Of a verity, those were stirring times, and whatever tenure men might have of their lands they had but little of their heads. Henry gained the throne almost without a struggle, but his daring act of usurpation was but the sowing of the seed which ripened and bore fruit in that "purple testimony of bleeding war," the fierce struggle of the Red and White Roses--a contest which, after having for well nigh half a century filled the country with commotion and drenched it in civil slaughter, left it in a state of exhaustion, with the flower of its nobility destroyed. Piers Legh had not completed more than ten years of his married life when the unrelenting Bolingbroke caused his head to be placed on the highest pinnacle of the east gate of Chester. His widow, Margaret D'Anyers, survived him nearly thirty years, her death occurring June 24, 1428. The issue of the marriage was, in addition to a daughter, Margaret, who became the wife of Sir John de Ashton, two sons--Peter, who succeeded as heir, and John, who married Alice, daughter and heiress of John Alcock, of Ridge, an estate in the township of Sutton, near Macclesfield, and from them sprang the Leghs of Ridge, Rushall, Stoneleigh, and Stockwell; the last representative of the parent line, Edward Legh, up to the time of his death, which occurred only a few years ago, residing at the Limes, Lewisham, near London. Peter, the eldest son of Piers Legh, could only have been a youth of some eight summers when his father met his untimely end. If-- Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,