Chapter IV (1)

HANDFORTH HALL--THE BRERETONS--SIR WILLIAM BRERETON.

The stranger who perchance for the first time finds himself a worshipper within the ancient church of Cheadle, in Cheshire, may haply have his mind diverted from his devotions by the sight of a curiously-wrought oaken screen which separates an old chantry chapel, at the east end of the aisle, on the south side, from the remaining portions of the church. It is an interesting relic of bygone days, black with age, and carved with many a quaint device, and, withal, of such excellent design and workmanship as to prove that our forefathers were by no means deficient in the higher graces of architecture; the cornice is battered and broken in places, but upon it you may still trace a running figure representing the stem and foliage of the briar, with the figure of a cask or tun, and the letters V and B frequently repeated. In the east window are some fragments of heraldic glass commemorating one of the heroes of Flodden Field, and within the enclosure, placed side by side, is a group of altar tombs of more than passing interest; upon them are the recumbent figures of knights armed cap-à-pie, each with his hands uplifted and conjoined upon his breast as if in supplication. Two of them are of alabaster and of ancient date; whatever there may have been of armorial insignia among their decorations has long since disappeared, but a collar of SS round the neck of each denotes the rank of Esquire of the Body of the Sovereign, and the character of the armour in which they are encased shows that they must have played their parts in the time of that long and bloody struggle between the adherents of the rival Roses which terminated on the Field of Bosworth when the sun of the Plantagenets went down and the flower of English chivalry was destroyed.

Those days of ruin
When York and Lancaster drew forth the battles,
When, like a matron butchered by her sons,
And cast beside some common way, a spectacle
Of horror and affright to passers by,
Our groaning country bled at every pore.

The third of these sepulchral memorials, the only one that bears an inscription, is of stone, and perpetuates the name of the last scion of an illustrious house. The verger, if encouraged, will recount, with delight, the valorous deeds of--

The ancient knights whose sculptured glories
The aisle adorn

and tell you that the grim warriors graven in stone represent some of the earlier lords of Handforth, one of the manors within the parish; that this old chantry was their burial place; and that the letters with the briar and the tun that have attracted your attention are the initials and the punning rebus of Sir Urian Brereton, who, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, of pious memory, acquired the Handforth estate by his marriage with the heiress of that name; "buylded" or rather rebuilt the "haulle" there, and erected the curious piece of carpentry in Cheadle Church for the greater sanctity of the place where repose the remains of his wife's progenitors. Within that little enclosure the gathered ashes of long centuries rest; there many a warlike Honford and many a valorous Brereton sleep in peace; but tabard and helm, sword and buckler, have disappeared, and scarce a relic remains to remind us of their daring and their prowess, or even to perpetuate their names, for--

Monuments themselves memorials need.

The frail carving on the screen commemorates the first of the Breretons, who resided at Handforth, and the name of the last of them is written upon one of the altar-tombs, but of that Sir William Brereton whose name figures so prominently in Cheshire history, and who played so conspicuous a part in the great struggle between King and Parliament that preceded the Commonwealth, not a single memento has been preserved. The church registers thus record his death:--

1661. Sir William Brereton, Barronet, died at Croyden ye 7th of April.

This, and nothing more. He died at the Archiepiscopal Palace, which had been granted to him by the Parliament after the execution of Laud, and where he resided during the Protectorate, and his body was sent down into Cheshire for interment in the sanctuary that canopies the bones of so many of his ancestors. Did he find a resting-place there? Old gossips shake their heads mysteriously when you inquire, and relate the strange legend that has shaped itself in the popular mind, and which, through the medium of oral tradition, has floated down through the long avenues of time--how that fate, which had permitted the stern Republican to see the King "enjoy his own again," willed that his body should not, after death, find a resting-place in the church which, in life, he had despoiled; that when those who accompanied the body from London were approaching the village of Cheadle a fearful storm arose in the night; trees were blown down, houses were unroofed, the rain descended in torrents, and the rivers were flooded, so much so that when they came to ford one of them the coffin, with its lifeless occupant, was swept away by the surging current, and never seen again. Such is the legend that has been handed down through successive generations, but which, in this unromantic age, is fast fading from the memory of the inhabitants. For its trustworthiness we fear we can ascribe no higher authority than--

Tradition's dubious light,
That hovers 'twixt the day and night,
Dazzling, alternately, and dim--

It belongs, we suspect, to that native spirit of romance that gilds to its own satisfaction, and without which the world with all its natural delights would be but a dull reality. Certain it is, that there has not been preserved a single memento of Cheshire's greatest Puritan soldier--the captor of her Cathedral City, and the despoiler of the stronghold of Beeston.

Any particular description of these tombs, or of the individuals whose dust they enshrine, we will defer until after our visit to the ancient and somewhat dilapidated mansion in which their occupants lived and had their being.

