CHESHIRE AND ITS FAMILIES
By James Hall
Author of “A History of Nantwich,” “The Civil War in Cheshire,” &c.
CHESHIRE, in regard to its shape, has been said to resemble a bird’s wing, an axe-head, and a shoulder of mutton. The late Colonel Egerton Legh humorously compared it to a chicken with its head in Featherbed Moss, Macclesfield in its crop, and the tail formed by Wirral. Perhaps more seriously, but no less fancifully, it may be likened to a broad, ear-topped shield of the College of Arms type, divided palewise by a central line of hills, of which the isolated rocks of Halton and Beeston occupy respectively the chief point and the fesse point of the shield.
From the summit of Beeston Castle, or, better still, from the more elevated escarpment of the adjacent Peckforton Hill, marked on the survey map Stanner Nab—a name little altered from its original Saxon, Stan-es Nebb, literally “front of stone,” or stone head, and now commonly called Tanner’s Nob—nearly the whole county is spread out in fine panorama of plain; the view extending from the Wirral coast to the high moorlands of Macclesfield, a distance of about fifty miles; and from the Mersey to the Shropshire border, a little over thirty miles. A like distant and picturesque horizon is obtainable from eminences such as Alderley Edge, Cloud End, and Mow Cop on the east; Frodsham Hill, Helsby Tor, and Halton Castle on the north; Carden Cliff, Harthill, and Belvidere in Wirswall on the south border. From gentle uplands, the more circumscribed landscape presents the effect of a tree-covered plain, owing to the great quantity of hedgerow timber, chiefly oak, and the smallness of the fields. This illusion is perfect when the view is taken from the cupola on the roof of Doddington Hall; but in reality the county is almost destitute of woods, excepting spinnies, often hidden in dingles, and the rather modern plantations on the central hills. There are, however, extensive parks at Dunham, Tatton, Tabley, Arley, Lyme, Peover, Somerford, Oulton, Vale Royal, Eaton, Cholmondeley, Combermere, Doddington, and Crewe; although some mentioned in history have been disparked, as at Kermincham and Norbury Booths.
Cheshire is a county of large estates, many of which have descended by a long ancestry to the present owners. The greatest estates occur in the purely agricultural and sparsely populated districts of the south. In order of their extent comes first the Peckforton estate, 25,380 acres (Lord Tollemache); next Cholmondeley, 16,842 acres (the Marquis of Cholmondeley); then Eaton, 15,001 acres (the Duke of Westminster); Doddington, 13,832 acres (Sir Delves L. Broughton, Bart.); and Crewe, 10,148 acres (Earl Crewe); but this last estate does not include the railway town of that name. Other large landowners[47] (most of whose names are historic in the county, and whose estates vary between 5000 and 10,000 acres) are—
The Lords—Egerton of Tatton, Harrington, Stamford, Derby, Haddington, De Tabley, Delamere, Stanley of Alderley (Sheffield), Kilmorrey, Shrewsbury, and Combermere. Also Sir Philip Grey-Egerton, Mr. Legh [now Lord Newton] of Lyme, Mr. Legh of Adlington, Mr. Egerton-Warburton of Arley, Sir W. G. Shakerley, Mr. Bromley Davenport, and Colonel France Hayhurst.
[47] This list of names is taken from the published returns to the House of Commons of the “Owners of Land” throughout the United Kingdom, commonly called the Modern Domesday Book, of 1873.
These twenty-three gentlemen own collectively 203,533 acres, or a little over one-third of the whole county; but, according to the same authority, 2840 persons own lands varying from 10 to 1000 acres, also 3166 persons have holdings between one acre and ten acres, while 17,691 persons possess lands less than one acre in extent. The Crown lands amount to 3581 acres, and the commons or waste lands to 6704 acres, so that the total number of owners in Cheshire is 23,720, the total area of the county being 608,922 acres, or rather less than 1000 square miles.
Some houses of the gentry have from ancient times stood on the margin of a natural mere, as at Tatton, Tabley, Mere, Rostherne, Arley, Combermere, and Marbury; or beside an artificial pool, as at Crewe and Doddington. But Bagmere, which once reflected the stately mansion of the Breretons, has been drained, and Ridley Pool has long been “sown and mown,” in fulfilment, as credulous people have believed, of Nixon’s prophecy. Barmere is one of the few meres that have not been honoured by a gentleman’s seat.
