For killing of a mouse on Sunday.
The marriage with John Booth could not have been a very felicitous one, for, according to Sir Peter Leycester, husband and wife lived apart from each other. She resided at the Miln House, and died there in February, 1675–6, and was buried at Prestbury. By her first husband, Thomas Legh, she had five sons, all of whom served in the Royalist army, one of them, John, losing his life in the war; and seven daughters, one of whom, Margaret, became the second wife of the eldest surviving son of her mother’s second husband, Alexander Rigby the younger, who, like his father, was an active soldier on the Parliament side, and the representative for Lancaster in the House of Commons in 1658.
At the time of Colonel Legh’s death, in 1644, his eldest son and heir, Thomas Legh, was a prisoner of war at Coventry, having been captured in the engagement at Stafford in May in the preceding year, where he was detained until June, 1645, when he was exchanged for his brother-in-law, Alexander Rigby,[35] who had been taken prisoner during the siege of Lathom House. He had then been married some few years, his wife being Mary, the daughter of Thomas Bolles, of Osberton, in Nottinghamshire.
Civil war has ever a devouring and insatiable maw, and in those days of political trouble and disturbance, when hostile armies were marching and counter-marching through the country, neither persons nor property were safe. It was the time—
When nobles and knights so proud of late,
Must pine for freedom and estate,
especially if they were suspected of having any political partialities, whether on the “malignants” or the “roundheads” side. The Leghs were all active partisans, and no family in Cheshire sustained heavier losses or endured greater hardships in defending what they believed to be the rights of their sovereign. While Thomas Legh was a prisoner at Coventry his young wife petitioned the sequestrators that some provision might be made for her, and eventually she had allotted to her a small portion of her husband’s lands. In June of the following year she again memorialised the sequestrators that her husband might be allowed to compound for his estates, pleading that since his release he had foreborne to repair to the enemy’s quarters, and setting forth the miseries which she and her children were enduring, being destitute of the means of livelihood until relieved. Mr. Legh also presented a petition praying that he might be allowed to compound, when a statement of his “delinquencies” and a report upon his estates was submitted, which is preserved among the State papers in the Record Office. The charges exhibited against him were—
(1.) That he led a company of musquetiers into Adlington Hall when it was first garrisoned against the Parliament, and brought some who were well affected to the Parliament prisoners into the garrison, and kept them there till they compounded with him.
(2.) That he bore arms in that garrison; was governor of it; and gave directions to the inferior commanders therein.
(3.) That he refused to deliver up the said house to Colonel Duckinfield for the use of Parliament.