"She's over the muir,
An' over the border,
An' ower the blue hills far awa':
With her callant, I trow,—
On his saddle-bow,
While the mist-wreaths around them fa'."
The main facts of the following narrative, lying scattered through a wide field of barren inquiry, the author has been at considerable pains to collect and arrange in a continuous narrative.
Little needs be said by way of introduction, the traditions here interwoven with the general history being mostly of a trivial nature, and not at all interfering with the facts developed by the historians and rhymers who have illustrated the annals of the house of Stanley. These accounts, exaggerated and distorted as they inevitably must have been, may yet, in the absence of more authentic testimony, afford a pretty accurate glimpse at the real nature of those events, however they may have been disguised by fiction and misstatement. Where tradition is our only guide we must follow implicitly, satisfied that her taper was lighted at the torch of Truth, though it may gleam doubtfully and partially through the mists and errors of succeeding ages.
One source from whence we have derived some information, though well known to the comparative few who have explored these by-paths of history, may not be thought uninteresting to the general reader, especially as it is connected with the most eventful portion of our narrative.
An ancient metrical account of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, is con
tained in some uncouth rhymes, written about the year 1562, by Thomas Stanley, Bishop of Sodor and Man,[12] and son of that Sir Edward Stanley, who, for his valour at Flodden, was created Lord Monteagle. There are two copies of these verses in the British Museum: one amongst Cole's papers (vol. xxix. page 104), and the other in the Harleian MSS. (541). Mr Cole prefaces his transcript with the following notice:—"The History of the family of Stanley, Earls of Derby, wrote in verse about the reign of King Henry the Eighth from a MS. now in possession of Lady Margaret Stanley, copied for me by a person who has made many mistakes, and sent to me by my friend Mr Allen, Rector of Tarporley, in 1758.—W. Cole."
The MS. formerly belonged to Sir John Crewe, of Utkinton, and was given by Mr Ardern, in 1757, to Lady Margaret Stanley.
The commencement of this metrical history is occupied in dilating upon the pleasure resulting from such an undertaking; and although the flow of the verse is not of remarkable smoothness, yet it hardly furnishes an apology for Seacome's mistake, who, in his "History of the House of Stanley," printed the first fifty lines as prose. The reverend versifier rehearses how Stanley sprang from Audley, and then shows the manner in which his ancestors became possessors of Stourton and Hooton. He dwells upon the joust betwixt the Admiral of Hainault and Sir John Stanley, the second brother of the house of Stanley of Hooton.[13] Then follows the account, more particularly developed in our own story, of the adventures and moving accidents which have been liberally used to adorn the "Garland" of his descendant William, Earl of Derby. "For many generations this was the recognised chronicle of the family, until, in the time of James the First, a clergyman of Chester translated the rhymes of the Bishop into English, carefully retaining the mistakes of the original, and adding long and dull disquisitions of his own."
In the days of our valiant King Edward, while the fame of Cressy and Poictiers was fresh and stirring in all true and loyal hearts, while the monarchs of two powerful kingdoms