and the date 1705, from which we gather that it was erected by Hugh, the twelfth Lord Willoughby, and the Lady Honora, his wife, in the earlier years of Queen Anne's reign. On the side is a square panel that was formerly adorned with the armorial ensigns of the house, but the carved stone-work was taken away some few years ago, and, as we were told, when last heard of was waiting for a claimant at a remote railway station. The house itself has been rebuilt, and is now tenanted by a farmer, a fragment of masonry on one side being the only portion of the original mansion remaining. The connection of the Willoughbys with this part of Lancashire dates from about the middle of the seventeenth century, when Thomas Willoughby acquired lands in the neighbourhood by his marriage with Eleanor, daughter of Hugh Whittal, or Whittle, of Horwich, the representative of an old Puritan family, ranking as substantial yeomen, and a descendant, in all likelihood, of that Ralph Whittal of whom Oliver Heywood makes mention when, alluding to his boyish experiences, he says:--"Many days of prayer have I known my father keep among God's people; yea, I remember a whole night wherein he, Dr. Bradshaw, Adam Fearniside, Thomas Crompton, and several more did pray all night in a parlour at Ralph Whittal's, upon occasion of King Charles demanding the five members of the House of Commons.[11] Such a night of prayers, tears, and groans I was never present at in all my life. The case was extraordinary and the work extraordinary."[12] The Willoughbys were a family of ancient and illustrious lineage, deriving their patronymic from the manor of the same name in Lincolnshire, where the parent stock had been seated almost from the time of Duke William of Normandy. One of them, Sir William Willoughby, in the reign of Henry III., signed the cross--in those days the highest object of human ambition--and accompanied the young Prince Edward in the expedition to Palestine to recover the holy places from the Moslem, and, in allusion to some now long forgotten exploit there, adopted a Saracen's head for his crest, which, on the Darwinian principle, has since developed into the "Black Lad," the sign, at the present day, of the village hostelry at Rivington. His warlike spirit was inherited by his descendants, who shared in the glories of Crescy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, and on many a well-fought field besides; bore their part in the sanguinary struggle between the rival houses of York and Lancaster, and were present at the final fight on Bosworth field--which alike put an end to feudalism and the power of the barons--when the victorious Richmond ascended the throne and terminated the fratricidal strife by twining the white rose with the red. In acknowledgment of their valorous deeds, they were at different times ennobled by the titles of Lords Willoughby of Eresby, of Broke, of Parham, and of Monblay and Beaumesguil.