308 



LIFE OF 15IMXDLKV. 



I'AKT V. 



them, and other landowners, taking courage, followed 

 the example ; when those who refused to hecome tenants 

 left, to squat elsewhere ; and the others then consented 

 to settle down to the cultivation of their farms. Ano- 

 ther set of travelling rogues belonging to the same 



^XN. 



BRINDLEY'S NATIVE DISTRICT [Ordnance Survey.] 



neighbourhood was called the " Broken Cross Gang," 

 from a place called Broken Cross, situated to the south- 

 east of Macclesfield. Those fellows consorted a good deal 

 with the Flash men, frequenting markets and travelling 

 from fair to fair, practising the pea-and-thimble trick, 

 and enticing honest country people into the temptation 

 of gambling. They proceeded to more open thieving 

 and pocket-picking, until at length the magistrates of 

 the district took active measures to root them out of 

 Broken Cross, and the gang became broken up. Such 

 was the district and such the population in the neigh- 

 bourhood of which our hero was born. 



James Brindley first saw the light in a humble cottage 

 standing about midway between the hamlet of Great 

 Kocks and that of Tunstead, in the liberty of ThornsHt, 

 some three miles to the north-east of Buxton. The 

 house in which he was born, in the year 17J 6, has long 

 since fallen to ruins the Brindley family having been 

 its last occupants. The walls stood long after the roof 



