LEGH, Piers (c.1637-71), of Bruche, Warrington, Lancs.

The Leghs of Bruche, near Warrington, were a cadet branch of the Legh family of Lyme, in Cheshire. Legh’s grandfather, Sir Peter Legh† of Lyme, had acquired Bruche, in southern Lancashire, in the early seventeenth century and had left it to his youngest son Peter – Piers’s father.19Lancs. RO, WCW, will of Peter Legh 1641; Newton, House of Lyme, 127; VCH Lancs. iii. 331; ‘Peter or Piers Legh’, HP Commons, 1558-1603. Piers was a cousin of Richard Legh*, who was himself the scion of a junior branch of the Leghs until a series of fortuitous (for him) deaths left him head of the family and heir to its extensive estates in Cheshire and Lancashire.

In May 1653, Piers was admitted to St John’s, Cambridge and is described in Alumni Cantabrigiensis, misleadingly, as the son of Piers Legh gentleman of Disley, in the parish of Stockport.20Al. Cant. The admission registers of St John’s, however, make it clear that it was the young Piers who was living in Disley – which suggests that he spent at least some of his youth at the Leghs’ principal family residence at Lyme, just to the south of Disley – and that he was the son of ‘Peri’, which was probably a mistake for ‘Petri’ (i.e. Peter).21St John’s Admiss. ed. J.E.B. Mayor (Cambridge, 1882), i. 110. It was Richard Legh who paid for Piers’ allowance at Cambridge – the handsome sum of £30 a quarter – though it seems Piers did not spend much time at the university, for on 10 January 1654 he was admitted to Gray’s Inn.22JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to Richard Legh, folder 12: Frances Bancks to Legh, n.d.; G. Inn Admiss. 266. His sister, in a letter to Richard Legh, implied that he was no scholar, remarking that ‘poor Piers’ found writing letters to the family ‘a sore task upon him’.23JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to R. Legh, folder 12: F. Bancks to Legh, n.d.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Richard Legh was returned for Cheshire, while Piers was elected to represent the Lancashire borough of Newton, where the Legh family were the principal electoral patrons and had a large and growing estate.24Supra, ‘Newton’; infra, ‘Richard Legh’. Because the clerk of the Commons referred simply to ‘Mr Leigh’, it is not possible to determine which of the two young men was granted leave of absence on 12 April or named, the next day (13 Apr.), to a committee relating to affairs in Lancashire.25CJ vii. 638a. Richard Legh was certainly in and around Westminster that month, and the fact that one of his correspondents asked to be remembered to ‘Mr Piers’ suggests that Legh, too, was attending his place in the House, or at least in London.26JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to R. Legh, folder 16: G. Bowdon to Legh, 15 Apr. 1659.

Legh played a conspicuous part in Sir George Boothe’s* royalist-Presbyterian rising in the summer of 1659, raising horse and foot in Lancashire and receiving a commission as a colonel of horse on 12 August from Boothe and Henry Brooke*.27Newton, House of Lyme, 203. Piers’s younger brother Thomas was killed when Boothe’s army were routed by the forces of Major-general John Lambert* at Winnington Bridge on 19 August.28Newton, House of Lyme, 214; Earwaker, E. Cheshire, ii. 305. Legh, who seems to have distinguished himself in this action, was arrested and imprisoned at Chester.29Ormerod, Cheshire, i. pt. 1, p. lxv He had been released by 1 March 1660, when he married a daughter of the prominent Cheshire gentleman Edward Hyde of Norbury.30Stockport par. reg. Legh’s ‘late engagements of either sort’ – military and marital – were cited by one of Richard Legh’s correspondents as a possible reason why he would not stand for election to the 1660 Convention – and, in the event, his place at Newton was taken by Richard, who had stood aside in Cheshire for Sir George Boothe.31Newton, House of Lyme, 207.

Legh undoubtedly welcomed the Restoration and signed at least one of the loyal addresses to the king from the Lancashire gentry in the spring of 1660.32SP29/1/35, f. 68. He petitioned the king on several occasions during the early 1660s – citing his ‘sufferings and services’ in the royal cause – for the office of joint prothonotary and clerk of the crown for Cheshire and Flintshire, which his uncle Henry Birkhened* had enjoyed. But despite receiving the backing of Boothe and other Cheshire grandees, there is no evidence that his suit was successful.33JRL, Legh of Lyme corresp. Lttrs. to R. Legh, folder 18: J. Duckenfeild to Legh, 28 July 1660; Legh of Lyme muns. box R, D no. 9; Newton, House of Lyme, 214.

Legh died in the autumn of 1671 and was buried at Warrington on 13 October.34Earwaker, E. Cheshire, ii. 305. In his will, he referred to charges on his estate by way of bequests and portions for his two daughters that totalled in excess of £4,200.35JRL, Legh of Lyme muns. box S, I no. 19. He left the custody and tuition of his son and namesake to Richard Legh. Legh was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.