PREFACE.

FREQUENT applications having been made to the Publisher for a work giving the history of the House of Stanley down to the present time, without being able to supply such a book, some time ago it was resolved to prepare and publish in the Ormskirk Advertiser a series of chapters giving the more prominent points in the career of the great Stanley Family from its earliest history, including notices of such relative and co-temporary incidents as are associated therewith. Those chapters appeared in the columns of the newspaper as opportunity allowed ; and it afforded no little encouragement to learn, as the work progressed, that its appearance in the columns of the newspaper was favourably received.

Besides the chapters which appeared in the Ormskirk Advertiser, under the title of " The House of Stanley," the present volume contains notices of the Stanleys of Cross-Hall and the Stanleys of Alderley,—Knowsley,——Lathom House,— Scarisbrick Hall,—The Burial Places of the Earls of Derby, Burscough Priory and Ormskirk Church,—.—and other relative matters of local and general interest.

The work is illustrated with four steel engravings, representing Old Lathom House before its troubles, the Ruins of Burscough Priory, and portraits of James, the seventh Earl of Derby, and his Countess, the illustrious Charlotte de la Tremouille (both from Vandyke) ; and the volume is also embellished with a lithograph of the Derby Chapel, by Messrs. Day and Son, London, from a drawing by the late Mrs. Mathias, sister of the Rev. W. E. Rawstorne, M.A., of Penwortham, some time vicar of Ormskirk, and a relative of Colonel Edward Rawstorne, the governor of Lathom House during its second siege.

ORMSKIRK, SEPT. 22th, 1864.