LEGH, Richard (1634-87), of Lyme, Prestbury, Cheshire.

The crown had granted the manor of Lyme, in south east Cheshire, to Legh’s family in 1398, and it became their principal residence.31Earwaker, E. Cheshire, ii. 291. The Leghs emerged under the Tudors as an electoral force not only in Cheshire but also Lancashire, where they owned considerable property near Warrington in the south of the county. One of Legh’s ancestors represented Lancashire in 1491; his grandfather Sir Peter Legh sat for Wigan in 1586 and 1589 and Cheshire in 1601; and his great-uncle Edward Legh served as MP for Wigan in 1597.32‘Edward Legh II’, ‘Peter or Piers Legh’, HP Commons 1558-1603; ‘Richard Legh’, HP Commons 1660-90.

Legh belonged to a cadet branch of the family – his father, a clergyman, being a younger son – and would have enjoyed a life of relative obscurity but for the death of his elder brother in infancy, of his cousin Peter Legh* who was fatally wounded in a duel in 1642, and of his uncle Francis, childless, in 1643.33Earwaker, E. Cheshire, ii. 305. As a result of these deaths, Legh inherited the family’s extensive estates in Cheshire and Lancashire.34PROB11/226, f. 381; Newton, House of Lyme, 179. The claim that he was ‘brought up as a Presbyterian’ appears to rest largely on the fact that one of the executors appointed by his uncle Francis to oversee the payment of his maintenance during his minority was the Presbyterian minister Charles Herle – the rector of the Lancashire parish of Winwick in which lay the grammar school that Legh attended.35PROB11/226, ff. 382, 383; Newton, House of Lyme, 191; ‘Richard Legh’, HP Commons 1660-90. Herle certainly corresponded with Legh during his time at university and indeed well into the 1650s.36JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to R. Legh, folder 19: Herle to Legh, 1649-58; Newton, House of Lyme, 192, 198. But if Legh imbibed Presbyterian principles from anyone it is more likely to have been his tutor at St John’s Cambridge, the puritan divine James Creswick, who was ejected in 1662.37Newton, House of Lyme, 193; Calamy Revised, 142-3.

In fact, however, there is little sign that Legh had any puritan sympathies whatsoever – indeed, quite the opposite. He was a friend and correspondent of the episcopal divine John Fell, the post-Restoration of bishop of Oxford.38JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to R. Legh, folder 18: Fell to Legh, n.d. Moreover, by June 1660, he was apparently the patron and protector of the Church of England congregation in All Saints, Marple – a chapelry in the parish of Stockport.39JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to R. Legh, folder 16: Bardsley to Legh, 10 June 1660. Certainly the minister who delivered Legh’s funeral sermon in 1687, and who claimed to have known him for almost twenty years, was adamant that he had been born and raised in a manner befitting the son of a loyal clergyman of the Church of England

in whose doctrines he was so fully instructed and so firmly established, and in whose offices he was so well satisfied and exercised, as to continue fixed in a constant and devout use of her liturgy ... and in an unalterable adherence to her communion in despite of all the arguments and motives both of friends and enemies to the contrary.40W. Shippen, The Christian’s Triumph over Death (1688), 32, 33, 41.

It is also worth noting that Legh’s mother was a Calveley, a family who have been described as ‘noted royalists’, while Legh himself was otherwise related to many of the region’s leading royalists.41P. J. Pinckney, ‘The Cheshire election of 1656’, BJRL xlix. 403, 422.

Legh attained his majority under the protectorate, and in the summer of 1656, at the age of 21, he put himself forward as a candidate in the Cheshire elections to the second protectoral Parliament. His election manager was his uncle by marriage and fellow candidate Peter Brooke*, who had been returned for the Lancashire borough of Newton, near Winwick, which the Leghs ‘largely controlled’. Brooke was also the uncle of Colonel Henry Brooke*, whose eldest son had married one of Legh’s sisters only a few months before the 1656 elections.42Cheshire RO, DBN/C/2/3-5, 7; Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 402, 403; Morrill, Cheshire, 289. Despite his royalist associations, Legh enjoyed the support of many of the Cheshire commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth, as well as that of the county sheriff Philip Egerton. He was evidently deemed politically unreliable, however, by Major-general Tobias Bridge*, who did not include him on his own slate of suitable candidates. Nevertheless, Bridge agreed to the Cheshire gentlemen’s slate so long as they undertook to remove from it the county’s leading opponent of the protectorate, the republican and regicide John Bradshawe*.43Supra, ‘Cheshire’. In the days immediately preceding the 1656 Cheshire election, the ‘gentlemen confederates’, as the Legh-Brooke-Egerton group was known, had several meetings at Legh’s house at Lyme in order to firm up their electoral strategy, which included inviting Sir George Boothe* to join them in place of Bradshawe. On election day, 20 August 1656, Boothe, Thomas Marbury, Legh and Peter Brooke were returned for the county in that order, beating off a challenge from Bradshawe and his electoral ally Sir William Brereton*.44Supra, ‘Cheshire’.

