She kissed them till her lips grew red,

    On the dowie howms of Yarrow."

    Warrington is described by Camden as remarkable for its lords, surnamed Butler, or Boteler, of Bewsey. This name was derived from their office, Robert le Pincerna having discharged the duties of that station under Ranulph, Earl of Chester, in 1158, hence taking the surname. Almeric Butler, his descendant, having married Beatrice, daughter and co-heir of Matthew Villiers, Lord of Warrington, became possessed of the barony.

    A MS. in the Bodleian Library gives the following statement, which, though manifestly incorrect in respect of names and particulars, may yet be relied on with regard to the main facts, corroborated by tradition, which still preserves the memory of this horrible event.

    "Sir John Butler, Knt., was slaine in his bedde by the procurement of the Lord Standley, Sir Piers Leigh and Mister William Savage joining with him in that action (corrupting his servants), his porter setting a light in a window to give knowledge upon the water that was about his house at Bewsey (where your way to ... comes). They came over the moate in lether boats, and so to his chamber, where one of his servants, named Houlcrofte, was slaine, being his chamberlaine; the other basely betrayed his master;—they payed him a great reward, and so coming away with him, they hanged him at a tree in Bewsey Parke;—after this Sir John Butler's lady prosecuted those that slew her husband, and ... £20 for that suite, but, being married to Lord Grey, he made her suite voyd, for which reason she parted from her husband and came into Lancashire, saying, If my lord will not let me have my will of my husband's enemies, yet shall my body be buried by him; and she caused a tomb of alabaster to be made, where she lyeth on the ... hand of her husband, Sir John Butler.

    It is further stated in the MS. that the occasion of this murder was

    because of a request from Earl Derby that Sir John would make one of the train which followed him on his going to meet King Henry VII., and which request was discourteously refused.

    The following extract from Froissart may not be deemed uninteresting, as a record of one of our Lancashire worthies, Sir John Butler of Bewsey, relating how he was rescued from the hands of those who sought his life at the siege of Hennebon:—

    "The Lord Lewis of Spain came one day into the tent of 

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