off, the garrison at Beeston Castle surrendered the same month, and that of Chester in February 1645-6. Immediately advancing southwards against Prince Maurice with 1,000 foot, Brereton found that the enemy had disappeared. On 6 March he captured Lichfield, and on 12 May Dudley Castle. On the 22nd of the latter month he dispersed near Stow-in-the-Wold the forces of Lord Ashley, the last important body of the royalists in arms. After the conclusion of the war he received the chief forestership of Macclesfield forest, and the seneschalship of the hundred of Macclesfield. He also obtained various grants of moneys and lands, among other properties which came into his possession being that of the archiepiscopal palace of Croydon. In an old pamphlet, 'The Mysteries of the Good Old Cause' (1663), which mentions his possession of the palace, he is described as 'a notable man at a thanksgiving dinner, having terrible long teeth and a prodigious stomach, to turn the archbishop's chapel at Croydon into a kitchen; also to swallow up that palace and lands at a morsel.' He died at Croydon on 7 April 1661. His body was removed thence to be interred in the Handforth chapel in Cheadle church, but there is a tradition that in crossing a river the coffin was swept away by a flood, and this is confirmed by the fact that there is no entry of the burial, but only of the death, in the Cheadle registers. By his first wife he had two sons and two daughters, and by his second wife two daughters. There are rude portraits of Brereton in Ricraft's 'England's Champions' and Vicars's 'England's Worthies.' In the Sutherland collection of portraits in the Bodleian Library there is an illustration of him on horseback drawn by Robert Cooper.
[Ricraft's Survey of England's Champions, 1647; Vicars's England's Worthies, 1647; Clarendon's History; Binghall's Providence Improved, written 1628-73, published at Chester in 1778, containing an account of the siege of Nantwich; Cheshire Successes, 1642; Magnalia Dei, a Relation of some of the many remarkable Passages in Cheshire before the Siege of Namptwich ... and at the happy Raising of it by ... Sir Tho. Fairfax and Sir William Brereton, &c., London, 1643; History of the Siege of Chester, 1793; Sir William Brereton's Letter sent to the Hon, William Lenthall, Esq., Speaker of the Hon. House of Commons, concerning ... the Siege ... of Chester, 5 March 1645; Chester's Enlargement after Three Years' Bondage, 1645; the various contemporary accounts which were published of his more remarkable victories. Dr. Gower, in Account of Cheshire Collections (p. 43), mentions the Journals of Sir Wm. Brereton in five folio volumes, written in a small hand, describing every circumstance that occurred during the four years he was general. The only document now known to be in existence, corresponding in any degree to this description, is his letter-book from April to June 1642, and from December 1644 to December 1646; Add. MSS. 11331-3. Detailed accounts of Brereton's career are contained in Archæologia, vol. xxxiii., Ormerod's Cheshire, and Earwaker's East Cheshire.]
BRERETON, Sir WILLIAM (1789–1864), lieutenant-general and colonel-commandant 4th brigade royal artillery, was descended from the very ancient Cheshire family of Brereton of Brereton Hall, through its Irish branch, the Breretons of Carrigslaney, co. Carlow, of whom some particulars are given by Sir F. Dwarris in 'Archæologia,' vol. xxxiii., and in Mervyn Archdall's edition of 'Lodge's Peerage of Ireland,' ii. 251. In the only biographical notice wherein his parentage is given he is described as a son of Major Robert Brereton, who fought at Culloden, and younger half-brother of Major-general Robert Brereton of New Abbey, co. Kildare (formerly of 30th and 63rd regiments), and lieutenant-governor of St. Lucia, who died in 1818. He was born in 1789, and entered the Royal Military Academy as a cadet in 1803, whence he passed out in May 1805 as a second lieutenant royal artillery. He served in the Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns from December 1809 to June 1815, including the defence of Cadiz, where he commanded the guns at Fort Matagorda, the battle of Barossa, where he was wounded, the Burgos retreat, the battles of Vittoria and the Pyrenees, the siege of San Sebastian, where he was temporarily attached to the breaching batteries, the battles of Orthez, Toulouse, Quatre Bras, and Waterloo. During the greater part of the time he was one of the subalterns of the famous troop of the royal horse artillery commanded by Major Norman Ramsay, with which he was severely wounded at Waterloo. He became a second captain in 1816, and was placed on half pay the year after. He was brought on full pay again in 1823, and, after a quarter of a century of further varied service at home and in the colonies, was sent to China, where he was second in command under General d'Aguilar in the expedition to the Bocca Tigris, and at the capture of the city of Canton in 1848. During the early part of the Crimean war, Colonel Brereton, who was then on the strength of the horse brigade at Woolwich, was present with the Black Sea fleet, as a guest on board H.M.S. Britannia, carrying the flag of his relative, Vice-admiral Sir J. D. Dundas, and directed the fire of her rockets in the attack upon the forts of Sevastopol on
