In 1498 he obtained a licence from the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry to have mass and other divine offices performed by a fit chaplain in the chapel situated within his manor of Adlington—a renewal, it would seem, of the privilege conceded to his grandfather, Robert Legh, in 1447. When Henry’s eldest son, Arthur, Prince of Wales, succeeded to the earldom, he was at great pains to guard against any encroachment affecting the “sword and dignity of Chester,” and with that object made a searching inquiry as to the authority in which many of his feudatories exercised their privileges. Among them Thomas Legh, in 1499–1500, had a quo warranto, requiring him to show cause why he claimed to have a park at Whiteley Hay and to hold a court-leet, &c. He replied, setting forth the grant made by Edward IV. to his grandfather; he further pleaded right of free-warren in all his Cheshire possessions, and claimed the assize of bread and ale, the punishing of scolds by the cucking-stool, of bakers by amercement or the pillory, and brewers by judgment of the tumbrell, and to have amercements and fines for trespasses, offences, and effusions of blood in affrays presented within the leet to be assessed by the jury. The answer must have been deemed satisfactory, for no further action appears to have been taken against him in the Earl’s court.
If we may judge from some of the enrolments on the Recognisance Rolls, Thomas Legh must have been a somewhat turbulent subject, and have been frequently at variance with his neighbours and friends. Impatient of the dilatory and uncertain processes of the law, he sometimes had recourse to the simpler and less tardy method of taking the adjustment of his differences into his own hands, a mode of procedure that occasionally brought him into trouble, and subjected him to the inconvenience of having to find sureties for his good behaviour. He oftentimes appeared in the legal arena, and not unfrequently his quarrels were with his wife’s father, Sir John Savage, who was then residing at the park at Macclesfield, the custody of which had been granted him by King Henry in acknowledgment of his services at Bosworth. Thus, on the 14th November, 1488, he was required to enter into a recognisance of 1,000 marks that he and all his children and servants would keep the peace towards Sir John Savage, sen., knight, and on the same day he entered into another recognisance of the like amount that he, his children, and servants would keep the peace towards Nicholas Davenport, of Woodford, and his servants. On the 28th April, 1489, he again gave sureties in two sums of 1,000 marks each that he would keep the peace towards his father-in-law, Sir John Savage, his children, and servants, and Nicholas Davenport, of Woodford, his children, and servants, and at the same time he entered into a further recognisance of £200 to keep the peace towards Hamo Ashley, Esq. Whatever may have been the cause of the difference with his father-in-law, it was a long time before the variance was composed, for on the 20th April, 1490, he again appeared in the law courts, when he was required to find sureties in 1,000 marks to keep the peace towards him. On the 11th May, 1495, he and his brother, John Legh, of Lawton, entered into recognisances of 1,000 marks each to abide the award of Hamnet Massy and others named, touching all disputes between the two brothers and Nicholas Davenport and William Honford, of Davenport and Honford, at the same time entering into recognisances for the same amounts. The arbitration must have been very protracted, for the recognisances and counter recognisances were renewed on the 12th April, 1496, again on 9th September in the same year, and a third time on the 19th June, 1498. On the 8th June, 1501, Thomas Legh was again required to give sureties, this time in £100, to keep the peace towards John Carter and Robert Rokeley; and on the 19th September, 1502, he entered into recognisances of £100 to keep the peace towards Richard Phillips, chaplain. He either lacked prudence, or his neighbours must have been more than ordinarily litigious, for it was not long before he was again involved in a suit, this time at the instance of Robert Walls, the representative of a family located at Adlington. He appears to have been then outlawed in error, for on the 5th March, 1st and 2nd Henry VIII., proceedings were taken against Roger Downes and others for restitution of goods seized under the outlawry. In July of the same year he entered into recognisances to the Earl of Chester to keep the peace towards his neighbour, Sir John Warren, of Poynton.
In the Calendar of Warrants, removed from Chester to the Public Record Office, London, there is one dated at Ludlow Castle, 1st April, 12th Henry VII., 1497, appointing the Bishop of Lincoln, the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and others named, a commission to levy money in the counties of Chester and Flint, to aid the King in repelling the unprovoked invasion of James IV. of Scotland, who, in violation of the treaty of 1493, had raised an army in support of Perkin Warbeck and crossed the borders, spoiling and plundering the country. The Parliament which assembled at Westminster in January of that year had granted him £120,000 under certain restrictions, and on the 6th April, Thomas Legh, and other loyal men of Cheshire, assembled at Chester, and in the name of the county granted him a further sum of 1,000 marks. Four days later a commission was issued to Thomas Legh and others to array the fencible men of the hundred before the 1st May following, for the purpose of aiding in the war against the Scotch. Henry VII., in the indulgence of his inordinate passion for money, had frequent recourse to a system of benevolences or contributions, apparently voluntary, though, in fact, extorted from his wealthier subjects, and also to the granting of subsidies—“reasonable aids,” as they were called. In 1501, on the occasion of the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales, with Katharine of Arragon, afterwards the unhappy queen of Henry VIII., a subsidy was granted by the county of Chester, and Thomas Legh was appointed with others to collect the portion due from his own hundred.
