A History of Lancashire

Alan de Syngleton, son of Richard, gave to God and our Saviour for a hospital four acres of land in Dilewhe (Dilworth), and Walter de Mutun, of Ribelchester, granted in the time of Henry III. all the lands which his father, Walter, had bequeathed to the same hospital. In a charter of the time of Henry VII. it is called the House of St. Saviour at Sted.

Nicholas Talbot by will, dated 1501, appointed a priest to sing for twelve months at Stede, where his father and mother were buried.

After the dissolution the manor of Stede [Stydd], with all its rights, in 1544, was granted to Sir Thomas Holt, of Grizzlehurst. From this grant it appears that Stydd was then a house of preceptories, consisting of Knights Hospitallers dependent on the house of Newland, near Wakefield. One of the provisions of this charter was that out of the revenues of the manor, etc., was reserved 40s. a year for the payment of a curate to perform divine service at the church at Stydd.

It was, no doubt, at this time that all the buildings except the small chapel were demolished. From the time of the Reformation until quite recently service was only performed here three or four times a year, although the church was endowed with the tithes of eleven farms in the township of Dutton.

The church as it now stands is at once striking and picturesque; it is composed of gray grit stone, and is almost covered with ivy. Small as it is, there were evidently three entrances to it, one of which, on the north side, is of very early Norman character. The principal entrance is in the west end, and its proportions and mouldings mark it as of Anglo–Norman date. The effect of this doorway is partly destroyed by a rude porch, which at a comparatively recent date has been added to it. The east window is of fine proportions; the compartments are lancet–shaped without cuspings, and contain three lights. The window on the interior of the mullions has been ornamented with painting in polychromy, now hardly visible. On the south side is a long, narrow aperture, which was probably used as a hagioscope or squint. The interior of this interesting little building looks cold and bare, as it is unseated and almost without the usual church furniture.185 It contains several tombstones of great age, one of which is to the memory of a Lord and Lady of Salesbury Hall, who were living in the time of Edward III., and another is embellished with the double cross of the Knights Templars. The head of this stone is richly ornamented, and is a fine specimen of its kind. The stone font is a massive octagonal piece of work, and is probably of the fourteenth century.186

In West Derby Hundred, the Domesday Book mentions five churches: Childwall and Walton–on–the–Hill, Wigan, Winwick and Warrington; but there had probably been at some earlier period churches at Kirkby and Ormskirk, and very soon afterwards others were founded at Prescot, Huyton, Sefton, and North Meols. The church of Warrington calls for special notice on account of its dedication to St. Elfin (see p. 55), a saint whose name does not occur in the Romish calendar, and is unknown to history. Beamont187 conjectures that it is the name of some local benefactor, canonized by the people for the good deeds which he had done; a cognate name was that of Elfwin, the brother of Egfrid, and the nephew of King Oswald, who was slain fighting with Ethelfrid in the battle on the banks of the Trent in A.D. 679.

At Warrington, probably towards the end of the thirteenth century, a friary of the Augustine or Hermit friars was established, but the name of its founder and the exact date of its foundation are alike unknown; it was not on a very extensive scale, and was dissolved with the other lesser houses in 1535. The third house established in Lancashire by the Austin canons was the priory of Burscough, which was founded in honour of St. Nicholas, by Robert Fitz–Henry, Lord of Lathom, in about 1124. To this priory was granted a charter in 1286 to hold a weekly market and a five days’ fair in their manor of Ormskirk; amongst its endowments were the advowsons of the churches of Ormskirk, Huyton and Flixton, and lands in many parts of West Derby. At the time of the dissolution (about the year 1536) it contained a Prior, five monks, and forty dependents, and its temporalities were then worth about £1,000 a year, according to the present value of money. There was here a priory church with several altars, a chapter–house, and a hospital, into which Henry de Lacy, Constable of Chester, agreed with the Prior for a perpetual right to send one of his tenants. Very little of this ancient priory has been left by the destroying hand of Time.188

A small Benedictine priory, dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, was founded at Upholland, near Wigan, by Sir Robert Holland, in 1318, and to it were impropriated the churches of Childwall in Lancashire and Whitwick in Leicestershire.

