WEST DERBY HUNDRED 



WARRINGTON 



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.' 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 1 6 1 7, visited 

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



A bronze box found in the moat at Bewsey is 

 perhaps mediaeval.* 



The first enfeoffment of the Haydock family of the 

 mesne manor of BRADLEY^ 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.^ The same 

 Gilbert had a charter of &ee 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 



Haydock of Hay- 

 dock. Argent, a cross 

 and in the Jirst quarter 

 a jieur-de-lis sable^ 



Legh of Lyme. 

 Gules, a cross engrailed 

 argent ; an escutcheon of 

 augmentation sable semee 

 of estoiles silver, an arm 

 embo'wed in armour pro- 

 per, the hand grasping a 

 standard of the second. 



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.^ John de Haydock had 

 a licence in 1386 for the cele- 

 bration of divine service in his 

 manor of Bradley.'" By the 

 marriage of Joan, daughter and 

 heir of Sir Gilbert Haydock, 

 to Sir Peter Legh of Lyme," 

 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 

 ii. miles from Newton. ' " The 

 memory of the park is preserved 



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

 site of the old hall." 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." Of the 

 stately building which existed 

 at that time now only the gate- 

 way and the moat remain.'* 

 The gateway is faced with 

 wrought stone, and has been 

 covered with a fan vault of two 

 bays, the springers of which 

 yet remain.'^ The details of 

 the work are plain, and point 

 to a date in the second half 

 of the fifteenth century. It 

 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 



Brooks of Man- 

 chester. Argent, three 

 bars, nua'vy azure, a cross 

 patonce erminois, in chief 

 a fountain. 



litigation between them,* and in 1358 another agree- On the stairs are two roundles let into the wall, bearing 



''■Lords of Warr. (Chet. Soc), i, 259- 

 61 ; Farl. R, iv, 497 ; Dame Boteler died 

 in 1441. 



^ The ballad, edited hy Dr. Robson, is 

 printed in Lords of JVarr, ii, 321—3, 

 where will be found a discussion of the 

 various and coniiicting traditions. 



Mr. Beamont thought that Sir John's 

 father. Sir John Boteler, who died about 

 1432, might have been the victim. 



^Metcalfe, Bk. of Knights, 171 ; besides 

 Sir Thomas Ireland another knight was 

 there made — Sir Lewis Pemberton. 



"* Arch. Journ, xviii, 159. 



^Bradele, 1228 ; Bradelegh, 1336. 



'Raines MSS. xxxviii, 293. 



? Cal. of Chart. R. (Rec. Com.), 178. 



^ Duchy of Lane. Assize R. 6, pt. i, 

 m. 3 d. The litigation and disputes con- 

 tinued for two centuries ; see Beamont, 

 Lords of Warr. (Chet. Soc), 188-91, 475. 

 A memorandum of Sir Peter Legh's 

 title in 1505 is among the Bold D. in 

 Warr. Mus. (B. 17). 



^Raines MSS. xxxviii, 295. In 1345 

 Henry de Haydock and William his son 



had licence from William le Boteler to 

 dig marl in the outlane next the Frereghes 

 for the tillage of the same and of a parcel 

 of land called Egardeslegh, part of which 

 lay in a certain close which had not been 

 ridded ; ibid. In 1356 they had a release 

 from the same William of lands lying 

 between Egardeslegh and Smallegh and 

 near their new grange, which lands they 

 held by demise of Dame Sibyl Butler ; ibid. 



l^Lich. Reg. Epis. vi, 122. 



"FiirV. of 1533 (Chet. Soc), 17 k. 

 From the various inq. p.m. of the Leghs 

 of Lyme it appears that the manor of 

 Bradley and lands in Burtonwood were 

 held of the duchy of Lancaster by fealty 

 only ; Duchy of Lane. Inq. p.m. vi, n. 

 63 ; XV, n. 38. 



!«/««. vii (i), 56. 



"As the estate consists of no acres 

 of the large measure only the park must 

 have been of inconsiderable extent. 



" The additions then made included a 

 fair new hall with three chambers, a dining- 

 hall with a new kitchen, bakehouse and 

 brew-house, a new stone tower and small 



towers, a fair gateway and stone tower 

 (bastellium) thereon, with good ramparts, 

 and a fair chapel. In addition to the 

 hall were other convenient buildings 

 previously existing, the whole being sur- 

 rounded by a moat with a drawbridge. 

 Beyond the moat and on the north side 

 were three large barns, with a great ox- 

 house and stable, with a bailiff's house 

 and a kiln newly built at the end of a 

 place called * Parogardyne,' to the south 

 of which lay a great apple orchard and 

 garden ; Warr. in 1465 (Chet. Soc), xxiii, 



l*In 1849 the holy-water stoup from 

 the chapel at Bradley, bearing upon one 

 of its four sides the arms of Haydock, was 

 preserved in the chapel at Lyme ; ibid. 



In 1524 Piers Legh, to remove from 

 his father's mind any doubts as to the 

 execution of his will, swore upon the 

 holy elements in the chapel of Bradley, 

 in the presence of a number of local 

 gentry, to secure its faithful execut'on ; 

 Lanes. Chant. (Chet. Soc), Ii2»j. 



16 See also Baines, Lanes, (ed. 1836), 

 iii, 683. 



