As many Masseys as asses,Leghs as fleas,And Davenports as dogs' tails;
As many Masseys as asses,Leghs as fleas,And Davenports as dogs' tails;
As many Masseys as asses,Leghs as fleas,And Davenports as dogs' tails;
As many Masseys as asses,
Leghs as fleas,
And Davenports as dogs' tails;
to quote another Cheshire saying.
One of the oldest Cheshire families is that of the Wooley-Dods of Edge Hill, who trace their descent from the Saxon Dot, who was a great man in Cheshire before the Normans came. The Grosvenors, whose ancestors came over with the Conqueror, live at Eaton Hall, and own vast estates in Western Cheshire. The present head of the family is the Duke of Westminster. The Mainwarings, whose forefathers fought in the Crusades, are at Peover, and the crest of the felon's head of the Davenports still survives at Capesthorne, though the Davenports of Marton and Bramhall are no more.
Many old families of Cheshire have long since died out. The last of the Masseys of Puddington (they had lived there since the days of Rufus) died in the Stuart rising of 1715. There are no Pooles at Poole Hall nor Venables at Kinderton. The last of the Savages of Rock Savage, whose tomb is in the Rivers Chapel at Macclesfield, died in the seventeenth century.
Dutton village and Dutton Hall bear the name of a famous family that was allied by marriage with most of the great families of Cheshire. Duttons live no longer at the Hall, for the last male heir died in the reign of James the First. They were descended from a squire of Robert Lacy, Constable of Chester. When Earl Randal was besieged in Rhuddlan Castle by the Welsh, the Constable and Dutton, his henchman, hastily gathered together a motley rabble of fiddlers and mountebanks from Chester Fair and went to his assistance. The Earl was rescued, and from that time forward to the Duttons was given the charge of all minstrels and fiddlers in the county. There are Duttons in Chester now; one was a mayor of the city quite recently.
Neighbours and kinsmen of the Duttons were the Dones or Donnes of Utkinton, hereditary foresters of the Forest of Delamere. Many of them are buried at Tarporley. The name of the last Lady Done is still called to mind in the neighbourhood where they lived. The Cheshire proverb is the highest praise that can be given to a young Cheshire housewife, and 'Lady Done' is a pet name for modest and thrifty girls, as 'Little Lord Derby' is for brave and honourable boys.
Lancashire claims the Earls of Derby now, but they are descended from the Stanleys, perhaps the most famous of all Cheshire families, by the marriage of Sir John Stanley and Isabella, heiress of the Lancashire Lathoms. The Stanleys settled at Storeton in Wirral in the fourteenth century. Many men of mark, churchmen and scholars, statesmen and soldiers, belonged to this family. A Stanley helped to win the battle of Bosworth for Henry Tudor, and a Stanley led the Cheshire troops in the famous charge at Flodden Field,
When shivered was fair Scotland's spearAnd broken was her shield.
When shivered was fair Scotland's spearAnd broken was her shield.
When shivered was fair Scotland's spearAnd broken was her shield.
When shivered was fair Scotland's spear
And broken was her shield.
One branch of the family settled at Hooton, but the last of this line lost his estates by gambling and extravagance. The Stanleys of Alderley received knighthood from James the First; they are Barons of Alderley now. This family has given a bishop to Norwich and a still more famous dean to Westminster. The bishop was educated at the Grammar School of Macclesfield.
The Egertons are descended from the standard-bearer of Henry the Eighth, who made him a knight after the 'Battle of the Spurs'. One of them rose to be Lord Chancellor in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First, and was made Baron Ellesmere. The first Earl Egerton of Tatton was made a peer by Queen Victoria largely for the help he gave in the making of the Ship Canal.
The Jodrells, buried in Taxal Church, were descended from an archer who served under the Black Prince. Perhaps he cut his bow from the very yew tree that still stands in the churchyard. One of them fought in thePeninsular War, but the name has disappeared from this part of Cheshire now.
Several Cheshire noblemen sit in the House of Lords to-day, their family name disguised under the more showy title of a peerage. A Booth became Lord Delamere at the Restoration, and the Viscounts of Combermere are the descendants of the Cottons, who helped Henry the Eighth to plunder the Cheshire monasteries. The Ardernes are represented by the Earl of Haddington; Lord Newton lives at Lyme Park, the ancient home of the Leghs, and the Earl of Crewe at Crewe Hall. Lord Ashton of Hyde has only recently taken a seat in the House of Lords. He was made a baron at the coronation of King George the Fifth.
