The hills and valleys in the vicinity of Whaley and Chapel-en-le-Frith are
equally delightful. Macclesfield has one matter of attraction--its important
silk manufactories. In other respects it is externally perfectly
uninteresting. The Earl of Chester, son of Henry III., made Macclesfield a
free borough, consisting of a hundred and twenty burgesses, and various
privileges were conferred by Edward III., Richard II., Edward IV., Elizabeth,
and Charles II.
One of the churches, St. Michael's, was founded by Eleanor, Queen of Edward
I., in 1278. It has been partly rebuilt, but there are two chapels, one the
property of the Marquis of Cholmondeley, which was built by Thomas Savage,
Archbishop of York, whose heart was buried there in 1508. The other belongs
to the Leghs of Lyme. A brass plate shows that the estate of Lyme was
bestowed upon an ancestor for recovering a standard at the battle of Cressy.
He was afterwards beheaded at Chester as a supporter of Richard II. Another
ancestor, Sir Piers Legh, fell fighting at the battle of Agincourt. We do
not know what manner of men the Leghs of Lyme of the present generation are,
but certainly pride is pardonable in a family with an ancestry which took
part in deeds not only recorded by history, but immortalized by Shakspeare.
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