Of modern mansions, both the magnificent palace at Eaton and the castle at Cholmondeley stand near ornamental sheets of water; while Peckforton Castle, perhaps the most remarkable house in all England, being built in close imitation of a Norman castle, is perched on a rocky eminence like an eyrie.
In no part of Cheshire are so many gentlemen’s seats clustered together as within a radius of a few miles around the old-fashioned town of Knutsford. They are as follows:—
Dunham Hall, or Dunham Massey, as it was named in ancient times, when it was held as a feudal barony by the Massey family until the death of Hamon, about the year 1340, stands in what is known as the Old Park, which is walled round for the protection of about a hundred head of deer. The so-called New Park, nearly three miles in circumference, also contains aged oaks and beeches, and is divided from the other park merely by the road leading from Bowdon to Dunham village. From the Masseys the estate descended to the notable family of Booth. At the old mansion lived Sir John Booth, who was slain at Flodden Field; Sir George Booth, created Baron Delamere in 1661 in honour of his staunch royalist services to Charles I.; and his son Henry, second lord, who, after having been three times unjustly imprisoned in the Tower, was in 1686 tried for high treason by his peers and acquitted.
High Leigh.—Here two important mansions stood in close proximity, namely, East Hall and West Hall. The latter, or what remains of it, was changed into a farmhouse nearly a century ago. The former, rebuilt towards the end of the eighteenth century as a brick mansion, is still the residence of the Legh family, which has been seated there since the time of Edward I. In the reign of Henry VII. there was much litigation between the Leghs of the two halls.
Rostherne Hall, long the residence of the Masseys of Coddington, and now the property of Lord Egerton, stands on the border of a broad mere, as much famed for its curious legends as for the natural beauty of its surroundings.
Ashley Hall, where, in 1715, ten Cheshire gentlemen, namely, Thomas Assheton, the resident proprietor; Sir Richard Grosvenor, of Eaton; James, Earl Barrymore, of Marbury; Charles Hurleston, of Newton; Amos Meredith, of Henbury; Alexander Radclyff, of Fox Denton in Lancashire, but born at Wythenshawe in Cheshire in 1677; Robert Cholmondeley, of Holford; John Warren, of Poynton; Henry Legh, of Legh; and Peter Legh, of Lyme; met to discuss the propriety of espousing the cause of the Old Pretender, the Chevalier St. George, the decision arrived at being in the negative by the casting vote of the owner of Ashley.
Tatton Hall, anciently the seat of the knightly family of Massey, from the time of Edward I. to the time of Henry VI., descended in the time of Charles II. to the Egerton family, and is now owned by Lord Egerton. The present mansion, designed by the two Wyatts, has for its chief external feature a portico of columns 25 feet high, and stands in the centre of a park nearly 12 miles in circumference. The old hall, half a mile away, is situate on low, sheltered ground at the north end of the lake.
Mere Hall.—The old hall, long the residence of the ancient family of Mere, stood nearer the village, but only a portion of it now remains, used as a farmhouse. This estate has been in the possession of the Brooke family since 1652. Mr. Peter Langford Brooke, who, in 1834, built the present brick mansion overlooking the mere, had the misfortune to be drowned while skating on the mere on 9th January 1840, his wife witnessing the sad occurrence.
Arley Hall, the seat of the Warburton family for several centuries, was demolished in 1833, and the present handsome structure, with its chapel designed by Salvin (who was also the architect of Peckforton Castle), was not completed until 1845. Over the stone porch doorway is carved the following rhyme by the squire of the hall:—
“This Gate is free to all Good Men and True,
Right Welcome thou, if worthy to pass through.”
Marbury Hall,[48] possessed by the Marbury family for many generations until the death of Richard Marbury in 1684. Since the eighteenth century it has belonged to the family of Barry. The present mansion, overlooking Budworth Mere, was built by the architect, Mr. A. Salvin, in the French château style.
