His widow, Katherine, became the second wife of Sir Randle Mainwaring, of Over Peover, Knight. William Brereton, the second and only surviving son, who succeeded as heir, was only sixteen years of age at the time of his father's death. By this marriage he became allied with a family which had for many generations been resident on their lands at Denton, and who claimed descent from the Hollands of Up-Holland, in Lancashire, a family whose members played an active part in the most picturesque and chivalrous period of English history; who figured among the founders of the Order of the Garter, allied themselves repeatedly with the royal family, attained the highest rank in the peerage, and it may be added, experienced the greatest vicissitudes of fortune; one of them, Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, doubly descended from the Plantagenets and the brother-in-law of King Edward IV., being reduced to such extremities that Philip de Commines, as he relates, saw him "walking barefoot after the Duke of Burgundy's train, and earning his bread by begging from door to door." The Denton Hollands from the time of the Reformation had been noted for their leanings towards Puritanism. Richard Holland, the father of William Brereton's wife, when High Sheriff of Lancashire, received the thanks of Queen Elizabeth for his services in prosecuting Popish recusants and zealously promoting the Protestant religion, and his nephew, Colonel Holland, was one of the earliest to take up arms in the Puritan cause in the great struggle between Charles and his Parliament, and had the command of Manchester when it was besieged by the Royalist forces in 1642. William Brereton died on the 18th February, 1609-10, and was buried at Cheadle on the 26th of the same month, his widow surviving him only a few days, the Cheadle registers recording her burial there on the 14th April following. He left issue--in addition to two younger sons, Richard and Urian, and a daughter, Margaret--a son, William, then only five years of age, who succeeded as heir, and who in after years was destined to play a conspicuous part in his country's affairs, his military exploits becoming inseparably interwoven with the history of his native county.