In the great hundred of Salford, the Domesday Book only names two churches, both of which were in Manchester, and dedicated to St. Michael and St. Mary, and it is somewhat remarkable that even the sites of these buildings are now only a matter of conjecture. The probability is that one stood in Aldport and the other in Acres Field, near to the end of the present St. Mary’s Gate. When or why these churches were pulled down history does not tell us, but for centuries after the Conquest Manchester was a rural deanery, and probably was the ecclesiastical centre of the ten parishes comprised in the county division. Baines says (and others have repeated) that the church at Bury was named in the Great Survey; this is not the case, but before the end of the twelfth century there were churches not only at Bury, but at Ashton–under–Lyne, Prestwich, Middleton and Flixton, and a little later saw the rise of the churches of Radcliffe, Bolton and Eccles. Rochdale Church was certainly built before 1194, and was almost certainly a Saxon foundation.

In 1421 (August 5) the parish church of Manchester was, at the instigation of Thomas la Warre, twelfth Lord of Manchester, made into a collegiate church, to be governed by one warden and eight fellows, four clerks, and six choristers, and it was ordained that divine service should be celebrated there every day for the good health of the King, of the Bishop, of Thomas la Warre, and for the souls of their ancestors, and for the souls of all the faithful departed for ever. This collegiate church in 1540 obtained the privilege of asylum (as had also Lancaster), whereby any criminal resorting to it for sanctuary should be assured his life, liberty and limbs. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the church of Manchester was a wooden building, on the site where now stands the cathedral.

The only monastic institution in this great division of Lancashire was the priory of Kersal, near Manchester, which consisted of a cell to the Cluniac house of Lenten, near Nottingham. The manor and cell of Kersal was granted by Henry II. (1154–1189) to Lenten, and both passed into the hands of Henry VIII. at the dissolution.

During the two centuries which immediately followed the Norman Conquest, a vast change came over the religious aspect of Lancashire; the commissioners who compiled the Domesday Book found here and there a small church and other evidences of the growth of the Christian faith; but in all directions they found great tracts of country – especially in the northern parts – lying waste, with few or no inhabitants. British settlements had been followed by Roman camps, and these in turn had been destroyed by the Scots, the Saxons and the Danes, in their struggles for supremacy; but, still, it is clear beyond dispute that the teachings of Paulinus, and Bede, and Wilfrid had taken firm hold of the minds of the people, and the time was ripe for a great missionary effort. The opportunity was seized, and in every direction colonies of monks and friars were sent out, and religious houses founded, one effect of this being that gradually a very large number of the existing churches were passed over to and became part of the possessions of the newly–established institutions. There were, of course, exceptions, but as a rule, where the patronage of a church was not held by the King, it was owned by some religious house. One result of this was the appointment of non–resident vicars, many of whom held several livings, the care of which was handed over to others.

One example of this may be cited. In 1289 the patronage of St. Michael’s–on–Wyre was vested in the King, and in the December of that year the Pope granted an indulgence to Walter de Languethon, the King’s clerk, Rector of St. Michael’s, to hold an additional living: in 1290 he held also the Rectory of Croston, and had a dispensation granted to enable him to accept a third, and in the following year he got an indulgence to retain two of these for five years without residing there or being ordained priest, whilst he was engaged in the King’s service, the churches in the meantime to be served by vicars. Another vicar of this parish in the next century was also acting as receiver for John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and at Preston, a long series of Rectors probably never were within sight of the church of which they held the living.