From Cheadle the old Hall is distant a good three miles, but from the railway station at Handforth it is only a few minutes' walk. It was a cold December morning when we started upon our quest; the sunshine and the warmth of summer had passed away, winter was upon us, and the year was fast hastening to its close. There was a stillness in the atmosphere and a dull leaden light in the sky that betokened a fall; the meadows far and near were covered with a thin coating of crisp white snow that gathered in heaps about the twisted roots of the trees, and through the haze we could see the umbraged heights of Alderley Edge looming spectral-like, while the hills, forming the eastern boundary of the county, were thickly covered with a fleecy mantle of Nature's weaving; the little pools and runnels by the wayside were congealed, the ice-gems decked the branches of the trees, making them look like so many fairy fountains, and the hoar-frost glittered on every plant and shrub. There were not many signs of human life about; some sheep were vainly endeavouring to find pasturage, and a few stirks stood gazing vacantly in the meadow, their breath visible in the frosty air. As we strode along the sound of our steps reverberated from the hard and frost-bound road, the crisp brown autumn leaves crackled beneath our feet, and the keen air drove the blood from the surface of the skin and sent it back into the heart like freezing water.

Handforth, or Handforth-cum-Bosden, as it is officially called--the manor of Handforth with that of Bosden forming a joint township in the parish of Cheadle--is still only an inconsiderable village, though in its outward aspect it has changed materially since the time when, in 1534-5, Sir William Brereton, then a young man of thirty or thereabouts, recorded his adventures in other lands and made favourable comparisons between his native place and those he visited. Thus, complaining of the scanty provision he had to put up with after a forty miles' ride in Ayrshire, he says: "The entertainment we accepted, in a poorer house than any upon Handforth Green, was Tharck-cake (_i.e._, oatcakes), two eggs, and some dried fish buttered;"[23] in Ireland he fared no better, for at Carrick, he says, "Here, in this town, is the poorest tavern I ever saw; a little, low, thatched Irish house, not to be compared unto Jane Kelsall's, of the Green, at Handforth."[24] Of poor Jane Kelsall and her humble hostelry, in which, possibly, the lord of Handford, before he went a "colonelling," may have occasionally enjoyed his cup of sack, not even a memory has been preserved, and the village green is now only so called by courtesy, for the railway traverses a part, and what remains has been enclosed, though the name lingers in a meadow which is still known as the "Green" field.

From the railway station a pleasant rural lane that crosses the line descends into a little valley, at the bottom of which a tiny rindle hurries on to add its tributary waters to the river Dean; crossing this the road ascends and presently brings us in front of the old mansion, a quaint half-timbered structure with black beams and a diaper-like pattern traced in places upon the white ground of intervening plaster, and built after the fashion of so many of the Cheshire houses with projecting gables and overhanging chambers. Approaching more nearly we note that much of the old timber work has been removed and replaced with brick painted in imitation of the original oaken framework to deceive the eye of the casual observer; the old mullioned windows, too, have disappeared, and their place has been supplied with others of later date, though of a considerable age, as evidenced by the small latticed panes. Ormerod says the building was originally quadrangular in plan; though there is nothing to indicate that such was the case there can be no doubt it has been shorn of its former proud and graceful proportions; its palmy state belongs to other days, but there is, nevertheless, much left to show what it has been, with the added interest that the halo of antiquity and romance throws around it. The portion that remains has for many years been used as a farmhouse, and the occupants, as may be supposed, have attached but small import to the interest it derives from old associations--alterations have been made to adapt it to its present purposes, and repairs that have been effected have not always been done in the most judicious manner or in the best taste. It is an oblong structure with two gables projecting from the principal front, one of them forming the porch or main entrance, and this constitutes one of the principal features of the exterior. The sideposts and the lintel of the wide open doorway are elaborately carved, and on the transverse beam above is the following inscription in old English characters:--

This haulle was buylded in the yeare of oure Lord God mccccclxii by Uryan Breretonn Knight whom maryed Margaret daughter and heyre of Wyllyam handforth of Handforthe Esquyer and had Issue vi sonnes and ii daughters.

The inner mouldings of the sideposts are enriched with the running figure of the stem and foliage of the briar, similar to that carved on the screen in Cheadle Church, and the same ornament is continued along the under side of the lintel, with the addition of a tun in the centre, and the initials V and B placed one at each angle. The outer face of each sidepost had an arabesque ornament carved in low relief, the one on the left terminating in a shield of arms now so much worn by exposure to the weather as to be scarcely decipherable, though in its perfect state it represented the coat of Brereton impaling Honford or Handforth--the sinister half, quarterly, first and fourth, _argent_ two bars _sable_, on the upper bar a crescent of the first, between the bars a cross fleury _gules_, charged with five bezants for Brereton; second and third, _argent_ a chevron between three crescents _gules_ for Ipstones. On the dexter half, quarterly, first and fourth, _sable_ an estoile _argent_ for Honford; second and third _gules_, a scythe _argent_ for Praers. On the sidepost on the right of the doorway the carved ornamentation terminates in the Brereton crest--a bear's head erased ppr., muzzled _or_, on the neck a cross patée for difference.

The interior in its general arrangement has in the course of years undergone considerable change, alterations having been made from time to time as the requirements or convenience of successive occupants have dictated; but, notwithstanding the altered purposes to which many of the apartments are now applied, it still exhibits a good deal of its ancient character, and happily the oaken panelling and other carvings that remain have escaped alike the common infliction of whitewash and the sacrilegious touch of the painter's brush. The most remarkable feature is the wide and handsome oak staircase that is no doubt coeval with the erection of the building. It is in a perfect state, and furnishes a more than usually good example of the carpentry of the Elizabethan period; the balusters of the same material are flat, the upper portion being enriched with a series of small enarchments and other decorations, with the addition of a broad heavy handrail, bright with the rubbings of successive generations. This staircase communicates with a landing on the upper storey, admission to which is gained by a large panelled folding-door, black with age and ornamented with fleurs-de-lis, &c.

