The subject of this ballad is the murder of a Sir John Butler at Bewsey Hall, near Warrington, Lancashire.
The story, which may be imperfect at the beginning, is that a party of men cross the moat in a leathern boat, and among them William Savage is one of the first. Sir John Butler's daughter Ellen wakens her father and tells him that his uncle Stanley is within his hall. If that be true, says Sir John, a hundred pound will not save me. Ellen goes down into the hall, and is asked where her father is; she avers that he is ridden to London, but the men know better, and search for him. Little Holcroft loses his head in trying to keep the door of the room where Sir John is; they enter, and call on him to yield. He will yield to his uncle Stanley, but never to false Peter Legh. Ellen Butler calls for a priest; William Savage says, He shall have no priest but my sword and me. Lady Butler was at this time in London; had she been at home she might have begged her husband's life of her good brother John. She dreams that her lord is swimming in blood, and long before day sets out for Bewsey Hall. On her way she learns that her husband is slain, and the news impels her to go back to London, where she begs of the king the death of false Peter Legh, her brother Stanley, William Savage, and all. Would ye have three men to die for one? says the king; if thou wilt come to London, thou shalt go home Lady Gray.
The papers of Roger Dodsworth,[foot-note] the antiquarian († 16..), give the following account of the transaction, according to the tradition of his time. "Sir John Boteler, Knight, was slaine in his bed by the Lord Standley's procurement, Sir Piers Leigh and Mister William Savage joininge with him in that action, curruptinge his servants, his porter settinge a light in a windowe to give knowledge upon the water that was about his house at Bewsaye, when the watch that watched about his howse at Bewsaye, where your way to ... [i.e. Bold] comes, were gone awaye to their owne homes; and then they came over the moate in lether boates, and soe to his chambre, where one of his servants, called Hontrost [Holcroft], was slaine, being his chamberlaine; the other brother betrayed his master. They promised him a great reward, and he going with them a way, they hanged him at a tree in Bewsaye Park. After this Sir John Boteler's lady pursued those that slewe her husband, and indyted xx. men for that 'saute,' but being marryed to Lorde Gray, he made her suites voyd, for which cause she parted from her husband, the Lorde Graye, and came into Lancastershyre, and sayd, If my lord wyll not helpe me that I may have my wyll of mine enemies, yet my bodye shall be berryed by him; and she caused a tombe of alabaster to be made, where she lyeth upon the right hand of her husband, Sir John Butler."[foot-note]
Another paper in the same collection assumes to give the cause of the murder. "The occasion of the murther was this. The king being to come to Lathom, the Erie of Derby, his brother-in-law, sent unto hym [Sir John Butler] a messenger to desire him to wear his cloath [appear as his retainer] at that tyme; but in his absence his lady said she scorned that her husband should way te on her brother, being as well able to entertayne Mie kynge as he was; which answer the erle tooke in great disdayne, and persecuted the said Sir John Butler with all the mallice that cowd be." After mutual ill-services, they took arms one against the other, Sir Piers Legh and William Savage siding with the earl, and in the end these three corrupted Sir John Butler's servants and murdered him in his bed. "Hys lady, at that instant being in London, did dreame the same night that he was slayne, that Bewsaye Hall did swym with blood; whereupon she presently came homewards, and heard by the way the report of his death."[foot-note]
Sir John Boteler, son of Sir John, born in 1429, married for his third wife Margaret Stanley, widow of Sir Thomas Troutbeck, daughter of Thomas first Lord Stanley, and sister of Thomas the second lord, whom Dodsworth calls by anticipation Earl of Derby, which he was not until 1485. Sir John Boteler had by his first wife four daughters, but no Ellen; by Margaret Stanley he had a son Thomas, born in 1461. He died in 1463, and his wife afterwards married for her third husband Henry Lord Grey of Codnor.
According to st. 23 of the ballad, Dame Margaret's brother Stanley, that is Lord Thomas, is directly concerned in the murder which in the Dods worth story he is said only to have procured. But an uncle Stanley appears to be a prominent member of the hostile party in sts 5, 12; how, we cannot explain. A 'good' brother John is mentioned in st. 15, of whom Lady Butler might have begged her husband's life, and who must, therefore, have been present. Lady Butler had a brother John. But the alleged participation of Sir Peter Legh and William Savage in this murder, perpetrated in 1463, is an impossibility. Sir Peter Legh was born in 1455, and was only eight years old at that time, and William Savage, nephew of Lord Thomas Stanley, was also a mere child. As to the part ascribed to Lord Thomas Stanley, Sir Thomas Butler, the son of Sir John, is said to have lived on the most friendly terms with him in after days, and to have limited " an estate in remainder, after the limitation to himself and his heirs, to the Earl of Derby in fee," which we can hardly suppose he would have done if the earl had been his father's murderer.
The occasion of the murder is represented in the tradition reported by Dodsworth to have been Sir John Butler's refusal (through his wife) to wear the Earl of Derby's livery at the time of the king's coming to Lathom. The king (Henry VII) did indeed come to Lathom, but not until the year 1495, thirty-two years after Sir John's death, and three years after that of his wife. It is true that other accounts make Sir Thomas, the son of Sir John, to have been the victim of the murder; but Sir Thomas died in 1522, and the Earl of Derby in 1504.[foot-note] There is not, as Dr. Robson says, a tittle of evidence to show that there was any murder at all, whether of Sir John or any other of the Butler family. But it was an unquiet time, and the conjecture has been offered "that, being a consistent Lancastrian," Sir John "may have incurred some Yorkist resentments, and have been sacrificed by a confederacy of some of those who, though his private friends, were his political enemies."[foot-note]
Sir John Butler, son of Sir John, is of course the only person that the ballad and the parallel tradition can intend, for Margaret Stanley was the only Stanley that ever married a Butler, and Margaret Stanley's third husband was Lord Grey of Codnor. But Sir John the elder, who died in 1430, had a daughter Ellen, "old enough to raise an alarm when her father was attacked, while he was actually nephew by marriage to the second Sir John Stanley of Lathom, who survived him." (If we might proceed according to established mythological rules, and transfer to the son what is told of the father, we might account for the "uncle Stanley" and the Ellen of the ballad.) Sir John the senior's widow, Lady Isabella, was in 1437 violently carried off and forced into marriage by one William Poole, and her petition to Parliament for redress calls this Poole an outlaw "for felony for man's death by him murdered and slain." It has been thought a not overstrained presumption that this language may refer to the death of Lady Isabella's husband, the earlier Sir John, though it would be strange, if such were the reference, that no name should be given.[foot-note]
The Bewsey murder has been narrated, with the variations of later tradition, by John Fitchett in 'Bewsey, a Poem,' Warrington, 1796; in a ballad by John Roby, Traditions of Lancashire, 1879, II, 72; and in another ballad in Ballads and Songs of Lancashire, Harland and Wilkinson, 1882, p. 13 (at p. 15 Fitchett's verses are cited). See also Dr. Robson, in the preface to the Percy ballad, p. 208, and Bearaont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington, p. 318.
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