Shortly after he came of age Thomas Stanley married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Pytts, of Kyre, in Worcestershire, and in 1634 he was honoured with the shrievalty of his native county. The time was an anxious one. It was the year preceding the arbitrary levy of ship-money, when the storm was gathering that ere long was to break with such disastrous force upon the head of the ill-fated Charles. When the sword was drawn the head of the Alderley Stanleys ranged himself on the side of those who contended for the privileges of Parliament in opposition to Kingly prerogative, and who were resolved upon upholding the bulwark of the national liberties; he does not appear, however, to have engaged in any of the great military enterprises which marked that stirring period, the help he rendered to the cause being limited in a great measure to the discharge of the civil functions which devolved upon him as a magistrate, and in the performance of which he was very zealous and energetic. His name is of frequent occurrence in the church books in his own part of the county, and when, during the time of the Usurpation, marriage, as a religious ceremony, was forbidden by the law, and transformed into a civil contract to be entered into before a justice of the peace, Mr. Stanley appears to have been one of the magistrates most frequently performing the office. Though a staunch Puritan, he can hardly be said to have been a violent supporter of the party, and except in the assiduous discharge of his magisterial office he took little part in the events that were then transpiring. Possibly it was the moderation shown in those exciting times that led to his being one of the Cheshire gentlemen selected for a baronetcy on the occasion of the Restoration of Charles II., and curiously enough his name appears first on the list from the county on whom that dignity was conferred. The hall at Weever had up to this time been the principal residence of the family. Some time before 1640 Thomas Stanley added to his possessions by the purchase of Chorley Hall, an old mansion of the Davenports, in Wilmslow parish; afterwards he greatly improved the ancestral home at Alderley, and erected in front of it a handsome stone-arched gateway, two of the pillars of which may still be seen in the wall bordering the roadside; it is said that he also planted the beech woods bordering upon the Mere, which now form such a pleasant adjunct of the park.