On the slope below the hall the searching eye may still discover traces of the old plesaunce with the fish-ponds and terraces that existed when it was in truth a pleasure ground, when the parterres were garnished with thick borders of yew and thyme and bushes of sweet-smelling briar, and the dainty masses of greenness were bespangled with flowers of every hue, for our forefathers knew the true uses of a garden as well as of a house, and were not restricted by the ideas that guide their successors in the present day.

The hand of improvement, like the "Spectral bunch of digits," in the fairy tale, is fast plucking our ancient monuments from the soil. Handforth remains, but its palmy days have long since passed away, never to return; but even in its present abject state, whether considered as a relic of antiquity or as associated with some of the most important events in the history of the county and the country, it will, while it exists, have strong claims upon attention and call up imaginative fancies as to the fate of those who lived and died within it, for how many a volume of happy or mournful history--of deep affection and patient endurance--of daring deeds and heroic actions--may we not read as we tread its dismantled apartments and gaze upon its venerable walls, for--

Here the warrior dwelt,
And in this mansion, children of his own,
Or kindred, gathered round him. As a tree
That falls and disappears, the house is gone;
And, through our improvidence or want of love
For ancient worth and honourable things,
The spear and shield are vanished, which the knight
Hung in his castle hall.

The manor of Handforth was owned for many generations by a family who derived their patronymic from their estate. It is not known with certainty when or how they acquired possession, but the name occurs in the local records as early as the reign of Henry III., at which time (circa 1233-6) Robert de Stokeport granted to Henry de Honford the ville or town of Bosden, forming part of the lands of his barony of Stockport. A descendant of this Henry, Roger de Honford, accompanied Edward the Black Prince in his expedition against the King of France, and, as we learn from an entry on the Cheshire Recognisance Rolls preserved in the Record Office, he was rewarded by the Prince, who was also Earl of Chester, for his "services in Gascony, and particularly at the battle of Poitiers." Those were days in which--

Each sturt bowman, dauntless, ready, true,
Scoured through the glades and twanged his bow of yew.

The men of Cheshire were noted for their skill in archery. They looked upon the earls of their palatinate as their titular sovereigns, and fighting under their banner gained much renown in the wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and nowhere did they display greater bravery or win more renown for England than on the morning of that memorable Monday in September, 1356--ten years after the fight at Crescy--when the Black Prince, with his small force of 8,000, found himself surprised by the King of France, with an army of 60,000 men. The result we know; rather than beat a dishonourable retreat or yield to superior numbers, the Prince accepted battle, and, ere midday was reached, the red Oriflamme, with its golden lilies, was laid in the dust; the mighty host of France was completely routed, those who escaped with life flying from the fields of Beauvoir and Maupertuis to the very gates of the city of Poitiers; and the French King himself, with his youthful son, Prince Philip, were prisoners in the English camp. In a locality full of the recollections of the glory of France; where Clovis defeated Alaric, King of the Goths, and established the faith of the creed of St. Athanasius--where Charles Martel drove back the host of invading Saracens and saved Europe from Mahometanism--England added to her laurels her proudest and most brilliant victory--Poitiers. In that death struggle the flower of Cheshire chivalry were engaged, and the Cheshire bowmen bore themselves bravely and well. Roger de Honford shared in the glories, and greatly distinguished himself on that memorable day; and it was well for him, perhaps, that he had the opportunity of atoning by his bravery for certain offences that he would seem to have been previously guilty of, for it is recorded on the Recognisance Roll that on the 25th May in the following year (1357) a warrant was granted by Edward the Black Prince for a pardon to him and one William de Neuton or Newton, of all felonies, &c., committed by them in the county of Chester, except the death of the Prince's ministers and of Bertram de Norden and Richard de Bechton.

Mr. Earwaker, in his "History of East Cheshire," tells us that another member of the family, Geoffrey, son of John de Honford, met with his death in 1360 by foul means. In what way is not stated, but in all probability it was in one of the forays that in those days were of such frequent occurrence between the owners of neighbouring lands, when in the case of a feud one or other of the disputants, impatient of the dilatory and uncertain processes of the law, would be tempted to adopt the simpler and less tardy method of taking the adjustment of his differences into his own hands and making a raid upon his adversary's possessions, for on the 23rd November, 35 and 36 Edward III. (1363), Edward Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, granted a pardon to John de Hyde, Knight, apparently the head of the house of Norbury and Hyde; William, son of John de Hyde; John, son of William de Hyde; and Hugh Frensshye, servant of Sir John de Hyde, for the death of Geoffrey, son of John de Honford, on the payment of 200 marks (£133 6s. 8d.). The name of the servant implicated, Frensshye, suggests the idea that he may have been brought over, possibly as a captive, from France by some representative of the house of Hyde.

Geoffrey de Honford left an only daughter, Katharine, his heir, then under age, and as appears by an enrolment of January 13, 1360-1, Robert de Legh, the younger, had a grant of the custody of the lands, together with the wardship and marriage of the said Katharine.

