Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/326

 Colley, of Sir Alexander Rigby, knt., of Layton Hall, High-sheriff of the county of Lancashire in 1691, whose father had erected a monument to the memory of Sir Thomas Tyldesley near the spot where he was slain.

During the year 1690, when the dethroned monarch James II. invaded Ireland in the hope of regaining his crown, Thomas Tyldesley prepared a secret chamber for his reception in the interior of the Hall. The closet or hiding-place was afterwards known as the King's Cupboard. The Pretender, also, was reported to have been concealed for some time within Fox Hall, and although it is certain that this aspirant to the British throne was never within its friendly walls, still the secret recesses, called "priests' holes," with which it appears to have been liberally provided, formed excellent refuges for the clergy and other members of the Romish Church, who on the slightest alarm were enclosed therein, and so secluded from the prying eyes of their hostile countrymen until the danger had passed. These latter incidents did not take place until after the decease of Thomas Tyldesley, who died in 1715, shortly before the outbreak of the rebellion, and was buried at Churchtown, near Garstang. His son Edward, who succeeded him, was arrested for taking part with the rebels, and escaped conviction and punishment only by the mercy or sympathy of the jury, who after returning their verdict of acquittal were severely censured by the presiding judge for their incompetency and disaffection. Edward Tyldesley died in 1725. At what date Fox Hall passed out of the hands of the Tyldesleys, it is impossible to trace, but it is doubtful whether the Edward here named ever resided there, as he is always described as of Myerscough Lodge, another seat of the family. Mary Tyldesley, the widow of his father, whom it will be remembered he married as his second wife, was living there as owner in 1720, and from that circumstance we must infer that the Blackpool house was bequeathed to her by her husband Thomas Tyldesley, and that the other portion only of the estates fell to Edward, the son of his first marriage and his heir. Poverty seems to have overtaken the family with rapid strides; their different lands and residences were either mortgaged or sold, and whether Fox Hall