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ALDERLEY CHURCH.

The only part that has been modernised is the chancel. It was rebuilt thirty years ago, and in it you may see many sepulchral memorials of the Stanleys and other local notabilities. On the south side is the monumental effigy of John Thomas, the first Lord Stanley, who died in 1850, and on the opposite side, on an altar-tomb, richly inlaid with mosaic work, is the sculptured form of the last lord, who died in 1869; it is an exquisite work of art, and as you gaze upon the chiselled features you are struck with the remarkable resemblance they bear to the late Dean of Westminster. Against the wall on the same side of the chancel is a tablet of white marble in memory of Edward Stanley—the Bishop of Norwich—and his wife and their two sons, Charles Edward and Owen Stanley, and their daughter Mary.

From these marble memorials of the dead you turn to the galleried pew where, in life, those they commemorate were wont to worship. The front of that little enclosure is resplendent with heraldic blazonries, and tells, in the language of the "noble science," the story of the marriages of the lords of Alderley for a couple of centuries or more. The Stanleys are evidently proud of their armorial ensigns, for they are displayed on every hand, and as you gaze upon the oft-repeated shields the memory wanders back along the dim avenues of the past to the time when, ages ago, a Sir William Stanley, by his marriage with the heiress of Bamville, obtained the forest of Wyrral, and with it the right to bear, as his device, the three bucks' heads upon a cross-belt of cerulean hue; and to the time, too, when that Sir William's great-grandson married the heiress of the house of Lathom, and thereafter assumed as his crest the eagle and child—the "brid and babby," as Lancashire people prefer to call it—which tradition commemorates the circumstance of an infant being found in an eagle's nest by a Lathom, who adopted it, and, being childless, made it heir of all his lands.

The church is not a large building, but it is exceedingly picturesque, and its interest is nothing lessened by the consciousness that within its walls the voice of praise and thanksgiving has been heard for five hundred years and more. Everything about it is decent and comely, as befits the house of God, and if a stranger should happen to be there on a Sunday he will find the services creditably sung by a choir of boys, and the prayers devoutly read by a clergyman who is a sound Churchman, and a worthy successor of good old Edward Stanley.

On one side of the entrance to the churchyard an aged yewtree, weather-beaten and decayed, but still fighting time gallantly, flanks the churchyard gate—the emblem of immortality reminding the living that the spirits of those laid low have passed to the life beyond. On the other side is the little school-house, with its quaint windows, and mullions and masonry of red sandstone, a structure that was not reared yesterday, as its grey lichen-stained walls testify. As you enter the garden of the dead your ears are greeted with the pleasant music of young voices, and your attention is arrested by the number of green mounds where successive generations are sleeping their last sleep. A summer's day might be spent here in meditation among the nameless but hallowed graves, and in conning over the "uncouth rhymes" that the weather and the green moss are fast obliterating from the crumbling memorials on which they are inscribed. You may note, too, in places bunches of simple wild flowers that have been placed by loving hands upon the newly upheaved turf—the offerings of that tender affection which longs for "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still." Near the east end, under the shade of a yew, is a plain white marble cross, with a small tablet at its base, embedded in the rock, on which is the following inscription:—

Here

Rests

Catherine Stanley

Died March 5 1862, aged 69

The wisdom

That is from above

Is first pure,

Then peaceable, gentle,

Easy to be entreated,

Full of Mercy

And good fruits

Without partiality

And without hypocrisy

ALDERLEY SCHOOL.

It is to the memory of the wife of Bishop Stanley—the mother of the late Dean of Westminster—who entered into the dark valley while her son was accompanying the Prince of Wales on his journey through Egypt and Palestine. That grave has been once reopened—on the 2nd of December, 1879, it received the remains of the Dean's sister, Mary Stanley, a lady whose memory will be gratefully remembered for her heroic efforts to mitigate the sufferings of our soldiers during the Crimean War. The 5th of March, on which Catherine Stanley passed away, was Ash Wednesday, a day that ever after had its saddening associations for her son, who on another Ash Wednesday (March 1st, 1876), had to endure another and more terrible trial, for on that day he stood by the death bed of her who had loved, supported, and comforted him when the spirit of his mother had passed away—his wife.

My mother—on that fatal day,

O'er seas and deserts far apart,

The guardian genius passed away

That nursed my very mind and heart—

The oracle that never failed,

The faith serene that never quailed,

The kindred soul that knew my thought

Before its speech or form was wrought.

My wife—when clos'd that fatal night,

My being turned once more to stone,

I watched her spirit take its flight,

And found myself again alone.

The sunshine of the heart was dead,

The glory of the home was fled,

The smile that made the dark world bright,

The love that made all duty light.

Now that those scenes of bliss are gone,

Now that the long years roll away,

The two Ash Wednesdays blend in one,

One sad yet almost festal day:

The emblem of that union blest,

Where lofty souls together rest,

Star differing each from star in glory,

Yet telling each its own high story.

