To seal the ruin of our line.
Our walk has brought us to the lawn in front of the mansion, but before we enter let us take a glance at the past history of the house and its possessors.
Before the days of Duke William, the Norman conqueror, Adlington formed part of the demesne of the Saxon Earl of Mercia. The name is supposed by some authorities to be derived from the Saxon words adeling (noble), and ton (a town), but in the Doomsday Book it is written Edulvintone, signifying Edwin’s town, the inference being that Edwin, then Earl of Mercia, a grandson of Earl Leofric and that fair Lady Godiva whose memory the good people of Coventry delight to honour, had a residence here, and this is the more probable origin. The account in the great Norman survey is summed up in the word “Wasta,” from which it is clear that the district had at that time been devastated or laid waste by the invaders, and the reason of this is not far to seek, though the story is not without a spice of romance. Edwin and his brother Morcar, Earl of Northumberland, were two of Harold’s chief generals at the battle of Hastings. Knowing the power and influence they possessed throughout the country north of the Trent, William set himself diligently to discover the means of effecting their overthrow. The Saxons generally were more impassioned than politic, and Edwin, having conceived an affection for the conqueror’s daughter, Adela, consented to abdicate his position as a condition of obtaining that princess’s hand. As far as a Norman word could bind she was given to him, whereupon he laid down his arms and undertook to pacify and to bring over to the invader nearly a third of the kingdom. Immediately he had done so the treacherous William, feeling himself secure, broke the promise he had given and refused to accept him for his son-in-law. Stung with the insult thus offered to himself and his house, Edwin and his brother flew to arms, and roused their countrymen into open revolt. The brave Saxons entered into a solemn league and covenant to expel the foreigners from their soil, or perish in the attempt. Famine, pestilence, and war did their worst. The Normans devoted themselves on the one hand to havoc, ruin, and desolation; while on the other, the outraged Saxons dealt death around them wherever they had the power. The foreigner was bent upon extermination, and between him and the native Saxon no intercourse existed save that of revenge and a rivalry as to which should inflict the greatest amount of injury upon the other. As a consequence, the country was drenched with slaughter and made the scene of violation, rapine, and murder. In the bloody conflict no place suffered more than this part of Cheshire, the frequent occurrence of the phrase “Wasta” in the survey evidencing the destruction accomplished by fire and sword. After fruitless struggles, Edwin, with a small band of followers, fled towards Scotland, but being overtaken near the coast he turned upon his pursuers. A fierce resistance was made, in which he was slain, when his head was cut off and sent as a trophy to the victorious William, and so perished the first owner of Adlington of whom history has furnished us with any particulars.
On the death of Edwin the manor with other of his possessions were given by the Conqueror to that pious profligate, Hugh d’Avranches, surnamed Lupus, whom he had created Palatine Earl of Chester, and who, being more concerned for the pleasures of the chase than the cultivation of the soil, appears to have retained Adlington in his own hands as a hunting seat, for in the Norman Survey it is mentioned as then having no less than seven “hays” (deer-fences or enclosures in which deer could be driven) and four aeries of hawks. It remained in the possession of the Norman earls until the time of John Scot, the seventh and last, who died without male heirs, when Henry the Third, with somewhat indistinct ideas with regard to meum and tuum, took the earldom into his own hands, deprived Earl John’s sisters of their heritage, and so sowed the seeds of discontent that produced a plentiful crop of troubles for King Henry’s grandson when he succeeded to the crown.
Immediately after this high-handed procedure Adlington is found in the possession of Hugh de Corona, who would appear to have held it by a grant direct from the Crown, for a Crown rental was payable for the manor for centuries. He also held the superior lordship of Little Neston-cum-Hargrave, in the Hundred of Wirral, as well as lands in Penisby, in the same hundred, formerly belonging to the hospital of St. John, at Chester. By his wife Amabella, daughter of Thomas de Bamville, of Storeton, near Chester, he had, in addition to a son, Hugh, two daughters—Sarah, to whom he gave his lands in Penisby, and Lucy, who became the wife of Sir William Baggaley, or Baguley, according to the modern orthography, whose monumental effigy has lately been placed in the old hall at Baguley.[27] In 1316 Hugh de Corona gave the whole of his manors of Parva Neston and Hargrave, excepting a third part of the same held in dower by his wife Lucy, and the tenements held in dower by Margaret, his mother, to John de Blount, or Blound, citizen of Chester, in consideration of an annual payment of ten marks; by another charter, executed about the same time, he granted the reversion of the said third part to the said John, and in the same year the grantee was released from the payment of the ten marks, and an amended grant of the manors “in fee simple” was made to him, with the exception of the dower estates. On the 15th March, 10 Edward II. (1316–17), Thomas de Corona appeared in the Exchequer at Chester, and prayed that these three grants might be enrolled, and they now appear on the Plea Rolls, together with a separate one granting the reversions. Finally, in the 27 Edward III., Thomas de Corona, the grandson of Hugh, quit-claimed to John, son of John de Blound, all title to the manors.