Subsequently to this time the name is of frequent occurrence in the public records, but the actual relationship of the persons mentioned has not been ascertained, and it is not until near the close of the century that we meet with anything like a continuous record. In 1393 an inquisition was taken after the death of John, the son of Henry de Honford, who had by his wife, Margaret, the daughter and co-heir of William de Praers, who predeceased him, an elder son, John, who succeeded as heir; and in addition a son, William de Honford, who attained to considerable note in the county. In 1402 he was appointed with Robert de Newton, of Longdendale, and others, collector of a subsidy in the Hundred of Macclesfield granted to the King. There appears to have been some irregularity respecting the descent of the land which he inherited from his mother, Margaret, one of William de Praers's co-heiresses, for, in 1407, Henry Prince of Wales granted him a lease of the lands and tenements in Wylaston, near Alvendeston, belonging to Alexander de Venables and his wife, and which were then in the Prince's hands by reason of their having been alienated to William de Praers without licence being first obtained. He married Isabel, the widow of her kinsman, Robert de Legh, of Adlington, who had died of the pestilence at Harfleur, just before the battle of Agincourt was fought, in 1415, and having, in 1420, acquired lands in Chorley, in Wilmslow parish, he founded the line of the Honfords, of Chorley Hall.

In 1397 John de Honford, who, four years previously, had succeeded as heir to the paternal estate of Handforth, had a grant from the Crown of an annuity of 100s., the King having retained him in his service for life. He did not, however, long enjoy it, his death occurring in 1400, when John de Honford, his son, then only nine years of age, succeeded as heir.

This John, on attaining to manhood, well sustained the martial fame of his progenitors, and served with distinction in the French wars in the reigns of Henry V. and VI. In 1424 he took part in the famous battle of Verneuil (August 17), when the Regent, the Duke of Bedford, utterly routed the French army in an engagement that is described on the rolls of Parliament as "the greatest deed done by Englishmen in our days, save the battle of Agincourt," and it is not unlikely that it was here he won his spurs; so conspicuous was he in the battle that in acknowledgment of his bravery a pension of £100 Tournois was granted him for life out of the forfeited possessions of John Tancrope, as fully set forth in an ancient document preserved among the Adlington MSS. in the Chetham Library. The victory at Verneuil was followed by a reverse in 1427. For some time the war was carried on without any decided success on either side, but in the year just named the forces of the Duke of Bedford sustained a severe defeat, which compelled them to raise the siege of Montarges, and it is more than probable that Sir John de Honford, who had participated in the glories of the previous victory, shared in the mortification of that disaster, for his name occurs on the Cheshire Rolls in that year as being "about to depart for France."

From that time misfortune followed upon misfortune. A simple country girl--Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans--had been wonderfully raised up to serve her country's need; victory followed wherever she led, and after several actions the English, in 1429, were compelled to raise the siege of Orleans. No story of ancient heroism reads more like a romance. The English never recovered the blow struck by the maid for the freedom of her country. Their hold upon the soil of France gradually relaxed, and one by one the territories which had been won by the sword were surrendered. The Duke of Bedford gathered a vast force for the prosecution of the war; Sir John de Honford was in his retinue, and in a contemporary document his name occurs as holding, in 1434, the important post of Keeper of the Bridge over the Seine at Rouen for the Regent Bedford, with one horseman, three lance soldiers on foot, and twenty bowmen. ("_Pons de Rone super aquam de Sayne: Johannes Hanneford, chevalier locum tenens domini regentis (cum) i lanceam equestrem iij lanceas pedesires et xx archers._") Those were evil times for England; Harfleur, the first trophy of Henry V., had been recaptured in 1432, and in 1435 the peace of Arras was concluded between Charles VII. and the Duke of Burgundy, the news of which caused the young King Henry to weep. At this important crisis in her history England sustained an irreparable loss by the death of the Duke of Bedford, who expired at Rouen September 14, 1435, at the very time the negotiations for the peace were being concluded.

Sir John de Honford must have quitted his post at Rouen, for before the close of the year he with other influential knights and gentry of the shire were summoned to the King's council at Chester for the purpose of granting a subsidy to enable him to carry on the war. Whether he returned to Normandy with the reinforcements or took part in the engagements in which Harfleur was retaken, and the brave Lord Talbot won such renown, is not clear, but his martial spirit could not find happiness in repose, and in 1441 (October 26) we find him entering into an engagement with Humphrey Earl (afterwards Duke) of Buckingham, then owner of the fortified stronghold of Macclesfield, to serve him in a military capacity for the remainder of his life in consideration of an annual fee of £10 chargeable on the manor of Thornbury, in Gloucestershire.

There was no standing army in England then; fighting was done by contract, and such agreements were therefore not of uncommon occurrence. Upon emergencies forces were raised by the King's letters under the Privy Seal; lords, knights, and esquires quickly responded to the summons of the sovereign, and an army was readily got together if the means of paying the adventurous spirits who comprised it were forthcoming. But it must not be supposed that the fighting Englishmen of those days were taken from the plough without any previous military training. The casque and the morion were hung up in the cottage of the serf as well as in the castle of the feudatory chief, and the good yew bow was suspended in the halls of the knights and esquires for the use of their servants and retainers, in accordance with the statute (II Henry IV.) to shoot at the butts on every Sunday and high festival, the municipal authorities at the same time being required to see that the youths in their respective districts were taught to send the "light flight-arrow" to the legal distance of 220 yards, so that when they had grown to lusty manhood they might perform the same feat with the heavy war-arrow. Hence, in those days there were to be found Locksleys in every village to whom the long range offered no difficulty when the King's letter came, whether direct or through the chief landowner to his subinfeudatory tenants and partisans.