In another part of the graveyard is an altar-tomb with a Latin inscription perpetuating the name of Thomas Deane, of the Park—a house near Monk's Heath—who endowed the parish school, and who is described as a lover of God, his Church, his King, and of all good deeds. Not far distant is an old disused font that was dug up half a century ago; it has a circular bowl capacious enough to immerse a child in, and, in its general outline, much resembles the one at Prestbury, both being probably of the same age.

From the churchyard we step into the rector's garden. The rectory house presents much the same appearance that it did fifty years ago, when Edward Stanley was its occupant; indeed, so little is it changed that it would require but little stretch of the imagination to picture the kindly-hearted old pastor watching the movements of his feathered friends, or, mounted upon his little black cob, setting out on a mission of mercy to some member of his rustic flock, his pockets the while filled with sweets and gingerbread for the children, with whom he was ever a favourite. The house is the beau-ideal of a country clergyman's home. It has no architectural beauties or peculiarities to boast of, and there is nothing pretentious about it; but it is a roomy, enjoyable sort of place, with an air of comfort and contentment pervading it that suggests the idea of the happy domestic life peculiar to England. A trellis work that forms a kind of verandah extends along the front, with honeysuckles, roses, and creeping plants climbing round the supports, and meeting overhead in a bower of vernal beauty. Of that verandah, which forms a kind of balcony, the Dean's mother thus wrote in one of her letters:—

Give me credit for coming from my balcony, from the sky, the stars, the moon, the heavenly air, to write to you. But it is not quite coming from them; my door is open, and I look now and then to the church tower, standing out so clear from the moonlight sky, which has scarcely yet lost its sunlight tinge—and my summer furniture of mignonette and sweet peas outside, to say nothing of the roses below or the trellis and the honeysuckle above—their united perfume all come streaming in the air. When I think of your imprisonment and your present deprivations of such a day as this, whose healing influences you so well would feel, I rejoice in your power of sympathy with the enjoyments as well as the sufferings of others, which makes me feel that I am refreshing rather than tantalizing you by placing my present position before you.

The door of the house stands invitingly open, and the wide entrance hall into which the visitor is ushered is in itself suggestive of the welcome awaiting the coming guest. The rooms are spacious, and lead one into another in a social sort of way, and the windows, reaching down to the floor and opening on to the lawn, give a bright prospect of the beautiful world without, of the pleasure grounds and the green grass carpet, chequered as we look upon it with the woodland shade and a moving group of laughing, bright-eyed nymphs engaged in a garden game. Oftentimes from those windows, as well as in his walks and rides, did the good old rector pursue his favourite study. "Close before the window of our observation," he says in his "Familiar History of Birds," "a well-mown, short-grassed lawn is spread before him (the starling)—it is his dining-room; there in the spring he is allowed to revel, but seldom molested, on the plentiful supply of worms, which he collects pretty much in the same manner as the thrush, already described. Close at hand, within half-a-stone's throw, stands an ivy-mantled parish church, with its mossy grey tower, from the turreted pinnacle of which rises a flagstaff, crowned by its weathercock; under the eaves and within the hollows and chinks of the masonry of the tower are his nursery establishments. On the battlements and projecting grotesque tracery of its Gothic ornaments he retires to enjoy himself, looking down on the rural world below; while, at other times, a still more elevated party will crowd together on the letters of the weathercock, or, accustomed to its motion, sociably twitter away their chattering song, as the vane creaks slowly round with every change of wind."

But Alderley has other attractions besides its venerable church and its pleasant old-fashioned rectory. We are not now going to speak of the Edge—of the Castle Rock, of the Holy Well, of Stormy Point, of the weather-beaten Beacon and the glorious view over the Cheshire Plain which it commands; nor yet to repeat the legend of the Wizard, the Iron Gates, and the Enchanted Cave in which stand the innumerable milk-white horses with the warriors beside them, all in a profound sleep and so—

Doomed to remain till that fell day,

When foemen, marshalled in array,

And feuds intestine, shall combine

To seal the ruin of our line.

The park, the beech woods, and Radnor Mere are well worthy of a passing notice, and the story of the Stanleys deserves to be told, for Alderley, though a small place, has a history behind it, and one which it need not be ashamed to own.

ALDERLEY RECTORY.

Alderley Park, "the fair domain" of the Stanleys, lies on the opposite side of the road to the church and the rectory. It is not so extensive as Tatton or Lyme, but it is equal to either for sylvan beauty and the charming views it affords. The rising grounds that extend in the direction of the Edge are clothed with a thick umbrage, the tall "patrician trees" mingling with the "plebeian underwood;" many of the older denizens of the wood are curled and distorted into all sorts of weird shapes, and bear the marks of the rough warfare they have had for ages to wage against the elements. Here and there pleasant vistas open out and from the high ground you can look over the fairest portion of the Vale Royal of England, over miles and miles of woodland and pastures and green fields, dotted at intervals with old farm houses and still older churches, a prospect such as no other country but our own can show, and which many a wanderer in distant lands would give a year of his life to see again. It is thoroughly pastoral in character, and imparts an undefinable sensation of quietude and rest, suggesting the idea of eternal tranquillity and peace. The view is charming at all seasons, but never more so than in the spring-time, when the trees have put on their fresh leafage, when the air is laden with the sweet odours of the scented thorn, and the thrush and the blackbird pour forth their melodious notes as if to make perfect the charm and witchery of our English scenery.

