A George II provincial silver tankard, John Langlands I, Newcastle 1757, of baluster form with later decoration, armorial to front, 20cm high, approximately 812g

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.