PLATE III. FAMILY GROUP—GEORGE ORMEROD AS A CHILD; HIS MOTHER SEATED BEHIND HIM; HER BROTHER, THOMAS JOHNSON, ESQ., OF TYLDESLEY, LANCASHIRE, STANDING; AND THEIR MOTHER SEATED ON THE RIGHT.
_Composition from miniature, circa 1780._ ]
“On one occasion when the Scotch officers who caroused in their prisoner’s house, had given their usual toast KING JAMES, and the host on request had followed with his, and undauntedly proposed KING GEORGE, some rose, and touched their swords; but a senior officer exclaimed, ‘He has drunk our Prince, why should we not drink his? Here’s to the Elector of Hanover.’”[8]
During the disturbed time, when any one bearing the appearance of a messenger would assuredly have been seized with the papers which he carried, the difficulty of transmitting information was met by the employment at night of two greyhounds trained for the service. The documents were fastened to the animals and thus carried safely to the adherent’s house, from which as opportunity offered they could be passed on. The greyhounds, having been well fed as a reward and encouragement to future good behaviour, were started off on their return journey. In the present day this plan of transmission would very soon be discovered, but in those times the nature of the country, the nocturnal hours chosen, and also the deeply-rooted superstitions of the district, all helped to make the four-footed messengers very trusty carriers.
In 1755 Thomas Johnson served as Sheriff of Lancashire. He died in 1763, leaving a widow (who survived him until 1798), one son, and three daughters—the only survivors of a family of eleven children, of whom seven died in infancy, three on the day of their birth. Of the four children who reached maturity, Elizabeth, the second daughter (plate III.) married my grandfather, George Ormerod of Bury, at the Collegiate Church, Manchester, on the 18th of October, 1784. He died in 1785, a fortnight before the birth of my father, who was the sole issue of this marriage.
My father, George Ormerod (plate II.), heir to his grandfather, was born October 20, 1785. He was co-heir of, and successor to the estates of his maternal uncle in 1823, and sole heir to his surviving maternal aunt in 1839. He was D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A., and a magistrate for the counties of Cheshire, Gloucester, and Monmouth. On August 2, 1808, he married my mother, Sarah, eldest daughter of John Latham, Bradwall Hall, Cheshire, Fellow and sometime President of the Royal College of Physicians, Harley Street, London.[9]