Three years after Sir John Honford had entered into the agreement with the Earl of Buckingham he was appointed one of the Justices in Eyre for the three Hundreds of Cheshire, and in 1449 he is again found on active service in Normandy--this time with the army commanded by the Duke of Somerset. The truce agreed to in 1444 had been broken, complications had arisen, the town of Fougiers in Brittann had been seized, and in the month of April Sir John ("Messire Jehan Hanneford, chevalier," as he is styled) was specially commissioned to return to England and report to the King the outrages that had been committed. It was the beginning of the end. One by one the provinces which had been won had been surrendered, and even those which Henry had inherited were given up. In July the French King invaded Normandy, Somerset had to submit to the capitulation of Rouen. Cherbourg was the last town to yield, it surrendered August 12, 1450, and thus in one campaign, almost without a struggle, England lost the large and fertile province of Normandy, containing more than a hundred fortified towns; Calais was the only possession retained in France, and that Queen Mary lost a century later; yet with a strange infatuation the Kings of England paraded the empty title of Kings of France and bore the golden lilies upon their heraldic shield until the first day of the present century, when by Royal Proclamation they were removed.

Of Sir John Honford's subsequent adventures little or nothing is known, and even the time of his death has not been ascertained with certainty; but it must have been about 1461, for in that year the manor of Honford was conveyed to his son, also named John. Mr. Earwaker says it is possible he died abroad; but this is scarcely likely, for there was then little for an English soldier to do abroad, and much to occupy his attention at home; and we can hardly suppose that such a veteran as Sir John de Honford would let his sword remain in the scabbard when in England the storm-cloud of war had burst, and the rival houses of York and Lancaster were in their death struggle--"the convulsive and bleeding agony of the feudal power." It was the year which ended the inglorious and unhappy reign of the "meek usurper" Henry VI., that in which Edward of York was borne to the throne upon the shoulders of the people--the year of Mortimer's Cross, of the second battle of St. Alban's and of Towton, the crowning victory of the White Rose. Though there is no record of the fact, it is more than probable that his remains were interred in the chantry at Cheadle, and from its appearance and general characteristics it would seem likely that the older of the two alabaster effigies there was placed over them to perpetuate his memory. Though the sword has disappeared, the figure of the old warrior, in its rich suit of ornamented armour, still remains comparatively perfect; the uncovered head resting upon his helmet, a pillow not much softer than that which Henry V. regretted that his faithful follower, Sir Thomas Erpingham, had to repose on, when, on the night before the fight at Agincourt, he exclaimed--

A good soft pillow for that good white head
Were better than a churlish turf of France.

John Honford, who succeeded as heir on the death of his father, had married in 1422 Margery, one of the daughters of Sir Laurence Warren, of Poynton. He died in October, 1473, and was succeeded by his son, also named John, who had to wife Margaret, daughter of Sir John Savage, of Clifton. By this lady, who survived him and married for her second husband Sir Edmund Trafford, of Trafford, he had two sons; John, the eldest, predeceased him, and William, the younger, succeeded as heir. He was under age at the time of his father's death in 1487, and, fortunately for him, the wardship of his lands and the sale of his hand in marriage was given to his grandfather, Sir John Savage, who in turn granted them to his stepfather, Sir Edmund Trafford. Of this member of the family but few records have been preserved. In 1513, in the month of May, he appeared in the amiable character of a peacemaker between Sir John Warburton and Sir William Boothe, two neighbouring knights, who had quarrelled over the rights they respectively claimed to cut turf on Warburton Moss; and William Honford, Sir Thomas Boteler, Sir Richard Bold, and Laurence Marbury drew up a deed by which the matters in dispute were amicably adjusted. It was one of the latest acts of William Honford's life, for ere four months had passed, or the warm golden tints of autumn had deepened upon the landscape, he had met a soldier's fate. On the 9th of September, 1513, the battle of Flodden Field was fought, and when night closed upon the scene the moon looked down upon Sir William's corpse as it lay stiffening on Branksome Moor.

There is, perhaps, no event in the annals of the country that has been the subject of so much exultation on the part of Lancashire and Cheshire men, or that has formed the ground-work of so many traditions and furnished so fruitful a theme for ballad writers as the victory of Flodden Field. Contemporary records are full of the achievements of the heroes of that memorable day, and the valiant deeds of those who bore a part in the fight have oft been celebrated in prose and rhyme.

To town and tower, to down and dale,
To tell red Flodden's dismal tale,
And raise the universal wail,
Tradition, legend, tune, and song,
Shall many an age that wail prolong;
Still from the sire the son shall hear
Of the stern strife, and carnage drear,
Of Flodden's fatal field,
When shivered was fair Scotland's spear,
And broken was her shield.

It was an overthrow which spread sorrow and dismay through Scotland; patriots bewailed it, poets sang dirges over it, and long was it remembered as one of the greatest calamities that country had sustained.

