Lying away near the north-eastern confines of the great parish of Eccles, and within a distance of six miles of the manufacturing metropolis, is the little hamlet of Swinton, a place that, if not particularly attractive in its outward aspects, yet possesses historical associations that are neither few nor poor. A great part of the district was formerly held by that renowned military and religious brotherhood which for centuries had its chef lieu in Clerkenwell—the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem—and antiquaries have been puzzled to determine whether it derived its name from the fact of its being the abode or "town" of the Saxon swineherd, or that it may have, as is supposed, formed part of the possessions of the rainy saint of Winchester, the rival of St. MÉdard and St. GodeliÈve—St. Swithin. We will leave the learned Dryasdusts to settle the knotty point of Swinton's etymology and ferret out the evidences of its early dignity, if such are to be found, for it is not our present purpose to steal fire—

or to picture the sylvan solitudes of the place in the days when the son of Beowulph tended the swine of Cedric, the Saxon thegn, in the primeval forests, and filled himself with the acorns and the mast that fell thick in the autumn time.

Though a mighty change has been wrought in the physical aspects of the locality, which now presents an appearance singularly at variance with the associations awakened by the contemplation of the memorials of the storied past, the immediate vicinity is not without the indications of its former dignity and consequence. Within a short distance, running almost parallel with the modern railway, may still be traced the line of the old Roman highway—the Stanney Street—along which the victorious legionaries have ofttimes marched—

The names which still cling to surrounding localities remind us of the "dark middle age" of our national history when the light-haired, blue-eyed Saxon held sway before the predatory Dane and the proud Norman, cognate tribes of the great Scandinavian stock, had successively established themselves as masters of the soil, or those offshoots of the Teutonic family had become welded in the one great, powerful, and noble race, that "happy breed of men," the English people. The halls of Wardley, Agecroft, Kempnough, Worsley, and Booths carry us along the dim avenues of the past to the days of the Plantagenet and the Tudor sovereigns, and they still remain the lingering memorials reminding us of the condition of social life as well as the condition of the country in this corner of the palatinate ere nature had been expelled by commerce, or the old easy-going manorial lords had given place to, or been elbowed out by, a race of striving money-getting manufacturers. The country hereabouts has lost much of its rural characteristics and pristine beauty. Cotton has little in common with Arcadia, and the Lancashire industries generally can hardly be said to be conducive to the picturesque, the tendency being rather to reverse the process which is said to make the wilderness blossom as the rose. The signs of busy life are everywhere apparent; far as the eye can reach it encounters little else than smoke and steam, the outward evidences of active labour—the beating of one great artery in the heart of England—and the tall spectral-like machinery, rising above the pit openings, for drawing to the surface the coal without which that labour would be of little avail in its efforts to clothe the nations of the world; while overhead the atmosphere is dense and heavy with vapour that leaves its blighting mark upon the country for miles around, withering the hedgerows, making the few trees that endure to grace the landscape stunted and sickly, and the fields as if they had never been clothed with a mantle of living green.

Uninviting as the surroundings are to the passionate lover of the open field and the clear sky, the antiquary may yet find much to interest him, and return with the belief that the time he has spent in a visit to this same little hamlet of Swinton has not been altogether unprofitably employed. Leaving the cluster of humble dwellings that constitute what there is of village, and continuing along the north or Chorley-road, a few minutes' walk brings him to a bye-road rejoicing in the name of Red Cat-lane; a quarter of a mile further a private road branches off on the left, leading down past a colliery, and following this for a short distance an old-fashioned timbered house comes in view. It is a quaint old mansion, patterned all over in black and white, with a broad arched gateway, flanked on each side by clustered chimneys that rise to a considerable height above the gabled roof, and is surrounded on three sides by a moat that spreads out considerably on the easterly side, assuming the character of a small lake, in which the diapered framework of the building, the overhanging cornices, the quaint casement windows, and the shrubs that partially environ it are distinctly reflected. Wardley Hall, for that is the name of the house, has its history; it has been successively the home of the Worsleys, the Tyldesleys, and the Downes, and many and various are the legends and romantic incidents associated with it. Of its earlier history we know little, and that little belongs as much to legend as to actual ascertained fact. The first possessors of whom any record has been preserved were the Worsleys, or de Workedeleghs, as anciently they wrote their name, or rather had it written for them, who were owners almost from the time of the Conquest. One of them, a certain Elias or Elizeus de Workeslegh, lord of Worsley, accompanied Duke Robert of Normandy in the expedition to the Holy Land projected by Peter the Hermit, when Europe sent forth the flower of its chivalry to do battle on the plains of Palestine for the recovery of the holy places from the Paynim foe; he was of such strength and valour as to be reputed a giant, and, according to the old scribes, was in consequence designated Elias Gigas, or Elias the Giant. Mention is made of this hero of ancient romance in Hopkinson's MS. pedigrees, and the quaint chronicler tells us "he fought many Duells, combats, &c., for the love of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and obtained many victories," and another writer[72] adds that after many triumphs over the infidels he died at Rhodes, and was there buried. The son and heir of this sturdy old warrior was Richard Workedeley, whose name occurs in a deed, without date, but apparently of the time of Henry I., conveying land in Pendlebury, or Penultsbury, as it was then called, and North Deyne, with the pasture of Swinton, to Adam de Penultsbury. The same Richard, with Roger de Workedelegh (probably his son), was one of the witnesses to a deed recorded in the Chartulary of Whalley Abbey, by which Gilbert, son of William de Norton, who married about the year 1220, Edith, lady of the manor of Barton, granted to God, St. Mary, and to the Church of Eccles, and to the clerks and to their men dwelling in that ville, free common throughout all his lands in the Parish of Eccles. The third in decent from this Richard was Geoffrey de Workesley, living in the time of Henry III., who by his wife Agnes had two sons—Richard, who succeeded as heir, and Roger, who founded the line of the Worsleys of Kempnough, an old half-timbered house, still existing, about a mile distant, and which in the time of Elizabeth obtained an unenviable notoriety on account of the supposed demoniacal possession for a period of two years of some members of the family then inhabiting it. Richard, the eldest son of Geoffery de Workesley, who was living in 1276, had a son Henry, who succeeded as heir; Roger, who married Cecilia de Rowynton; and a third son, Jordan de Workesley, the first of the family whose name occurs as owner of Wardley.

