Egerton

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Several members of the Egerton Family feature in the history of Chester. The Egertons are an ancient Cheshire family, seated at Oulton Park near Tarporley since the Middle Ages. It is claimed that an ancestor of Roland Egerton the 1st Baronet, William le Belward (some sources say David), took the surname of Egerton from the lordship of Egerton, which he inherited. However, it is possible that he was a different branch of the family.

Thomas Egerton (1540 - 15th March 1617)

Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley.

Known as Lord Ellesmere from 1603 to 1616, was an English nobleman, judge and statesman from the Egerton family who served as Lord Keeper and Lord Chancellor for twenty-one years.

Thomas Egerton was born in 1540 in the parish of Dodleston. Thomas is associated with the traditional legend of how Gallantry Bank at Bickerton got its name. He was the illegitimate son of Sir Richard Egerton of Ridley and an unmarried woman named Alice Sparks from Bickerton. Pennant records:

  • "The mother had been so much neglected by Sir Richard Egerton, of Ridley, the father of the boy, that she was reduced to beg for support. A neighbouring gentleman, a friend of Sir Richard, saw her asking alms, followed by her child. He admired its beauty, and saw in it the evident features of the Knight. He immediately went to Sir Richard, and laid before him the disgrace of suffering his own offspring, illegitimate as it was, to wander from door to door. He was affected with the reproof, adopted the child, and by a proper education, laid the foundation of his future fortune."

He was thus acknowledged by his father’s family, who paid for his education. The "neighbouring gentleman" was apparently Thomas Ravenscroft of Hawarden, whose daughter Egerton would eventually marry.

Egerton studied Liberal Arts at Brasenose College, Oxford, and received a Bachelor’s Degree in 1559. He then studied law at Lincoln's Inn and became a barrister. He was a Roman Catholic, until a point in 1570 when his lack of conformity with the Church of England became an issue when his Inn passed on a complaint from the Privy Council. In 1579 he was elected Master of the Bench of Lincoln's Inn. On 28 June 1581 he was appointed Solicitor General. As Solicitor General, Egerton became a frequent legal advocate for the crown, often arguing cases instead of the Attorney General. Briefly, he was MP for Cheshire, 1584–87. He was one of the prosecutors at the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1586. He advised that in her indictment she should only be styled "commonly called queen of Scots," to avoid scruples about judging a sovereign. On the 8th February 1587 Mary Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle.

He was also the prosecutor in the trial of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, for high treason. He was made Attorney General on 2 June 1592, he was knighted the next year. He was made Master of the Rolls on 10 April 1594 where he excelled as an equity judge and became a patron of the young Francis Bacon. After the death of the Lord Keeper Puckering he was appointed Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and sworn a Privy Councillor on 6 May 1596, remaining Master of the Rolls and thus the sole judge in the Court of Chancery.

The Egertons had a house on the ring-road.

Egerton purchased the site of the Carmelite friary in Whitefriars in 1592-3. The friary had been dissolved in 1538 and its holdings passed in 1544 to Fulk Dutton, and a house, known as White Friars, was built on part of the site. Thereafter the friary passed in 1583 to Edmund Gamull (see:Gamul House) and in 1593 to Thomas Egerton, who in 1597 demolished the church to make way for a new building. The antiquarian Webb lamented the loss of the church (of which the steeple was used as a navigation aid until it was taken down in 1580) in the following terms:

  • It was a great pitie that the steeple was put away, being a great ornament to the citie. This curious spire steeple might still have stood for grace to the citie, had not private benefit, the devourer of antiquitie, pulled it down with the church, and erected a house for more commoditie, which since hath been of little use, so that the citie lost so goodly an ornament, that tymes hereafter may more talk of it, being the only sea-mark for direction over the bar of Chester.

The site remained in the hands of Egerton's descendants until the later 18th century. Egerton built what was apparently one of the finest mansions in the city. For further information see Weaver Street. At one point Egerton appears to have owned Brewers Hall.

Egerton bought Tatton Park, in 1598 from his half sister Dorothy Brereton. It would stay in the family for more than three centuries. In 1597 or 1598 – he hired the poet John Donne as secretary. This arrangement ended in some embarrassment, since Donne secretly married Ann More, Elizabeth's niece, in 1601. Egerton was made Chamberlain of Chester in 1593. On the accession of James I, Thomas Egerton was reappointed Lord Keeper, resigning the Mastership of the Rolls in May 1603, and the Chamberlainship of Chester in August. He was a rigid churchman, hostile to both the Puritans and the Roman Catholics. He fully approved of the king's unfriendly attitude towards the former, adopted at the Hampton Court conference in 1604.