From among the time-worn fathers of the grove a little rindle winds its way with many a curve and sinuosity until it empties itself in a broad lake, formerly called Radnor Mere, but now more commonly known as Alderley Mere—a relic, so tradition affirms, of the great lake that in pre-historic times is believed to have extended as far as High Legh, a dozen miles or so away, and of which Tatton Mere, Rostherne Mere, and Mere Mere formed a part. But the glory of the park is the beech wood which reaches down almost to the edge of the mere; it was planted, so the local chroniclers tell us, more than a couple of centuries ago by Sir Thomas Stanley, the first baronet, who obtained a supply of beech mast from his father-in-law's grounds at Kyre, in Worcestershire, the tree being then uncommon in Cheshire. Possibly he was influenced by the advice which John Evelyn about that time had been giving in his "Discourse of Forest Trees," and desired to supply his tenantry with stuffing for their beds. The author of "Sylva" says:—"But there is yet another benefit which this tree (the beech) presents us; its very leaves, which make a natural and most agreeable canopy all the summer, being gathered about the fall, and somewhat before they are much frost-bitten, afford the best and easiest mattresses in the world to lay under our quilts instead of straw, because, besides their tenderness and loose lying together, they continue sweet for seven or eight years, long before which time straw becomes musty and hard." It would be interesting to know if the primitive custom to which Evelyn referred continues in any part of rural England at the present day, or if it has been entirely discarded. More stately trees than the Alderley beeches we have seldom seen in any part of the country; they stand thick in the background, giving a forest-like character to the scene, and the pathways that wind beneath them in a wild and wandering sort of way afford as delightful a sylvan walk as the foot of man can tread. The dead leaves lie the whole year round upon the turf, and overhead the branches meet in a verdant canopy, imparting a mysterious gloom that seems like a perpetual twilight. No one who longs for seclusion needs "fly to a lodge in some vast wilderness," for here he may wander for a day without the sound of a fellow mortal to disturb him or hearing any footfall but his own, and can, if so disposed, realise the full meaning of the words—

One impulse from a vernal wood

Will teach thee more of man,

Of moral evil, and of good

Than all the sages can.

Well do we remember a summer evening's saunter through the park and the old beech wood in the pleasant companionship of the worthy rector of Alderley, beguiling the time with cheerful chat.

'Twas Summer tide; the eve was sweet

As mortal eye has e'er beholden;

The grass look'd warm with sunny heat;

Perhaps some Fairy's glowing feet

Had lightly touch'd and left it golden.

Entering by a gate near the old corn-mill we struck across the park in an easterly direction and soon reached the edge of the wood, from which there is a good view of the hall and the old deer house, with the mere in front, feathered down almost to the water's edge with stately trees. The wilder parts of the grounds are alive with rabbits, and as we strode over the green sward they started up from the fern and the thick grass and scampered off to their warrens in all directions; but no other sign of life was visible, and, save that now and then we could hear the distant croaking of the corn-crake and the thrush chanting a requiem to the departing day from a neighbouring copse, even the birds seemed to have sunk to rest in their foliaged homes. The woods were in the fulness of their summer verdure, displaying a thousand varied tints of green and yellow; to the right we could see the great plain of Cheshire stretching away towards the Frodsham hills and the estuary of the Dee, the green meadow-breadths looking almost golden in the sunset sheen. A warm aërial haze suffused itself over the landscape, softening into beauty every object; the breeze which so lately frolicked through the trees had died away, and the wide mere lay spread before us calm, and still, and bright as a mirror, while its surface, unruffled by a single ripple, gave back with wonderful minuteness the outline of the plumy woods, the amber radiance of the sky, and the moving forms of the reeds and water flags that fringe its margin; the effect being heightened as now and then a shaft of ruddy light quivered through the foliage and shed an almost unearthly splendour upon the water.

No stir of air was there,

Not so much life as on a summer day

Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,

But where the dead leaf fell there did it rest.