The family were among the early benefactors of the ancient church of Eccles, in which parish both Worsley and Wardley Halls are located. By a deed, dated at Eccles on Sunday of the octave of St. Martin the Bishop, in winter (November 18th), 1293, Henry, the eldest son of Richard de Workesley, the one last named, gave to God and to the high altar (so called to distinguish it from the small altars in the chantries or side chapels) of the Church of the Blessed Mary of Eccles, yearly for ever, for the salvation of Joan, his wife, and of his father Richard, his predecessors and successors, and of the souls of all the faithful dead, at the feast of St. Martin, in the winter (November 11th), one pound of wax, faithfully offered (in fulfilment of a vow), so that whoever should be rector of the church might compel him, by ecclesiastical censure, or by the lesser or greater excommunication, to make the offering at the feast, if it should be neglected. The wax was no doubt intended for the large candles to be burned on the high altar and the other lights used during the services of the Roman Catholic Church.[73]

Henry de Workesley had a son Robert, married to Cecilia de Bromhall, and living in 1292, to whom he gave five hundred acres of wood and five hundred acres of pasture, called the Boothes, and from him descended the Worsleys of Boothes, also in Worsley township. Of the same family was Helias de Workesley, who became Abbot of Whalley in 1309, but resigned his charge and died before 1318; and also Henry de Workesley, who about the time of Edward III. married Johanna, daughter and co-heiress of Sir Richard de Greenacres, and in her right became owner of half the manor of Twiston, in the parish of Whalley. Another branch of the family was located at Worsley Meyne, near Wigan, of whom, according to an epitaph in St. Mary's, Chester, was Ralph Worsley, yeoman of the wardrobe, (_pagettus garderoboe robarum_) to Henry VIII., who appointed him towards the latter end of his life to the wardenship of the Tower. The Worsleys of Manchester were another branch, a pedigree given in the Harleian MSS. (2,100, fo. 32), "collected," as it states, "from deeds of ye auntient family of Worsley of Worsley," connecting with the ancient stock Nicholas Worsley, of Manchester, living in 1598, the scion with whose name the pedigree in Dugdale's "Visitation of Lancashire" in 1664 commences, and who is said to have been the son and heir of Otwell, or Otes, Worsley, of Newnham Green, near Worsley, by his wife Cicely, daughter of Nicholas Rigby, of Harrock. A younger son of this Nicholas, Charles Worsley, diverged into trade, and established himself in Manchester as a "haberdasher," a phrase that had then a much wider significance than now. He married, at the old church of Manchester in 1586, Elizabeth, daughter of Ralph Gee, the sister of Alice, wife of George Clarke, the munificent founder of the Manchester charity that still bears that worthy's name; and, prospering in business, he, in 1614, purchased from Sir Oswald Mosley certain lands in Rusholme. His son and successor, Ralph Worsley, extended the business, and with such success that he was able in 1625 to add to the paternal purchase of the lands in Rusholme the estate in the same township called "The Platt," thus founding the line of the Worsleys of Platt, in the old manor house of which place was born to him, in 1622, a son and heir, Charles Worsley, who acquired distinction as the first member for Manchester in the Cromwellian Parliament, and who was one of the Protector's most trusted generals, and the immediate instrument of the famous coup d'État when Cromwell, dismissing the "Rump" Parliament, ordered General Worsley to "take away the bauble."

With Jordan, the younger son of Richard de Worsley, the brother of Henry, the benefactor of the church at Eccles, who, as we have seen, was lord of Wardley in the reign of Edward I., may be said to have begun and ended the line of Worsley of Wardley, for at his death, in the succeeding reign, the estate was conveyed in marriage by Margaret, one of his daughters and co-heiresses, to Thurstan, son of Thomas de Tyldesley, lord of the mesne manor of Tyldesley, and from this match sprang the several branches of the famous house of Tyldesley of Tyldesley, of Wardley Hall in Worsley, Morley's Hall in Astley, the Lodge in Myerscough Park, an outlying portion of Quernmore Forest, in Lancaster parish, and of Fox Hall, Blackpool, in Bispham parish.

The Tyldesleys were a family of considerable note and influence in the county, deriving their patronymic from the place of their abode, which was held by feudal service as the tenth part of a knight's fee under the Norman barony of Warrington. In the Testa de Nevill, or Liber Feudorum as it is sometimes called—a return of the Nomina Villarum, Serjeanties and Knights' Fees in the several counties, made, as is generally supposed, either in the the year 1236 or 1242 by Ralph Nevill, an accountant of the Exchequer, or Jollan de Nevil, of Weathersfield, a justice itinerant—Henry de Tyldesley, the great-grandfather of the Thurstan just named, is mentioned as being then in possession of the manor of Tyldesley, and as holding of William Fitz Almeric Pincerna or Boteler, the seventh Baron of Warrington, the tenth part of a knight's fee, which Henry de Tyldesley (his father) held of the heirs of Almeric Pincerna, and he of the Earl of Ferrers, who held of the King. The name of the same Henry also occurs first on the list of jurors for the hundred of West Derby, or Wapentake of Derbyshire, as it is called in the return when De Nevill's Inquisition was taken. A younger brother of Henry de Tyldesley, the juror, Adam de Tyldesley, had a son Geoffrey, who became owner of Shakerley, a hamlet in the higher division of Tyldesley. Following the practice of the age, he assumed the name of the place in which he was located, and became progenitor of the family of Shakerley, now represented through the female line by Sir Charles Watkin Shakerley, of Somerford, Cheshire, Baronet.

To return to Henry de Tyldesley; his grandson Thomas, son of Richard de Tyldesley, as appears by an inquisition taken after the death of John Tyldesley, Dec. 1, 1410, married and had four sons, John, Nicholas, and Ralph, who each died issueless, and Thurstan, who, as previously stated, married the daughter and co-heiress of Jordan de Worsley; in right of his wife he became lord of Wardley, and by her was founder of the family of Tyldesley of that house. The first-born of this marriage was a son, Thomas de Tyldesley, who became serjeant-at-law to King Henry IV., but, dying without issue, the estates on the death of the father descended to his younger brother, Hugh de Tyldesley. From an early date a close intimacy had existed between the Tyldesleys and the Stanleys of Knowsley, who were then rapidly rising to power, having in the revolution which seated the house of Lancaster upon the throne contrived to add immensely to their territorial possessions. A steady shower of royal benefactions descended to them during Henry the Fourth's reign, not the least important being the transfer from the old Earls of Northumberland of the lordship of the Isle of Man, after the unsuccessful revolt of the Percies, and with it such an absolute ownership of soil and jurisdiction over the islanders as to make their position as Lords of Man little less than regal, the homage to be paid in consideration being the presentation of two falcons on coronation days. The intimate relations that long existed between the two families of Stanley and Tyldesley account for the frequent occurrence of the name of Tyldesley in the annals of the island. In 1405-6 Henry IV. granted a letter of protection to William de Stanley, Knight, John de Tyldesley, and others, on their going to the Isle of Man to take possession of the island and the castle, which had then been wrested from the Percies. In 1417 Sir John de Stanley, who is styled "King and Lord of Man," being called to England, left Thurstan de Tyldesley, "a wise and severe magistrate" as he is described, and Roger Haysnap, his commissioner, with instructions to settle the people. The Thurstan last named was, doubtless, the son of Hugh de Tyldesley, and the one who is commonly supposed to have erected the present hall of Wardley on the foundation of an earlier structure. His grandson, Thomas de Tyldesley, who died in 1502-3, left a son Thurstan, who succeeded as heir to Tyldesley and Wardley; he married Mary, the daughter of Henry Keighley, of Keighley and Inskip, the sister of Sir Henry Keighley, Knt.

