That on the Sunday after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, two years ago, viz., on the 27th September, 1282, Philip de Bamville, with his wife and family, was at a banquet given by Master John de Stanley (an ecclesiastic apparently, priests at that time who had an academical degree being entitled to be called master), on which occasion Joan (Bamville), suspecting that her father intended to marry her to her step-mother's son, took means to avoid it by repairing with William de Stanley to Astbury Church, where they uttered the following mutual promise, he saying, "Joan, I plight thee my troth to take and hold thee as my lawful wife until my life's end," and she replying, "I Joan take thee William as my lawful husband." The witnesses were Adam de Hoton and Dawe de Coupelond. By this marriage William Stanley became owner of one-third of the manor of Storeton (the remaining two-thirds he subsequently acquired), and also the hereditary bailiwick or chief rangership of the Forest of Wirral, which then overspread the peninsula lying between the estuaries of the Mersey and the Dee, and which was so thickly wooded that, according to the old saying:-- From Blacon point to Hilbree A squirrel may leap from tree to tree. After this marriage the Stanleys migrated from the Stony-lea in Staffordshire to their newly acquired home in Cheshire, and at the same time Sir William, in allusion to his office of hereditary forester of Wirral, assumed the arms which have ever since been used by his descendants in place of those borne by his ancestors, viz., _argent_, on a bend _azure_, three bucks' heads caboshed _or_; in other words, over a shield of silver a belt of blue crossed diagonally with three bucks' heads displayed thereon. Another and still more important addition was made to the patrimonial lands of the Stanleys through the marriage of Sir William de Stanley, the fourth in direct descent from the first of the name who held the forestership of Wirral, with Margery, only daughter and heir of Sir William de Hooton of Hooton, a township midway between Chester and Birkenhead, and occupying one of the most delightful situations which the banks of the estuary can boast, commanding, as Ormerod says, "a peculiarly beautiful view of the Forest Hills, the bend of the Mersey, and the opposite shore of Hale, and shaded with venerable oaks which the Wirral breezes have elsewhere rarely afforded." From this marriage descended the Stanleys of Hooton and their offshoots, among whom may be mentioned that Sir William Stanley who, in the reign of Elizabeth, betrayed the trust committed to him by the English Government in the base surrender of Deventer to the King of Spain.