That scene has been so exquisitely described in the "Journal" of Catherine Stanley that we are tempted to transcribe it:—

The purplish brown of the wood rising above the softened reflection of it in the water, and a few touches of brighter brown in the shrubs and ferns near the edge; the boathouse relieved by the dark wood behind it; a line of yellowish brown reeds breaking the reflection of it in the water, and another still brighter yellow-and-brown island coming immediately before it; the soft blue haze spread over the water and softening the reflected outlines of the wood without weakening the effect, contrasted here and there with the vivid and determinate outline of a few leaves or weeds lying on the surface of the water; the scene enlivened now and then by a wild duck darting from the reeds across the lake, making a flutter and foam before her, and leaving a line of clear light behind her on her path, her wild cry distinctly echoed from the wood and deerhouse together—such a simplicity yet variety of tint, such a force of effect, and such a softness of shade and colour! Artists, one and all, hide your diminished heads!

The home of the Stanleys is a stone building of no great antiquity and very little architectural merit, and, considering the many advantageous sites the park affords, has been placed with a singular disregard for the charms of situation. Until 1779 the family resided at the old hall near the church, but in the spring of that year it was burnt down, and until the present mansion was built they were obliged to take up their abode at the Park House, a tenement formerly part of the estates held in Alderley by the Abbey of Dieulacres, near Leek. The Hon. Miss Stanley, in her description of "Alderley Edge and its Neighbourhood," says: "The old hall of Alderley was burnt down in the spring of the year 1779. Sir John Stanley was absent at the time; he was on the road home, returning from Chester, where he had gone the day before—he arrived when the whole was nearly consumed—very little of the furniture was saved. It was never known how the fire originated. The house stood in the village of Alderley, close to the mill. It was surrounded by a moat spreading out into a large sheet of water on the east side, and on the west filling a channel cut out of the solid rock. When the house was burnt, it consisted of three sides of (comparatively speaking) a modern built mansion, a large hall of an older date occupying the other side, and offices behind the hall. A handsome stone bridge of two arches crossed the moat from the ground entrance and west side to a stone terrace, which commanded views of the Park, the church, and the plain of Cheshire, and by a flight of steps led to a handsome stone arched gateway close to the road, built by Sir Thomas, the first Baronet." The inscription on the tombstone in Alderley church of Sir Thomas Stanley, who died in 1591, says: "He rebuilt the houses of Alderley and Weever," from which it is evident there was a still earlier mansion upon the site; the house he erected was doubtless the "large hall of an older date" referred to by Miss Stanley, the other portions of the building having been added about the beginning of the last century. The two end pillars, bearing the crest of the Stanleys—the eagle and child—with a portion of the wall, may be seen abutting upon the roadside; but, with these exceptions, not a vestige of the old mansion remains.

The connection of the Stanleys with Alderley dates back about four hundred and fifty years or thereabouts, when the estate was acquired by the marriage of John Stanley, a brother of the first Earl of Derby, with Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Thomas Weever, of Weever and Alderley. This John's father, Sir Thomas Stanley, of Lathom, after serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, emerged from among the country gentlemen as Lord Stanley, and was made controller of the household of the "meek usurper," Henry VI., when, in consideration of his services, he had granted to him by favour of the King the wardship and marriage of Thomas Weever's heiress, and he, with commendable care for the worldly well-being of his younger son, bestowed the lady and her lands upon him.

The house of Stanley, which ranks among the greatest of our governing families, is one of the most ancient as it is one of the most distinguished in the page of history, comprising at the present day, in addition to the baronetcy enjoyed by the elder line—the Stanleys, of Hooton in Wirral—two peerages, the Earldom of Derby of Knowsley, in Lancashire, and the Barony of Stanley of Alderley, in Cheshire, besides the younger branches in Staffordshire, Sussex, Kent, and Hertfordshire. The first known ancestor was one Adam de Aldithlegh, so named from his paternal estate of Audithlegh, in Normandy, who came over with William the Conqueror. Acquitting himself bravely on the field of Hastings, he was rewarded with large territorial estates in the newly conquered country. He was accompanied in the expedition by his two sons, Lydulph or Lyulph and Adam de Aldithlegh. These sons married, and in due course two grandsons were born to the old Norman warrior, both of whom married into a Saxon family of noble rank and ancient lineage, which had been fortunate enough to retain possession of its estates, while confiscation had been the lot of those around it. The family derived its name from the manor of Stanley or Stoneley, the stony lea or stony field according to the Anglo-Saxon meaning, a little hamlet lying about three miles south-west of the small manufacturing town of Leek, in Staffordshire, a place which, Erdswick, the old topographer, remarks "seems to take its name of the nature of the soil, which, though it be in the moorlands, is yet a rough and stony place, and many craggy rocks are about it." One of the grandsons, Adam, the son of Lyulph de Audithlegh, became in right of his wife lord of Stanley, and was ancestor of the Lord Audley of ancient times, and is represented through the female line by the Touchets, Lords Audley of the present day. The other grandson, William, the son of Adam de Audithlegh, acquired with his wife the lordship of Thalck, better known as Talk o' th' Hill, in the same county. This William seems to have conceived a liking for the stony lea before referred to, and exchanged his lordship of Talk with his cousin for it. Thenceforward he made Stanley his seat, and, as the old chronicles tell us, in honour of his wife and of the great antiquity of her family, assumed her maiden name and became immediate founder of the Stanleys, a race the most illustrious in the country's annals, and associated with the most stirring events of history.

