WEST DERBY HUNDRED 



hill and various lands there, John Chorley and 

 Elizabeth his wife being in possession. 1 This family, 

 who became attached to the Society of Friends, con- 

 tinued to hold the Rainhill 

 estate for several generations, ~ 

 the last being John Chorley of 

 the Red Hazels in Huyton, 

 who died in 1 8 1 o, leaving two 

 daughters Mary and Sarah, 

 married respectively to John 

 Ford and John Walker.' The 

 father had been one of the 

 great West Indian merchants of 

 Liverpool, but failed in 1808, 

 when his estates were sold. 

 Dr. James Gerard of Liverpool, 

 who afterwards lived at Sand- 

 hills, Kirkdale, purchased Rain- fory counterchanged' 

 hill manor-house, and in 1824 



sold it to Bartholomew Bretherton of Rainhill, a 

 famous stage-coach proprietor, whose principal esta- 



PRESCOT 



blishment was situated in the village. 3 It descended 

 to his daughter and heiress, the Marchioness Stapleton- 

 Bretherton, and on her death in December 1883, 

 passed to the present owner, Mr. Frederick Annesley 

 Stapleton-Bretherton/ 



The second moiety descended from Roger and 

 Agnes de Molyneux to their son Richard ; ' on the 

 death of the latter's son Sir John 6 without surviving 

 issue, it became the right of John de Lancaster, son of 

 that John de Lancaster who married Margery, one 

 of the daughters of Richard de Molyneux. 7 But 

 little is known of the Lancaster family, 8 though they 

 held the manor for four centuries and their pedigrees 

 were recorded at the visitations. 9 In 1628 Thomas 

 Lancaster, as a convicted recusant, paid double to 

 the subsidy ; 10 but though his son John was a Royalist, 

 and as such suffered the confiscation of his property 

 by the Parliament, he does not seem to have been 

 charged with the equally serious offence of recusancy." 

 Subsequently the estate was recovered. In 1717 

 John Lancaster and two other members of the family 



John, Hugh, Richard, and Margaret; 

 another son Thomas ; his daughters 

 Margaret Wood (with children, Nicholas 

 and Alice) and Alice Orme, wife of 

 Edward Orme ; and his sister Elizabeth. 

 Earlier in the same year a settlement of 

 the lands of Hugh and John Ley had 

 been made ; Pal. of Lane. Feet of F. 

 bdle. 54, m. 101. 



1 Pal. of Lane. Feet of F. bdle. 1 1 7, n. 2. 

 Alexander Chorley of Rainhill, and 

 Elizabeth his wife, were in 1678 indicted 

 as recusants ; Kenyan MSS. (Hist. MSS. 

 Com.), 109. Over the main entrance 

 to the manor-house, now a farm, is the 

 inscription ' A. 1662, C.' ; probably for 

 Alexander Chorley, who was in pos- 

 session as early as 1651, as appears by 

 very in the Common Pleas, Mich. 



of John de Molyneux and carried to Ches- 

 ter, where she was detained for eighteen 

 months, in hope of securing her inherit- 

 ance ; ibid. Rex. m. 22. 



-' John de Lancaster the father is de- 

 scribed as 'of Rainhill' as early as 1313. 



daughter of Richard de Molyneux in or 

 before 1314 ; Find Cone, ii, 19. He had 

 a moiety of the manor at once con- 

 ferred upon him, and in 1318 demanded 

 a partition, the other lords being Alan de 

 Windle (or Burnhull) and John son of 

 Richard de Molyneux. All then held 

 jointly 1,000 acres of pasture, part of the 



le Styward, his great-grandfather ; De 

 Bane. R. 230, m. 172 d. ; 235, m. 



the short time of this transitory life, and 

 fearing the eternal damnation of his soul,' 

 he repudiated the ' feigned and false title ' 

 which had been set up ; Ogle R. 



He died in 1535, and the subsequent 

 inquest shows that he had held the moiety 

 of the manor of John Eccleston by fealty 

 and a rent of iBJ. ; a messuage in Rain- 

 hill of the king, by a rent of 8</. paid to 

 the bailiff of West Derby ; also lands in 

 Euxton and in Appleton ; his son and 

 heir Richard Lancaster, married to Alice 

 daughter of Bartholomew Hesketh in 

 1530, was seventeen years of age in 

 1538; Duchy of Lane. Inq. p.m. vii, 

 . 1 1. Licence of entry, without proof of 

 age, was granted to Richard son and heir 

 of Richard Lancaster, 20 Nov. 1543; 

 App. 555. 