Having in this way completely alienated the Wirral estates, Adlington seems to have been made the chief abode of the Coronas. Lucy, the daughter of Hugh de Corona, who became the wife of Sir William Baggaley, had a son, John, who died without issue, and two daughters—Isabel, who married Sir John de Hyde, and Ellen, who became the wife of John, son of Sir William Venables, of Bradwell, Knight, younger brother of Sir Hugh Venables, Baron of Kinderton, but who assumed the surname of Legh, the maiden name of his mother, Agnes de Legh, as also of the place (High Legh) where he was born and resided until he became the possessor by purchase of Knutsford-Booths-cum-Norbury-Booths, from William de Tabley, 28 Edward I., 1300.
Hugh de Corona, the second of the name who resided at Adlington, had a son, John, who inherited the estates, and was in turn succeeded by his son, Thomas de Corona, who died unmarried in the reign of Edward III., when the male line of the family became extinct. By a deed executed in the early part of Edward II.’s reign, this Thomas granted to John de Venables, alias Legh, and Ellen de Corona, or Baggaley, his wife, all his part of the manor and village of Adlington, excepting the lands which Margaret, his mother, and Lucy, the widow of his grandfather, Hugh de Corona, the second of the name, had in dower; and by another charter, dated 9 Edward II., he gave to the said John Legh and Ellen, his wife, all the rest of his lands in Adlington previously held in dower by his mother and grandmother. Thus John de Legh became lord of Adlington, and on the paternal, as his wife Agnes de Legh was on the maternal side, founder of the house of Legh of Adlington, a house that has held possession of the manor for an uninterrupted period of more than five centuries and a half.
John de Legh, who acquired the lordship of Adlington by his marriage with Agnes de Corona, could boast a lineage as ancient and honourable as that of the Conqueror himself. When the subjugation of England was accomplished the Norman invader was enabled to reward his faithful followers out of the numerous forfeitures that had accrued through the fruitless insurrections of Earl Edwin and the other Saxon nobles. Hugh d’Avranches, or Hugh Lupus, as he was more generally designated, from the wolf’s head which he bore for arms, and which may have been given as symbolical of his gluttony, a vice Oderic says he was greatly addicted to, though he does not appear to have been with the invading army at Hastings, having followed the victor in the succeeding year, was largely instrumental in establishing William upon the English throne. In acknowledgment of his services, as well as for his valour in reducing the Welsh to obedience, he had conferred upon him in 1070 the whole of the fair county of Cheshire, “to hold of the King as freely by the sword as the King himself held the realm of England by the crown”—he was, in fact, a Count-Palatine, and all but a king himself. Thoroughly appreciating the conditions of his tenure, he, in order the more effectually to secure it, divided his palatinate into eight or more baronies, which he distributed among his warlike followers upon the condition of supporting him with the sword as he was in turn to support the King. He also established his officers as well as his own courts of law, in which any offence against the dignity of “the Sword of Chester” was as cognisable as the like offence would have been at Westminster against the dignity of the Royal crown.[28]
One of the eight barons created by Hugh Lupus was Gilbert, a younger son of Eudo, Earl of Blois, and a first cousin of the Conqueror. He was one of the combatants at Hastings, where he received the honour of knighthood for his valour in the field, and he afterwards rendered important services against Edgar Atheling, as well as in the subjugation of the Welsh, for which welcome aid Earl Hugh rewarded him with considerable estates in the newly-acquired county, and he chose Kinderton as the seat of his barony. Like his patron, he was devoted to the pleasure of the chase, and from that circumstance acquired the name of Venables (Venator abilis), which some of his descendants have retained to the present day, in the same way that another Norman chieftain, a nephew of Hugh Lupus, and a mighty hunter withal, took the name of Grosvenor—Gilbert Le Gros venor—which is now perpetuated by the ducal house of Westminster.