Sir William Stanley, the fourth in descent from the William who first assumed the name, gave an impetus to the fortunes of the family by one of those matrimonial alliances to which the house of Stanley owes so much of its prosperity. He took to himself a wife in the person of Joan, the youthful daughter and co-heir of Sir Philip Bamville, master forester of Wirral, and lord of Storeton, a place some few miles south of Birkenhead.

Associated with this match is a love story that in its romantic incidents is scarcely less interesting than the one related of the fair heiress of Haddon, Dorothy Vernon. The daughter of the house of Storeton had given her heart to young Stanley, and to escape the misery of a forced marriage with one for whom she had no love she determined to elope. While a banquet was being given to her father, she stole unobserved away, and, being joined by young William Stanley, the anxious lovers rode swiftly across the country to Astbury Church, and there, in the presence of Adam Hoton and Dawe Coupelond, plighted their troth to each other. Six hundred years have rolled away since that scene was enacted, but it requires little stretch of the imagination to picture the resolute maiden hastening with tremulous steps from her father's house, the exciting ride across country, and the hurried joining of hands and hearts in the old church at Astbury, and forgetting that all this occurred long ages ago, we wish from our hearts all happiness to the pair. The story is no mere legend, for the facts are to be found in those musty and unromantic records, the Cheshire Inquisitions, which have been unearthed, and their contents made accessible to the world, by the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records. In a return to a writ of enquiry as to the betrothal of William Stanley, the Inquisition sets forth—

That on the Sunday after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, two years ago, viz., on the 27th September, 1282, Philip de Bamville, with his wife and family, was at a banquet given by Master John de Stanley (an ecclesiastic apparently, priests at that time who had an academical degree being entitled to be called master), on which occasion Joan (Bamville), suspecting that her father intended to marry her to her step-mother's son, took means to avoid it by repairing with William de Stanley to Astbury Church, where they uttered the following mutual promise, he saying, "Joan, I plight thee my troth to take and hold thee as my lawful wife until my life's end," and she replying, "I Joan take thee William as my lawful husband." The witnesses were Adam de Hoton and Dawe de Coupelond.

By this marriage William Stanley became owner of one-third of the manor of Storeton (the remaining two-thirds he subsequently acquired), and also the hereditary bailiwick or chief rangership of the Forest of Wirral, which then overspread the peninsula lying between the estuaries of the Mersey and the Dee, and which was so thickly wooded that, according to the old saying:—

From Blacon point to Hilbree

A squirrel may leap from tree to tree.

After this marriage the Stanleys migrated from the Stony-lea in Staffordshire to their newly acquired home in Cheshire, and at the same time Sir William, in allusion to his office of hereditary forester of Wirral, assumed the arms which have ever since been used by his descendants in place of those borne by his ancestors, viz., argent, on a bend azure, three bucks' heads caboshed or; in other words, over a shield of silver a belt of blue crossed diagonally with three bucks' heads displayed thereon.

Another and still more important addition was made to the patrimonial lands of the Stanleys through the marriage of Sir William de Stanley, the fourth in direct descent from the first of the name who held the forestership of Wirral, with Margery, only daughter and heir of Sir William de Hooton of Hooton, a township midway between Chester and Birkenhead, and occupying one of the most delightful situations which the banks of the estuary can boast, commanding, as Ormerod says, "a peculiarly beautiful view of the Forest Hills, the bend of the Mersey, and the opposite shore of Hale, and shaded with venerable oaks which the Wirral breezes have elsewhere rarely afforded." From this marriage descended the Stanleys of Hooton and their offshoots, among whom may be mentioned that Sir William Stanley who, in the reign of Elizabeth, betrayed the trust committed to him by the English Government in the base surrender of Deventer to the King of Spain.

