Trentham, the home or settlement on the Trent, has been a village since the days of the Saxons, who adopted this fertile nook on the banks of a beautiful stream as a fit abode for man. Here, in this well-selected spot, they were led by their religious impulses to found an Abbey, over which presided no less a personage than Werburg, daughter of the ferocious Wulphere, king of Mercia, whose palace was hard by, at Berry-Bank, and whose wicked murder of his two sons, Wulfard and Rufin, on suspicion of their conversion to Christianity, was perpetrated at Bursson and at Stone, where subsequently religious houses were erected as memorials of their martyrdom. St. Werburg, for she was canonized, and was, moreover, sister to King Ethelred, died at Trentham or at Hanbury, in the year 683, was buried at the latter place, and her body was in the year 875 removed to Chester Cathedral, where the rich decorated stone case of her shrine now forms the bishop’s throne. Of the Saxon abbey of Trentham no records remain; of its “ancient glories” there exists not a trace.

In the time of King Stephen,

Ranulph, the second of the great Earls of Chester who bore that name, refounded the monastery of Trentham for canons of St. Augustine. In the present church, which closely adjoins to Trentham Hall, and which, by the munificence of the Duke of Sutherland, has been within these three or four years carefully and judiciously restored in every part, under the charge of Mr. Barry, we have still some slight but interesting remains, reaching back nearly to the time of its foundation. These consist of the tall, round, Norman piers of the nave, with their quaint capitals, and the bold and lofty pointed arches to which they give support.

The appended woodcut exhibits the interior of the church—the screen, of carved oak, being one of very considerable beauty.

At the Dissolution, the Monastery had only seven religious, and was granted by King Henry VIII. in 1539, to Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk. It afterwards came into the possession of the Levesons, a Staffordshire family of great antiquity, seated at Willenhall. Nicholas Leveson, lord-mayor of London, died in the year that Trentham was granted to the Duke of Suffolk. His great-grandson, Sir John Leveson, left two daughters only, co-heiresses; one of whom, Frances, by marrying Sir Thomas Gower of Sittenham, carried Trentham and other extensive possessions into this ancient Yorkshire family, which dates from the Conquest. Sir John Leveson-Gower was elevated to the peerage in 1702-3, as Baron Gower of Sittenham. His son John, the second Baron, was constituted Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, and was repeatedly one of the Lords of the Regency during the absences of George II. on the Continent. In 1746 he was created Viscount Trentham of Trentham, and Earl Gower. He died in 1755, and was buried at Trentham. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Granville, the second Earl, who was Member of Parliament for the city of Westminster. On the occasion of his appointment as one of the Lords of the Admiralty, his re-election was strongly opposed by Sir George Vanderput, who was defeated by a small majority. In consequence, a scrutiny ensued; and there occurred several riotous proceedings recorded in the journals of the time. He filled the high offices of Lord Privy Seal, Lord Chamberlain, and Lord President of the Council. He was installed Knight of the Garter, and created Marquis of Stafford in 1786. His eldest son, George Granville, also a Knight of the Garter, married the late estimable Countess of Sutherland in her own right, and was created Duke of Sutherland in 1833. This peerage, according to some of the Scottish writers, is the most ancient of any in North Britain. The Duke did not long survive to enjoy his new dignity, but died in the same year, carrying with him the sincere regret of his numerous tenantry. The latter, to testify their respect for His Grace’s memory, commissioned Sir Francis Chantrey to execute a colossal statue of their noble landlord, which occupies a neighbouring height of great elevation, immediately in front of Trentham Hall across the lake, and forms a very conspicuous object in the surrounding scenery. Of the present noble possessor of the title, George-Granville-Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, the second Duke of his family, it will not be necessary to add much. After sitting in the Commons for Staffordshire, he was summoned to the House of Peers in the lifetime of his father, as Earl Gower, and is distinguished for the gracious dignity with which, during the whole of his career, he has sustained the honours of so many ancient and noble families, concentrated, as it were, in his own person.

To the Levesons we may be allowed to recur. Sir Richard Leveson was distinguished as a naval commander. He is considered to be the subject of that fine old plaintive ballad, “The Spanish Lady’s Love,” which relates the woes of a captive maid, “by birth and parentage of high degree,” at being about to be separated for ever from her detainer—

for he accompanied the Earl of Nottingham, in 1596, in his expedition against Cadiz, when he was twenty-seven years of age. He was married to the daughter of this famous Earl, who was the Lord High Admiral and Commander in Chief of the English fleet which defeated the so called “invincible” Spanish Armada. Sir Richard Leveson, who was in this engagement as well as many others, in 1601 was made Vice-Admiral, and died early in life in 1605. In the Collegiate Church at Wolverhampton a noble bronze statue, richly gilt, supported by a stately monument in black marble, was erected to his memory; by which were two brass plates, the one inscribed with the chief events of his life, registered at length in Latin, terminating in these words—“E vita pie discessit

sine prole, sed non sine magno multorum luctu, auro dignus, Ære contentus;” and the other in English. He was succeeded by Sir Richard Leveson of Trentham, Knight of the Bath, who erected this splendid memorial to the Admiral’s fame. It was executed by Le Sueur for 300l., and the original contract in French is still preserved at Trentham. During the contest between Royalty and the Parliament, this bronze effigy was ordered by the Committee of Sequestrations at Stafford to be taken away and cast into cannon; but by the timely interposition of Lady Leveson, the Admiral’s widow, it was redeemed for a sum of money, and deposited in Lilleshall Church till the strife was over. The marble monument being destroyed, it now occupies a niche in the church at Wolverhampton. A copy of the effigy is placed in a recess in the court-yard at Trentham Hall of which we give an illustration.

The above Sir Richard Leveson, Knight of the Bath, was member of parliament for the county of Salop, and afterwards for Newcastle-under-Lyme, and was devoted to the cause of Charles I. He made his residence at Trentham, “being accounted one of the best house-keepers and landlords in the county.” In consequence of his adherence to the royal cause, his property was sequestrated, for which he compounded by the payment of more than 6000l., the largest composition obtained. There remains a letter from him to the Governor of Shrewsbury, which strikingly indicates the distresses sustained, by persons of distinction even, during those troubled times:—

Sir Richard Leveson built the old hall at Trentham in 1633, two views of which are given in Dr. Plot’s singular “Natural History of Staffordshire.” He died in 1661. His widow, Lady Catherine Leveson, was a great benefactress to the parish, and died at Trentham in 1678.

The present Hall, previous to the recent most happy and successful “transformation” under the direction of Mr. Barry, was built on the model of Buckingham House, in St. James’s Park. It has now become, by the addition of the semicircular colonnade, rich carriage porch surmounted by the ducal arms, and baronial tower, an imposing and stately mansion, enriched with much diversity of outline.

A massy structure near the Hall was erected by the late Marquis of Stafford as a family mausoleum, in the Egyptian style; the grounds around it being planted with various species of yew and other sombre plants, of a lofty, pointed, and pyramidal form. The ponderous architecture, the deeply-tinted foliage and heavenward aspect of the evergreens, form most appropriate emblems, both of human frailty and of the brighter hopes of the Christian.

The park is marked by the unrestrained native beauties of the neighbouring wood of oaks, “wild above rule or art,” and by the river Trent expanding into a goodly lake:—