POLITICAL HISTORY 



support of the duke of Somerset's rebellion, but they were soon ' downe agen ' 

 and one or two ' hedyd ' at Chester.'^' 



Six years later, in March, 1470, the duke of Clarence and the earl of 

 Warwick, fleeing before Edward IV, came to Manchester in hopes of support 

 from Lord Stanley, but ' ther they hadde litill favor ' and left the county 

 hurriedly.'" On the restoration of Henry VI Stanley no longer hesitated, and 

 in March, 1471, he was besieging Hornby Castle on behalf of the Lancas- 

 trian government."' Yet the next turn of the political wheel found him in 

 high favour with Edward IV. His first resistance to the duke of Gloucester's 

 ambition in 1483 procured him a short imprisonment, but Gloucester's fears 

 that Stanley's son would raise Lancashire and Cheshire against him were not 

 realized, and the father made his peace with the usurper.'" He warily 

 avoided committing himself in Buckingham's revolt, in which his second wife 

 Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond, was deeply engaged, and even at 

 Bosworth, though he had a secret interview with his stepson the earl of 

 Richmond, he kept his Lancashire troops out of the battle, leaving his 

 brother to decide the day for Henry. His abstention, however, counted for 

 much and was suitably rewarded. The manors of Bury, Pilkington, and 

 Cheetham, forfeited by Sir Thomas Pilkington, and the lands of other 

 Lancashire families who had taken the losing side, swelled his possessions, and 

 on 27 October, 1485, he was created earl of Derby."" He became godfather 

 of Prince Arthur, and in July, 1495, the king and queen paid him a visit of 

 nearly a month's duration at Knowsley and Lathom."^ The marriage (before 

 1489) of his fifth son Edward to Anne Harrington, heiress of Hornby, 

 extended the Stanley influence into North Lancashire."' 



Meanwhile dynastic changes had compelled a revision of the relations of 

 the Lancaster estates to the crown. In 1461 they were declared in Parlia- 

 ment to be forfeited to Edward IV by the treason of Henry VI. The claims 

 of the heirs of the original grantees being thus barred, the duchy, with all its 

 privileges, including those of a county palatine in Lancashire, was entailed 

 upon Edward and his heirs being kings of England, to be held under the name 

 of ' Duchy of Lancaster,' separate from all other inheritances.'" The 

 possibility left open by the settlement of 1399 of this mighty fief passing 

 again into the hand of a subject was thereby definitely excluded. Henry VII 

 in the first Parliament of his reign had it vested in himself and ' his heirs for 

 evermore . . . separate from the corone of England and possessione of the 

 same,' "* Although the wording seems open to the construction that the 

 crown and the duchy might pass into different hands, the Act of 1485 has 



'" Paston Letters, ii, 152 (before i March). 



'" Ibid, ii, 396. Edward could not follow them into Lancashire 'for lakke of vitayll' ; Rot. Pari, vi, 

 233. During his subsequent exile Roger Lever is alleged to have entered Lancaster Castle with an armed 

 force and carried off the record of a judicial decision against his claim to the wardship of the manor of Great 

 Lever ; ibid. 34, p. 181. 



"" Foed. (Orig. ed.), xi, 699. The cannon called The Mile Ende was sent from Bristol for the siege. 



"» Diet. Nat. Biog. liv, 77. 



"" The title was taken from the county, though he had no lands there, not from the hundred of (West) 

 Derby in which the bulk of his estates lay. 



"' Excerpta Hist. 104. He may have been one of the Lancashire men whom the earl of Oxford, when 

 expecting a royal visit in 1489, proposed to convince that 'ther be gentylmen (in Essex) of as grete 

 sobestaunce that thei be able to bye alle Lankeschere' ; Paston Letters, iii, 353. 



"' G.E.C. Complete Peerage, v, 347 ; Leland, Itin. viii, 109. 



'" Hardy, Chart, of Duchy of Lane. 282 ; Rot. Pari, v, 478. '" Ibid, vi, 272. 



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