Inskip was a manor in the parish of St. Michael-le-Wyre, in the hundred of Amounderness, held at one time by the Keighleys and Cliftons, but which subsequently passed into the exclusive tenure of the first-named family, in whose descendants it remained until about the reign of James I., when Anne, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Keighley, conveyed it in marriage to William Cavendish, afterwards created Earl of Devonshire. At the time of Thurstan Tyldesley's marriage with the co-heiress of Inskip his family had, in addition to the old manor house at Tyldesley and the more modern mansion at Wardley, a residence known as the Lodge, in Myerscough Park, in the neighbouring parish of Lancaster,—a part of the ancient forest land of the Duchy. In the reign of Henry VIII. the Earl of Derby was Keeper of the Park of Myerscough, which was in reality within the limits of the forest of Quernmore, and the Tyldesley's were "deputy keepers," "deputy master-foresters," and "farmers of the herbage," and in the proceedings of the Duchy Court of Lancaster it is recorded that in 1531 Thurstan Tyldesley was plaintiff in an action brought against Henry Keighley for "deer killing in Broks Gille, Mirescoghe Park." The defendant was, doubtless, his wife's kinsman, but whether father or brother, or what other relationship he stood in, is not known.

The Lodge in Myerscough, where the family occasionally resided, and to which we shall have occasion hereafter to refer, is now occupied as a farm house, but, though it has undergone many transformations, it still retains the evidences of its former state and dignity. Twice it has been the temporary abode of royalty, once in 1617, when James I. slept in it for a night or two in his progress from Edinburgh to London, and subsequently on the 13th August, 1651, when Charles II. "lodged one night at Myerscoe, Sir Thomas Tyldesley's house," on his advance from Preston to Worcester. The lodge stands a short distance from the hall of the same name, on the westerly side of the road leading from Preston to Lancaster, and within about three or four miles of the old home of the Keighleys at Inskip. It is approached by a small bridge spanning an expanse of water that appears to have been originally extended for ornamental purposes. A portion of the main building has been cased with brick, but in other parts the original timber framework remains exposed to view, with some of the old mullioned windows, the irregular gables, and the huge buttressed chimney stacks—the latter, from their peculiar construction suggesting the idea that they were intended more for the purpose of concealment in times of danger than for that which their outward form would seem to indicate. The principal entertaining-room is on the north-west side; it is wainscoted from floor to ceiling, and has a spacious fireplace on one side with a handsome chimney-piece of carved oak. The portion above the mantel is arranged in a double row of panels,—eight in all,—each of those in the lower stage being ornamented by a medallion head, encircled by a wreath and carved in high relief. On the first of the upper row of panels is a shield charged with the arms of Tyldesley—Arg. three rushhills vert, with the initials TT beneath. In the second shield are displayed the arms of the Isle of Man, with an eagle's claw—an ancient crest of the Stanleys—beneath. On an adjoining shield is a representation of the eagle and child, the crest of the Earls of Derby; and on the fourth panel is a shield bearing the arms of Langton, which seems to fix the period when the work was executed as in the time of Thurstan, the grandson of Thurstan Tyldesley and Mary Keighley, who had for his second wife Jane, daughter of Ralph Langton, Baron of Newton, the initials on the first panel also answering to his name. Opposite the principal entrance a broad staircase of oak, with massive and highly-decorated balusters, leads to the upper chambers, one of which, at the east end of the building, is traditionally said to be that in which the two Kings slept on the occasions of their respective visits to the Lodge.

Thurstan Tyldesley, by his wife Mary Keighley, had a son, Thomas, who was Receiver-General and one of the Council of Thomas Stanley, first Earl of Derby—the wily soldier and astute politician whose fickle but far-sighted adhesions secured for his house additional wealth and power with every change of dynasty, and whose matrimonial affairs were managed with fully as much prudence and success—his first marriage making him the brother-in-law of a king-maker and his second the stepfather of a king. He married a daughter of Sir Alexander Radcliffe, the head of the knightly house of Ordsall, an alliance that is commemorated by a device in one of the windows of that ancient mansion—that lighting the room commonly known from its decorations as the Star Chamber—where still may be discerned the faint outlines of an heraldic shield charged with three rushhills, the Tyldesley coat. The issue of this marriage were, in addition to a son, Thurstan, who succeeded as heir, Thomas, and a younger son, Alexander, who became a monk at the Charter House, and a daughter, Ellena, the second of the two wives of Sir Alexander Osbaldeston, of Osbaldeston. This lady by her will, which bears date 1560, directed three stones with inscriptions in brass to be laid in the Osbaldeston chapel within Blackburn church over herself, her husband, and Thomas Tyldesley, her brother.

Thurstan Tyldesley, who succeeded to the patrimonial lands at his father's death, is mentioned as being in the Commission of the Peace and a Grand Juryman for the County Palatine of Lancaster in 1522. Following the example of his progenitors, he maintained a close friendship with the Stanleys of Knowsley, and in 1532 his name occurs as Receiver-General for the Isle of Man. He was twice married—in the first instance to Parnell, daughter of Geoffrey Shakerley, of Shakerley, descended from Adam, younger son of Henry de Tyldesley, living in the time of Henry III., whose son Geoffrey, as we have seen, assumed the name of Shakerley; in the second, to Jane, daughter of Ralph Langton, Baron of Newton; and by each he had issue. By his will, which bears date 6 Edward VI., he left to the children of his first marriage Tyldesley and Wardley, and to those of the second the estate at Myerscough.

Thomas Tyldesley, his son by the first marriage, was, doubtless, the one whose name occurs in 1540 as Deputy Captain of the Isle of Man, George Stanley being at the time Captain. About this time, as appears by Chalmer's Treatise of the Isle (Manx Society's Publications, v. 10), mention is made of a Robert Tynsley (a corruption probably of Tyldesley), but in what relation he stood to the Lancashire Tyldesleys is not clear. Thomas Tyldesley had a sister Alice, who became the wife of Richard Worsley, of the Booths. He died in 1556, and was buried at Eccles, having had by his wife Jane, daughter and heiress of Hugh Birkenhead, whom he married in 1518, six sons and three daughters. Thomas, the eldest son, born in 1532, married Margaret, daughter of Sir William Norreys, of Speke, who bore him, in addition to three sons, James, Gilbert, and Alexander, a son Thomas, of Gray's Inn, Attorney-General for the county of Lancaster, who received the honour of knighthood; he was one of the learned Council of the North, and added to the ancestral estates by his marriage with Anne, daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Norreys, of Orford, near Warrington, the issue of the union being—in addition to two daughters, Elizabeth and Anne, married respectively to Edward Breres, of Brockhall, and (1) to Thomas Southworth, of Samlesbury, (2) Adam Mort, of Preston—three sons, Thomas, who died in infancy, 1597; Edward, who also died in infancy; and Richard, who survived his father only a few years and died unmarried in 1639, thus terminating the male line of the elder branch of the family.