Thomas Egerton was thrice married (into the local gentry after his first wife died). By his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Ravenscroft of Bretton, Flintshire, he had two sons and a daughter. The elder son, Thomas, predeceased him, leaving three daughters. His third marriage on 20th October 1600 to Alice Spencer, daughter of Sir John Spencer and widow of Ferdinando, 5th Earl of Derby, was a disaster. She joined Egerton’s household with a retinue of 40 persons, estimated as being likely to add at least £650 a year to his household expenses. By 1610 Egerton, now lord chancellor and a peer, was describing his wife as extravagant, greedy and ill-tempered, with a:

  • cursed railing and bitter tongue ... I thank God I never desired long life, nor never had less cause to desire it than since this, my last marriage, for before I was never acquainted with such tempests and storms.

The younger, John, succeeded his father as 2nd Viscount Brackley, was created Earl of Bridgewater, and, marrying Lady Frances Stanley (daughter of his father's third wife, widow of the 5th Earl of Derby), was the ancestor of the earls and dukes of Bridgewater, whose male line became extinct in 1829. Thomas had left everything to his son, but the widow made a determined but unsuccessful attempt to contest the will, until the son obtained probate.

John Egerton (1579 – 4th December 1649)

John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater.

The son of Sir Thomas Egerton and Elizabeth Ravenscroft, he matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford in 1589 at the age of 10, graduating as Bachelor of Arts in 1594. Egerton served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Callington from 1597 to 1598, and for Shropshire in 1601. Knighted on 8 April 1599, he was Baron of the Exchequer of Chester from 1599 to 1605.

On 27 June 1602, Egerton married Lady Frances Stanley, daughter of Ferdinando, 5th Earl of Derby and Lady Alice Spencer, Lord Bridgewater's step-mother (after Ferdinando Stanley's death, on 20 October 1600, Lady Alice had married John's father Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley). Frances was a collector of books. Around half the contents were theological, with many works by contemporary popular devotional authors like William Perkins, Joseph Hall and Francis Rous, but she also had a wider range of literature, history, and accounts of foreign countries. The titles were almost all in English, and mostly acquired new (or not long after publication). The Egerton family library, which began to be established by Thomas Egerton, continued to be built up over succeeding generations and became known as the Bridgewater Library. It began to be dispersed in the 19th century and a significant portion of it (ca.4400 volumes) was purchased by Henry Huntington in 1917, and is now in the Huntington Library in California.

Having succeeded to his father's titles in March 1617, he was created Earl of Bridgewater on 27 May 1617.

John Milton's Comus celebrates his installation as Lord President of Wales (from 1631 to 1642). An air of controversy surrounds this masque, as the Earl of Castlehaven (1593 – 14 May 1631), Bridgewater's brother-in-law, was the subject of a sordid sodomy and rape scandal for which he was executed. Some critics have conjectured that the masque, with its focus on chastity, was designed to "cleanse" the Egerton family.

Bridgewater lived a very retired life after the civil wars broke out. He was joint-commissioner of array for Flintshire, Denbighshire, and Merionethshire in May 1643, but soon afterwards withdrew to his house at Ashridge, where he died on 4 Dec. 1649. He was buried in the neighbouring church of Little Gaddesden.

John Egerton, 2nd Earl of Bridgewater

Styled Viscount Brackley before succeeding to the earldom in 1649, he served as Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire (1660–1686), Cheshire (1670–1676), Lancashire (1670–1676), and Hertfordshire (1681–1686), as well as being sworn of the Privy Council in 1679.

John Egerton, 3rd Earl of Bridgewater KB PC (9 November 1646 – 19 March 1701)

He was the eldest son of John Egerton, 2nd Earl of Bridgewater. Two of his children died in a fire at Bridgewater House in London.

Scroop Egerton, 1st Duke of Bridgewater

Scroop Egerton was born on 11 August 1681, the third son of John Egerton, 3rd Earl of Bridgewater, and his second wife, Lady Jane Paulet.

John Egerton, 2nd Duke of Bridgewater

Egerton was the fourth son of Scroop Egerton, 1st Duke of Bridgewater and his second wife Lady Rachael Russell, daughter of Wriothesley Russell, 2nd Duke of Bedford. His older brothers having predeceased him, he succeeded his father as duke in 1745. Only three years later Egerton died intestate, aged only 20, from a fever. He was unmarried and was succeeded in his titles by his younger and only surviving brother.

