dated 18th October, 1597, she appoints the Lord Keeper Egerton, whom she designates her “wellbeloved sonne,” one of her executors, and bequeaths to him “one ringe of Goulde having thereon a Dyamond.” She is buried at Astbury, where her altar-tomb, with a recumbent effigy upon the top, may still be seen. [Note 32: Lady Egerton, who remained a firm adherent of the ancient faith, is frequently named in the prosecutions for recusancy under the severe statutes of Elizabeth, but appeals for mitigation were often and successfully made through, as would seem, the influence of the Lord Keeper Egerton.] Thomas Legh, the first husband of Mary Grosvenor, did not long enjoy possession of the ancestral domains, his death occurring at Eaton, May 17, 1548, the year in which he attained his majority. The only issue by his marriage was a son, Thomas, aged one year at the time of his death, so that the broad lands of Adlington were once more held in ward through the infancy of the heir. On the 21st April, 1548, three weeks before his death, Thomas Legh granted to his wife’s eldest brother, Thomas Grosvenor, of Eaton, all the lands which his family had held in Belgrave from the time of the marriage of Sir Robert Legh with the heiress of Sir Thomas Belgrave, _circa_ 1385; and four days later he settled the remainder of his estates, including “the Hall of Adlington,” in trust for the benefit of himself and his wife and his heirs in tail male. Sir Urian Brereton, who married the widow of Sir John Stanley, the quondam recluse, seems to have acquired, with the lady, Sir John’s craving for the Prestbury tithes, for in 1538, during the minority of Thomas Legh the elder, he obtained from the Abbot of St. Werburg’s, in the names of himself and John Broughton, the reversion of the lease of the manor and advowson, to commence on the expiry of the one for 40 years renewed to George Legh in 1524; and this reversion was afterwards purchased by Richard and John Grosvenor, the brothers of Mary, the wife of Thomas Legh, in trust, and to prevent their alienation from the other Adlington properties. But a great revolution in religious thought and action was then gradually gaining strength and power, and the day was near at hand when the monks and their system were to be overthrown. On the dissolution of St. Werburg’s Abbey the manor and advowson of the church of Prestbury were granted to the Dean and Chapter of the newly-founded Cathedral of Chester. They did not, however, long enjoy possession; William Clyve, the third dean, and two of the prebendaries, were confined in the Fleet by procurement of Sir Richard Cotton, of Werblington, comptroller of the King’s household, a Hampshire knight, who appears to have shared the acquisitive properties of his elder brother, Sir George Cotton, another courtier and favourite of the King, who had had conferred upon himself the dissolved abbey and the greater part of the demesne of Combermere, in Cheshire, and who,