While these events were transpiring negotiations were set on foot for a marriage, for which a dispensation was obtained, the contracting parties being, as stated, related in the fourth as well as the third degree of consanguinity, and before the year had closed Piers Legh had taken to himself a wife in the person of his kinswoman, Margaret D'Anyers, the widow of Sir John Savage. By this time, or shortly after, he must have regained the King's favour, for in August, 1390, a commission was issued directing him and others therein named to hear and determine all felonies committed within the borough of Macclesfield, and a second commission empowered him to determine in like manner all felonies, misdemeanours, and breaches of the peace committed within the forest and hundred of Macclesfield. At that time the forest comprised about one-third of the entire hundred, and included within its limits the larger portion of the great parish of Prestbury. It had belonged to the Earls of Chester until the extinction of the local earldom in 1237, when it passed to the Crown, and was thereafter reserved for the Royal hunting and made subject to the forest laws, which were very severe against any who should presume to make free with the King's venison--the killing of a deer being accounted an offence as serious as the killing of a man, and punishable with equal severity. A further evidence of the renewed confidence of the King is found in the fact that on the 6th April, 1391, Piers Legh was appointed by the Queen Consort--"the good Queen Anne," as she was called by the people--steward of her lands in the Macclesfield Hundred. In the month of August following, he was commanded to arrest all malefactors and disturbers of the peace within the hundred, and made one of the King's justices for the same, with directions to hold three courts itinerant or _in eyre_, the proceedings at which were of the nature of those at a court of assize, the penalty for non-attendance when summoned thereto being outlawry, with forfeiture of goods. In January, 1395, he was named equitator or rider of the forest, his special duties being to attend the King in person whenever he should hunt in the forest; and this office he had subsequently conferred upon him for life, and also, in conjunction with his brother, that of keeper of the park of Macclesfield.