English literature -- England -- Lancashire; Legends -- England -- Lancashire
"Yestreen I dreamed a doleful dream,
I fear there will be sorrow!
I dreamed I pu'd the heather green
With my true love on Yarrow.
"She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair,
She searched his wounds all thorough,
She kissed them till her lips grew red,
On the dowie howms of Yarrow."
Warrington is described by Camden as remarkable for its lords,
surnamed Butler, or Boteler, of Bewsey. This name was derived from
their office, Robert le Pincerna having discharged the duties of that
station under Ranulph, Earl of Chester, in 1158, hence taking the
surname. Almeric Butler, his descendant, having married Beatrice,
daughter and co-heir of Matthew Villiers, Lord of Warrington, became
possessed of the barony.
A MS. in the Bodleian Library gives the following statement, which,
though manifestly incorrect in respect of names and particulars, may
yet be relied on with regard to the main facts, corroborated by
tradition, which still preserves the memory of this horrible event.
"Sir John Butler, Knt., was slaine in his bedde by the procurement of
the Lord Standley, Sir Piers Leigh and Mister William Savage joining
with him in that action (corrupting his servants), his porter setting
a light in a window to give knowledge upon the water that was about
his house at Bewsey (where your way to ... comes). They came over the
moate in lether boats, and so to his chamber, where one of his
servants, named Houlcrofte, was slaine, being his chamberlaine; the
other basely betrayed his master;--they payed him a great reward, and
so coming away with him, they hanged him at a tree in Bewsey
Parke;--after this Sir John Butler's lady prosecuted those that slew
her husband, and ... £20 for that suite, but, being married to Lord
Grey, he made her suite voyd, for which reason she parted from her
husband and came into Lancashire, saying, If my lord will not let me
have my will of my husband's enemies, yet shall my body be buried by
him; and she caused a tomb of alabaster to be made, where she lyeth on
the ... hand of her husband, Sir John Butler.
It is further stated in the MS. that the occasion of this murder was
because of a request from Earl Derby that Sir John would make one of
the train which followed him on his going to meet King Henry VII., and
which request was discourteously refused.
The following extract from Froissart may not be deemed uninteresting,
as a record of one of our Lancashire worthies, Sir John Butler of
Bewsey, relating how he was rescued from the hands of those who sought
his life at the siege of Hennebon:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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