The younger line of the Stanleys, with whose fortunes we are more immediately concerned, commences properly with a younger brother of Sir William Stanley of Hooton, Sir John Stanley, who married Isabel, the daughter and sole heir of Sir Thomas Lathom, lord of Lathom, whose ancestress had also been heir of Sir Thomas de Knowsley, lord of Knowsley, and who thus, in right of his wife, became master of the extensive estates around which his descendants' princely property has accreted. By the marriage with the heiress of Bamville the Stanleys acquired the three bucks' heads which have continued ever since to be the distinguishing charge on their heraldic coat; and in like manner, by the marriage with the heiress of Lathom, they obtained the remarkable crest which to the present day continues to surmount their arms, the well-known Eagle and Child, in heraldic language described as—on a chapeau gules turned up ermine, an eagle with wings elevated or, preying upon an infant swaddled of the first, banded argent. Many are the stories that are told respecting Sir John's elopement with the heiress of Lathom, and great is the amount of legendary lore that gathers round the crest which he adopted in her honour. The tradition has often been related, and the curious who wish to know more respecting it will find much interesting information in the Miscellanea Palatina (1851) and in a contribution to Nichol's Collectanea by the learned historian of Cheshire. The greatness of the Stanleys may be said to have commenced with Sir John—a cool, shrewd, and efficient man—who in his lifetime raised the family from the rank of simple country gentlemen. We need not recount all the honours and distinctions bestowed, or the steady shower of royal benefactions that descended upon him. A knight sans peur et sans reproche, he was a rare instance of a courtier who could carry himself through four successive reigns with ever increasing prosperity—and without once sustaining a reverse. His eldest son, Sir John Stanley, fully sustained the dignity of the family, and his grandson, Sir Thomas, in whose person the elevation of the Stanleys to the peerage took place, increased it. But it remained for the son of the last-named Sir Thomas to carry the fortunes of the house to heights before unknown. Living in an age when the spirit of chivalry had given place to a policy of subtlety and success depending less on strength of arm than astuteness of head, he ran a career of successful faithlessness that has scarcely a parallel in English history. Looking always to his own interest, fighting always for his own hand, and changing sides at his own discretion, but always changing to the dominant party, he received as the reward of his consummate tact enormous royal grants which went to swell the originally great possessions of his house; and, finally, by the boldest and most adroit stroke of his whole life—when the rival Roses met on the field of Bosworth and he had beguiled both combatants with promises of sympathy, after the fate of the battle was decided he went over to the side of the victor, and completed his services by placing the battered crown of the vanquished Richard upon the brow of the triumphant Richmond, exclaiming—

Courageous Richmond, well hast thou acquit thee!

Lo, here, this long-usurped royalty,

From the dead temples of this bloody wretch

Have I plucked off, to grace thy brows withal;

Wear it, enjoy it, and make much of it.

Thus Thomas Stanley earned for himself and his descendants the Earldom of Derby. Through his eldest son, George Lord Strange, who succeeded to the title, Thomas, Earl of Derby, was progenitor of a race of illustrious men, conspicuous among whom were James, the "Martyr Earl," distinguished for his attachment to the Royal cause during the Civil Wars, and the eminent statesman of more recent times, Edward Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, 14th earl, who died in 1869—the father of the present holder of the title.

The Stanleys of Alderley trace their descent from John, a younger brother of Thomas the first Earl, who became possessed of the manor of Alderley by his marriage with the heiress of Thomas Weever, lord of Weever and Alderley. When Duke William of Normandy parcelled out the land in the newly-conquered country among his faithful followers Alderley fell to the share of William Fitz Nigel, the builder and fortifier of Halton Castle, and was held by him as of his manor of Halton. In 1294 he granted Over Alderley to one Roger Throsle, who in turn gave it as a marriage portion to his daughter Margery when she became the wife of Edmund Downes. Subsequently it passed into the possession of the Ardernes, who held it for two or three generations. Peter de Arderne, the last male representative of this line, had an only surviving daughter, the heiress of all his lands; wishing in his life-time to secure a suitable match for her he, in the reign of Edward III., purchased from Sir John de Arderne, lord of Aldford and the paramount lord of Weever, the wardship and marriage of Richard, son and heir of Thomas de Weever, paying for the same 40 marks (£26 13s. 4d.), an investment he turned to profitable account by marrying his young ward to his daughter. In this way the estates of Weever and Alderley became united, and so they continued until the reign of Henry VI. In 1445 Thomas de Weever, the great-grandson of Richard de Weever and Margaret Arderne his wife, died, leaving an only daughter, Elizabeth, who thus became heiress of the lands in Weever and Alderley. Being under age at the time of her father's death she became a ward of the King, and he, as previously mentioned, gave the disposal of her in marriage to his favourite, Thomas, the first Lord Stanley, who made the most of his opportunity by marrying her to his third son, Thomas Stanley, thus securing for him and his descendants a very handsome patrimony, embracing the manor of Weever and the lands in Over and Nether Alderley, &c.. Weever remained in their possession until 1710, when it passed by sale to the Wilbrahams of Townsend, now represented by George Fortescue Wilbraham, Esq., of Delamere House, but Alderley was retained and still continues the chief residence of the family, who have held it in continuous succession for a period of more than four hundred years.