Francis Egerton (21 May 1736 – 8 March 1803)

He was the youngest son of the 1st Duke. The Bridgewater Canal from Worsley to Manchester which he constructed to transport coal obtained on his estates is usually cited as the first modern British canal as opposed to a river navigation—although the Sankey Canal is a rival to this claim, projected as a "navigation", but built as a true canal. The construction of Bridgewater's canal, with its aqueduct across the River Irwell, was carried out by James Brindley. Francis did not marry, and the dukedom expired with him, although the earldom was inherited by a cousin, Lieutenant-General John Egerton.

The Bridgewater Canal

The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Manchester. It was opened in 1761 from Worsley to Manchester, and later extended from Manchester to Runcorn, and then from Worsley to Leigh. The canal is connected to the Manchester Ship Canal via a lock at Cornbrook; to the Rochdale Canal in Manchester; to the Trent and Mersey Canal at Preston Brook, southeast of Runcorn; and to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Leigh. It once connected with the River Mersey at Runcorn but has since been cut off by a slip road to the Silver Jubilee Bridge. The Worsley Navigable Levels are an extensive series of coal mines in Worsley. The first drainage sough was cut into the Earl of Bridgewater's estates in Worsley on the Manchester Coalfield in 1729 under the auspices of John Massey, the mines agent of Scroop Egerton. Francis Egerton gained full control of his estates in 1757 when he was 21 and hired John Gilbert as factor for his estates. It was clear to Francis Egerton and John Gilbert that the Duke of Bridgewater's coalmines would need to be much more efficient and productive in order to meet the rise in demand for coal in Manchester. One part of their plan was to dig a canal, the Bridgewater Canal, from Worsley to Salford on the River Irwell. This idea would improve the transport of coal but not the efficiency of mining. They then had the idea of extending the canal at Worsley underground to produce a navigable level within the coal measures for both drainage and coal transport. A consequence of this decision was that the water from the coalmines proved sufficient to keep the canal in water. The act of Parliament allowing the building of the Bridgewater Canal was passed in 1759. The construction of the canal had already started when James Brindley became involved. Brindley took charge of the canal's construction. Several changes were made to the canal's course under Brindley's control and the canal was completed in 1764. The first workable seam on the underground portion of the canal (the Worsley Four Foot mine) was reached in 1761, 770 yards (700 m) from the tunnel's portal.

Navigable throughout its history, the Bridgewater is one of the few canals in Britain not to have been nationalised, and remains privately owned. Pleasure craft now use the canal which forms part of the Cheshire Ring network of canals. Francis Egerton opposed the plans for the Chester Canal (see: Canal and Boatyard). The limited plan authorised 1772 permitted the building of a canal 14 feet wide from Chester to Nantwich and Middlewich. The overall canal project was seriously undermined, however, by a requirement that the new canal should end at least 100 yards away from the Trent and Mersey Canal at Middlewich, requiring overland portage rather than allowing for a functional junction. As a result, the Middlewich branch of the Chester Canal was not begun, and the branch to Nantwich became the course of the final section of the Chester Canal. "Weale's Quarterly Papers on Engineering" noted the following:

  • "The line which Mr Brindley surveyed was probably that of the Ellesmere Canal from Chester to Nantwich with a branch to the Grand Trunk at Middlewich. By the first Acts of Parliament obtained for this canal the proprietors are empowered to make it from Chester to Nantwich and Middlewich. In the Act 17th George III 1777 however there is a most singular clause inserted for the protection as it is called of the Duke of Bridgewater and the Grand Trunk Canal Company by which the Chester Canal Company is restricted from carrying the Middlewich branch of that canal nearer than 100 yards to the Grand Trunk Canal. In consequence of this restriction the branch to Middlewich remained untouched up to the year 1827, while in the mean time the Chester Canal had been extended to the south as far as Wolverhampton and connected at Welshpool and several other places with the Severn and with the canals in Staffordshire. The want of a communication with the Grand Trunk however was still severely felt and a valuable mining district in Denbighshire was almost ruined by the competition of places more favoured by the proximity of water carriage. At the same time the value of the shares in the Chester Canal had been extremely depressed by the want of communication with other canals and at one time were worth no more than one per cent of their original value."

The Wardle Canal eventually connected the Trent and Mersey Canal to the Middlewich Branch of the Shropshire Union Canal, terminating with a single lock known as Wardle Lock. It was built in 1829 so that the navigation authority of the Trent and Mersey Canal could maintain control over the junction with the Chester Canal branch and charge large compensation tolls for traffic passing along it.

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