Memorials of old Cheshire

by Unknown

By P. H. Ditchfield, M.A., F.S.A.

CHESHIRE, the “seed-plot of gentility,” as Speed loved to call his native shire, can boast of many illustrious sons who have conferred honour on their county. A large volume would be needed wherein to chronicle all their achievements, their deeds of prowess, their successes as poets, divines, lawyers, and philosophers. We can only record the names of the most illustrious Cestrians who have achieved fame in various professions and are worthy of a niche in these memorials of the county.

Soldiers

Cheshire men have always been good fighters. They have played their part bravely on many a battlefield at home and abroad, and honour shall first be done to the soldiers of the shire. In civil war there was little unity amongst the gentlemen of Cheshire. They fought with, or against, each other as party faction or inclination dictated; but against the enemies of England they were formidable foes. The great Civil War that raged between King and Parliament brought most of these Cheshire soldiers into prominence, and most of the names on our list of warriors are connected with that period.

In the wars with France when the third King Edward reigned, Cheshire men showed well the stuff they were made of, their valour and bravery in arms. Foremost amongst their number in this group of early warriors stands Sir Thomas Danyers, who fought gallantly in the battle of Crecy under the banner of the Black Prince. He plunged into the thickest of the fight, and when the King bade his son “win his spurs and the honour of the day for himself,” Sir Thomas “relieved the banner of his Earl and took prisoner the Chamberlain of France, de Tankerville.” For this gallant feat of arms the Prince rewarded the Cheshire knight with a goodly sum of money, and the promise of the grant of an estate in his native county. This promise was not fulfilled until after the warrior’s death, when the fair lands of Lyme were bestowed upon his daughter, who had married Sir Piers Legh; and thus the famous family of the Leighs of Lyme began their existence, and happily the connection still survives after the lapse of many centuries.

Another brave soldier of the period was Sir John Delves, who with his companions in arms contributed greatly to the glorious victory of Poictiers. That fight was memorable for Cheshire men. The gallant James, Lord Audley, a native of the shire, though he lived in Staffordshire, had for his four squires, John Delves, Dutton of Dutton, Foulshurst of Crewe, and Hawkeston of Wrine Hall, a Cheshire man though residing in Staffordshire. When the battle day dawned Audley vowed to be foremost in the field and lead the attack, and “with the ayde of his four scuyers dyd marvels in arms, and foughte always in the cheyfe of the batyle; y^t day he never toke prisoner, but always foughte and wente on his enemyes.” He was sorely wounded, and was borne from the field by his faithful squires. For his bravery the Prince made him a grant of five hundred marks a year for ever. This reward the good knight handed over to his squires, saying that they had deserved it as much as he, and had more need of it. So the Prince gave him a second grant of a like amount. Audley, as a further reward to his squires, ordered that they should bear on their coats of arms his own proper achievement, gules a fret, d’or. Sir John Delves purchased Doddington, near Nantwich, where he erected a goodly mansion in 1364, and where the statues of himself and his brave companions, carved in later times, could be seen. There is an alabaster effigy of Sir Robert Foulshurst, one of the gallant squires, in Barthomley Church.

Sir Hugh Calveley’s Tomb, Bunbury Church.

Sir Hugh Calveley sleeps at Bunbury, a mighty hero of the French wars who fought under the brave leader Sir John Chandos. You can see his fine alabaster tomb, a lion couching at his feet, and his crest, a calf’s head, which he bore on many a foreign battlefield. Fuller says of him: “Tradition makes him a man of teeth and hands, who would feed as much as two, and fight as much as ten men; his quick and strong appetite could digest anything but an injury, so that the killing a man is reported the cause of his quitting this country, making hence for London and France. Here he became a most eminent soldier.” It were vain to tell of all his exploits. He fought in Brittany in 1357, at Auray in 1364, Navarete in 1367, in Brittany again with Sir John Arundell in 1380, when the expedition was almost entirely destroyed by a storm and 20,000 men perished. Many of these warriors lived a wild and turbulent life during the wars, and Sir Hugh, perhaps repenting of his deeds, in his old age converted the Parish Church of Bunbury into a collegiate church, with a master and six chaplains to pray for his soul. One of his companions in arms was Sir Robert Knowles, born of mean parentage in Cheshire, but brave and valiant. He fought with Sir Hugh Calveley in Brittany in 1351, when thirty Englishmen encountered the like number of Bretons and were sorely worsted. The ruined castles that he left behind him in France were termed “Knowles’s Mitres.” His last service to his country was the suppression of Wat Tyler’s rebellion.

The Wars of the Roses claimed some Cheshire victims. On the bloody field of Blore Heath, when the Earl of Salisbury defeated Lord Audley and the Yorkists on September 25, 1459, fell Sir Robert Booth, the ancestor of the Booth family of Dunham Massey. His brass memorial, with that of his wife, the heiress of that estate, is in the church at Wilmslow. Sir William Stanley, second son of the first Lord Stanley, in the time of Henry VII. held Ridley, being Chamberlain of Cheshire. He distinguished himself at the battle of Bosworth, rescuing Henry from great peril and saving his life. He was the first to set the crown of England on King Henry’s head, after it had been found on the battlefield trampled under the feet of the fighters. A gratified monarch bestowed upon him wealth and honour, but he was accused of favouring the design of Perkin Warbeck, and perished on the scaffold. His manor of Ridley was forfeited to the Crown and given to another distinguished soldier, Sir Ralph Egerton, who fought bravely at the battle of the Spurs, and at the siege of Terouenne and Tournay, capturing the standard of the French. He also fought at Flodden Field, and was appointed royal standard-bearer of England, a high distinction nobly earned. He lies in the church at Bunbury, and from him descended the lines of the Earls and Dukes of Bridgewater.