[48] On the southern border of the county is another Marbury Hall, late the residence of Cudworth H. Poole, Esq., beautifully situated on a hill that commands the view of two meres and a picturesque church and village of the same name.
Tabley House and Chapel.
Tabley Hall, which resembles Tatton in architecture, was completed in the year 1769. The old hall, now in a ruinous condition, and in danger of becoming a tumbled heap by its thick mantling of ivy, together with a detached brick chapel dated 1675, stand on an island in the circling mere. This was the home of Sir Peter Leycester, the representative of a long lineage, and the first great historian of Cheshire families, who was buried at Budworth in 1678.
The above-mentioned halls lie on the northern and western sides of Knutsford; two others are on the south side of that town, namely:—
Toft Hall, another seat of the Leycester family for many generations, and remarkable now for its fine avenue of elms in triple rows. Ralph Leycester, who died in 1777, owned this estate for no fewer than 70 years.
Peover Hall is associated with the Mainwarings from Plantagenet times, whose surname, according to the antiquary Dugdale, had undergone 131 variations of spellings in old deeds. Sir Henry Mainwaring, who died unmarried on 6th April 1797, was the last direct descendant. By his will the estate came to his uterine half-brother, Thomas Wettenhall, of Nantwich, who took the name and arms of Mainwaring, and, dying the following year, on 12th July 1798, thus became the ancestor of the present line of baronets of Peover.
Farther away from Knutsford, on the borders of Delamere Forest, stand three notable houses; namely, Delamere House, designed by Wyatt, and owned by Mr. Wilbraham, who is the direct descendant of the ancient family of Wilbraham of Woodhey in the south part of the county; Vale Royal, the seat of the present Lord Delamere, that estate having been purchased in 1615 by the noble lady, Mary Cholmondeley, widow of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley, and known in history as “the bold lady of Cheshire,” who entertained King James I. on his progress through the county in 1617; and Utkinton Hall, now a farmhouse with some remains of its former importance, which in the same year, 1617, was the residence of the forester, Sir John Done, who had married Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Wilbraham of Woodhey, whose manners and character were “so amiable that to this day” (as Thomas Pennant says in 1782), “when a Cheshire man would express some excellency in one of the fair sex, he would say, ‘There is a Lady Done for you!’”
Very fine specimens of ancient timber houses are at Bramhall, Little Moreton, Adlington; and the hall at Baguley, perhaps the oldest building of its kind in the county, has massive oak beams, still in good condition, proving the durability of that material for building construction. Of stone and brick mansions, Brereton is the best example of Tudor architecture; Dorfold and Crewe of the seventeenth century renaissance; Oulton, Lyme, and Doddington of the later palladian style.
Other halls constructed wholly or in part of timber, and once occupied by the yeomen class—the charterers or freeholders named on old manor court-rolls—whose estates have been swallowed up in the larger properties, were usually defended by deeply-dug, rectangular moats, indicative of an unsettled and dangerous state of life in former times. At Huxley Old Hall, at Harden, at Moreton, and elsewhere, moats and drawbridges still exist; but some moated enclosures have been turned into orchards, and a farmhouse has been built outside, as at Mickley in Wrenbury parish, and at Stapeley in Wybunbury parish.
Formerly Cheshire people frequently married with neighbouring families of like station in life, according to their common proverb, “It is better to marry over the mixen than over the moor;” and even yet there is a saying: “If you are going into Cheshire, remember they are all cousins.”
The long-established peasant families must not be passed over in silence. Suspicious of strangers, they understand “the law of the land” very differently from the inhabitants of crowded cities and manufacturing towns. Country people still speak with confidence and respect of “our squire,” just as the landlords talk of “our people”; although it must be admitted that the mutual social influences of old English life are now fast waning. A former manifestation of goodwill and good understanding among the tenantry of a large estate may here be mentioned. On the death of the Rev. Sir Thomas Broughton, Bart., in July 1813, the coffin containing his remains was borne to burial on the shoulders of relays of farmers by road from Doddington Hall to Broughton Church, a distance of no less than twelve miles!
The numerous townships into which Cheshire is divided are almost entirely rural in their situation; and in few parts of the county, Wirral being the chief exception, are the dwellings sufficiently near each other to constitute what is generally known as a village. I have heard a countryman express this peculiarity in these words: “The common people live in the lanes, but the quality (that is, the well-to-do farmers) live up in the fields.”