To return to the issue of Thurstan Tyldesley by his second wife, Jane Langton. Besides three daughters—Mary, wife of Ralph Standish, of Standish; Anne, wife of Richard Massey, of Rixton; and Dorothy, wife of Richard Brereton, of Worsley—he had a son, Edward Tyldesley, who, by a fortunate though clandestine marriage, about the year 1560, with Anne, daughter and sole heiress of Thomas Leyland, became, in right of his wife, owner of Morleys Hall, in Astley, in the parish of Leigh. Popular tradition has cast the glamour of romance around this marriage, and tells how that the young heiress of the Leylands, having formed an attachment for the younger son of the house of Tyldesley, in opposition to the wishes of her father, was confined in her room, but, verifying the truth of the old adage that love laughs at locksmiths, she contrived to possess herself of a rope, one end of which she fastened to her person and the other she threw from the window to her expectant lover on the other side of the moat; then, casting herself into the water, which was thirty feet wide, she was drawn to land, when the pair rode off, and before morning dawned, or the lady's family had become aware of her escape, the marriage ceremony had been performed and the twain made one.

Of the old mansion of the Leylands, which thus became an inheritance of the Tyldesleys, we have an interesting description in Leland's "Itinerary" (vol. v. pp. 78-9, Ed. 1711):—"Morle in Darbyshire [the Hundred of West Derby is meant] Mr. Leland's Place is buildid saving the Foundation of Stone squarid, that risith within a great Moote a vi. Foote above the water; al of Tymbre after the commune sorte of building of Houses of the Gentilmen for most of Lancastreshire. Ther is as much Pleasur of Orchardes of great Varite of Frute, and fair made Walkes and Gardines as ther is in any Place of Lancastreshire. He brenneth [burneth] al Turfes and Petes for the Commodite of Mosses and Mores [near] at hand.... And yet by Morle as in Hegge Rowes and Grovettes is meately good Plenti of Wood, but good Husbandes keepe hit for a Jewell."

Nearly every old historic home is linked to romance by some story of love or adventure, and endeared to the memory by the image of some fair woman whose name is associated with some particular incident or bit of legendary lore that tradition has preserved, and which, if not actually attested fact, is yet not without some glimmering of truth that reflects light upon familiar history. At Morleys it is the tender tale of the loves of Anne Leyland, the heiress of her father's lands, and Edward Tyldesley, a young scion of the house of Wardley, that excites the interest and which has for many a generation furnished food for the village gossips. They had looked upon each other and loved. The spark that had been kindled in their young hearts was fanned into a flame, but—

At Morleys it was the old old story. To prevent the tender passion ripening into a union an unsympathising father forbade the lovers meeting, and to prevent the chances of clandestine intercourse kept his daughter within the strict seclusion of her own chamber. The result may be guessed. Rather than be kept asunder from the object of her affection, Anne Leyland determined on braving the stormy temper of her father. Risking all dangers and throwing aside all obstacles, she cast herself into the moat surrounding her home, whence she was drawn ashore, and under cover of the darkness escaped in the arms of her expectant lover, and before night's candles had burned out and—

the two were united in the indissoluble bonds of wedlock.

It may well be supposed that Thomas Leyland's ire when he learned the real circumstances of the case was not of the mildest character; be that as it may, his anger must eventually have been appeased, for in 1562, two years after the marriage of the runaways, he made his will, and in token of his affection for his infant grandson, gave "unto Thomas Tyldesley sonne unto my sonne in lawe Edward Tyldesley twoe silvr spones and one angell off gold." The old man was a staunch Papist and determined persecutor of heretics. When the brother-in-law of George Marsh, the martyr—"Jeffrey Hurst, of Shakerley, who was preserved by God's providence from burning in Queen Mary's time"—absented himself from his parish church because of the Romish ritual that had been reintroduced, and encouraged the teachers of the reformed faith to secretly assemble in his house "for sermon and prayer," "Justice" Leyland went with his "mass-priest" to Hurst's cottage to search for heretical books, and having found Tyndale's Testament, which was pronounced to be "plain heresy and none worse," and some Latin books which neither he nor the mass-priest could read, he, by a stretch of authority not unfrequent in those days, bound the mother and brother of Hurst in the penalty of £100 to produce him within fourteen days. Hurst appeared at the appointed time and was committed to Lancaster, but news of Queen Mary's death arriving about the same time, he was set free.

Thomas Leyland died July, 1564, at the age of fifty years. His end appears to have been very sudden. It is recorded that "in July, as the foresaid Thos. Lelond sate in his chair talking with his friends, he fell down suddenly dead, not much moving any joint; and such was his end; from such God us defend." His will, which bears date April 2, 1562, was proved on the 23rd September following his death, when his son-in-law, Edward Tyldesley, in right of his wife, succeeded to the estates.

From this union descended the younger branch of the Tyldesleys, a line that in successive generations manifested a devoted attachment to the cause of the ill-fated Stuarts. In addition to the estate of Morleys acquired through his wife, Edward Tyldesley inherited from his father the Lodge at Myerscough and also the paternal estate of Tyldesley, which, however, continued to pay quit-rents to Wardley Hall, probably in right of the appendent estate of Wardley, where the elder branch of the family was settled. He appears to have been the first, if not the only one, of the family who had any difference or dispute with its early patrons, the Stanleys of Knowsley and Lathom. In the proceedings of the Duchy Court of Lancaster, without date, but of the time of Edward VI. or Philip and Mary, Edward, Earl of Derby, "keeper of Myerskoo Park," and elsewhere called "master of the game," appears as plaintiff in an action against Edward Tyldesley, "farmer of the herbage," the dispute having arisen out of some claim to turbary or the right of cutting turves on the land of the superior lord.