The establishment of these religious houses does not appear to have been immediately followed by any considerable increase in the number of churches, though here and there a new one was erected; the number added to those recognised by the valuation of Pope Nicholas in 1291 was very small indeed.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many chantries were founded by private individuals in the parish churches, very few of the older foundations being without one or more of these altars, nearly all of which were more or less endowed, and there were buried their founders and their successors, to whose memory stately monuments were therein erected. With the birth of the sixteenth century, it was evident that serious abuses had crept into the monastic institutions, which prepared the way for and finally led to their suppression. The change brought about by the violent measure taken by Henry VIII. must have been greatly felt in Lancashire, where then, as now, great difference in opinion must have existed as to its wisdom or otherwise. There are those who now declare that history justifies the course then taken, whilst there are others who maintain that “neither among the friars, with their public ministry and their international character, nor among the Cistercians of Furness and Whalley, with their industries and agriculture, nor among the regular canons, Augustinian and Præmonstratensian, nor among the Benedictines, with their large place in the national history, their local ties, and their varied work, was there found, when the end was at hand, anything to warrant their wholesale suppression.”189 Into this question it is not necessary to enter, but it may be briefly stated that most historians agree that, although many of these houses were well managed and regulated, the abbots and priors were often more concerned about the temporal possessions of their orders than for the spiritual benefit to the community, which alone justified their continued existence. And no one can read the literature of those times without coming to the conclusion that, at all events in the popular mind, there was then a strong conviction that the lives of the monks were not regulated by the high standard of morality aimed at by the original founders of their institutions.

Acting upon powers given by Parliament, the King took possession of the religious houses in Lancashire, and with no loss of time conveyed all their lands and tenements to willing purchasers, the abbeys, priories, and other buildings being in nearly every instance unroofed and more or less destroyed, and even the silver shrines, the church plate, and the richly embroidered vestments, were all converted into money, which found its way into the royal coffers.

The Reformation was now accomplished, and the Pope was no longer head of the English Church, which was now controlled by Henry VIII., who not only regulated the appointment of its clergy, but to some extent dictated its form of ritual as well as its teaching: images and holy relics were swept away, as well as many forms of worship considered of Popish origin. Edward VI., to make the matter complete, suppressed the private chantries, and converted their endowments to his own use; and soon afterwards (in 1552) inventories of all church goods were taken, and such as were not deemed necessary to carry on divine service according to the reformed method were to be sold. These lists for Lancashire have been preserved;190 as a sample of the then furniture of a church, the case of Ormskirk may be taken: in it there were found 2 chalices, 1 cope of old green velvet, 2 copes of old blue silk, a vestment of silver velvet, 1 of tawny velvet with yellow crosses, 1 vestment of green satin bridges,191 with 2 other vestments, 3 albs, 2 altar–cloths, 1 towel, 3 corporases,192 5 bells, 2 cruets,193 3 sacring bells, a pair of organs. Organs were now not very common in parish churches; they were, however, found in the churches at Rochdale, Middleton, Preston, and Liverpool; in the latter place the Mayor and Bailiffs in 1588 ordered that there should be a hired clerk who could sing his plain song and prick song and play on the organs. At the time of the suppression of the chantries the number of clergy, including the chantry priests, was considerable in some of the larger parishes; thus we find twenty in Manchester, fourteen in Winwick, fourteen in Blackburn, and eleven in Prescot.

Many of these cantarists, as they were called, were now pensioned off for life. In Lancashire at this time there was a very strong party in favour of the old form of religion; and this wholesale doing away with the institutions which had so long been established in their midst met with almost open rebellion, and thus it was that again progress was arrested in the county.

It has already been stated that during the monkish rule little was done in church–building; indeed, in what is now the Diocese of Manchester,194 between 1291 and the suppression of the monasteries, there were not a dozen churches erected, whilst during the reign of Henry VIII. seven were built, several of which would perhaps be more properly described as chapels–of–ease; they were Ashworth, Denton, Blakley, Douglas, Hornby, Rivington, and Shaw. On the accession of Mary in 1553, there was a return to the old order of things, and Popery being once again established, the Lancashire Catholics were not slow in taking advantage of the opportunity; thus, we find that in 1558 the Mayor and Bailiffs of Liverpool ordered that the priest of St. John’s altar should say Mass daily between the hours of five and six in the morning, that all labourers and well–disposed people might attend. During the troubled times which followed, two of Lancashire’s sons became martyrs in the cause of the Protestant religion. John Bradford was a native of Manchester, where he was born in the early part of the century; he became Prebendary of St. Paul’s and chaplain to Edward VI., but on his refusal to give up preaching the reformed doctrine he was sent to the Tower, and after an examination before the Lord Chancellor and the Bishop of London, and repeated appeals to conform, he was pronounced to be a heretic, and on June 30, 1554, he was burnt at Smithfield in the presence of a vast concourse of people. On reaching the place of execution he walked firmly up to the stake, and after a short prayer he took up a faggot and kissed it, and took off his coat and delivered it to his servant, and then, turning towards the people, he held up his hands, and exclaimed: “O England, England, repent thee of thy sins! Beware of idolatry, beware of antichrists, lest they deceive thee!” His hands were then tied and the fire lighted, and amidst the flames he was heard to say, “Strait is the way and narrow is the gate which leadeth unto life, and few there be that go in thereat.” Fuller describes Bradford as “a most holy man, who, secretly in his closet, would so weep for his sins, one could have thought he would never have smiled again, and then, appearing in public, he would be so harmlessly pleasant, one would think he had never wept before.”

