the “Faery Queen” had been written, and its gifted author, Edmund Spenser, was then residing.
Thomas Legh died at Adlington on the 25th January, 1601–2, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, and was buried at Prestbury, on the following day, as the parish registers show. The same year his widow caused a memorial window, a portion of which still remains, though in a very mutilated condition, to be placed in the church, on which is a shield of arms, with several quarterings, representing the alliances of the two families. Beneath is this inscription:—
Orate pro bono statv Thomæ Leyghe de Adlington armigeri et Sibilla vxoris svæ vni’ filiorvm Vriani Brereton de Handford militis defvncti qvi hanc fenestram fieri fecervnt in anno domini 1601.
She survived her husband eight years, and was buried at Prestbury, February 19th, 1609–10.
Sir Urian Legh, who succeeded as heir on the death of his father, in 1602, was born at Handforth in 1566, and was, consequently, in his thirty-sixth year when he entered upon his inheritance. As we have seen, he had early embraced the profession of arms, and in the service of his country had already won renown. It was the time when Elizabeth’s sea captains, Howard and Essex, and Raleigh and Drake, were adding to the national laurels by their achievements on the main, justifying the witty and well-timed impromptu which one of the courtiers gave when lament was made that England was then under the rule of a queen, instead of that of a king,—
O fortune! to old England still
Continue such mistakes,
And give us for our Kings such Queens,
And for our dux such Drakes.