The youngest of the two daughters, Margery, married for her first husband Sir Robert Barton, of Smithells, in Lancashire, and concerning their union tradition tells a pathetic story which Mr. Leigh has enshrined in verse and given to the world in his entertaining "Lays and Legends of Cheshire," under the title of "The Loves of Sir Robert Barton and Margery Legh." Sir Peter Legh outlived his eldest son, also named Peter, who died at Haydock about the year 1570, and was succeeded by his grandson, who bore the same baptismal name. He was born in 1563, and must therefore have been in his twenty-seventh year when he succeeded to the patrimonial lands. While yet a minor he had received a training well fitted to enable him to discharge the duties that would devolve upon him as the owner of extensive estates. He had been a frequent guest of the Earl of Derby, and in the lordly hall of Lathom and at the kingly court of Castle Rushen he acquired a grace and dignity of manner, and at Gray's Inn, where he entered as a student, he gained a knowledge of the laws which in due course he would be called to administer. When a youth of fourteen he acted as page to Henry, Earl of Derby, and held up his train when he made a visit of ceremony to the town of Liverpool, and seven years later he was in the same Earl's suite as "one of his gentlemen waiters," when, as Elizabeth's ambassador, he went to invest the King of France with the Order of the Garter. In September, 1585, four months after he had entered at Gray's Inn, he married Margaret, daughter of Sir Gilbert Gerard, of Bromley, Master of the Rolls. For some cause or other the marriage had been delayed, as the settlement bears date 1st June, 1579. In the following year he was called upon to bear his part in the Great Council of the Nation, being chosen one of the representatives in Parliament for the ancient borough of Wigan, his wife's kinsman, William Gerard, being his co-representative. The time was one of much anxiety, consequent upon the well-founded apprehensions of a Spanish invasion and the decisive indications of plots for the deposition of Elizabeth and the recognition of Mary's claim to the English crown--that in which the fierce indignation in England against the bigoted King of Spain led the Government to break through the superstitious love of peace and boldly encounter Philip on his own territory. In 1589 Mr. Legh was again elected one of the representatives of Wigan, and in the following year his grandfather, Sir Peter Legh, passed to his rest, when he succeeded as next heir male to the family estates. His wealth and social status marked him as a fitting person to be entrusted with the shrievalty of Cheshire, and in 1595 that dignity was conferred upon him. Proud of his ancestry, he was no less proud of the home of his ancestors. His grandfather had rebuilt the mansion at Lyme and spent much of his time there, maintaining great estate; the older mansion of Bradley had in consequence been