_Thomas Leigh_, of Adlington, in ye said countie (Cheshire), by deeds dated ye 16th of November, A.D. 1648, hath settled ye tithes of _Prestbury_, of ye value of £56 per ann. upon George Booth, Esq., in trust for ye minister of _Boseley_, and his successors for ever. Consideration £560. Before the close of the year, in pursuance of an order of Parliament, he was ordered to pay £220, being an assessment of one-twentieth part of the estate. Subsequently he was required to furnish a particular account of his real and personal estate, which being done, it was submitted to Major-general Worsley and the Commissioners then assembled at Middlewich, in February, 1655. In November, 1656, he had the misfortune to lose his wife, who had borne him a family of six sons and four daughters. She was buried at Prestbury, November 22, and at the very time she lay dead his estate was again decimated and himself secured. Whereupon he presented a petition to the Lord Protector, alleging that he had behaved peaceably under the then government, and praying that he might no longer be looked upon as an enemy, but might partake of the Protector’s grace and favour. The petition was referred to Worsley and the Commissioners for securing the peace of the county, who in January, 1656-7, reported that since his composition he had behaved peaceably and respectably to the Parliament party, soldiers and friends, and had not been concerned in any plots against the Protector or Parliament to their knowledge; that he had constantly paid all taxes for the use of the Commonwealth; had sent forth such forces, both horse and foot, for the service of the late Parliament as required; and had, moreover, offered his personal assistance for them at the battle of Worcester; and, finally, that they considered him a person capable of favour. From this time he appears to have been left in undisturbed possession of his property. He survived these troublous times, and lived to see the overthrow of the Commonwealth and the restoration of monarchy in the person of Charles the Second. In 1662 he was nominated sheriff of his native county—the only recognition he ever received of the losses sustained and the great services which he and his family had rendered to the cause of the Stuarts. Fortunately for his house, those losses were in some measure made up from another source. In the year in which he served the office of sheriff his late wife’s mother, Dame Mary Bolles, who, in 1635, had been created a baroness in her own right, the only instance of such a creation, died, leaving property, to the value, it is said, of £20,000 to be divided between her two sons-in-law, Sir William Dalston and Thomas Legh—in the case of the latter a welcome addition to an estate which during the usurpation had been so greatly impoverished. The fortune thus acquired he seems to have employed in improving and extending his territorial possessions, for about the year 1669 he