Sir Urian Legh, as we have said, died in 1627; and his eldest son, Thomas, was approaching the meridian of life when he succeeded as heir to the family estates. It was a memorable epoch in English history, for in that year Buckingham, the King’s favourite, by his inglorious expedition to France, had brought dishonour on his country’s arms, and was impeached in Parliament; and in the following year the Commons, before they would grant the supplies necessary to retrieve the disaster, extorted from Charles the Petition of Rights, confirming the liberties that were already the birthright of Englishmen—a measure which, had it been accepted by its authors as final, would have spared the country the calamities of civil war. Thomas Legh had married in his father’s lifetime (1610) a rich heiress, one of the daughters of Sir John Gobert, of Boresworth, in Leicestershire; with whom he acquired considerable property, including the estate of Clumber,[34] forming part of the royal manor and forest of Sherwood, which subsequently passed into the possession of the Pelham-Clintons, Dukes of Newcastle; so that by the time he came into his patrimony he had added considerably to the territorial possessions as well as to the social status of his house. On the death of Sir John Gobert, dame Lucy, his widow, appears to have resided with her daughter and son-in-law at Adlington, and to have remained with them up to the time of her death in 1634. In 1628-9 Thomas Legh was chosen to fill the office of high sheriff of the county, a distinction that was again conferred on him in the year 1642-3. The year of the second appointment was a portentous one, for the seeds of civil strife which had been sown in previous years had ripened, and King and Commoner—sovereign and subject—were then placing themselves in open array against each other. The Royalists of Cheshire, though in a minority, were prompt in obeying the King’s summons. Thomas Legh, in whom the blaze of youth was then sinking into the deep burning fire of middle age, for fifty summers had passed over his head, at once placed himself at the disposal of his sovereign, and had a colonel’s commission in the Royalist army; Thomas, his eldest son, had a lieutenant-colonel’s commission; whilst his four younger sons—John, Charles, Peter, and Henry—and his brother Urian, who had previously been in the wars in the Low Countries, had also commissions. [Note 34: A recent writer says (_Contributions towards a History of Prestbury, p. 102_): “Clumber appears to have been sequestrated from the Leghs during the Civil War, and never restored.” This is not quite accurate, for Thomas Legh, who died in 1687, by his will, dated 20th August, 1686, bequeathed to his younger son, Richard Legh, and his heirs for ever, “all that mannour or capitall messuage called Clumber, in the county of Nottingham, and all buildings, tenements, and hereditaments in Clumber aforesaid.”]