In 1391 Thomas Fitton was appointed one of a number of influential persons in Cheshire who were constituted a commission to levy a subsidy of 3,000 marks (£2,000) in the city of Chester, on account of the King’s confirmation of the old charters belonging to that city. He died in 1397, and was succeeded by his son, Sir Lawrence Fitton, then aged 22, who married Agnes Hesketh, a daughter of the house of Rufford, in Lancashire. This Sir Lawrence, who held the lordship for the long period of 60 years, fills no inconsiderable space in the annals of the county. He was frequently one of the forest justices in eyre, the assizes being then held in Macclesfield, and took an active part in the stirring events of his time. When, in 1399, Richard the Second went over to Ireland to avenge the death of Roger Mortimer, by chastising the Irish chieftains who had risen in insurrection, he, in order to increase the strength of his Cheshire guard by a fresh levy, issued his orders to Sir Lawrence Fitton and others commanding them to summon the best archers in the Macclesfield hundred between 16 and 60, and to select a number to go to Ireland in his train, who were to be at Chester on the morrow of the Ascension of our Lord for inspection by the King’s officers. The King did not actually sail till the 4th of June, when he was joined by Sir Lawrence Fitton, who, as appears by an entry on the Recognizance Rolls of the palatinate, had protection granted him on his departure; and at this time, under date June 5, we find a licence to William Prydyn, parson of Gawsworth, Robert de Tounley, John Tryket, and Matthew del Mere to act as his attorneys and to look after his affairs while absent in Ireland on the King’s service. “When the shepherd is absent with his dog the wolf easily leaps into the fold.” So says the proverb, and Richard had unpleasant experience of the truthfulness of it, for scarcely had he loosed his sails before some of the more discontented of his nobles at home were plotting for his overthrow. Within a month of his departure Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, the only son of old John of Gaunt, who had been banished the kingdom, landed at Ravenspur, near Hull—as Shakspere writes— The banish’d Bolingbroke repeats himself, And with uplifted arms is safe arrived At Ravenspurg,