On the 6th of September, 1586, ten years before the affair at Cadiz, Sir Urian Legh was united in marriage to Mary, one of the daughters of Sir Edmund Trafford, of Trafford, Knight, that “hunter out and unkeneler of those slie and subtil foxes Iesuites and semenarei Priests.” The guests who graced the ceremony by their presence must have formed a goodly company, for William Massie, the rector of Wilmslow, who preached a sermon on the occasion, speaks of it as being delivered “before the right honourable the most noble Earle of Derby, and the right reuerend father in God the B(ishop) of Chester with diuerse Knightes and Esquires of great worship at the solemne marriage of your (Sir Edmund Trafford’s) daughter, a modest and vertuous Gentlewoman, married to a young gentleman of great worship and good education.”
Sir Urian Legh died at Adlington on the 2nd June, 1627, and two days afterwards, as the registers show, he was buried at Prestbury.
It is somewhat singular that Thomas Newton,[33] the famous Cheshire poet, who sang the glories of Essex and Drake in Latin verse, should have remained silent upon the daring deeds of his quondam friend and neighbour, Sir Urian Legh, leaving the “Water Poet,” John Taylor, to record in rhyme the virtues of the hero of Cadiz. Taylor was a guest at Adlington some time before the close of the century, and in his “Pennilesse Pilgrimage” describes the reception he met in a manner that recalls Ben Jonson’s lines in praise of the daily hospitalities at Penshurst:—
This weary day, when I had almost past,
I came vnto Sir Urian Legh’s at last.
At Adlington, neer Macksfield, he doth dwell,
Belou’d, respected, and reputed well.
Through his great loue, my stay with him was fixt,
From Thursday night till noone on Monday next.
At his own table I did daily eate,