Henry VIII. was at the time besieging Terouenne, and the Scottish King, thinking it a favourable opportunity for a descent upon England, mustered a large force, crossed the Tweed, and sat down before the castle of Norham, which surrendered in a few days; three other border fortresses fell in quick succession, when the invading host continued its march southwards. The report of this plundering raid fired the ardour of the English people, and roused the men of Lancashire and Cheshire to enthusiasm. The war note which had been sounded met with a ready response; William Honford prepared himself for the field, and he and many of his neighbours summoned their retainers, and, mustering under the banners of their respective leaders, marched to meet King James of Scotland, their force consisting for the most part of archers and billmen, and, as the tablet formerly preserved in the old church of Bolton-le-Sands expressed it--

The bolt shot well, I ween,
From arablast of yew tree green,
Many nobles prostrate lay
On the glorious Flodden day.

On reaching Hornby the Lancashire and Cheshire forces placed themselves under the command of Sir Edward Stanley--

From Lancashire and Cheshire, too,
To Stanley came a noble train
To Hornby, from whence he withdrew
And forward set with all his train.

The two armies met on the 8th September, on the banks of the Till, a branch of the Tweed, that flows by the foot of the Cheviot Hills, and the battle began on the afternoon of the following day, the Scots having descended from their position on the heights of Flodden. The Earl of Surrey, who had been entrusted by the Queen Regent with the command, divided his forces into two parts; the vanguard he confided to his son, the Lord Admiral, and the rear he headed himself. Sir Edmund Howard commanded the right wing, and Sir Edward Stanley the left. The fight began about four o'clock, and the contest was fierce and furious. The first report was that the Cheshire men, overwhelmed by a large body of Scottish spearmen, had wavered and fallen back; and, as ill news always travels apace, this report, it is said, was the first that reached King Henry, then at Terouenne. The battle swayed to and fro for some time until the Scottish ranks were thinned by the murderous discharges of the English archers; their King, James IV., surrounded by a strong body of knights, fought on foot, and seeing the English standard almost, as he thought, within his grasp, marched with steady step to secure it. It was the agony and very turning point of the contest, for at the same moment Sir Edward Stanley, heading the Lancashire and Cheshire bowmen, led the famous charge which Scott has enshrined in imperishable verse--

Victory!
Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion.

It turned the fortunes of the day. The shock was irresistible, and the Scottish force fell into disorder; 10,000 of the bravest of Scotia's warriors were slain, and her King fell a lifeless corpse almost within a spear's length of the feet of Surrey. Among those who bit the dust that day were the Archbishop of St. Andrews, two bishops, two abbots, twelve earls, thirteen barons, five eldest sons of barons, and fifty other persons of distinction, including the French Ambassador, the King's secretary, and, last and saddest of all, the King himself. "Scarce a family of eminence," says Scott, "but has an ancestor killed at Flodden," as the Scottish minstrel laments:--

Dool and wae for the order, sent our lads to the border!
The English for ance, by guile wan the day;
The flowers of the forest, that fought aye the foremost,
The prime of our land, are cauld in the clay.

We'll hear nae mair lilting at the ewe milking;
Women and bairns are heartless and wae;
Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning--
The flowers of the forest are a' wede awae.

The English loss was also very severe, the number slain being estimated at seven thousand; but the men of rank who fell were not nearly so numerous. Cheshire lost many of her sons, among them William Honford, of Handforth, with his neighbours, Thomas Venables, the Baron of Kinderton; Christopher Savage, the valiant Mayor of Macclesfield; and many substantial burgesses of that town.[25] As the ancient poem of "Scottish Feilde," believed to have been written by a Cheshire man--a Legh, of Baguley--expresses it--

The Barne (Baron) of Kinderton full kenely,
was killed them beside;
So was Honforde, I you hete,
that was a hynde swyer![26]
Fulleswise[27] full feil,
was fallen to the grounde!
Christopher Savadge was downecaste
that kere[28] might be never!

Another of the heroes of Flodden, more fortunate than William Honford, we shall meet with anon--Sir John Stanley, who afterwards became lord of Handforth Hall.

With the death of William Honford the direct line of the house of Honford terminated, the estates devolving upon his only daughter, Margaret, a child of ten years at the time her father lost his life. His widow, Sibyl, some twelve years later became the second wife of Laurence Warren, of Poynton, Esquire. William Honford's Inquisition, from some cause or other, was not taken until January, 1516; his daughter Margaret, then twelve years of age, was found to be his heir, and in the interval between the victory at Flodden and the taking of the Inquisition she had been married by her feoffees to Sir John Stanley, William Honford's companion in arms.

Sir John Stanley, who was about seven years older than his youthful bride, was an illegitimate son of James Stanley, warden of Manchester, and afterwards Bishop of Ely, a younger son of that Thomas, Lord Stanley, who according to popular tradition, which, by the way, is in this instance a popular error, placed the crown of the vanquished Richard upon the head of the victorious Henry of Richmond on the field of Bosworth.[29] The mother of Sir John was doubtless the lady to whom Fuller in his quaint fashion refers, when, commenting upon the Bishop's frailty in the infraction of his vow of celibacy, he says that he blamed him not "for passing the summer with his brother (? nephew) the Earl of Derby, in Lancashire, but for living all the winter at Somersham, in Huntingdonshire, with one who was not his sister, and who wanted nothing to make her his wife save marriage."