It is not our purpose to trace the descent of the Stanleys through successive generations, we therefore pass over the history of the ancient house to the time of Sir Thomas Stanley, the sixth in direct descent from John Stanley, who married the heiress of Weever, and the one who added a baronetcy to the honours of the Alderley line—an interval of nearly two centuries, during which time the family estates had been largely increased, partly from the possessions of the dissolved abbey of Dieulacres, and partly from lands acquired at different times through prudent marriages, as evidenced by the Inquisition taken in 1606, after the death of Sir Thomas Stanley, Knight, who had married the heiress of Sir Peter Warburton of Grafton, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and which shows that at his decease he held the manors of Weever, Over Alderley, Nether Alderley, Clive, Little Meols, and Pulton Launcelyn; and lands in those and the following places: Barretspool, Wimbaldesley, Stanthorne, Spittle, Middlewich, Rushton, Bredbury, Upton near Macclesfield, Chorley, Hough, Warford, Chelford, Astle, Birtles, Mobberley, Ollerton, Torkington, Offerton, Norbury, Occleston, Sutton, &c., all in the county of Chester. This Thomas, who had been knighted by James I. while at Worksop Manor on his progress towards London, after the death of Elizabeth, a journey during which he shed the honours of knighthood on no less than two hundred and thirty-seven gentlemen who were presented to him, was succeeded by his eldest son, Thomas Stanley, who was only eight years of age at the time of the father's death.

Shortly after he came of age Thomas Stanley married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Pytts, of Kyre, in Worcestershire, and in 1634 he was honoured with the shrievalty of his native county. The time was an anxious one. It was the year preceding the arbitrary levy of ship-money, when the storm was gathering that ere long was to break with such disastrous force upon the head of the ill-fated Charles. When the sword was drawn the head of the Alderley Stanleys ranged himself on the side of those who contended for the privileges of Parliament in opposition to Kingly prerogative, and who were resolved upon upholding the bulwark of the national liberties; he does not appear, however, to have engaged in any of the great military enterprises which marked that stirring period, the help he rendered to the cause being limited in a great measure to the discharge of the civil functions which devolved upon him as a magistrate, and in the performance of which he was very zealous and energetic. His name is of frequent occurrence in the church books in his own part of the county, and when, during the time of the Usurpation, marriage, as a religious ceremony, was forbidden by the law, and transformed into a civil contract to be entered into before a justice of the peace, Mr. Stanley appears to have been one of the magistrates most frequently performing the office. Though a staunch Puritan, he can hardly be said to have been a violent supporter of the party, and except in the assiduous discharge of his magisterial office he took little part in the events that were then transpiring. Possibly it was the moderation shown in those exciting times that led to his being one of the Cheshire gentlemen selected for a baronetcy on the occasion of the Restoration of Charles II., and curiously enough his name appears first on the list from the county on whom that dignity was conferred. The hall at Weever had up to this time been the principal residence of the family. Some time before 1640 Thomas Stanley added to his possessions by the purchase of Chorley Hall, an old mansion of the Davenports, in Wilmslow parish; afterwards he greatly improved the ancestral home at Alderley, and erected in front of it a handsome stone-arched gateway, two of the pillars of which may still be seen in the wall bordering the roadside; it is said that he also planted the beech woods bordering upon the Mere, which now form such a pleasant adjunct of the park.

Until the present century the succeeding generations of the Stanleys took little active interest in national affairs, preferring the quieter and less exciting life of country gentlemen, passing much of their time in Cheshire improving their estates, and spending much of their leisure in the indulgence of their literary tastes. Sir Peter Stanley, who succeeded as second baronet on the death of his father, Sir Thomas, in 1672, served the office of sheriff in 1678. He died in 1683, having had by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Leigh of Northcourt, in the Isle of Wight, two sons and seven daughters. Thomas Stanley, the eldest son, who succeeded to the barony and estates, was born at Alderley on the 25th March, 1652, and baptized there on the 15th April following. He added to the family estates by his marriage with Christiana, daughter and heiress of Sir Stephen Leonard, of West Wickham, Kent, Bart. During his time the old hall of Weever, a half-timbered mansion, pleasantly situated on an acclivity that rises from the banks of the river of the same name, and which had come into the possession of the Stanleys as early as the reign of Henry VI., and been their principal residence until 1660 or thereabouts, was sold, the purchaser being Randle Wilbraham, of Townshend, direct ancestor of the Wilbrahams of Delamere House. Lady Stanley, who died February 16, 1711-12, bore him in addition to two daughters, both of whom died unmarried, two sons, who in turn succeeded to the honours and estates of the family. Sir Thomas Stanley died at West Wickham in 1721, when the eldest of his two sons, James Stanley, succeeded as heir. He married in November, 1740, Frances, youngest daughter of George Butler, of Ballyragget, in the county Kilkenny, in Ireland, but by her had no issue. He seems to have been a somewhat eccentric personage, if we may judge from a remark made by Miss Stanley. She says, quoting from the recollections of John Finlow, an old retainer of the family, that "Sir James used to drive up to the Edge almost daily in his carriage drawn by four black long-tailed mares, always accompanied by a running footman of the name of Critchley." She adds that her informant, Finlow, was a lad then, and used to get up behind the carriage. Notwithstanding his little foibles the old baronet is represented as having been of a remarkably mild and placid temperament, a character that seems to be borne out by some lines he is believed to have written, and which were found among his papers after his death—

The grace of God and a quiet life,

A mind content, and an honest wife,

A good report and a friend in store,

What need a man to wish for more.

