This is easy of explanation when multitudinous plebeians bearing the same surnames are added to the following lists of genteel families:—
There were Leghs of Legh, Northwood, Sandbach, Booths, Oughtrington, Adlington, Baguley, Lyme, and Ridge.
There were Masseys of Massey, Coddington, Puddington, Tatton, and Chester.
There were Crewes of Crewe, Nantwich, Alvaston, Farndon, Holt, Cholmondeston, and Utkinton.
There were Davenports of Davenport, Woodford, Calveley, Wheltrough, Bramhall, Henbury, Capesthorne, Blackhurst, Boughton, and Chorley.
The Davenport family had power of life and death over intruders infesting the royal forest of Macclesfield; and their crest—a rogue’s head, with a halter round the neck—must have been a constant reminder that the Davenports were terrors to all evil-doers.
The Bramhall Davenports, who held that estate for more than five hundred years, have persistently borne the name of William; and for the same length of time the Tattons of Wythenshawe have been named Robert and William alternately; while the owner of Carden has been John Leche for sixteen successive generations!
In regard to curiosities of descent, it may here be restated that Robert Hyde, of Hyde, Esq., who died about the year 1528, left a son, Lawrence Hyde, who, leaving Cheshire for Wiltshire, became the ancestor of the Hydes of Westhatch, from whom descended the celebrated Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, whose two granddaughters, Mary and Anne, became in succession Queens of England.
Few counties in England have had their history so fully written and re-written as Cheshire; and therefore from this epitome of a wide-embracing subject the reader is referred to the writings of Camden, Webb, Fuller, Sir Peter Leycester, the Lysons, and the monumental volumes of Dr. Ormerod’s History of Cheshire; to the published transactions of the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, and of the historic societies of Manchester, Liverpool, and Chester; to many separate histories of towns and parishes in the county; and to the genealogical works of the late Mr. Earwaker, whose untimely death in 1895 is still deplored by all who take an interest in the records of family history.
This chapter shall close with the words of two Cheshire poets—the one Geoffrey Whitney, who, living in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, wrote in praise of prominent Cheshire men of that time; the other, the late Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton, “the rhyming squire of Arley,” in the time of Queen Victoria.