The land now occupied by Lyme Park was granted to Piers Legh and his wife Margaret D'anyers, by letters patent dated January 4, 1398, by Richard II, son of the Black Prince. Margaret D'anyers' grandfather, Sir Thomas D'anyers, had taken part in retrieving the standard of the Black Prince at the Battle of Crécy in 1346, and was rewarded with annuity of 40 marks a year by the Black Prince, drawn on his Cheshire estate, and which could be exchanged for land of that value belonging to the Black Prince. Sir Thomas died in 1354, and the annuity passed to his nearest surviving kin, his granddaughter Margaret, who in 1388 married the first Piers Legh (Piers Legh I). Richard II favoured Piers and granted his family a coat of arms in 1397, and the estate of Lyme Handley in 1398 redeeming the annuity. However, Piers was executed two years later by Richard's rival for the throne, Henry Bolingbroke.