With regard to Cheshire families in the dim past, Camden the antiquary of the sixteenth century wrote:[49] “Cheshire is the great nursing-mother of the gentry; for there is no other English county that formerly supplied the King’s army with more nobility, or that could number more knightly families.”
[49] The original words in the Britannia read: “Cestria eximia nobilitatis altrix; nec enim alia est in Anglia provincia, quæ plures nobiles in aciem eduxerit, et plures equestres familias numerarit.”
Contemporary with Camden, John Speed, the historian, a native of the county, calls Cheshire the “seed-plot of gentility.” In proof of this, we refer to the statement already made in the historical introduction to this volume, that William the Conqueror constituted Cheshire a county palatine, bestowing the earldom on his nephew, Hugh Lupus, whose title, Earl of Chester, has belonged, since the time of Edward I., by hereditary right to the heir-apparent of the English Crown. Cheshire, like Normandy in France, thus became an imperium in imperio, with the Earl as titular sovereign and courts of justice, administered by a Constable, Seneschall, Chamberlain, Justices, Barons of Exchequer, Sheriff, Attorney, Escheator, &c. So constituted, the county preserved its independent existence until the time of Henry VIII., when it became subject to the Crown; and in the next reign the county sent its first representatives to the national Parliament at Westminster. The first Earl held a large part of the earldom in his own hands; and portioned out the rest of the land among military men, whom he created barons, or tenants in capite; and their hereditary honorary services for their fees were due to him and his successors. In course of time these fees became a civil establishment rather than a military plan, and the services began to be compounded. Agricultural and other services grew out of the sub-infeudations of the chief tenants; and eventually, by a statute, 12 Chas. II., local baronies and manors became little more than nominal institutions, and as such they continue to be.
It is said the Grosvenors are descended from Gilbert le Grosvenor, who came over from Normandy with Hugh Lupus, his uncle; the Mainwarings from Earl Randle; and the Egertons and Cholmondeleys from the Norman Barons of Malpas. The ancient, but now extinct, families of Merbury, Hatton, Rutter, Birkenhead, Vernon, Leftwich, and Fitton, each bore three garbs or (three golden wheatsheaves) on their shields, an honourable charge claimed to have been assigned them by the sixth Earl, Randle Blundeville, who bore the same device. In modern times the garb or occurs on the arms of Wicksted, Cholmondeley, and Grosvenor; and, in the last named, since the time of Richard II., when Sir Robert Grosvenor contended with the proud Sir Richard Scrope of Yorkshire in the long heraldic suit (1386-1389) as to the right to bear Azure a bend or, with the result that Sir Robert should bear a golden sheaf instead of a golden band, as descended from the Earls of Chester.
In the ancient days of chivalry the military aristocracy promoted peace and order within the county, and defended it against raids from beyond the Welsh Marshes. Cheshire archers became famous; and, led by their own knights, gained renown in the wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
If military achievement be claimed in justification of the proverb—“Cheshire, chief of men”—quoted by Drayton, it must be remembered there was a rival in the field. The “Men of Kent,” who boldly said to William the Conqueror—
“We are ready to offer thee either Peace or War at thy own choice and election—Peace with faithful obedience, if thou wilt permit us to enjoy our liberties; War, and that most deadly, if thou deny it”—
have a prior claim for daring manhood. But while Grose, the antiquary, insinuated that the proverb was given to our noble selves by our noble selves, it may, after all, have had no more serious signification than that Cheshire men always boasted of their isolation from other English people.
Truly the warrior-roll forms a long list of brave and hardy men, from Roger Lacy, the Constable of Cheshire in 1200, that magnanimous champion of war in both France and Wales, down to Field-Marshal Combermere of Salamanca and Bhurtpore fame; but memorials abound of heroic endeavour in the arts of peace, in law and letters, as well as in the field.