Sir James Stanley died March 17th, 1746-7, when the baronetcy as well as the patrimonial lands devolved upon his younger brother, Edward, who succeeded as fifth baronet. He did not, however, long enjoy possession of the estates, for in 1755, while returning from Adlington, where he had been on a visit to Charles Legh, he was suddenly seized with a fit of apoplexy, and died in his carriage before he could be conveyed home. By his marriage with Mary, daughter of Thomas Ward, a wealthy banker, of London, who survived him and died at Bath in 1771, he had two sons, James Stanley, who died in infancy, and John Thomas, born 26th March, 1735, who succeeded as sixth baronet. He was in his twenty-first year at the time of his father's decease, and married in April, 1763, Margaret, daughter and heiress of Hugh Owen, of Penrhos, in Anglesey, a well-wooded estate, about a mile from the town and harbour of Holyhead. When he came into possession of the family estates the steep rocky promontory known as the Edge, and with which every Manchester holiday-maker is familiar, was a wild dreary common, without any sign of cultivation, except the few clumps of hardy fir trees which had been planted by his father and by his uncle, Sir James Stanley, between the years 1745 and 1755. It is recorded that in 1799 he enclosed the Edge, with other waste lands on the estate, and, at the same time repaired or rebuilt the old Beacon which had been in existence from the time of Elizabeth, if not from a still earlier date, and which was then in a state of decay, covering in the square chamber with the pyramidal roof which, until it became obscured by the thick umbrage around, made it one of the chief landmarks in Cheshire.

Sir John Thomas Stanley died in London, November 29th, 1807, and was buried at South Audley. By his wife, who survived him, and died February 1st, 1816, he had a numerous family—two sons and five daughters. Of the sons, the eldest, born November 26th, 1766, and named after himself, succeeded as seventh baronet, and in 1839 was elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Stanley of Alderley. The other son, Edward, the youngest of seven children, was born at his father's residence in London, January 1st, 1779.

While the baronetcy and the broad lands of Alderley were reserved for the eldest son of Sir John Thomas Stanley, the family living—the rectory and the pleasant old rectory house—was the portion that Edward, the youngest son, could look forward to, for the Stanleys were then, as now, patrons of the church, as well as lords of the manor of Alderley.

The future rector, as we have seen, first saw the light on New Year's Day, 1779. He was born at his father's residence in London, and his birth and baptism are thus recorded in the church register at Alderley:—

1779. Feb. 21.—Edward, son of Sir John Thomas Stanley and Margaret, Lady Stanley, was born in the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, co. Middlesex, the 1st of January, 1779, and baptized on the 31st of the same month (by the Rev. Ralph Carr, rector of Alderley) at Sir John's house, in the said parish of St. George's.

Though born, as it were, to the prospect of taking Holy Orders, Edward Stanley's sanguine temperament, his love of adventure and spirit of enterprise, led him in early years to long for the excitement and the perils of a naval life, a passion that is said to have been inspired by a visit he made, when a child of three or four years, to Weymouth, where he first saw an English man-of-war. Though the boyish fancy was overruled by circumstances beyond his own control, the impression made upon his mind was never eradicated, and his enthusiastic love for a profession from which he was excluded remained and gave a colour to his whole after life. As his son in later years observed, "the sight of a ship, the society of sailors, the embarkation on a voyage, were always sufficient to inspire and delight him wherever he might be."

A bright, happy, eager childhood seems to have been his. Of amiable disposition, with a cheerful flow of animal spirits, fertility of resource, activity of mind and body, and an exuberance of boyish mirth and daring, he carried with him into the active business of life those natural characteristics which enabled him, when he had attained to manhood, to overcome whatever difficulties might beset his path—characteristics that were especially useful to him when he entered upon his University career, for it can hardly be said that up to that time his education and training were such as to specially fit him for the sacred calling in which he was to find his vocation, or such as were ordinarily given to boys destined for the Church. His early life was passed in a succession of removals from one private school or tutor to another; subsequently he was placed in the Grammar School at Macclesfield, under the Rev. Dr. Inglis, whose classical attainments had earned for the school a high reputation in the Universities. In 1798 he entered at St John's College, Cambridge, to find, however, that he had to begin his course of study almost from the very foundation. Dean Stanley, in his "Memoirs," to which we are indebted for many interesting particulars of his life, says: "Of Greek he was entirely, of Latin almost entirely, ignorant; and of mathematics he knew only what he had acquired at one of the private schools where he had been placed when quite a child." His earnest application and indomitable perseverance, however, soon enabled him to make up for these deficiencies, and to make such progress that in 1802 he appeared as 16th Wrangler in the mathematical tripos. Of him it might with truth be said that "he applied his heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom," and we might almost fancy him to have been the subject of the portrait of an English clergyman which a Fellow of his own college, W. Mackworth Praed, drew with such a skilful hand—