Edward Tyldesley died in 1586-7, having had by his wife, Anne Leyland, a family of three sons and three daughters. Thomas, the eldest son, who succeeded as heir, enjoyed possession of the estate for four years only, his death occurring in 1590. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Christopher Anderton, of Lostock Hall, near Bolton, who bore him, in addition to three daughters—Anne, who became the wife of Sir Cuthbert Clifton, of Westby, Knight; Dorothy, who married John Poole, of Poole Hall, in Cheshire; and Elizabeth, who became Abbess of the religious house of Gravelines, in Flanders—one son, Edward Tyldesley, who was only four years of age at the time of his father's decease. He succeeded as heir to the Tyldesley estates as well as to Morleys and Myerscough, and entertained King James the First at the last named seat in August, 1617, on the occasion of his memorable visit to Lancashire—memorable for the reason that it was the occasion of the presentation of a petition from a number of Lancashire peasants, tradesmen, and others while on his progress (some authorities say while at Myerscough) that led to the publication of the famous "Book of Sports,"—the beginning of a course of events which led through the Civil War and the temporary subversion of the Throne and the Church to the ultimate exclusion of the Stuarts from the Crown. Edward Tyldesley did not long survive the honour of entertaining his sovereign, his death occurring in the following year at the comparatively early age of 32. By his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Christopher Preston, of Holker, in Cartmel parish, an off-shoot of the Prestons, of Preston Patrick and Levens Hall, who survived him and re-married (1) Thomas Lathom, of Parbold, and (2) Thomas Westby, of Bourne Hall, he had, in addition to Edward, who died in infancy, a son, Thomas, who succeeded as heir, the most distinguished member of the family—a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche—certainly the ablest soldier who fought on the side of the King in Lancashire during the Civil Wars, and probably the most active, resolute, and uncompromising partisan, for, as has been well said, if Lord Strange was the head of the King's forces in Lancashire, Sir Thomas Tyldesley was their right hand, or rather, their heart and soul, and living power. He was one of those Cavaliers whose deeds were more suited to the pages of a romance than to those of history, and who, by his dauntless courage, may be said to have cast a halo round the cause he espoused. Born near the close of Elizabeth's reign, he early embraced the profession of arms, and served with distinction in the wars in the Low Countries. A soldier by temperament, as well as by profession—brave, proud, generous, enthusiastically loyal—he raised and equipped troops at his own expense, and immediately on the breaking out of the war joined the King and served as lieutenant-colonel when the two armies were first put in array against each other at Edgehill, October 23, 1642. In the preceding month Colonel Tyldesley accompanied Lord Strange, afterwards Earl of Derby, to Manchester, and in person led the attack on the Deansgate entrance to the town, but, after firing a barn or two and destroying some trifling defences, his men were obliged to retire, and eventually, through the stubborn and successful resistance of the townsmen, were compelled to abandon the siege.

What Rigby was to the cause of the Parliament, Colonel Tyldesley may be said to have been to that of the King. Connected by birth and marriage with the best families in the county his influence was unbounded. Of indomitable zeal, irrepressible energy, and reckless daring, he became the head and heart and hand and almost everything besides in his own county, and took part in almost every important action. He served at the sieges of Bolton and Lancaster; defeated by Colonel Ashton before Wigan, he retreated towards Liverpool, but, collecting a considerable force, he again marched northwards, with the view of recovering Preston and Lancaster. Subsequently he distinguished himself at Burton-on-Trent by the desperate heroism with which he led a cavalry charge over a bridge of thirty-six arches, and for that display of valour, as well as his faithful adherence to the King, he received the honour of knighthood and was made a brigadier. At a later period in that sanguinary struggle he accompanied Prince Rupert into Yorkshire, and was present at the disastrous fight at Marston Moor, July 2nd, 1644, when Cromwell gained his greatest victory, and drove the Royalist troops in confusion from the field. Tyldesley, with his shattered force, retreated in hot haste into Lancashire, resolved to raise fresh troops and make a stand in the Fylde country. Sir John Meldrum was sent after him, and the first encounter took place on Freckleton Marsh. A fierce attack having been made upon their lines by the Parliamentarians under Colonel Booth, the Royalists broke and fled; Tyldesley rallied and reformed his men, but his efforts were unavailing. Victory followed victory, one position after another was forced, and one detachment after another was broken or dispersed At that time, as Rushworth writes, "there remained of unreduced garrisons belonging to the King in Lancashire only Lathom House and Green(halgh) Castle." Greenhalgh surrendered in 1645; and the subsequent fall of Lathom House and the surrender of the King to the Scotch army of the Puritans brought the contest, for a time, to a close in 1647, when Sir Thomas Tyldesley received instructions to disband the troops under his command.

In 1651 the second of the Stuarts was proclaimed King by the Scotch under the title of Charles the Second. In August of that year the Royal Standard floated once more over the battlemented tower of old John o' Gaunt—time-honoured Lancaster—and Charles was proclaimed King in the chief town of the palatinate. Sir Thomas Tyldesley, who had retired with the Earl of Derby to the Isle of Man, once more appeared upon the scene, and immediately set about arming his tenantry and collecting auxiliaries. Charles spent a night in his mansion at Myerscough, but under very different circumstances to those which had characterised the entertainment of his father in the same house thirty-four years previously. Before the month was over the force which he and Lord Derby had been able to raise encountered the Parliamentarians, under Colonel Lilburne, in a lane on the north side of Wigan. Tyldesley took the place he ever loved to take—at the head of his friends and in front of his foes. The fight was courageously sustained on both sides, and for more than an hour victory remained undecided. At the moment that Lilburne's horse seemed to be giving way before the unbroken firmness of Tyldesley's foot, a body of Parliamentary troops took up a position behind the hedges on both sides of the lane. A deadly discharge from their firelocks threw the Royalists into confusion; after a stubborn and desperate resistance their line wavered, when Lilburne's horse dashed up and drove the remnant of them in confusion from their position. The Earl of Derby escaped, only to be taken prisoner in Cheshire, after the retreat from Worcester, and suffer the fate of his former Royal master, but Sir Thomas Tyldesley was left dead upon the field. Thus fell the most heroic and most daring defender of the cause of the Stuarts in Lancashire. A large-hearted Nonconformist, Dr. Halley, thus sums up the character of the ill-fated Cavalier:—"The most active, the bravest, and in many respects the best of the Lancashire friends of Royalty. Never daunted, never weary in consultation, marching, or fighting, he was engaged in every intrigue, present in every conference, ready for every emergency, and unreservedly devoting all he had to the cause of Royalty, and as he understood it, to the true religion. Beloved and trusted by all the members of his own party, he was respected by his enemies, and treated by them more leniently than the other malignants whom the fortune of war brought under their power." Memorials of him remain in the eloquent eulogy of Clarendon, and in the inscription upon the column which his "grateful cornet," Alexander Rigby,[74] twenty-eight years afterwards, when he was sheriff of the county, erected upon the spot where fell, as a mark of esteem for his many virtues and gallant deeds, and as a "high obligation on the whole family of the Tyldesleys to follow the noble example of their loyal ancestor."

When the brave and popular Cavalier, Sir Thomas Tyldesley, sank down upon the blood-sodden ground in Wigan Lane the power of the Royalists in Lancashire was broken. Many a family in the palatinate had long cause to remember that day with grief, for there were few that had not some member killed or made prisoner. Tyldesley's body, covered with wounds, was found lying among a heap of slain when the fight was over, and a day or two later it was borne to its last resting place in the vault by the side of his fathers, in the old chantry of St. Nicholas, in the parish church of Leigh.

That late summer day was a sorrowful one for the supporters of the Stuart cause. It requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture that procession of true mourners—a little band of buff-jerkined warriors who had boldly confronted death on many a hard-fought field—weeping aloud, and not ashamed to shed tears, as they wend their way to the ancient fane to deposit therein all that was mortal of their much-beloved leader. Within a week from that day Worcester had been lost, and "Charles Stuart, son of the late tyrant," as the Cromwellians styled him, was a sorrowful fugitive, hastening for life from the fatal field in the endeavour to escape from his merciless pursuers. A tomb was afterwards erected in Leigh Church, over the grave which holds the ashes of the loyal soldier; but though the spot is still pointed out nearly every trace of the memorial has disappeared. It is of little consequence—

No self glory stirred the mind of the chivalrous soldier, and no thought had he of "storied urn" to record his gallant deeds. The Earl of Derby felt keenly the loss of his old friend and comrade, and in his last solemn moments, when passing through Leigh on his way to the scaffold at Bolton, his earnestly expressed wish was that he might be permitted to dismount from his horse and go into St. Nicholas' chapel to cast a last long look upon the honourable grave where his faithful companion in arms lay at rest.

