If military achievement be claimed in justification of the proverb--“Cheshire, chief of men”--quoted by Drayton, it must be remembered there was a rival in the field. The “Men of Kent,” who boldly said to William the Conqueror-- “We are ready to offer thee either Peace or War at thy own choice and election--Peace with faithful obedience, if thou wilt permit us to enjoy our liberties; War, and that most deadly, if thou deny it”-- have a prior claim for daring manhood. But while Grose, the antiquary, insinuated that the proverb was given to our noble selves _by_ our noble selves, it may, after all, have had no more serious signification than that Cheshire men always boasted of their isolation from other English people. Truly the warrior-roll forms a long list of brave and hardy men, from Roger Lacy, the Constable of Cheshire in 1200, that magnanimous champion of war in both France and Wales, down to Field-Marshal Combermere of Salamanca and Bhurtpore fame; but memorials abound of heroic endeavour in the arts of peace, in law and letters, as well as in the field. Of famous lawyers were Lord Chancellor Egerton and Sir Ranulph Crewe, the Speaker of the House of Commons, in the seventeenth century. In the following century were Randle Wilbraham, ancestor of the Wilbrahams of Rode, and of Lathom House (now Lord Skelmersdale) in Lancashire; Sir John Chesshyre, who founded in 1733 a library at Halton, and was buried at Runcorn in 1738 with this epitaph:-- “An honest man’s the noblest work of God”: and Richard P. Arden, born at Stockport in 1745, who became Lord Chief Justice, Baron Alvanley, and died in 1804. Of talented men of letters were Dr. Broome, the poet, born at Haslington in 1689; and in our own time Lord de Tabley, eminent as poet, botanist, and author of the first work on the subject of book-plates; Sir Philip Egerton, the learned geologist and mineralogist; the Rev. A. P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster; and other worthies whose names are enshrined in the volumes of the _National Biographical Dictionary_. Of benefactors of their fellow-men were James Neild, born at Knutsford in 1774, the philanthropic prison-visitor; the Duke of Bridgewater, pioneer of canal construction; George Wilbraham, Esq., of Delamere House, who died in 1813, and was one of the first to introduce an improved system of agriculture into the county; the first Lord Tollemache, who in his lifetime was everywhere spoken of as Cheshire’s model landlord; and many others who, holding positions of trust for the general good, fulfilled their duties with integrity and honour, and to whom we are all debtors. There is another local proverb, expressed in curious rhyme and alliteration, that relates to the number and distribution of four Cheshire family names:-- As many Leighs as fleas; Massies as asses; Crewes as crows; and Davenports as dogs’ tails.