WEST DERBY HUNDRED 



In the fifteenth century Bewsey was the scene of 

 one or two notable acts of violence. Isabel widow 

 of Sir John Boteler was in July, 1437, seized by 

 William Poole, of Wirral, and a number of accom- 

 plices, outraged and carried off to Birkenhead and 

 Bidston, where she was compelled by threats to marry 

 him. He then made his escape into Wales, and thus 

 appears to have escaped punishment. 1 Her son 

 Sir John Boteler, who died in 1463, is said to have 

 been the victim of an outrage instigated by Sir John 

 Stanley and Sir Piers Legh a ballad, perhaps con- 

 temporary, giving the story of the surprise of Bewsey 

 Hall at midnight by a party of men who crossed the 

 moat in a boat of a bull's hide, the murder of the 

 chamberlain, and then of Sir John Boteler himself.' 



James I, in his Lancashire progress of 1617, visited 

 Bewsey 21 August, and made its owner a knight. 3 



A bronze box found in the moat at Bewsey is 

 perhaps mediaeval. 4 



The first enfeoffment of the Haydock family of the 

 mesne manor of BR4DLET? where they and their 

 successors the Leghs resided for several centuries, has 

 not been preserved on record, but was probably made 

 before the acquisition of the 

 manor of Burton wood by William 

 le Boteler circa 1264. In 1336 

 William le Boteler of Warring- 

 ton demised to Gilbert de Hay- 

 dock and his son Matthew, for 

 their lives, a plat of land and 

 waste on the western side of their 

 field called Pikiswode, another 

 plat of wood and waste on the 

 southern side of Bradelegh Brook, 

 and 3 acres of arable land on 

 Sonki Bonke, all lying in Bur- 

 tonwood, with liberty to clear 

 the land of trees and cultivate it. 6 The same 

 Gilbert had a charter of free warren in his manor 

 of Bradley in 1344.' In 1357 Sir William le 

 Boteler released to John son of Gilbert de Haydock 

 and Joan his wife all the lands and tenements which 

 they held of him in Warrington, Great Sankey, and 

 Burtonwood in return for a deed of feoffment grant- 

 ing to Sir William for life certain lands and tenements 

 of his inheritance which had been the subject of 

 litigation between them, 8 and in 1358 another agree- 



LEGH OF LYMI. 

 Gules, a cross engrailed 

 arpent : an escutcheon of 

 ble semee 



WARRINGTON 



ment was made between William le Boteler and 

 Gilbert de Haydock, touching common of pasture 

 and improvements made, or to be made, in the 

 common wood of Burton- 

 wood. 9 John de Haydock had ^ 



a licence in 1386 for the cele- 

 bration of divine service in his 

 manor of Bradley. 10 By the 

 marriage of Joan, daughter and 

 heir of Sir Gilbert Haydock, 

 to Sir Peter Legh of Lyme, 11 

 this manor passed to the Leghs, 

 but was sold early last century 

 to Samuel Brooks, of Man- 

 chester, banker, and has since 

 descended in his family. 



Leland recorded that ' Syr 

 Perse Lee of Bradley hath his 

 Place at Bradley in Parke a per, the band grasping a 

 ii. miles from Newton. ' " The standard of the second. 

 memory of the park is preserved 



in the name of two fields called The Parks, near the 

 site of the old hall. 13 Part of the ancient manor- 

 house, including the Knights' Chamber, was of an 

 older date than 1465. Shortly 

 before that year Sir Peter Legh _ 

 had greatly enlarged and im- 

 proved his residence. 14 Of the 

 stately building which existed 

 at that time now only the gate- 

 way and the moat remain. 15 

 The gateway is faced with 

 wrought stone, and has been 

 covered with a fan vault of two 

 bays, the springers of which 

 yet remain. 16 The details of 

 the work are plain, and point bars, -wavy azure, a cross 



to a date in the Second half patona erminois, in chief 



of the fifteenth century. It "fountain. 

 is approached by a stone bridge 



over the moat, and within the enclosure stands the 

 present Bradley Hall, a brick farmhouse of no great 

 age, but preserving several interesting fragments of 

 older work. The most notable are the front door 

 and the door to the kitchen, which have elaborate 

 wrought-iron scrolled hinges of the fourteenth century. 

 On the stairs are two roundles let into the wall, bearing 



327 