When the war note had been sounded, and the enthusiasm of the Lancashire men had been roused by the threat of invasion, Bishop Stanley, with ready response, summoned his retainers and dependents, but, unlike the Abbot of Vale Royal, who led his contingent to the field in person, and by his presence gave the sanction of religion to the cause, placed them under the charge of his young son, John Stanley--"that child so young," as Weber calls him in one of his ballads--to whom the writer of the metrical story of the "Scottish Feilde" has incorrectly assigned the place of honour as the real commander in the decisive attack in the battle, instead of his uncle, Sir Edward Stanley, who, as we know, for his bravery, was in the following year created Lord Monteagle.

Sir John Stanley that stowte knight,
That stern was of deedes!
With four thousand fursemen[30]
That followed him after;
They were tenantes that they tooke,
that tenden on the bishopp.
Of his household, I you hete
hope ye no other,
Every burne had on his breast
browdered with goulde;
A fote of the faireste foule
that ever flowe on winge!
With their crownes full cleare
all of pure goulde!
Yt was a semely sight,
to see them togeder,
Fourtene thousand egill feete,[31]
feteled in arraye.

That the Bishop of Ely raised so large a contingent as 4,000 may be very much doubted, but, whatever their number, his son, who had the command, displayed such prowess that he was knighted upon the field.

About the time of Sir John Stanley's marriage with the heiress of William Honford, his father, the Bishop of Ely, died. While holding the wardenship of Manchester he had built the spacious chapel on the north side of the Collegiate Church, now the Cathedral, known in the present day as the Derby Chapel; this was completed in the year in which Flodden was fought, and at the time of his death, in 1515, he was employed in erecting a smaller chapel adjoining it, in which his tomb is placed. This chapel Sir John, in accordance with his father's directions, completed, and placed over the door the arms of himself and his wife with a supplicatory inscription, prefaced by his favourite motto, _Vanitas Vanitatum et omnia Vanitas_.

In 1519 he was appointed with Sir Peter Legh, of Lyme, William Swetenham, of Somerford, and John Holynworth, collector of a subsidy within the Hundred of Macclesfield. Four years afterwards he became involved in a dispute with his neighbour, George Legh, of Adlington, respecting the renewal of the lease of the tithes of Prestbury, a grant of which he had contrived to obtain from the Abbot of St. Werburgh, at Chester, the particulars of which are more fully set forth in the account of Adlington Hall and the Leghs.[32] Sir John, having refused to surrender his lease, was committed to the Fleet at the instance of Cardinal Wolsey, a high-handed procedure that subsequently formed one of the charges in the articles of impeachment exhibited against that ecclesiastic, and it was not until he had undergone a twelve months' imprisonment that he could be induced to yield.

The ardent soldier who had displayed such valour in the field at Flodden on attaining maturer years became somewhat of a religious enthusiast, and while yet comparatively a young man, being little more than thirty, retired from the world, and sought the seclusion of the cloister, from, as has been said, "displeasure taken in heart" at the treatment he had received at Wolsey's hands.

In 1527-8 he obtained "letters of fraternity" from the Abbot of Westminster, and in a volume of MS. pedigrees at Tabley, near Knutsford, there is still preserved the original grant under the convent seal of the abbey, dated January 5th, under which John, abbot of that house, grants to Sir John Stanley and dame Margaret, his wife; John Stanley, their heir; and Anne Stanley, their sister; that they shall be prayed for in that monastery, "_in vita pariter et in morte_," and all other places in their order through England, and that their names shall be enrolled on the fraternity's martyrology _post obitum_. Whatever may have been the cause of Sir John's withdrawal from society, certain it is that, having arranged all his worldly affairs, he and his wife, in 1528, prayed for a divorce in order that they might severally devote themselves to a religious life and be quit of the world. The divorce was granted, Sir John and his wife were released from their marriage vows, and put asunder one from the other for ever. He entered the Abbey of Westminster, and assumed the cowl and tonsure of a monk, and it is believed that his death occurred shortly afterwards.

Mr. William Beamont, in his "Notes on the Lancashire Stanleys," thus sums up his character:--"His mind turned towards seriousness if not sadness. He loved the Preacher's motto 'All is vanity,' and where he could he liked to inscribe it openly. This natural tendency was deepened and increased by the stigma of his birth and other circumstances which he could not forget. The stain on his father's life, and his death excommunicated, would not let him, even in the inscription on his grave, where he supplicates for him the prayers of the faithful, call the bishop by the sacred name of father, and in the letters of fraternity all mention of his father's name is avoided. Sir John's mind dwelt too much upon chantries, burial-places, obits, indulgences, and the like. It was his favourite subject, and he crowned this part of his career by retreating from the world and disappearing in the deep shadow of the cloister."

Sir John left an only son, bearing his own baptismal name, who was an infant at the time of his parents' divorce. His father's will provided that he should be placed under the care of the Abbess of Barkyng until he should attain the age of twelve years, when he was to be transferred to the care of the Abbot of Westminster, with whom it was directed he should remain until he was twenty-one, when, and not before, he was to be at liberty to choose himself a wife, with the advice of the Abbot of Westminster and Edmund Trafford, Esq. Of his subsequent career little is known. He attained to manhood, when he married Ellen, daughter of Sir Edward Fitton, of Gawsworth, Knight, but does not appear to have had any issue by her. He was living in 1551, but after that all trace of him is lost, and with him the line terminated.

