The Courts could not be held in the plague-stricken city; the Exchequer Court was removed to Tarvin, and the Assizes were held at Nantwich. The annual fairs were abandoned to prevent the spread of the disease. Numbers of victims were carried out from the city and hastily buried in the 'Barrow Field'. Other Cheshire towns suffered severely. On the hills, near Macclesfield, are many gravestones of the victims of the plague; two gravestones near the Bowstones on Disley Moor tell the same tale. Some of the English nobles had residences in Chester. The city gates were confided to noble families for safe keeping. The East Gate was guarded by the ancestors of Lord Crewe. The 'Bear and Billet' Inn in Bridge Street belonged to the Earls of Shrewsbury, who were Sergeants of the Bridge Gate. The Earls of Derby had charge of the Watergate. The North Gate, however, the most important entrance to the city, was entrusted to the mayor and the citizens. A narrow court in Watergate Street leads to the Stanley Palace of the Earls of Derby; the gardens extended down to the river-side. The architecture is very similar to that of the old timber halls described in the last chapter, but the row of round-headed panels tells us that people were beginning to imitate in their timber decorations the round-headed arches of the Italian style. As early as the reign of Henry the Seventh, English architects were beginning to study the remains of ancient buildings in Rome, and Italian architects were brought over to England. Henry the Eighth invited a builder named John of Padua, who designed the north side of Lyme Hall. The Italians despised the Pointed styles of English architecture, calling it contemptuously 'Gothic', from the name of the barbarian Goths, who overran the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries. Many of the Cheshire gentry left their homes in the towns to live in new houses in the country. The old hall of the Sandbach family is now the principal inn of the town of Sandbach; the ancient home of the Ardernes in Great Underbank, Stockport, is now a bank; and the house built at Nantwich by 'Richarde and Marjery Churche' has been turned into a ladies' school. The Mainwarings lived in a fine house in Watergate Street, Chester, until a number of little shops were allowed to block up the front of their home. The Wilbrahams moved from Nantwich to the spacious Elizabethan hall at Dorfold. When the monasteries were destroyed, a large number of people were thrown out of work, especially in the country districts. The distress was so great in Queen Elizabeth's reign that Parliament passed a 'poor law', by which the inhabitants of every parish were compelled to pay taxes for the support of their own poor.