A George II silver tankard, William Shaw II & William Priest, London 1750, of baluster form with later decoration, the scroll handle with heart-shaped terminal, armorial to front, 19cm high, approximately 770g

The arms are of RIDLEY of Heaton Hall, with a martlet for difference, indicating a fourth son. The impalement is JOHNSON (1^st and 4^th) quartering STAFFORD (2^nd and 3^rd).

On the 8^th November 1810 the Revd. Richard Ridley (1782-1845), fourth son of Sir Mathew White Ridley of Blagdon, 2^nd Bart, married Catherine Lucy Johnson, daughter of the Revd. Richard Popplewell-Johnson, Rector of Ashton-upon-Mersey, and his wife Penelope Stafford, daughter of John Stafford of Macclesfield who was related to the Staffords of Eyam, Derbyshire, and bro-in-law of Thomas Tatton-Egerton. Stafford became a major landowner in Macclesfield and is reputed to have had ‘fingers in a large number of pies in the north-west’. Catherine’s father, the Revd. Richard Popplewell Johnson was the local magistrate as well as a rector, and it was apparently he who ‘Read the Riot Act’ at Peterloo in 1819, and when the protesters did not disperse, authorised the Yeomanry to charge into the crowd.