PREFACE. "Now then, farewell! and still if you be wise Nor e'en on English soil neglect to prize The genuine relics of our great of old!" HE annals contained in the following pages embrace TH Tthe time between the years 150 and 1833, in the 1587 former of which the nation in dignified preparation was awaiting the invasion of the Spanish armada; and in the latter the reform bill had just passed, after exciting an agitation which had disturbed the country almost as much as the dread of the armada had done. Between these two periods England passed through a series of events of the greatest importance in her history. When the duke of Mayenne's officer, before the battle of Arques, jeeringly asked Henry of Navarre whether the small array he saw was the whole of the force with which he meant to engage the duke's great army, Henry calmly replied: "No sir, it is not all; for you have not reckoned God and a good cause, which are both on our side;" and such might have been queen Elizabeth's reply to Philip of Spain if, in the year when these annals begin, she had been similarly questioned before the angry winds and waves, coming to the assistance of her seamen, had done their office and dispersed his "invincible fleet." If the admiral's fleet as he followed the enemy borrowed any of its wings from the sail-cloth made at Warrington, the place has an additional reason to take pride in the victory. The sceptre next passed peacefully from the last Tudor to the first Stuart monarch, who shortly afterwards narrowly escaped the danger threatened by the gunpowder treason; but under his son that great civil war broke out which cost the monarch his life and in all but the name set Cromwell in his place. When the latter died and the sceptre had devolved to his son, queen Richard as he has been called, his hand proved too weak to grasp it, and for two troubled reigns the crown reverted to and remained with its old possessors until it was wrested from them by the revolution; it then passed to William of Orange, just a century after the overthrow of the armada. William by his skill and courage was enabled to guide the country through the dangers inseparable from so great an organic change, and from him the crown passed peaceably to queen Anne, whose reign was rendered illustrious by the victories of Marlborough. Scarcely however had her reign ended before the throne of her successor was threatened by the rebellion of 1715; and in thirty years after there occurred another rebellion, which, with the historian who wrote its history in Latin (the last that has appeared in that language), let us hope will be the last rebellion the country will ever witness. Under George III. England gained her Indian empire, but she lost her American colonies, — a loss which India could not repair. If queen Mary could remember the loss of Calais to her dying day, the loss of the American colonies must have distressed him who lost them as much and as long. The protracted war with France into which England was drawn by the revolution ended in the great victories of Wellington and the fall of Napoleon. Under George IV. and William IV. the national contests, which were chiefly parliamentary, ended in the passing of that bill which is the terminal limit of these annals. This brief review may suffice to show that the lords of Warrington and Bewsey in the period of these annals, if they desired it, would have abundant opportunities in the state of the times to serve their country and show their patriotism. From the time when these annals begin Warrington passed successively through the Dudleys, the Irelands and the Booths to the Blackburnes its present owners; and Bewsey passed through two different branches of the Irelands, the Athertons and the Gwillyms to the present noble owners, the house of Powys; and it will appear in the subsequent pages that very few of these successive lords were deaf to the call of their country, or omitted to serve her either in the law, the camp, the senate or the court. If we canvass their various lives we shall find among the Dudleys that Leycester and his son, though clever and prominent, were rather notorious than famous |