comparatively neglected and allowed to fall into decay, and in 1597, as appears by an inscription on one of the beams, he set about repairing the ravages which time had made, thoroughly reinstated it, and at the same time adorned the wall of the great staircase with an heraldic shield of eight quarterings, which may be seen at the present day. On the 2nd July, 1598, just a month before the death of the illustrious Lord Burleigh, the hoary minister, in whom Old experience did attain To something like prophetic strain, he attended at the Royal Palace in Greenwich, and there received the honour of knighthood at the hands of Queen Elizabeth. Two years later--43 Elizabeth--he was elected to represent the county of Chester in Parliament, in the place of Sir William Beeston of Beeston, Knight, his co-representative being Sir Thomas Holcroft, of Vale Royal, and the same year, having completed the restoration of his house at Bradley, he rendered the like good service to the church which his ancestors had founded at Disley, re-roofing it and putting the fabric in a state of complete repair. While this work was going on he was busied in making important additions to his territorial estate, having entered into a contract with Roger and Hamer Bruche for the purchase of their ancestral domain of Bruche, with the hall and lands pertaining to it, which thenceforward formed part of the Legh estates. On the 24th March, 1603, the most glorious reign in our country's annals was brought to a close; it was a sad day for "merrie England," for it was that on which, in the royal palace at Richmond, in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign, worn out with the cares of State and wearied with the fierce contest between her intensely womanly nature and her sense of duty as the queen of a great people, the most powerful and most beloved monarch in Europe, Queen Elizabeth, lay upon her cushions wrestling with death, and terminated a long life of power, prosperity, and glory. Within three short months of that day death had cast a shadow over the home of Sir Peter Legh. On the 23rd July, 1603, he had the misfortune to lose his wife, the Lady Margaret Legh, who was then in her thirty-third year. She appears to have been staying in London at the time, for her body was buried in the church of Fulham, in Middlesex, where a sumptuous monument with her effigy upon it was erected to her memory, and which may still be seen near the north door of the chancel. She is represented as seated beneath an arched canopy with an infant upon her lap and another by her side. Over the head is a shield of arms, and on the face of the tomb is the following inscription:--