though upon one occasion we remember a facetious unbeliever, taking up the ponderous weapon and the parable, exclaiming in the nasal twang which sight-showers seem to think indispensable-- This is the sword of Perkyn a Legh, A blade both true and trusty, That Frenchman's blood was ne'er wiped off; Which makes it look so rusty-- when the stately cicerone strode out of the room, evidently offended at his unbecoming levity. Poor old Flower, Norroy King of Arms, we fear has much to answer for in giving the stamp of his authority to, and thus perpetuating the fable. But in the days of the maiden Queen the heralds were somewhat credulous genealogists, and much less exacting than their predecessors in the stirring times of the Plantagenet Kings. In 1575, during his "visitation" of Cheshire, Flower was a guest at Lyme, when, influenced possibly by the sumptuous hospitality of his entertainer, he not only allowed the then lord of Lyme the arms his progenitors had borne, but added to them an honourable augmentation in the shape of "an escucheon or shield of augmentacon Sable, replenished with mollets Silver, therein a man's arme bowed, holding in the hand a standard Silver, to be by the sayd Piers and his posterity for ever hereafter borne and to be used as a testimony of his ancestour's good deserts." The "shield of augmentacon," which we now see so profusely displayed at Lyme, was a handsome and well-merited addition to the coat armour of the family, but the garrulous old herald--he was then approaching eighty--in granting it, unfortunately repeated the old story, which ascribed to Sir Piers Legh, instead of to his wife's father, Sir Thomas D'Anyers, the valorous deeds by which Lyme was won, and on the strength of that grant Sir Peter added the following lines to the inscription on the monumental brass of his ancestor, which may still be seen in the Lyme Chapel in Macclesfield Church:-- This Perkin serv'd King Edward the Third and the Black Prince his sonne in all their warres in France and was at the Battle of Cressie, and had Lyme given him for that service. Raphael Hollinshead, the chronicler, a Cheshire man and a contemporary of Flower, in his work, published in 1577, repeats the statement with much circumstantial detail and an equal lack of accuracy. Describing the scene on that glorious August day, he says:--