Sir Thomas Tyldesley had married in early life Frances, only daughter of Ralph Standish, of Standish, near Wigan, and by her had a son Edward, born in 1635, who succeeded as heir; Thomas, born in 1642, and living in 1702; Ralph, born in 1644, and living in 1694; and seven daughters. Edward, the eldest son, following in the steps of his father, was an ardent supporter of the Stuarts, and when Charles II., after the restoration of monarchy, proposed to create a new order of knighthood to be called the order of the "Royal Oak," as a reward to some of his more faithful adherents, Edward Tyldesley was one of the Lancashire men selected to receive the honour, and would have done so had not the project, from considerations of prudence, been abandoned. Having some cause to believe that he would, on the Restoration, receive from the Crown a grant of the lands in Layton Hawes, near Blackpool, in recognition of the services rendered by his father and himself, he began the erection of a residence near the south shore called Fox Hall, a portion of the walls of which may still be seen in the more modern erection known as the Fox Hall Hotel, placing over the gateway a sculptured figure of the device that had inspired the enthusiasm of his father's soldiers in many a hard-contested fight—a pelican feeding her young, or, as the heralds have it, in piety, surrounded by the motto Tantum Valet Amor Regis et PatriÆ—and here he occasionally resided during the later years of his life. He was twice married, his first wife being Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Fleetwood, of Colwich, in Staffordshire, who bore him two sons, Thomas, born April 3rd, 1657, and Edward, and two daughters. After her decease he espoused Elizabeth, daughter of Adam Beaumont, of Whiteley, and by her he had a daughter, Catherine, who died unmarried. His death occurred between the years 1685 and 1687, when the eldest son by his first marriage, Thomas Tyldesley, succeeded to the estates, with the exception of the lands in Tyldesley, which had been previously disposed of. In 1679, being then twenty-two years of age, he married Eleanor, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Holcroft, of Holcroft. This lady, who was only fourteen years of age at the time of her marriage, brought Holcroft Hall to the Tyldesleys. By her Thomas Tyldesley had a son, Edward, his heir, and four daughters. On the death of his wife he again entered the marriage state, his second wife being Mary, daughter of Alexander Rigby, of Layton, and the co-heiress of her brother, Sir Alexander Rigby, son and heir of the "grateful cornet" who erected the monument in Wigan Lane to the memory of the gallant Sir Thomas Tyldesley, and by her was father of three sons—Charles, Fleetwood, and James; and two daughters—Agatha and Winifred. To this Thomas Tyldesley we are indebted for the interesting personal records contained in a "diary" written during the years 1712-13-14, which has in recent years been published under the able editorship of Messrs. Joseph Gillow and Anthony Hewitson. He died in 1715, shortly before the breaking out of the rebellion, in the preparation for which there is good reason to believe he had been concerned, and was buried at Churchtown, near Garstang, January 26th,[75] his eldest son Edward succeeding. On the Jacobite rising in 1715 Edward Tyldesley, with the representatives of many other of the old Catholic families who had upheld the banners of Charles I., hastened to support the cause of his grandson. For his share in the rising he was put upon his trial in London, but, although the evidence of a number of witnesses left no possible doubt that he had led a body of men against the King's forces, he was fortunate enough to obtain an acquittal, a result which so provoked the anger of Baron Montagu, a sort of Whig Jeffreys, who presided over the court, that he openly rebuked the jury for their verdict, himself failing to see that the harrowing records of the "bloody assize at Lancaster" had produced a revulsion in popular feeling, and that the spirit of vindictiveness manifested by the government of the Hanoverian King had caused even Protestant juries to manifest a feeling of commiseration for those of their countrymen who still retained a feeling of devoted attachment for the head of the exiled house of Stuart, whom they looked upon as their legitimate sovereign.

At the time of his death, in 1725, Myerscough, which had been held for so many generations, had passed from the possession of the Tyldesleys, having, as is supposed, been sold to satisfy the demands of Thomas Tyldesley the father's creditors, but Holcroft Hall, inherited from his mother, as well as Morleys, still remained. By his wife Dorothy, who survived him, Edward Tyldesley had, in addition to a daughter (Catherine), a son (James), who succeeded as heir to both Morleys and Holcroft. True to the traditions of his family, he remained faithful in his adherence to the exiled dynasty, and when Charles Edward, the young Pretender, appeared in Lancashire, he took up arms and joined the rebel forces. From this time the fortunes of the family seemed gradually to decay. Myerscough, as we have seen, had been already alienated, and, in 1745, Morleys, which had been acquired two centuries previously by a marriage with the heiress of Thomas Leyland, was sold, and gradually the remnants of the once large estates were mortgaged or sold.

James Tyldesley died in August, 1765. His will bears date 8th of February, of that year, and was proved at Chester, April 23, 1768. Thomas Tyldesley, the eldest son, succeeded to Holcroft, the only estate remaining in the family's possession, the other issue being three sons and one daughter, all of whom seem to have drifted into a state of comparative poverty, their descendants being now to be looked for in a much lower position in the social scale than that held for so many generations by the owners of the proud name of Tyldesley.

To return to the old ancestral home at Wardley. As previously stated, Thurstan Tyldesley, who died in 1553, was twice married; his inquisition post-mortem was taken in the year of his decease, when, in accordance with the provisions of his will, the family estates were divided between the children of each marriage, Tyldesley and Wardley falling to the lot of Thomas, the son borne him by his first wife, and Myerscough to Edward, the issue of his second wife. In the early part of the reign of Elizabeth the Wardley estate, which had been held by the Tyldesleys for a period of three centuries, was sold in parcels, when the old manor house became the property of Gilbert Sherrington of Lincoln's Inn, a busy Lancashire lawyer, and at his death it passed to his brother Francis Sherrington, a successful trader and money-lender, who had been at one time located at Wigan. Subsequently Wardley became the property of Roger Downes, son and heir of Roger, a younger son of the ancient house of Downes, of Worth and Shrigley, in Cheshire, by a marriage with Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Alexander Worsley. Roger Downes, the younger, who was living at Wardley in 1613, twice represented Wigan—one of the four Lancashire boroughs entitled to send representatives to Parliament before the passing of the Reform Act in 1832—first in 1601, and again in 1620. On the 24th July, 1 Charles I. (1625), he was appointed by the Earl of Derby Vice-chamberlain of Chester, during pleasure (_durante bene placito_), an office he continued to hold under the Earl and his son, Lord Strange, until his death in July, 1638, when Orlando Bridgeman, son of the Bishop of Chester, was appointed by James Lord Strange his successor, much to the displeasure of John Bradshaw, the future president of the High Commission Court, who was then Attorney-general for Cheshire, and, as Seacombe affirms, had applied for the office.[76] In the will of Sir Alexander Barlow, of Barlow Hall, near Manchester, dated 4th April, 1631, Roger Downes, of Wardley, is joined with Sir George Gresley, Knight and Baronet (of Drakelowe), as overseer, and is therein described by the testator as his "loving cosen;" and a few years later, when Richard Halliwell, landlord of the Bull's Head Inn, in the Market Place, opposite the Cross, in Manchester—a successful vintner, who had managed to accumulate a considerable landed estate—made his will (May 12th; 1638), he desired that his "friend, the Right Worshipful Roger Downes, Esquire," should act as his overseer.