Legh was named to only five committees in the second protectoral Parliament and took no recorded part in debate.45CJ vii. 424a, 514a, 515b, 521b, 531b. Two of his committee appointments, however, concerned the introduction of the new constitutional settlement, the Humble Petition and Advice. On 27 March 1657, he was named to a committee to attend the protector in order to arrange a time and place at which the House might present him with the Humble Petition, complete with an offer of the crown.46CJ vii. 514a. On 9 April, Legh was named to a committee for satisfying the protector’s scruples on the kingship question and for explaining the House’s continued insistence that he accept the crown.47CJ vii. 521b. Several letters to Legh from Colonel Richard Standish* during the spring of 1657 strongly imply that Legh was in favour of the Humble Petition.48Infra, ‘Richard Standish’; JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to R. Legh, folder 22: R. Standish to Legh, Duxbury 17 Apr. 1657; Newton, House of Lyme, 197. One contemporary listed both Legh and Brooke among the ‘kinglings’ at Westminster – that is, those MPs who had supported offering Cromwell the crown.49[G. Wharton], A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5); In 1658, he was also listed among the leaders of a projected royalist uprising in England, but there is no firm evidence that he was involved in cavalier conspiracies during the 1650s.50Bodl. Eng. hist. e.309, p. 19.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Legh and Brooke again stood as candidates for Cheshire, but this time they had only seats to aim for rather than the four of earlier protectoral Parliaments. On the first day of the election, ‘the most part of the ancient gentry’ appeared for Legh, who duly secured the senior place.51Harl. 1929, f. 20. However, a contest then developed between Brooke and Bradshawe for the second place, which Bradshawe won through the sharp practice of the sheriff, who on this occasion was his ally.52Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 423. Addressing the voters, Bradshawe called Legh ‘a child’ and Brooke something even less complimentary (probably a bastard) and declared ‘it was not for the honour of the county to choose such’.53Harl. 1929, f. 20. Brooke petitioned against Bradshawe’s return, and Legh helped to secure a prompt hearing of the case before the committee of privileges.54Greater Manchester County RO, E17/89/26/1, 2.

Legh’s cousin Piers Legh was also returned for Newton in 1659; and one of the two young men – the clerk of the Commons simply refers to ‘Mr Leigh’ – was named to a committee set up on 13 April 1659 relating to affairs in Lancashire.55CJ vii. 638a. The next day (14 Apr.) ‘Mr. Lee’ – almost certainly Richard – appears to have been present at a meeting of the committee of privileges when the Cheshire election was debated and doubtless put the case against Bradshawe’s return very strongly – although to no effect, because the committee voted to uphold the election result.56Burton’s Diary, iv. 430. On 15 April, one of Legh’s correspondents advised him to keep his testimony to the committee ‘short and as general as you can’, but to emphasise that ‘all along ... you did apprehend that he [the sheriff] did endeavour to promote the Lord Bradshawe as to the matter of the election’.57JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to R. Legh, folder 16: G. Bowdon to Legh, 15 Apr. 1659. It was possibly by way of punishment for appearing against Bradshawe that the restored Rump had him imprisoned in York Castle in May 1659.58Shippen, Triumph over Death, 39; Newton, House of Lyme, 204. In addition, Legh may have been suspected of plotting with the friends of Charles II – he was certainly noted by one royalist exile as a potential supporter.59Pinckney, ‘Cheshire election of 1656’, 423-4. The resentments generated by the 1659 Cheshire election contributed significantly to the outbreak of Boothe’s Presbyterian-royalist rebellion that summer – in which Legh, still a prisoner, played no part.

Legh undoubtedly welcomed the Restoration and signed several loyal addresses to the king from the Lancashire and Cheshire gentry in the spring of 1660.60SP29/1/34, f. 65; SP29/1/35, f. 68. In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Legh stood aside in Cheshire for Sir George Boothe and was returned instead for Newton.61Newton, House of Lyme, 208-9; HP Commons 1660-90. He was listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement, but this was probably more in hope than expectation.62G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 337; J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry Besieged (1993), 42. In October 1660, Legh increased his already substantial estate in and around Newton with the purchase of the old feudal barony of Makerfield; and in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, he was returned for the borough again.63Lancs. RO, QDD/55/F2; VCH Lancs. iv. 133-4. At Westminster he generally aligned with the court party and those hostile to the dissenters, while in the localities he was active as a magistrate and deputy lieutenant in ‘the suppression of schism in the conventicles’.64Shippen, Triumph over Death, 38, 39; HP Commons 1660-90; Browning, Danby, iii. 37, 59, 85, 91, 108, 117.

Legh died on 31 August 1687 and was buried at Winwick on 6 September.65Newton, House of Lyme, 346, 347. In his will, he charged his estate with bequests amounting to about £18,000 (including portions of £3,000 for each of his five surviving daughters) and annuities of £530 a year.66Cheshire RO, WS 1687, will of Richard Legh. His personal estate was valued at £4,179.67Newton, House of Lyme, 351. His eldest son Peter and his younger brother Thomas sat for Newton and Liverpool respectively in 1685.68HP Commons 1660-90.