When great industries took root in Cheshire new names appeared, and some of the most honoured families in Cheshire now are those that have been closely associated with the workers of the county. We hear a great deal nowadays of 'the dignity of labour', and we think it no disgrace to rise to position and power by a life of toil. The Gregs of Styal and the Brunners of Northwich, the Levers of Wirral, and many others, have endeared themselves to the people of Cheshire by the example of their own labours and the pains they have taken to make the lives of those who live about them and work for them brighter and happier.
A simple cross in the graveyard of the Unitarian Chapel at Knutsford bears the name of Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. The people of Knutsford have a warm corner in their hearts for her, for in a way she has made their town famous for all time. One of the books she wrote—Cranfordshe called it—speaks of the people of Knutsford as she knew them in the earlier days of Queen Victoria. The book tells you much of the quiet life of a country town before the coming of the railways and the busy hubbub of the later nineteenth century, and all Cheshire children should read it. Mrs. Gaskell wrote several other books, all of which show her sweet sympathy and kindliness towards those whose lives are cast in lowly surroundings.
If you have not heard ofCranfordyou have probablyread a book whose title you know better than the name of the writer.Alice in Wonderlandwas written by a man who spent much of his early life in Cheshire. 'Lewis Carroll', though that is not his real name, is the name under which he wrote the humorous stories that have delighted young people and old alike.
John Critchley Prince, the workman poet of Hyde, lived in the days when the poorly-paid workers of Cheshire were struggling for a better existence. While working in a factory at Hyde he found time to write poems which speak of the charms of home, the brotherhood of all mankind, and the hopes and ambitions of his fellow men. Prince was thriftless and intemperate, and much of his life was spent in misery, but his talents were great, and the people of Hyde have done him honour. He is buried in Hyde churchyard.
In the chancel of Stockport Parish Church is a tablet to the memory of John Wainwright, the organist who composed the tune for 'Christians, awake', the beautiful Christmas hymn 'whose sound is gone out into all lands where the praise of our Lord is sung', as the inscription runs. The words of the hymn were written by Byrom, a Manchester man.
Cheshire produced a famous hymn-writer in Bishop Heber. Reginald Heber was born in the rectory of Malpas in 1783. He gave himself up to missionary work in foreign lands, and was made Bishop of Calcutta. 'From Greenland's icy mountains' and 'Brightest and best of the sons of the morning' are two of the hymns that came from his pen.
Charles Kingsley must have loved Cheshire. Though he was not a Cheshire man by birth, he claimed descent from the Kingsleys of Vale Royal. He was a great lover of nature, and, while he was Canon of Chester, founded the Natural History Society in Chester, whose home is in the Grosvenor Museum, and encouraged the people of Cheshire to take an interest in the story of their county, and to study the ways of plants and of the wild creatures of the fields and the forests. His pathetic ballad of the Sands of Dee, 'O Mary, go and call the cattle home,' will always be a favourite with the village people of Wirral.
Tabley Hall was the home of another celebrated naturalist. Here lived Lord de Tabley, one of the greatest students of Cheshire flowers, and a lover of all wild living things. His grave is in the churchyard of Little Peover, and over it trails a bramble, which was his favourite plant and one of which he made a special study. In the gardens of Tabley Hall is a bramble-bed, still tended carefully, which he laid out from the choicest briars he could find.
Lord de Tabley was a poet as well as a lover of flowers and birds. Perhaps you will some day read his poems, and be charmed by his descriptive pictures of the ways of his feathered friends, the 'starlings mustering on their evening tree', the 'swallows beating low before a hint of rain', the 'plaintive plovers', and the 'wide-winged screaming swift'.
Lord de Tabley's example is one which all Cheshire boys and girls should learn to copy. Those who are proud of their county will not do anything to make it less beautiful. Like him, they will cherish and protect the plants and birds and all the wild creatures that have been put into their keeping; for such things are the common heritage of the people of Cheshire, and, once destroyed, can never be replaced.