Roger Downes was twice married, his first wife being Elizabeth, daughter of Myles Gerard, of Ince, by whom he had a son Roger, who predeceased him. His second wife was Ann, daughter of John Calvert, of Cockerham, and she bore him, in addition to a daughter, Jane, who became the wife of Ralph Snede, of Keele, in Staffordshire, three sons, Francis, Lawrence, and John. Concerning Francis, a curious story is related by Hollingworth in his "Mancunienses." He had, it seems, "revolted from the reformed religion," when his neighbour, Sir Cecil Trafford, of Trafford, who was known as "a cruel persecutor of Papists," resolved before he resorted to harsher measures to attempt the reconversion of his friend by the force of argument; but he reckoned without his host, for in reasoning the Catholic proved himself too clever for the Protestant, and so thoroughly argued Sir Cecil out of his beliefs that he abjured his own religion and became a convert to the Roman faith; and from that time the Traffords, who had been among the earliest adherents of the Reformed faith in Lancashire, have been steady and consistent Catholics.

Francis Downes, who represented Wigan in the Parliament of 1625, predeceased his father, and died issueless, as did also his brother Lawrence, the estates, on the death of Roger Downes in 1638, devolving upon the youngest son, John Downes, who had married Penelope, one of the daughters of Sir Cecil Trafford, an alliance that explains the anxious desire manifested by Sir Cecil to effect the conversion of his son-in-law's elder brother.

John Downes, who succeeded on the death of his father to the Wardley estate, was an ardent adherent of King Charles in the unhappy struggle between that monarch and his Parliament, and in September, 1642, when Lord Strange, having completed his arrangements with the commissioners of array, appointed Warrington as the place of meeting, he armed and equipped his tenantry, and appeared with the host of other Lancashire chieftains to support the cause of the sovereign. Before the month had drawn to a close he was at Manchester, having accompanied Lord Strange and Sir Thomas Tyldesley in their fruitless expedition to secure the town for the King. He died in May, 1648, leaving an only son, Roger, his heir, then an infant a few months old, and a daughter Penelope.

Roger Downes, who succeeded as heir to the patrimonial estates on the death of his father, John Downes, in 1648, was the last of the family seated at Wardley. His history is not a pleasant one to contemplate. Living in an age when the people could take delight in the dissoluteness of the sovereign, he abandoned himself to the vicious courses of the time and became one of the most profligate of the profligate court of Charles the Second. The patrimony which had descended to him was wasted in riotous extravagance, and, to use the figurative language that Johnson applied to Rochester, "he blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness," and brought his career to a violent and untimely end at the early age of twenty-eight. He was the Roger Downes of whom Lucas speaks, when he says that, according to tradition, while in London, in a drunken frolic, he vowed to his companions that he would kill the first man he met; when, sallying forth, he ran his sword through a poor tailor. Soon after this, being in a riot, a watchman made a stroke at him with his bill, which severed his head from his body, and the skull was enclosed in a box and sent to his sister at Wardley Hall. "The skull," adds the narrator, "has been kept at Wardley ever since, and many superstitious notions are entertained respecting it." The late Mr. Roby, in his entertaining "Traditions of Lancashire" wrought the incidents into a pathetic story, under the title of the "Skull House." Tradition, which always delights in the marvellous, took up the story, and many and incredible are the legends which the ghastly relic of mortality has given rise to. Certain it is that from time immemorial a human skull has had an abiding place at Wardley, carefully secured in an aperture in the wall beside the great staircase. According to popular belief, the grim fixture is as strongly averse to removal as the miraculous skull of "Dickey of Tunstead," which caused so much trouble to the engineers when constructing the railway near Chapel-en-le-Frith some years ago. Its rayless sockets, we are told, love to look upon the scenes of its former enjoyments, and it never fails to punish with severity those who venture to disturb or lay irreverent hands upon it. How the story originated it is impossible to say, but, though a skull, whitened by long exposure, is still exhibited, it is very certain that it never graced the shoulders of young Roger Downes. Thomas Barritt, the antiquary, in his MS. pedigrees, gives the following explanation:—"Thos. Stockport," he says, "told me the skull belonged to a Romish priest who was executed at Lancaster for seditious practices in the time of William III. He was most likely the priest at Wardley, to which place his head being sent, might be preserved as a relique of his martyrdom," and he adds, "The late Rev. Mr. Kenyon, of Peel, and librarian of the College in this town (Manchester), told me about the year 1779 the family vault of Downes in Wigan Church had about that time been opened, and a coffin discovered, on which was an inscription to the memory of the above young Downes. Curiosity led to the opening of it, and the skeleton, head and all, was there; but whatsoever was the cause of his death, the upper part of his skull had been sawed off, a little above the eyes, by a surgeon, perhaps by order of his friends, to be satisfied of the nature of his disease; his shroud was in tolerable preservation. Mr. Kenyon showed me some of the ribbon that tied the suit at the arms, wrists, and ankles; it was of a brown colour. What it was at first could not be ascertained." The name of Roger Downes is perpetuated on a massive marble slab affixed to the wall of Wigan Church, in which his remains are interred. It is surmounted by the arms of the family—sable, a stag lodged argent, and bears the following inscription:—_Rogerus Downes de Wardley, Armiger, filius Johannes Downes, hujus Comitatus Armigeri, obijt. 27 Junij. 1676. Ætatis suÆ 28._

Roger Downes having died unmarried, the family estates, including Wardley, devolved upon his only sister and sole heiress, Penelope, who conveyed them in marriage (31 Charles II, 1679-80) to Richard Savage, of Rock Savage, who succeeded as fourth Earl Rivers of the new creation, a title that had originally been held by the father-in-law (Woodville) of Edward IV., the Savages deriving through the marriage of an ancestor with the aunt of a former earl. Lord Rivers took a prominent part in public affairs during the eventful reign of Queen Anne. As a soldier and statesman he displayed no mean abilities, and, possessing these qualities, he was not unfrequently employed on complimentary and diplomatic missions. In 1706-7 he was ordered to the command of the English forces in Spain, and at the same time received the appointment of ambassador to King Charles, and some few years later (1712) he was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Elector of Brunswick prior to the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, that famous landmark of modern history which put an end to the wars of Queen Anne, secured the Protestant succession to the English throne, and separated for ever the crowns of France and Spain. He did not long survive this last mission, his death occurring August 18th, 1712, the only surviving issue by his marriage with the heiress of Wardley being a daughter, Elizabeth, who about the year 1706 married James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore, who was then a widower, and by whom she had an only child, Penelope, of whom anon.

