Family and Education

1st s. of Thomas Legh of Ridge by Mary Greenwell.  m. bef.1696, Susanna (d. 1701), 5s. (2 d.v.p.) 1da.1

Offices Held

Biography

The Legh family had been settled at Ridge since the reign of Henry VI, Legh being a cousin of Peter Legh† and Thomas Legh II*. He had been involved in lead mining on duchy of Lancaster lands in Derbyshire since the early 1680s. Returned for Newton by Peter Legh in 1698, he was forecast as a likely opponent of the standing army and in about September 1698 was classed as a member of the Country party. In the 1701 Parliament he was forecast, in February, as likely to support the Court in agreeing with the supply committee’s resolution to continue the ‘Great Mortgage’, and also voted against the preparations for war with France in February, later being blacklisted for this vote. On 19 Mar. he was nominated to draft an estate bill. On 9 May Legh was given a leave of absence, ‘his wife being very ill’. Returned again in December 1701, Legh was again an inactive Member, though was listed as having favoured the motion of 26 Feb. 1702 vindicating the actions of the Commons against William III’s former ministers, and in July was added to the Lancashire bench. Dropped at the 1702 election to allow Peter Legh to offer a seat to John Grobham Howe* should Howe fail to be elected elsewhere, Legh was returned for Newton in December 1702 after Howe had opted to sit for Gloucestershire. Legh’s parliamentary career was cut short, however, in March 1703, when ‘stepping out of his coach, [he] broke his thigh, of which he is since dead’, with one observer recording that he was ‘a very worthy gentleman and is very much lamented by all that knew him’. He left estates heavily encumbered with debts and mortgages, obliging Peter Legh and his other executors to renounce administration and to secure an Act of Parliament to enable the estates to be sold.2

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Authors: Eveline Cruickshanks / Richard Harrison

Notes

• 1. Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. 765–6.
• 2. HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 383–7; L. K. J. Glassey, Appt. JPs, 285–6; Cheshire RO, Arderne mss DAR/F/33, Samuel Daniell to [–], 31 July 1702; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 279; Strathmore mss at Glamis Castle, box 71 bdle. 2, newsletter 20 Mar. 1703.