General Notes

William Brereton was born and baptised in 1604 in Manchester. He was the eldest son of William Brereton of Handford and Margaret Holland. He matriculated in Brasenose College in 1621.[1] In 1627, he inherited the lands and money of his father. The same year, he was elected for Parliament and negotiated with King Charles I for a title [2] and became a baronet. [3]  Morrill describes Brereton as ‘ a substantial but not leading landowner’ [4]

Brereton had a 500 year lineage going back to the first lords of Brereton, Cheshire.  A marriage was arranged with with Susanna, daughter of Sir George Booth, an influential nobleman of Cheshire.

Brereton was an energetic man of government.  He was a member of Parliament, a magistrate, and a financial adventurer, and was a primary contributor to the plantation of the Massachusetts Bay. In 1634-1635 he made travels to the Netherlands and Ireland which he describes in ‘Travels in Holland, …’ [5]

By 1640 England faced an internal division : revolt in Scotland and later in Ireland, combined with the royal enforcement of Catholic practice in local churches caused a confrontation of King with Parliament. Brereton had a seat in both the Short and Long Parliaments [6], which turned against the King in 1642. This was the beginning of the Civil War.[7]

Sir William Brereton, meanwhile, had remarried after the death of his first wife, this time to a woman of strong Puritan religious faith named Cicely.[8] He chose to fight for Parliament and received control of Roundhead (Parliamentarian) troops in Cheshire. Sir William defeated Royalist armies at Nantwich, Stafford, Liverpool, Shrewsbury, Denbigh and Chester, and held executive power in Cheshire county during the conflict. His military victories were crucial to Parliamentary control of Britain. After the war, his career ended with a defeat in a contested election in 1656, and he retired from public life.

Brereton supposedly played a juridical role in the death-sentence upon King Charles [9] and he received money and land for his services to the English Commonwealth,  including Macclesfield Forest and the Croydon Episcopal Palace. It is there he died in 1661. The site of his burial is unknown.[10]


Sir William Brereton 1604 - 1661

Author: Harold Forster MBE, of Nantwich

Orders of the day, Volume 33, Issue 6, 2001/2002

The first mention of this member of the Brereton family appears in the Register of Christenings at Manchester Collegiate Church for 1604: "William, Son to William Brereton, Esq., of Hamford (Handforth)”.

When only six years of age William was to lose his father but he developed into a worthy descendant of many illustrious ancestors, receiving his education at Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1627, when only 23, he was created a baron by Charles I, the King he was later to so vigorously oppose in battle.

In 1628 he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Cheshire but he relinquished his seat in order to travel, his 'Grand Tour’ taking him to Scotland, Ireland and Holland. While travelling in Holland Sir William took great interest in military matters, and in particular he was intrigued with the art of siege warfare, an interest that was to serve him well in later days. In 1639 he was re-elected to Parliament and immediately came under the notice of several prominent politicians as 'a born leader'.

Sir William married twice. His first wife, Susannah died in 1637, leaving one son, Thomas. His second wife was Cicely, the daughter of Sir William Skeffington of Leicestershire and the widow of Edward Mytton of Weston in Staffordshire. They had two daughters.

Sir William had strong views on the so called ‘Divine Right of Kings' and also objected to the imposition of certain tax demands, and in particular ‘Ship Money’. He was also in dispute with the Mayor and Corporation of the City of Chester for refusing to pay ‘Murage’ a tax levied on townspeople for the repair and maintenance of the city walls.

He owned a town house in Chester, and when in 1642 King Charles raised his Standard at Nottingham, Sir William was in Chester trying to drum up recruits for the Parliamentary Army. The citizens of Royalist Chester chased him out of the city, an action which they were to regret later.

As the Civil War spread over the country, Sir William Brereton quickly became an important member of the Parliamentary Army. He was at first given command of all the Roundhead forces being mustered in Cheshire and later was promoted Major General of Cheshire, Shropshire, Lancashire and Staffordshire. His strong point was not so much as a leader in the field but in the plans he initiated to obtain information about enemy movements and, of course, in siege warfare, gained from the knowledge he obtained form his visit to Holland. It was said that Brereton “had spies under every hedge and friends in every village”. His greatest triumph was his siege and capture of the City of Chester, a project that took over 12 months.

It was in 1643 that Sir William Brereton came to Nantwich. arriving just ahead of Sir Thomas Aston. Both the Royalists and Parliamentarians realised its strategic importance as a road centre. Making Nantwich their headquarters, the Parliamentarian Army surrounded the town with earthworks and trenches sufficient to keep out any assaults.

Nantwich was under siege from December 1643 to January 1644, but in the Battle of Nantwich on 25th January 1644, the Royalist Army, under Lord Byron, was soundly defeated. After the war Sir William Brereton was well rewarded for his efforts. Amongst other ‘gifts' he received the Chief Forestership of the Forest of Macclesfield and the Seneschalship of the Hundred of Macclesfield, both of which would provide him with considerable monetary benefits. In 1652 he was given the tenancy of Croydon Palace, the former home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He spent the last nine years of his life commuting between his newly-acquired London home and his ancestral home at Handforth, Cheshire.

He died at Croydon in 1661 and a story is told that when on the way from Croydon to Cheadle for burial, his body was washed away in a river. It is generally assumed however that it did reach Cheadle and was buried in the family vault in the church of that Cheshire town.