We have traced the story of Cheshire from prehistoric times. For long ages the story was one of war and bloodshed, of conquest and defeat, of the coming and the passing of many nations, each in turn yielding to a more powerful foe. Cheshire has seen more of the strife of nations than most counties of England. Her position on the map of the British Isles has willed that this should be.
When the latest struggle for the possession of our country was ended, and the Normans lorded it over the conquered Saxons, we saw Cheshire made into a bulwarkto keep in check the nations that surrounded her on north and west. For 200 years this was her mission. She was a kingdom within a kingdom, with an earl or viceroy to rule over her, and a Parliament and laws of her own. More centuries passed by before a Tudor king permitted her to take her place in that greater English Parliament and to help to frame laws under which she, along with the rest of England, should be governed.
Dee Bridge and Mills: Chester
Dee Bridge and Mills: Chester
Dee Bridge and Mills: Chester
But Cheshire was not denied the greatest of all good gifts. We saw the lamp of Christianity burn brightly from Hildeburgh's Isle to Chadkirk, and some of the earliest Gospel teachers were sent by the very Welsh and Irish nations over which Cheshire was afterwards set as sentinel and watch-dog. Feebly the light sometimes glimmered in days of stress and storm, but it never went out; and after the Tudor monarch had shaken off the shackles of Rome, and the minds of men had been stirred by a great awakening, its early brightness was restored in a purified religion that gave freedom of conscience to all men.
Then came the horrors of civil war, when Cheshire men fought for the liberty to believe what they thought to be right, and rose in their wrath at the unlawful misdeeds of the Stuart kings, when patriots rose in defence of the ancient liberties that are the inheritance of all Englishmen. This was the last blood shed in Cheshire.
In the last hundred years the people of Cheshire have seen the face of Cheshire greatly changed. They have helped to create great industries, and they have witnessed the wonderful discoveries of the power of steam and electricity, and all the conveniences and comforts of modern life that have followed in their train. In ways too numerous to speak of, their lives have been made brighter and happier.
The Princes of Wales are the Earls of Chester still. King Edward the Seventh, when he was Prince of Wales, came to Chester and opened the new Town Hall. The citizens of Chester knew him well, for he was often a guest at Eaton Hall, the home of the Grosvenors, the descendants of the Conqueror's 'mighty huntsman'.William the Norman harried Cheshire with the sword, and the people of Cheshire fled before him. King Edward brought not a sword but peace in his hand, and the people loved him, for he was one of the world's great peace-makers.
In one of the earliest chapters of this book you have read of the 'making of Cheshire'. We have brought the story of Cheshire down to the present day, but Cheshire is not yet 'made'. Many and wonderful changes there have been since our ancestors shot wild beasts with their flinty arrow-heads, and devoured raw flesh in the pits and caverns of Alderley Edge. The people of Cheshire, who have struggled through long centuries to win for themselves light and liberty, have never turned their faces backwards. With steadfast purpose and unfaltering steps they march forward on the way of progress.
The 'making' still goes on; and there is plenty of work to do for the Cheshire boys and girls of to-day, that they may help to make their county a better place to live in than they found it.
Enough, if something from our hands have powerTo live, and act, and serve the future hour.
Enough, if something from our hands have powerTo live, and act, and serve the future hour.
Enough, if something from our hands have powerTo live, and act, and serve the future hour.
Enough, if something from our hands have power
To live, and act, and serve the future hour.
The great families of Cheshire whose names recur so often in these pages were proud of the mottoes written beneath their crests and coats of arms. The words inscribed on the village cross which the boys and girls of Eastham pass on their way to school, are the best mottoes that all Cheshire school-children can take for their own:
'Fear God. Honour the King. Work while it is yet day.'
'Fear God. Honour the King. Work while it is yet day.'
'Fear God. Honour the King. Work while it is yet day.'
'Fear God. Honour the King. Work while it is yet day.'
And the day is very short. As the lines on a tombstone in Little Peover churchyard remind us:
A little rule, a little sway,A sunbeam in a winter's day,Is all the greatest of us haveBetween the cradle and the grave.
A little rule, a little sway,A sunbeam in a winter's day,Is all the greatest of us haveBetween the cradle and the grave.
A little rule, a little sway,A sunbeam in a winter's day,Is all the greatest of us haveBetween the cradle and the grave.
A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the greatest of us have
Between the cradle and the grave.