During his imprisonment he wrote to his mother, then living in Manchester, and tried to console her by the assurance that he was not going to die “as a thiefe, a murderer, or an adulterer,” but as “a witness of Christ, hys gospel and veritye.” He left several sermons which, together with his letters and an account of his life, were afterwards published.

George Marsh was a native of Dean, near Bolton, where he was born about the year 1515, and was brought up to follow agricultural pursuits; but having lost his wife when he was about thirty years old, he left his young children with his father, proceeded to Cambridge, and became a student at the University, and being subsequently ordained, was appointed Curate of Allhallows’, Bread Street, in London, by the Rev. Mr. Saunders (the martyr), then Rector of that church. In 1555 he appears to have been persecuted for his zeal in the reformed religion, and contemplated leaving the country; but before doing so he paid a visit to his mother and his children, and on this occasion the Earl of Derby sent a letter to Mr. Barton, of Smithell’s Hall,195 near Bolton, to apprehend him and send him to Latham. This order was duly carried out, and after an examination before the Earl, he was imprisoned in what he describes as a “cold windy stone house, where there was very little room,” and where he remained for two nights without bed, “save a few great canvas tent–clothes.” This was in March, 1555. He remained here for over a fortnight, and on Low Sunday (with some others) was removed to Lancaster Castle. After a time the Bishop of Chester came to Lancaster, and, according to Marsh’s statement, he refused to have anything to do “with heretics so hastily,” but at the same time he “confirmed all blasphemous idolatry, as holy–water casting, procession gadding, mattins, mumbling, mass–hearing, idols up–setting, with such heathenish rites forbidden by God.” Subsequently Marsh was sent to Chester, and brought before the Bishop (Dr. Cotes), and there was charged with having preached at Dean, Eccles, Bolton, Bury, and many other places in the diocese, against the Pope’s authority, the Catholic Church of Rome, the blessed Mass, the Sacrament of the Altar, and many other articles; whereupon he did not deny the preaching, but asserted that he had only, as occasion served, maintained the truth touching these subjects. Having firmly refused to recant, the Bishop “put his spectacles on his nose,” and read out his sentence, after which he added, “Now will I no more pray for thee than I will for a dog.” He was then delivered to the sheriffs of the city, and put into prison at the North Gate. On April 24, 1555, he was taken thence to Spittle–Broughton, near the city, being escorted by the sheriffs and their officers, “and a great number of poor simple barbers with rusty bills and poleaxes.”

When at the stake he was again asked to recant, but again refused, whereupon he was chained to a post, and “a thing made like a firkin, with pitch and tar” in it, was placed over his head, and the fire lighted.

The religious persecution was now going on all over the kingdom, and many Protestants from Lancashire, in company of thousands from other parts of England, fled for shelter to foreign countries, there to seek that liberty of conscience which was denied them at home. They mostly went to Geneva, Strasburg and Holland. Towards the end of Mary’s reign, Pope Paul IV. began to insist on the reinstitution of the abbeys and monasteries in England; but it was found that those who now owned these estates declined to part with them “as long as they were able to wear a sword by their sides.”

The war with France following, when the Pope took sides against the Queen, and in which England lost all her dominions in that country, only for a time stayed the persecution of heretics, and in October, 1558, it was again renewed; but the death of the Queen on the 17th of November in the same year closed this dreadful chapter of English history.

