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IR WILLIAM BRADSHAGHE was a great traveller and soldier,
and married a fair lady named Mabel, daughter and sole heiress of Hugh Morris
de Haghe and Blackrood.
Sir William was absent at the wars for ten years, and the lady hearing
nothing from him, after a time was persuaded that he had fallen in battle,
and accepted in second nuptials a Welsh knight, whose love was chiefly given
to her money. But at length, in the habit of a pilgrim, Sir William returned
to Lancashire, and, joining a party of poor people who were going for alms
to his old home, came into the presence of his wife and her second husband.
As he bent before her, the Lady Mabel, struck by his resemblance to her first
(and supposed) dead husband, murmured a sad regret that he had not returned
as others had, and burst into a flood of tears. Enraged, and jealous even
of the dead, the Welsh knight, with a savage oath, struck her. Her husband,
angry and indignant, at once drew her to him, and exclaimed, "I am the man
you mourn; I am William Bradshage."
And he turned from the hall, and went to make himself known to his
tenants, "in which space of time," says the legend, "the knight instantly
fled; but Sir William pursued him, overtook him near Newton Park, and slew
him for his past and present cruelty to a woman." For this deed Sir William
was tried and punished by exile for some time from England.
Lady Mabel had been faithless, and had (though not consciously)
committed bigamy. She sorely repented of her fault, and her husband forgave
her; but her confessor enjoined, as a penance for it, that she should go
bare-footed and bare-legged to a cross near Wigan from her home, the Haghe,
once every week, as long as she lived, to weep and pray for pardon. The cross
to this day is called Mab's Cross. It stands at the top of Standishgate,
at the entrance to the town by the Standish road, and consists of the base
of a pillar and a half shaft of four sides, rounded off by time. To this
the lady made her weekly pilgrimages, as we have said, in penitential attire,
from the chapel of Haigh Hall, a distance of two miles.
At the end of the tomb now in the church the lady is represented
at the foot of the cross, and at the other the knights are seen in deadly
combat. On the sides are a number of shields and monkish figures. Within
the rails which enclose the tomb are two beautifully executed marble monuments;
one to Maria Margaret Frances, wife of James, Earl of Crawford; born 1783,
died 1850; and the other to Alexander, seventh Earl of Balcarras, and Elizabeth
Bradshaigh, his wife.
It was this heiress of the Bradshaighs of Haigh who, having in 1780
married Alexander, seventh Earl of Balcarras, brought Haigh Hall to him,
and from this event dates the connection of the Lindsays with Lancashire.
Earl Alexander served in the American Revolutionary War, and at
Saratoga was opposed to Benedict Arnold. Some time after, when present at
court, the king introduced him to the American traitor. "What, sire!" exclaimed
Balcarras, drawing back, "the traitor Arnold!"
This insult led to a challenge; of course a duel followed, and it
was agreed that the principals should fire at a given signal. Arnold fired
and missed. The earl did not fire; he turned and walked away. "Why don't
you fire, my lord?" asked Arnold. "Sir," said Lord Balcarras, glancing back,
"I leave you to the executioners."
On Lord Balcarras's return from Jamaica in 1801 he lived chiefly
at Haigh, which had been in a sad state of decay, but which he perfectly
restored, as well as the fortunes of his family. To his sister, Lady Anne
Barnard, the nation is indebted for the exquisite ballad of "Auld Robin Gray."
But perhaps the most remarkable of the Lancashire Lindsays was Alexander
William Crawford Lindsay, the eighth earl. He was a graceful writer, and
an accomplished art critic. His charming "Lives of the Lindsays" was published
in 1838, and is dated from Haigh. The "History of Christian Art" is well
known, as are his "Letters from the East," and "Memoirs of the Revolution
in Scotland." He died in 1880.
His son, who represented Wigan in the House of Commons, is a good
astronomer, and fitted out, at his own expense, the expedition to the Mauritius
for observing the transit of Venus.
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