Widnes Examiner. — 1913-07-19 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

THE LEGEND OF BEWSEY HALL.  The following is quoted from Messrs. Jack's "Lancashire Stories" :  In the ancient days the Butlers of Bewsey Hall were lords of the manor at Warrington. Originally the family name had been Pincerna, but an ancestor acting as butler to Ranulph, Earl of Chester, in 1158, had taken the surname of Butler from his office. The position of butler to so great a nobleman as the Earl of Chester was not a menial office, but was equivalent to that of a Comptroller, or Master, of the Household in a royal household of our own time, and could only  dispatched the father, rushed to the cradle with the intention of killing the child. Nothing less than the destruction of the line of Butler would apparently satisfy the Stanley vengeance for the affront put upon them by Sir John. But the ci adle was empty. here there are two versions of the legend. One tells that whilst the murderers were occupied in their bloody work upon Houlcroft and his unfortunate master, a page passed through the porter's lodge carrying a basket. The wicked porter asks— Now whither away, thou little page, Now whither away so fast ? ' They have slain Sir John,' said the little page, 'And his bead in this wicker cast.' 'And whither goest thou with that grisly head ? ' Cried the grim porter again. 'To Warrington Bridge they bade me run, And set it up amain.' 'There may it hang,' cried that loathly knave, And grin till its teeth be dry ; While every day, with jeer and taunt, Will I mock it till I die ! '  It was not Sir John's head, however, that the page carried in his basket, but Sir John's child, which, this version:says, he conveyed "craftily " to the Priory of the Hermit Friars of St. Augustine near the bridge at Warrington,. where it was recovered by the distracted mother on the following morning. After vainly searching for the child the murderers descended the stairs, and discovered the trick played by the page upon the porter, whom they roundly accused of treachery— They counted down the red, rel gJld ; And the porter laughed outright ; Now we have paid thy service well, For thy master's blood this night ; For the master's blood thou hast betrayed, We've paid theo thy desire ; But for thy treachery unto us, Thou bast not had thy hire.'  Taking the porter with them across the moat, they hanged him—" they payed him a great reward, and so coming away with him, they hanged him at a tree in Bewsey Parke." The other version of the legend is the more credible of the two. This tells that a faithful negro servant, hearing the fray in Sir John's bedroom, rushed thither, and entering by a door opposite to that forced by the murderers snatched up the infant from its cradle, and carried it to its nurse in an adjoining chamber. Returning to Sir John's bedroom, the negro held the three murderers at bay in the second doorway, while the nurse effected her escape with the child. Finally he, too, was killed,but in the meantime the child was safe at the Priory by Warrington Bridge. In the second version of the legend the traitorous porter is also hanged, after having been paid the blood money he demanded, but this was doubtless a precautionary.measure on the part of the murderers, who would naturally wish to remove so damning and treacherous a witness to their crime, and the deliberation with which it had been arranged. Lady Butler commenced a prosecution against Sir John's murderers, but the machinery of the law in those days,especially when directed against a member of so powerful a family as the Stanleys, was not easily set in motion, and before her suit came on for hearing she had married Lord Grey, doubtless as a protection to herself and her child against her late 'husband's enemies. Her second husband, however, did not support her in her efforts to bring Sir John's murderers to justice, and exercising a right then existing he made her suit void. This again, was probably due to Stanley influence. Whatever the reason, his wife did not submit tamely : "for which reason she parted from her husband and came into Lancashire, saying, 'lf my lord will not let me have my will of my husband's enemies, yet shall my body be buried by him.'"  The descendants of Sir John continued to live at Bewsey Hall until 1603, when the estate was sold to the Irelands of Hale Hall. MR.