The Church was now again freed from the authority of the Pope, and gradually restored to what it was in the time of Henry VIII.; but in order not to hurt the Roman Catholics too much at first, a small number of Catholic ministers were retained in her Majesty’s Council. Commissioners were appointed to visit each diocese and to report on the state of things, especially as to the effects of the late persecutions. Amongst those selected for the Northern visitation was the Earl of Derby. The commissioners commenced their work on August 22, 1559, and were directed to minister the oath of recognition; they received many complaints from clergymen who had been ejected from their livings for being married and other causes, and in some cases these were reinstated. In Lancashire the oath of supremacy was ordered to be taken by a proclamation to the Chancellor of the duchy, dated May 23, 1559, both clergy and laity being required to take it. At the same time all the restored chantries were only to be now used in accordance with the Reformed Church: the Host was not to be elevated, and the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Gospels were to be read in English.

The progress of the Reformation was rapid in the South of England, but in Lancashire the feeling in favour of the old form of religion was so strong that for some years little or no permanent change was effected, as nearly all the oldest and most powerful families in the county were rigid Roman Catholics. It is a remarkable fact that when England, under Elizabeth, again became Protestant, and almost all the bishops gave up their sees, the great majority of the clergy in Lancashire agreed rather to accept the new form of religion than to resign their livings, the result being that in many parishes the vicars or rectors were really Papists in disguise, and had shown themselves but ill qualified shepherds to have the care of such large, scattered, and disunited flocks. But this exhibition of pliant and accommodating consciences was put in the shade by the rapidity with which the Earl of Derby changed front, and we now find the persecutor of Marsh every whit as keen in running to earth the recusant Roman Catholic. But in all extreme movements there is generally a reaction; so the harsh measures taken by Queen Mary laid the seeds for the formation of a new body of malcontents, to whom the reform meted out to the Church was not sufficient; and this, at first a mere sect, soon rose into a powerful party, which was recognised under the general title of Puritans. Queen Elizabeth hated a Puritan only with a less bitter hatred than she did a Catholic; so as both these were represented in Lancashire, this county was at once marked out for persecution; and it was not long before we hear of 600 recusants being presented at one assize at Lancaster, and that all the prisons were full.196

Catholics were forbidden to leave the country, and Puritans were not allowed to meet together to worship anywhere except in the church. In 1567 the Queen addressed a letter to the Bishop of Chester, in which she says: “We think it not unknown how, for the good opinion we conceived of your former service, we admitted you to be bishop of the diocese; but now, upon credible reports of disorder and contempts, especially in the county of Lancaster, we find great lack in you. In which matter of late we writ to you, and other our commissioners joined with you, to cause certain suspected persons to be apprehended, writing at the same time to our right trusty and well–beloved the Earl of Derby, for the aid of you in that behalf.

“Since that time, and before the delivery of the said letters to the Earl of Derby, we be duly informed that the said earl hath, upon small motions made to him, caused such persons as have been required to be apprehended, and hath shown himself therein according to our assured expectation very faithful and careful of our service.”

The letter concludes with instruction to the Bishop to make a personal visitation into the most remote parts of his diocese, especially in Lancashire, and to see for himself how the various church–livings are filled.

Notwithstanding this reproof to the Bishop, he had before this had many times to deal with rebellious clergy and their congregations. Many instances might be quoted. In 1564 the curate of Liverpool was admonished to warn the people “that they use no beades,” and that they “abolish and utterly extirpate all manner of idolatrie and superstition out of the Church immediately;” and at the same time the curate of Farnworth was presented “for showing and suffering candles to be burnt in the chapel on Candlemas daye, accordinge to the old superstitious custom.” In the same year complaints were made to the Archbishop of York that in all the livings in Whalley and Blackburn the clergy were neglecting their duty, and very seldom preached to their flocks. The Bishop made a visitation in the summer of 1568, but he has left little record of it, except that he was well entertained by the gentry, the only drawback to his perfect enjoyment being the excessive heat of the weather. The disaffection increased, and there was a determination on the part of a large portion of the community not to attend church nor to hear sermons, but to have Mass celebrated, and otherwise to act against the laws of the land; indeed, there is not wanting evidence to show that it would at this time not have required much excitement to have resulted in open rebellion.