In the east window of the little chantry chapel in Cheadle Church, to which reference has already been made, there are some remains of heraldic glass, very fragmentary in character, but which still serve to perpetuate the memory of Sir John Stanley and his wife Margaret, the heiress of Handforth. The mantling and the helmet, with a part of the crest, are there; but the shield itself has been much mutilated. Sufficient, however, remains to indicate what the charges have been, and on one side may still be seen a label bearing the words "_Vanitas Vanitatum_," the other side, doubtless, having had at one time a corresponding label inscribed with the remainder of Sir John Stanley's mournful motto--"_et Omnia Vanitas_." In its pristine state the shield was divided paleways, the dexter half--_or_, three eagles' feet erased _gules_, on a chief indented _azure_ three stags' heads caboshed _or_ for Stanley of Handforth; the sinister half--quarterly first and fourth, _sable_, an estoile _argent_ for Honford, second and third, _gules_, a scythe _argent_ for Praers. Crest an eagle's head erased _or_, holding in its mouth an eagle's claw erased _gules_. Only the chief of the Stanley coat and the second and fourth quarters of the sinister pale with a fragment of the crest remain.

Dame Margaret Stanley, the wife of Sir John, who appears to have shared in some degree the religious fervour of her husband, had also evidently intended entering a religious house, but when the divorce was obtained and Sir John had been comfortably settled among the monkish fraternity at Westminster her opinions underwent a change. She was still young, being only about five-and-twenty, and the world, it would seem, had not altogether lost its attractions, for she abandoned the idea of becoming a recluse, and again entered the marriage state, choosing for her second husband a scion of the ancient house of Brereton, a family that boasted an antiquity equal to that of any house in Cheshire, tracing its descent back very nearly to the time when Duke William of Normandy parcelled out the newly-conquered country among his warlike followers. The original Breretons, who derived their patronymic from the manor of that name, if we may judge from the arms they bore, were kinsmen, if not actually direct descendants of Gilbert Venables, the first Norman Baron of Kinderton, and from them descended Sir Urian Brereton, who became the second husband of William Honford's daughter and heiress, and the builder of the present Hall of Handforth.

Sir William Brereton, who was lord of Brereton in the reign of Edward III., had by his second wife, Margaret, daughter of Henry Done, of Utkinton, a younger son, Randolph, who received the honour of knighthood, and had to wife Alice, daughter and heir of William de Ipstones, through whom he acquired considerable territorial possessions, and became the founder of the line of Brereton of Shocklach and Malpas, in Cheshire. His great-grandson, also a Sir Randle, was Chamberlain of Chester in the reign of Henry VII., and one of the knights of the body to that King. He is mentioned generally as Chamberlain to Henry VII., and he acted in the same capacity to Henry's son and successor, Henry VIII., holding the same office under both sovereigns for the long period of twenty-six years. At the time that William Brereton, of Honford, and his compatriots were engaged in the death struggle at Flodden, King Henry, as previously stated, was with an army at Terouenne; Sir Randle Brereton was with him, and for his distinguished services there and at Tourney he was made a knight banneret. He built the Brereton chancel in Malpas Church in 1522, and carved upon the oaken screen this supplication:--

Pray good people for the prosperous estate of Sir Rondulph Brereton, of thys werke edificatour, wyth his wyfe dame Helenour, and after thys lyfe transytorie to obtegne eternal felicitie. Amen. Amen.

His wife, "Dame Helenour," bore him a family of nine sons and three daughters. Sir Randle, the eldest, continued the Malpas line; Sir Richard founded the line of Brereton of Tatton; Sir William Brereton, the seventh son, succeeded his father as Chamberlain of Chester, and was also made Groom of the Chamber to King Henry VIII., an office that involved him in the ruin that befell the second of that sovereign's wives. He married Elizabeth, widow of Sir John Savage, and the daughter of Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester; and on the 17th May, 1536, when only twenty-eight years of age, and then recently married, was beheaded along with Lord Rochfort, the Queen's brother; Sir Henry Norris, Groom of the Stole; Francis Weston, a Gentleman of the Bedchamber; and Mark Smeaton, a musician, on the questionable charge of criminal intercourse with Queen Anne Boleyn, the Queen herself submitting to the same unhappy fate on Tower Green two days later; a hideous crime that has found an apologist in a modern historian--Froude--who, in his exuberant admiration of Henry's self-asserting force of character, has sought to prove a "human being sinful whom the world has ruled to be innocent," oblivious of the fact that, while on the one hand there is a total absence of satisfactory proof against Anne, there is undeniable evidence of heartless cruelty, wilfulness, revenge, and shameless lust on the part of her husband. On the morrow of her death the King married Jane Seymour; but getting rid of one wife in order to obtain another was not a solitary act in the life of Henry.

The memory of that cruel wrong long rankled in the mind of the Breretons, and the recollection may not improbably have had its influence on Sir William Brereton, who a century later did so much to accomplish the overthrow of monarchy, and who in this way may be said to have avenged the death of his kinsman, and thus have added one of those retributive parallels of which history furnishes so many instances.

Sir William Brereton, who came to so untimely an end in 1536, had a younger brother, Urian Brereton, who in his earlier life was also one of the Grooms of the Privy Chamber. In 1526 he was appointed Ranger of Delamere Forest, and the same year Escheater of Cheshire, the latter an office he also held in the successive reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, until his death in 1577. On the voluntary seclusion of Sir John Stanley, Urian Brereton married his divorced wife, Margaret, the daughter of William Honford, and thus became the founder of the line of Brereton of Handforth.