1609-10.] CHESTER. 333 



" Britaine, to him that wan the best Bell : 



" In signe of victory which thou hast gain'd, 

 This wreathe by thy faire front shall be sustain'd ; 

 Whose green-leav'd branches unto Fame shall tell 

 That thou didst best deserve the better Bell." * 



" William Robert Wall alderman dyed in march 

 & William Stanley E. of Darby ^'^ chosen Alde'iii in his 

 place the friday after. 1609. 



"St. Georo^es Bells, and race of Runino-e Chester. 



^ ^ 1610. 



horses, vv"" other pleasante shewes sett out, st. George's 

 now Invented, by one m'' Roberte Amerye ^^^' 



Iremongor and some tymes sheriff & borne in this 

 Cittye, all at his Coste. zaith the diall (22 strikers) 7iow 

 at St. />eters church''' f 



121 William Stanley, 6th Earl OF Derby, K.G. This noble- 

 man, who bought from his nieces their claims to the Isle of 

 Man, was a notable turfite of the period and a proniinent 

 patron of rural sports in the Western Counties. He took 

 a special interest in the turf at Chester and Farndon. In the 

 city of Chester he " made a fair cock-pit under St. John's in 

 a garden by the water side to which resorted gentlemen from 

 all parts and great cocking was used there a long while." 

 The game-cocks of the Knowlsey breed were famous in the 

 pits of the three kingdoms for nearly three hundred years. 

 This justly celebrated breed were (alas ! and more's the pity) 

 exterminated by order of the 15th and present earl, who is so 

 full of the milk of human kindness. But in the days of the 

 6th earl this "sport of the gods " flourished under his patron- 

 age at Chester, and there were fought many mighty mains, 

 devised in those guileless times, as old Burton hath it, " to 

 avoid idleness," although later on in the seventeenth century 



* Nichols' " Progress of James I.," vol. ii., pp. 295-306. 

 t The words in italics are in a different, and probably more recent, 

 hand. MSS. R. Holme (Chester Collections), Harleian, 2125, fol. ~'^. 



