In 1635 Sir William Brereton returned from his travels in Ireland. In May of the following year he was in London, visiting, at Westminster and the Temple, his younger brother Urian, whom Mr. Earwaker incorrectly represents as dying in 1631,[34] but who in 1636 was apparently following the law. While there he was laid up with sickness, and "feared a violent, burning fever," but happily was soon restored to health. In the early summer of the succeeding year a great sorrow fell upon him, and the gloom of sadness overshadowed his house. On the last day of May, 1637, the solemn knell that echoed from the bell towers of Cheadle and Bowdon churches proclaimed to hall and hamlet that the mistress of Handforth, the beloved and cherished wife of William Brereton, had passed away, and on the 6th of June her remains were laid beside those of her progenitors in the quiet old church of Bowdon. The tender and affectionate wife, the woman of his early love, the mother of his young children, for they were still in their infancy, was taken from him at the time when her counsel was needed most. The trial was a sore one, and his domestic sorrow seemed to have loosened the cords of life; his habits were entirely changed; the green lanes, the wooded uplands, and the bosky dells that surrounded his Cheshire home were no longer pleasant to look upon; his decoys had lost their attractions, and he ceased to find enjoyment in those rural pastimes and pursuits in which he had previously delighted. It was a sorrowful episode in his life, but there was another sorrow deepening in the country that helped to obliterate the remembrance of it. The funeral plumes that waved over the coffin of his wife were stirred by the trumpet blast of discontent that swept over the country. A blow had been struck at the liberty of Englishmen; the writ for the levying of "SHIP MONEY"--that word of lasting memory in the annals of the nation--had been issued; a tax as startling as it was novel, that had been raked up from among the dust of forgotten records, had been reimposed. Hampden had resisted it, and earned for himself thereby a cheap immortality. Ship money was in all men's ears a hated word; Brereton's heart was stirred within him, and he quitted his rural retirement, with its mournful associations, to join in the great struggle against kingly prerogative. It was the levying of this obnoxious tax that first brought him into collision with the constituted authorities. As previously stated, he had inherited an estate in Chester--the Nunneries, given by Henry VIII. to his ancestor, Sir Urian Brereton. He maintained that these lands were exempted from rating. The Mayor of Chester ignored his claim, and much personal animosity between himself and the city was engendered in consequence. The blood of Sir William Brereton, which had been so unrighteously shed by King Henry, had not been avenged; the memory of that cruel wrong still lingered, and when, in obedience to the command of Charles,