Cophurst, an old house near Sutton Downes in the Forest of Macclesfield, is thought to have been the birthplace of the chronicler Raphael Holinshed, who wrote a History of England and dedicated it to William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the great minister of Queen Elizabeth. Shakespeare used this book for the plots of some of his plays. The triumphs of Francis Drake were celebrated in a long Latin poem by Thomas Newton of Butley, who placed the small brass tablet on the wall near the pulpit in Prestbury Church to the memory of his parents. Newton was for some time the head master of Macclesfield Grammar School. Another Elizabethan poet was Geoffrey Whitney, who was born at Nantwich. An inscription on an old house at Nantwich, bearing the date 1584, shows that Elizabeth returned the affections of her people and did all she could for them. The verse reads thus:-- God grant our royal Queen In England long to reign; For she hath put her helping hand To build this town again. [Illustration: MAP OF CHESHIRE. From Drayton's 'Polyolbion'] Nantwich had been almost totally destroyed by fire in the previous year. The risk of fire was always very great, owing to the fact that nearly all the houses of the Middle Ages were built of timber and thatched with straw. The black and white timbered halls are the glory of Cheshire. Let us pay a visit to-day to Little Moreton Hall, near Congleton, perhaps the most beautiful of them all. The people who live here are proud of their home, and on certain days of the week allow you to examine at your leisure many of the rooms in the old house, which remains in almost the same condition as when the Moretons removed to a new and more spacious house of brick hard by. The framework of the house is all of wood, good solid English oak, and black with age. The spaces between the beams and props are filled with plaster and painted white. The principal beams which support the building are of course upright, firmly laid on a foundation of stone. Within the squares of this framework other beams are set in sloping parallel lines, forming patterns of chevron or diamond, or arranged in rows of quatrefoils and arcades of trefoil-headed arches. The upper stories and the gables of the roof project beyond the ground floor of the building, which is thus kept dry. We cross the moat by a substantial stone bridge, and enter through a gateway whose massive oaken lintel and side-posts are covered with rich carving, and find ourselves in a square paved courtyard. Within the gateway is a stone horse-block. Facing us are two deep bay-windows formed of five sides of an octagon. Over them you may read the carved inscription: 'God is al in al things. This window whire made by William Moreton in the yeare of oure Lorde MDLIX.' The building of the home was regarded by our Elizabethan forefathers as an almost sacred work, to be carried out with hardly less reverence than the building of a church.