William died childless, and was succeeded by Anne, the last Stuart who sat on the English throne. She had Cheshire blood in her veins, for she was the daughter of James the Second's wife, Anne Hyde, whose grandfather, the Earl of Clarendon, was a Hyde of Hyde Hall.
Queen Anne's children all died young. Before she came to the throne Parliament had passed an Act of Settlement, by which the crown was settled on a Protestant, Princess Sophia, granddaughter of James the First, and her heirs. When Queen Anne died, George, the eldest son of Sophia, became king.
The fallen Stuarts made more than one attempt to recover the British crown. In 1715, when George the First was king, a number of Cheshire gentlemen, among whom were the Leghs of Legh and Lymm, the Grosvenors of Eaton, Warrens and Asshetons, and Cholmondeleys met in the hall of the Asshetons at Ashley to decide whether they should give any help to James Edward, the 'Old Pretender', James's eldest son, who was raising a revolt in Scotland. They decided by a majority of one only to remain loyal to the Protestant King George.
Thirty years later the inhabitants of East Cheshire saw an army of rugged Highlanders in bonnets and kilts pass southwards from Stockport Prince Charles Edward, the 'Young Pretender', had raised his flag in the Highlands of Scotland and gathered together an army of 'Jacobites', as the followers of the Stuarts were called. At Manchester the Scots had been joined by about 200 Lancashire Catholics. But the villagers who cheered the rebels on the Macclesfield high-road saw them returning within a week, for they had hardly crossed the hills at Bosley and descended into the valleys of Derbyshire when the Duke of Cumberland, commanding an army in the Midlands, scattered them and drove them pell-mell northwards again.
In Lyme Hall are some Jacobite wine-glasses, with the White Rose of the Stuarts stamped on one side, and on the other the Latin word 'fiat', which expressed the thought that was in the minds of those who used them: 'May the king come to his own again!' When men were forbidden to drink the health of the Pretender in public, these 'fiat' glasses were made by the Jacobites and the toast drunk in silence.
'Bonnie Prince Charlie' stayed at the house of Sir Peter Davenport in Macclesfield, and his officers at a house in Jordangate which is now the George Hotel. Stuart 'Pretenders' were never seen in Cheshire again.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. I
During the latter part of the seventeenth century the people of Cheshire began to repair the damage done to the churches, mansions, and public buildings during the Civil Wars. It was hardly to be expected that the art of the builder could flourish during that stormy period. Gothic architecture had reached its greatest glory under the Plantagenet and Tudor kings, and when the builders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took up their work again they cast aside the aims and ideals of the Gothic craftsmen and turned to new models and new sources for their inspiration.
The changes which were now made were one of the results of the Renaissance or Great Awakening of the sixteenth century. The men who visited Italy and brought back with them copies of the works of the old Greek and Roman writers, which they printed and gave to the world, brought also the ideas of Italian architects and plans of Italian buildings, which had been copied from those of ancient Athens and Rome. Englishmen of the eighteenth century took these as their models. Like the Roman workmen, they found it easier to copy than to invent.