He speaks of Chester as
th' imaginary work of some huge Giant's hand:
which if such ever were, Tradition tells not who.
The book was illustrated by a number of curious maps, adorned with quaint figures of men and women representing the rivers, hills, forests, and castled towns.
John Speed was born at Farndon on the Dee, and wrote a book called the Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, which contained the earliest set of maps published in England.
Cophurst, an old house near Sutton Downes in the Forest of Macclesfield, is thought to have been the birthplace of the chronicler Raphael Holinshed, who wrote a History of England and dedicated it to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the great minister of Queen Elizabeth. Shakespeare used this book for the plots of some of his plays.
The triumphs of Francis Drake were celebrated in a long Latin poem by Thomas Newton of Butley, who placed the small brass tablet on the wall near the pulpit in Prestbury Church to the memory of his parents. Newton was for some time the head master of Macclesfield Grammar School. Another Elizabethan poet was Geoffrey Whitney, who was born at Nantwich.
An inscription on an old house at Nantwich, bearing the date 1584, shows that Elizabeth returned the affections of her people and did all she could for them. The verse reads thus:—
God grant our royal Queen
In England long to reign;