John de Legh, who acquired the lordship of Adlington by his marriage with Agnes de Corona, could boast a lineage as ancient and honourable as that of the Conqueror himself. When the subjugation of England was accomplished the Norman invader was enabled to reward his faithful followers out of the numerous forfeitures that had accrued through the fruitless insurrections of Earl Edwin and the other Saxon nobles. Hugh d’Avranches, or Hugh Lupus, as he was more generally designated, from the wolf’s head which he bore for arms, and which may have been given as symbolical of his gluttony, a vice Oderic says he was greatly addicted to, though he does not appear to have been with the invading army at Hastings, having followed the victor in the succeeding year, was largely instrumental in establishing William upon the English throne. In acknowledgment of his services, as well as for his valour in reducing the Welsh to obedience, he had conferred upon him in 1070 the whole of the fair county of Cheshire, “to hold of the King as freely by the sword as the King himself held the realm of England by the crown”—he was, in fact, a Count-Palatine, and all but a king himself. Thoroughly appreciating the conditions of his tenure, he, in order the more effectually to secure it, divided his palatinate into eight or more baronies, which he distributed among his warlike followers upon the condition of supporting him with the sword as he was in turn to support the King. He also established his officers as well as his own courts of law, in which any offence against the dignity of “the Sword of Chester” was as cognisable as the like offence would have been at Westminster against the dignity of the Royal crown.[28] [Note 28: The “Sword of Chester” is now preserved in the British Museum. The last instance of the exercise of the Earl’s privileges was in 1597 when the Baron of Kinderton’s Court tried and executed Hugh Stringer for murder.] One of the eight barons created by Hugh Lupus was Gilbert, a younger son of Eudo, Earl of Blois, and a first cousin of the Conqueror. He was one of the combatants at Hastings, where he received the honour of knighthood for his valour in the field, and he afterwards rendered important services against Edgar Atheling, as well as in the subjugation of the Welsh, for which welcome aid Earl Hugh rewarded him with considerable estates in the newly-acquired county, and he chose Kinderton as the seat of his barony. Like his patron, he was devoted to the pleasure of the chase, and from that circumstance acquired the name of Venables _(Venator abilis)_, which some of his descendants have retained to the present day, in the same way that another Norman chieftain, a nephew of Hugh Lupus, and a mighty hunter withal, took the name of Grosvenor—Gilbert _Le Gros venor_—which is now perpetuated by the ducal house of Westminster.