This would appear to have been the occasion when, according to Stow, Beeston was chosen by the king, on account of its strength and the usually loyal feelings of the county, for the custody of his treasures, when jewels and other valuables said to be worth 200,000 marks (£133,333) were deposited in it for safety. The castle was then garrisoned by a force of a hundred men; but it says little for their valour that, without striking a blow, they surrendered it to the victorious heir of Lancaster, who, anticipating Richard’s advance towards his trusty friends in Cheshire, where his power was strongest, and wishing to intercept his communications, had marched through Gloucester, Hereford, and Ludlow to Shrewsbury, crying havoc and destruction to Cheshire and Cheshire men as he went; and who was then at Chester, where he had caused to be beheaded that loyal and loving subject, Sir Piers Legh, the founder of the house of Legh of Lyme—a Cheshire worthy who had been the companion in arms of the Black Prince, and whose name is still perpetuated in the inscription which one of his descendants placed in the Lyme Chapel, in Macclesfield Church—
Here lyethe the bodie of Perkyn a Legh,
That for King Richard the death did die,
Betrayed for righteovsnes;
And the bones of Sir Piers, his Sonne,
That with King Henrie the Fift did wonne
In Paris.
The hapless king, finding his power gone and his castles of Carnarvon, Beaumaris, and Conway destitute of provisions, gave himself up to Percy, Duke of Northumberland, who conveyed him to Flint, whither Bolingbroke repaired from Chester to receive him. Thence the fallen monarch was removed to Chester; but he could only have remained a day or two, for on the 21st August he was at Nantwich, a prisoner on his way to the Tower, having on the morning of that early autumn day passed with his captors beneath the frowning walls of Beeston, so lately lost to him. The close of that sad journey of triumph and humiliation has been thus described by our greatest dramatist:—
Then, as I said, the duke, great Bolingbroke—