Of famous lawyers were Lord Chancellor Egerton and Sir Ranulph Crewe, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in the seventeenth century. In the following century were Randle Wilbraham, ancestor of the Wilbrahams of Rode, and of Lathom House (now Lord Skelmersdale) in Lancashire; Sir John Chesshyre, who founded in 1733 a library at Halton, and was buried at Runcorn in 1738 with this epitaph:—
“An honest man’s the noblest work of God”:
and Richard P. Arden, born at Stockport in 1745, who became Lord Chief Justice, Baron Alvanley, and died in 1804.
Of talented men of letters were Dr. Broome, the poet, born at Haslington in 1689; and in our own time Lord de Tabley, eminent as poet, botanist, and author of the first work on the subject of book-plates; Sir Philip Egerton, the learned geologist and mineralogist; the Rev. A. P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster; and other worthies whose names are enshrined in the volumes of the National Biographical Dictionary.
Of benefactors of their fellow-men were James Neild, born at Knutsford in 1774, the philanthropic prison-visitor; the Duke of Bridgewater, pioneer of canal construction; George Wilbraham, Esq., of Delamere House, who died in 1813, and was one of the first to introduce an improved system of agriculture into the county; the first Lord Tollemache, who in his lifetime was everywhere spoken of as Cheshire’s model landlord; and many others who, holding positions of trust for the general good, fulfilled their duties with integrity and honour, and to whom we are all debtors.
There is another local proverb, expressed in curious rhyme and alliteration, that relates to the number and distribution of four Cheshire family names:—
As many Leighs as fleas; Massies as asses;
Crewes as crows; and Davenports as dogs’ tails.
This is easy of explanation when multitudinous plebeians bearing the same surnames are added to the following lists of genteel families:—
There were Leghs of Legh, Northwood, Sandbach, Booths, Oughtrington, Adlington, Baguley, Lyme, and Ridge.
There were Masseys of Massey, Coddington, Puddington, Tatton, and Chester.
There were Crewes of Crewe, Nantwich, Alvaston, Farndon, Holt, Cholmondeston, and Utkinton.
There were Davenports of Davenport, Woodford, Calveley, Wheltrough, Bramhall, Henbury, Capesthorne, Blackhurst, Boughton, and Chorley.
The Davenport family had power of life and death over intruders infesting the royal forest of Macclesfield; and their crest—a rogue’s head, with a halter round the neck—must have been a constant reminder that the Davenports were terrors to all evil-doers.
The Bramhall Davenports, who held that estate for more than five hundred years, have persistently borne the name of William; and for the same length of time the Tattons of Wythenshawe have been named Robert and William alternately; while the owner of Carden has been John Leche for sixteen successive generations!
In regard to curiosities of descent, it may here be restated that Robert Hyde, of Hyde, Esq., who died about the year 1528, left a son, Lawrence Hyde, who, leaving Cheshire for Wiltshire, became the ancestor of the Hydes of Westhatch, from whom descended the celebrated Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, whose two granddaughters, Mary and Anne, became in succession Queens of England.
Few counties in England have had their history so fully written and re-written as Cheshire; and therefore from this epitome of a wide-embracing subject the reader is referred to the writings of Camden, Webb, Fuller, Sir Peter Leycester, the Lysons, and the monumental volumes of Dr. Ormerod’s History of Cheshire; to the published transactions of the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, and of the historic societies of Manchester, Liverpool, and Chester; to many separate histories of towns and parishes in the county; and to the genealogical works of the late Mr. Earwaker, whose untimely death in 1895 is still deplored by all who take an interest in the records of family history.
This chapter shall close with the words of two Cheshire poets—the one Geoffrey Whitney, who, living in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, wrote in praise of prominent Cheshire men of that time; the other, the late Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton, “the rhyming squire of Arley,” in the time of Queen Victoria.
Whitney, in his Emblem, dedicated to “I. I. esquier,” says:—
Not for our selues alone wee are create,
But for our frendes, and for our countries good.
Mr. Egerton-Warburton composed these verse-mottoes for the shields that decorate the two fireplaces in the dining-room at Arley Hall.
Under the Egerton shield:—
Since days of olden chivalry bequeathed from sire to son,
May honour keep untarnished still the shield which valour won.
Under the Warburton shield:—
If proud thou be of ancestors for worth and wisdom famed,
So live that they, if now alive, would not of thee be shamed.