One of the churches, St. Michael’s, was founded by Eleanor, Queen of Edward I., in 1278.  It has been partly rebuilt, but there are two chapels, one the property of the Marquis of Cholmondeley, which was built by Thomas Savage, Archbishop of York, whose heart was buried there in 1508.  The other belongs to the Leghs of Lyme.  A brass plate shows that the estate of Lyme was bestowed upon an ancestor for recovering a standard at the battle of Cressy.  He was afterwards beheaded at Chester as a supporter of Richard II.  Another ancestor, Sir Piers Legh, fell fighting at the battle of Agincourt.  We do not know what manner of men the Leghs of Lyme of the present generation are, but certainly pride is pardonable in a family with an ancestry which took part in deeds not only recorded by history, but immortalized by Shakspeare.

There is a grammar school, of the foundation of Edward VI., with an income of 1500 pounds a-year, free to all residents, with two exhibitions of 50 pounds per annum, tenable for four years.  But there must be some mismanagement, as it appears from Parker’s useful Educational Register, that in 1850 only twenty-two scholars availed themselves of these privileges; yet Macclesfield has a population exceeding thirty thousand.

The education of the working classes is above average, and music is much cultivated.  We abstain from giving the figures in this as in several other instances, because the census, which will shortly be published, will afford exact information on all these points.

The establishment of silk factories on the river Bollen brought Macclesfield into notice in the beginning of this century.  Unhampered by the restrictions which weighed upon the Spitalfields manufacturers, and nurtured by the monopoly accorded to English silks, the silk weaving trade gradually attained great prosperity between 1808 and 1825.  At that period the commencement of the fiscal changes, which have rendered the silk trade quite open to foreign competition, produced a serious effect on the prosperity of Macclesfield.

In 1832 the number of mills at work had diminished nearly one-half, and the number of hands by two-thirds.  Since that period, after various vicissitudes, the silk trade has acquired a more healthy tone, and we presume that the inhabitants do not now consider the alterations commenced by Huskisson, and completed by Peel, injurious to their interests; since, at the last election, they returned one free-trader, a London shopkeeper, in conjunction with a local banker and manufacturer.

Macclesfield has now to contend with home as well as foreign competition, for silk manufactories have been spread over the kingdom in many directions.

We may expect to see in a few years, as the result of the universal extension of railway communication, a great distribution and transplantation of manufacturing establishments to towns where cheap labour and provisions, or good water or water-power, or cheap fuel, offer any advantages, There is something very curious to be noted in the manner in which certain of our principal manufactures have remained constant, while others have been transplanted from place to place, and in which ports have risen and fallen.