When Henry of Richmond came out of the field of Bosworth a victor it was to rule over a nation weak and impoverished, and bleeding at every vein. The sword had vied with the axe, and the nobles had shown themselves too powerful for the comfort or security of the monarch. To destroy their influence the King determined upon the suppression of their retainers—virtually the rent of the lands granted in knights’ service, thus freeing their properties from the burden of supplying the armies of the State. In this way peace and good order were re-established, and an end put to those intestine wars which had well-nigh exhausted the country. Though the Leghs had not suffered to any appreciable extent from these internal broils, it is more than probable that less attention had been paid to their ancestral home than would have been the case had public affairs been in a more settled state. With the return to a more peaceful order of things they had leisure to add to the beauty and convenience of their permanent home. Architecture marks the growth and development of human society, and the progress of refinement as well as the changes society had undergone rendered alterations at Adlington necessary for the comfort and convenience of the inmates. Thomas Legh, if he did not rebuild the house, remodelled and greatly enlarged it; and much of the traceried panel-work forming part of the ancient screen, as well as other carved work still remaining, was no doubt executed during his time. In commemoration of his work, he caused his name and that of his wife, with the date, to be affixed in carved Lombardic letters—
The inscription appears over the high-place at the west end of the great hall, and was probably replaced in the last century during the occupancy of Charles Legh.
Thomas Legh died August 8, 1519, leaving, with other issue, a son, George Legh, then aged 22 years, who succeeded as his heir.
“Better marry over the mixen than over the moor” has ever been a favourite proverb with the men of Cheshire; and the heads of the house of Legh evidently believed in the soundness of the advice it conveyed, for, from the time their Norman progenitor first settled in the county, they had been content to mate within their own shire. The first of the manorial lords of Adlington to depart from this long-established custom was George Legh, who, in 1523, married the daughter of a Huntingdonshire squire—Joan, daughter of Peter Larke, and a sister of that Thomas Larke on whom Cardinal Wolsey had bestowed the rich rectory of Winwick, in Lancashire—and it can hardly be said that the departure added much to the reputation of his house, the supposed antecedents of the lady having given rise to no inconsiderable amount of scandal. It is said that, previous to her marriage with Thomas Legh, Joan Larke had been the mistress (not the illegitimate daughter, as a recent writer has unnecessarily sought to disprove) of Cardinal Wolsey. The statement is evidently made on the authority of one of the “Articles of Impeachment” against Wolsey presented to Parliament by a committee of the House of Lords, December 1, 1529, and quoted in Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s “Life of Henry VIII.” The story is a curious one, and, if true, reflects little credit either upon the Cardinal or his frail companion. The accusation is embodied in the 38th article—
That the sd Cardinal did call before him Sir Jno. Stanley, kt., which had taken a farm by convent seal of the Abbot and Convent of Chester; and afterwards by his power and might, contrary to right, committed the said Sir Jno. Stanley to the prison of Fleet by the space of one year, until such time as he compelled the sd Sir Jno. to release his convent seal to one Leghe, of Adlington, which married one Lark’s daughter, which woman the sd lord cardinal kept and had with her two children; whereupon the sd Sir John Stanley, upon displeasure taken in his heart, made himself monk in Westminster, and there died.
The story, it must be confessed, has much improbability about it; and may, as has been suggested, have been prompted by feelings of malice against the fallen ecclesiastic. Certain it is, the charge was not pressed to a direct issue. Whatever may have been the relations existing between Wolsey and the wife of Thomas Legh, there is no doubt that in the short interval between the expiry of the lease of the Prestbury tithes, in 1523–4, and the granting of a new one by the Abbot of St Werburg, in the following year, a dispute had arisen between George Legh and Sir John Stanley respecting them. It is not improbable that the latter had endeavoured to steal a march upon his neighbour by securing a lease of a portion of them to the disadvantage of the Leghs, who, as we have seen, had been farmers of the impropriate rectory for a lengthened period, and that the Cardinal, who is known to have been a patron of the Larkes, was then appealed to with a view of inducing the monks of Chester to grant George Legh a renewal of the privileges his family had so long enjoyed. If so, the appeal was unsuccessful, for in 1524–5 a new lease for forty years was granted, which was subsequently renewed.