The career of Earl Rivers was not unmarked by the libertinism which formed so prominent a characteristic of society in the age in which he lived. In addition to the daughter by his marriage with Penelope Downes—Elizabeth Savage, who became heiress of her mother's estates as well as those of her father—he had an illegitimate daughter by Mrs. Colydon, who married, in 1714, Frederick Earl of Rochford, to whom it is said she conveyed a fortune of £60,000; he was also the reputed father of the poet, Richard Savage, a writer better known for his misfortunes than for any peculiar novelty or merit in his poetry—the offspring of an illicit intercourse with the notorious Countess of Macclesfield, who acquired an unenviable notoriety as the heroine of the famous law case which followed upon the birth of her base-gotten son. Some curious particulars of this extraordinary scandal are to be found in the records of the time. The countess, under the name of Madame Smith and wearing a mask, was delivered of a male child in Fox-court, near Brook-street, Holborn, by Mrs. Wright, a midwife, on Saturday, January 16, 1697-8. Lord Macclesfield denied the paternity, and established the impossibility of his being the father of the child his countess had borne. A divorce was granted in 1698, but, as the law deemed the earl accountable through his own profligacy for the malpractices of his wife, he was required to repay the portion he had received with her on marriage, and with this she secured another husband in the person of Colonel Brett, by whom she had a daughter, Anne Brett, the impudent mistress of George I. The inhuman mother disowned her illegitimate offspring by Lord Rivers, Richard Savage, and had him placed under the charge of a poor woman who brought him up as her son, but Lady Mason, her mother, caused him to be removed to a school near St. Alban's and educated him at her own expense. Earl Rivers died without making any provision for his unfortunate son, a circumstance that was due, as Johnson says, to the fact that in the earl's last illness the degraded countess—then Mrs. Brett—had the inhumanity to state that Savage was dead, and through this falsehood the boy was deprived of a provision that was intended for him. It has been said that young Savage was an impostor, and the opinion was held by Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Johnson, who says: "In order to induce a belief that the Earl Rivers, on account of a criminal connection with whom Lady Macclesfield is said to have been divorced from her husband by Act of Parliament, had a peculiar anxiety about the child which she bore to him, it is alleged that his lordship gave him his own name, and had it duly recorded in the register of St. Andrew's, Holborn; I have," he adds, "carefully inspected that register, and I cannot find it." That Boswell should have failed in the discovery is explained by a reference to "The Earl of Macclesfield's case," presented to the House of Lords in 1697-8, from which it appears that the child was registered by the name of Richard, the son of John Smith, and christened on Monday, January 18th, in Fox-court, and this statement is confirmed by the following entry in the register of St. Andrew's, Holborn:—

Jany. 1696-7, Richard, son of John Smith, and Mary, in Fox Court, in Gray's Inn Lane, Baptised the 18th.

Notwithstanding the discredit that has been thrown on Savage's story, there can be little doubt of its truth. It was universally believed at the time, and no attempt was ever made by the countess to contradict or to invalidate any of the statements connected with it. Moreover, he was openly recognised in the house of Lord Tyrconnell, a nephew of his reputed mother, with whom he lived on equal terms, and who allowed him a sum of £200 a year until Savage quarrelled with him, when the peer stopped the allowance, and the hapless poet was again sent adrift upon the world. He was also on terms of acquaintance with the Countess of Rochford, the illegitimate daughter of Earl Rivers by Mrs. Colydon. Savage's folly and extravagance left him almost without a friend. Pope, whom he had supplied with the "private intelligence and secret incidents" that add poignancy to the satire of the "Dunciad," was about the last to withdraw his aid, and the poor fellow was eventually left to wander about in a state of destitution. He repaired to the West of England, and while in Bristol was arrested for a small debt, and being unable to find sureties was thrown into prison. During his incarceration he was taken ill, and on the morning of the 1st of August, 1743, was found dead in his bed, having been unable to procure any medical assistance. It is related that the keeper of the prison, who had treated him with kindness, buried him at his own expense.

Before his decease, Lord Rivers had executed indentures of lease and release, dated 13th June, 1711, by which his large estates in Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, and Essex were vested in trustees for the use of himself for life and remainder to him in tail; remainder to the use of his cousin, John Savage, a Romish ecclesiastic, who inherited the earldom, but never assumed the title; remainder to his illegitimate daughter, Bessy Savage, afterwards Countess of Rochford; remainder to his own right heirs. From some irregularities in the disposal of the property, the will was disputed, and eventually an Act of Parliament (7th George I., 1720) was obtained for the disposal of the estates, which were declared to be vested in trust for the earl's son-in-law, James, fourth earl of Barrymore, with remainder to Lady Penelope Barry, the only issue of his marriage with the Lady Elizabeth Savage, and the granddaughter of Richard Earl Rivers and his wife Penelope Downes, the heiress of Wardley.

Lady Penelope Barry, who was a minor, in 1720 brought the estates of her family in marriage to General James Cholmondeley, second surviving son of George Earl of Cholmondeley. Her ladyship seems to have inherited the frailties of her father, for in 1737 her husband obtained a sentence of divorce against her for adultery with one Patrick Anderson, a surgeon. She died childless about the year 1742;[77] General Cholmondeley, who survived her many years but did not remarry, died at the age of sixty-seven, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, October 19th, 1775, when, in accordance with the provisions of a settlement made in 1729, the estates passed to James Cholmondeley's great nephew, George James, fourth Earl and afterwards first Marquis of Cholmondeley, the father of William Henry Hugh, the present marquis, Hereditary Grand Chamberlain of England.

More than a century has elapsed since the historic house of Wardley was occupied by any direct descendant of its earlier lords. At one time it was in the occupation of a farmer, and subsequently was divided into several tenements, when it was allowed to fall into a state of decay, the humbler dwellers caring little for its antiquity, and content if they only could protect themselves from the elements and keep a roof above their heads. From the last representative of the Downes family the hall was conveyed by purchase to other owners, and for many years past it has formed part of the estates of the Earls of Ellesmere, to whom the grateful acknowledgments of all antiquaries are due for the thoughtful care they have taken in protecting it from further injury, as well as for the judgment they have exercised in carrying out the work of restoration. Within the last half century important renovations have taken place, and some portions have been rebuilt, but whatever has been done has been in perfect keeping with the architectural peculiarities of the original structure. The old mansion is now in a good state of repair, and, notwithstanding its situation in close proximity to a mining and manufacturing district, it furnishes a picturesque and singularly interesting example of a somewhat rare class of building, the moated dwelling of a gentleman of the fifteenth century.