Brereton was their chief, but he was their comrade also; if he trained and disciplined them he shared also their hardships, their dangers, and their privations. He was prodigal of his own safety, and his prodigality increased their faith and inspired their confidence, and thus enabled them not only to withstand the reckless daring--the chivalrous bravery of the Cavaliers--but eventually to overcome and scatter those who counted their lives as nothing in defence of their sovereign's cause. Both Rycroft and Vicars[44] give what purport to be portraits of Brereton, but they are rude and unsatisfactory, and there is a doubt as to their authenticity. An unfriendly hand ("Mysteries of the Good Old Cause," 12mo., 1663, p. 3) has described him as "a notable man at a thanksgiving dinner, having terrible long teeth and a prodigious stomach to turn the archbishop's chapel at Croydon into a kitchen, also to swallow up that palace and lands at a morsel." The subsequent history of Handforth Hall is soon told, As previously stated, Sir William Brereton lost his first wife--a daughter of Sir George Booth, of Dunham--before the breaking out of the Civil Wars; he again entered the marriage state, his second wife being Cicely, daughter of Sir William Skeffington, of Fisherwick, in Leicestershire, the widow of his former comrade in arms, Edward Mytton, of Weston, in Staffordshire, but as no mention is made of this lady in his will the presumption is that she also predeceased him. At the time of his death there were living four daughters, two by the first and two by the second marriage, and one son, Thomas Brereton, the sole heir, who succeeded to the baronetcy, and who was then married to the Lady Theodosia, youngest daughter of Humble, first Baron Ward, of Birmingham, ancestor of the present Lord Dudley. This Sir Thomas, who was born in 1632, died childless on the 7th of January, 1673, and was buried on the 17th of the same month in the Handforth Chapel, at Cheadle, where there is now a handsome altar tomb to his memory with his recumbent effigy resting thereon. He is represented in the plate armour of the period, with the hands uplifted and conjoined as if in supplication; the figure is bareheaded, with the long-flowing hair characteristic of the later Carolinian period, and the head rests upon a helmet surmounted with a plume of feathers. At one end is a shield, representing the arms of Brereton impaling those of Ward, and on the side are two shields--Brereton with a crescent as a mark of cadency and the badge of baronetcy, and Ward, and between these on a tablet is the following inscription:-- Here Lyeth the Body of Sr Thomas Brereton of Handforth, Barronett, who Married Theodosia Daughter to the Right Honourable Humble Lord Ward and the Lady Frances Barronesse Dudly. hee Departed this Life the 7th of January Anno Dom: 1673 Ætatis Suæ 43. [Illustration: SIR WILLIAM BRERETON.]