CHAPTER XI. THE ANCIENT FAMILY OF WYCHE, OR DE LA WYCHE, OF ALDERLEY, CHESHIRE. {245a} THE ancient family of Wyche, or De la Wyche, was located at a very early period at Davenham, and afterwards removed to Nether Alderley, in Cheshire, where the members of it possessed an estate, and a mansion called Soss Moss Hall, {245b} which, after being for several generations in the family, were purchased by Sir Edward Stanley, Bart., in 1753, from William Wyche, Esq.; {245c} and are now the property of Sir Edward’s descendant, Lord Stanley of Alderley. The family appears to have been of great consideration, and of long standing in the county, and one of the family, Sir Peter Wyche, was ambassador to Constantinople, in the reign of Charles I.; {245d} he was first cousin of Richard Wyche, the first of the family who settled at Alderley. The armorial bearings of the members of the family were, “Azure, a pile ermine; crest, an arm embowed azure, cuffed ermine, holding a trefoil vert.” {246a} In the second volume of Edmonson’s _Heraldry_, the crest is rather differently stated, viz., crest, “a dexter arm embowed, habited gules, turned up or; holding in the hand proper a sprig vert.” In Lysons’ _Magna Britannia_ the family is named {246b} amongst the Cheshire families still resident in the county, whose descent has been continued in an uninterrupted male line for more than three centuries, and some of them for a much greater length of time. {246c} In Ormerod’s _Cheshire_ {246d} it is stated that some of the descendants of the family of Wyche were still remaining in the neighbourhood of Soss Moss Hall; that work was published in 1819: and in Lysons’ _Mag. Britannia_, {246e} which was published in 1810, it is stated that the immediate descendant of this ancient family, then (in 1810), rented a farm in the neighbourhood. It lies in my power to corroborate those statements. William Wyche, a tenant of my father, Richard Brooke, Esq., of Liverpool, resided, when those works were written, and during many years previously, on a farm which belongs to my father, {247} rather more than a mile from Soss Moss Hall; the farm, which is called the Peck Mill Farm, is in Little Warford, in the parish of Rostherne, and there is not any reason to doubt that William Wyche, the tenant, was, as he claimed to be, a lineal descendant of this ancient family. He was an old man, of limited education even for a small farmer, so much so that if he could read, he could not write perfectly. He died about 1821, and the farm was then occupied by his widow, Elizabeth Wyche, for several years, and afterwards by his son, Samuel Wyche, who was in very poor circumstances, and left it in 1839.