The people of Cheshire were not all thieves and robbers in the eighteenth century. If the rich and the idle were given to folly and extravagance, and poorer men also too often lost the little they possessed through gambling and cock-fighting, the heart of the people was sound, and only waiting to be stirred to newer life and better ideals.

In the latter half of the century a great preacher came to Cheshire, and stirred deeply the hearts of men by denouncing the follies of the age, and the lack of religious feeling which had spread over all classes of society. His name was John Wesley, the founder of the Wesleyan and Methodist bodies. At first he met with much opposition, and his meetings were broken up by the mob, but in time the people were struck by his earnestness and flocked to hear him. The chapel at Chester where he preached was so crowded that it could not hold all who wished to listen to him. In his Diary he tells us of his visits to Knutsford, Stockport, and other Cheshire towns. But Wesley and his followers often found themselves unable to preach in the churches, so they built for themselves chapels, little square brick buildings, all over the county.

Another fervent preacher of the time was Captain Scott, who left the army to be a missionary among his own countrymen, whom he gathered round him in the streets or the inn-yards of the villages where he stayed. The Mill Street Chapel at Congleton is one of the many chapels founded by him in Southern Cheshire.

Many Cheshire men were fighting in the wars into which England was drawn in the eighteenth century. In the reigns of Anne and the three Georges war succeeded war, and the intervals of peace were few and short. France and Spain were our enemies, each of whom looked with jealous eyes upon the growing power of England, and, still more, her vast colonial empire. From Canada in the West to India in the East battles were fought on land and on sea to maintain for England the supremacy of the sea and her colonies.

Many churches in Cheshire tell the story of Cheshire soldiers and sailors who distinguished themselves in these wars. In the church of Pott Shrigley you may see a memorial tablet of Peter Downes, whose ancestors were foresters of the forest of Macclesfield. Peter Downes entered the navy and was killed in a fight between the Leander, an English man-of-war, and the French ship GÉnÉreux.

Peter Dennis, who was born at Chester and was a scholar at the King's School, became an Admiral of the Fleet. He was in command of the battleship Centurion in a battle fought off Cape Finisterre. Afterwards he was knighted and made commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet.

The battleships in which these sailors fought were very different to the monster ironclads of the present day with which you are familiar. The eighteenth-century vessels were the old 'wooden walls' of England, big sailing ships called 'three deckers', with three rows of guns pointing outwards from their sides. There is a model of one of them, the Royal George, over the inner door of Vernon Park Museum.

Robert Clive was the son of a Shropshire squire, and was educated at the little school in the Cheshire village of Allostock. Clive went to India and became a soldier. The English and French were fighting for the mastery of India, and it is to Clive's victories that we owe in a great measure our Indian Empire.

In the last few years of the eighteenth century the dangers which threatened England from France were much nearer home. In 1794 King George the Third was obliged to ask Parliament for a large increase in our home army. Cheshire raised a regiment of six troops, with Colonel Leicester, of Tabley Hall, as its commander.

Shortly afterwards a call for Volunteers was made in Cheshire, as in other parts of the country, to defend the shores of our own land from attack. The armies of Napoleon were conquering everywhere, and an invasion of England was expected. Knutsford Heath presented the same busy scene that it had done 150 years before, when Lambert's troops were encamped upon it. For Knutsford was the appointed meeting-place of all the Cheshire forces—Militia, Yeomanry, and Volunteers—and the beacon that was kept in readiness on Alderley Edge was to give the signal.

The danger was not over for many years, for the war lasted well into the nineteenth century, ending only when Napoleon and the French were defeated by Wellington at the battle of Waterloo. Duke Street and Wellington Street in Stockport keep alive the memory of the 'Iron Duke', Napoleon's conqueror.

A friend of the Duke of Wellington was Stapleton Cotton, Viscount Combermere, whose statue stands in front of the gates of Chester Castle. He was a descendant of the Cotton to whom the Abbey of Combermere was given when Henry the Eighth plundered the Cheshire monasteries. The Duke of Wellington frequently stayed at Combermere; on one of his visits he planted an oak tree which you may still see in the Park. On the tomb of Stapleton Cotton in Wrenbury Church you may read the names of the many battles in which this gallant soldier took part.

The wars of the eighteenth century and the final struggle with Napoleon would have ruined this country but for a great increase in the wealth of the people, which made them able to bear the cost.

To understand the sources of this wealth, and the way in which it was made, we shall have to go back again to the middle of the eighteenth century, and tell the story of a great Industrial Revolution, a revolution without war and bloodshed indeed, but one that brought with it the greatest changes perhaps that Cheshire had yet seen. What these changes were, and how they affected the lives of Cheshire men and women, you will read in the succeeding chapters.