Hand-List of the Legh of Booths Charters in the John Rylands Library
HAND-LIST OF THE LEGH OF BOOTHS CHARTERS IN THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY. BY F. TAYLOR, M.A., PH.D. KEEPER OF MANUSCRIPTS AND ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN IN THE JOHN RYLANDS LIBRARY. documents listed below relate to the old Cheshire A family of Legh of Norbury Booths Hall, near Knutsford, and its estates from the late thirteenth to the early nineteenth century. They were saved from destruction 1 last century by the antiquary Richard Henry Wood (1820-1908), a scholar associated for many years with local history studies in Cheshire and Lancashire, and now form part of the large and important manuscript collection which he brought together from many sources. A general survey of this collection, which was deposited in the Library in 1940 by Captain J. Hatton Wood, has been given elsewhere,2 and it is perhaps sufficient here to notice that, in addition to the Legh charters, it is rich in monastic documents (twelfth-fifteenth century) and rare seals,3 and contains several royal grants (the earliest dating from the reign of Henry I), as well as a considerable number of miscellaneous deeds, mostly pre-1500, relating to some twenty-five counties. The Cheshire element of the Hatton Wood MSS., excluding the Legh charters, is comparatively small, numbering only thirty-six documents. Certain of these, however, are worthy of note, among them being eight thirteenth-century charters of the Abbey of St. Werburgh, Chester, five leases (1562-1647) from the Master and Brethren of the Hospital of St. John without the North Gate, Chester, a letter from Burghley to Edmund Gammell, late Mayor of Chester (Oct.
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