Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/94

 razed. Quere, whether the site of a Roman castrum at this place, mentioned by the Rev. John Whitaker, was not the old situation of Sir John Chetham's house? This land is now owned by the present Earl of Derby (1780), who likewise now owns one half of Rhodes estate, and one half of the old hall, which is now divided into two dwellings. On a chimneypiece in one of the parlours I observed the letters 'H.P.,' which recalled to memory that this house was once the residence of the Prestwich family of Prestwich, one of which family founded Prestwich church. All or great part of this estate was sold by the sequestrators in the time of the civil war in the reign of Charles I., and one half was bought by a Mr Fox, whose family hath lived there till very lately. But after the Restoration, Charles, Earl of Derby, son of that Earl who was beheaded at Bolton, laid claim to the share that Mr Fox had bought, who was determined to keep his purchase. The Earl, on finding this, had recourse to the following stratagem:—It was pretended that two oxen had been stolen from Knowsley; but they were privily conveyed one night into the shippon of Mr Fox. Persons were immediately dispatched all over the country in search of the beasts, which were found in the shippon of Mr Fox, who was seized on as the thief, and threatened with being sent to prison. Mr Fox, knowing his innocence, and that the charge was a juggle, was willing to go to prison; but the persons sent by the Earl, and instructed how to proceed, finding this, offered him the Earl's pardon on condition he would deliver up the land, which Mr Fox still refused, and persisted in going to prison. But when he had got a little distance from the house, his wife and children followed, and persuaded him to hearken to the terms proposed by the Earl's servants; who then offered him his