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stituting Manchester a place of sanctuary, but the privilege was 
one the inhabitants do not appear to have very highly appre- 
ciated, for in the following year they made a representation to 
Parliament that the immunity was very prejudicial to the wealth, 
credit, and good order of the town by encouraging idleness, 
unlawful games, unthriftiness, and other enormities; and so in 
the following year another Act was passed transferring the 
sanctuary to Chester, which, being poor, was not likely to offer 
much temptation to thieves and felons. This Act (83 Henry 
VIIL., c. 15) sets forth that Manchester was ‘‘ well sette a worke 
in making of clothes as well of lynnen as of wollen, whereby the 
inhabitants have obteyned, gotten, and come unto ryches, and 
welthy lyvings, and have kept and sett many artificers and pore 
folks to work within the said towne.” 
Lancaster was the oldest corporate borough, and was then as 
now, the chief town of the county, though so far as population 
was concerned it was surpassed by several towns of more recent 
growth. It had then however become a decaying town: Leland, 
writing in the reign of Henry VIII., describes it as “ falling into 
ruin,’ and Camden half a century later says it was ‘ but 
thinly peopled” and “all the inhabitants are farmers.”’ 
Preston, the priests’ town as its name denotes, exceeded in 
population the chief town of the palatinate and rivalled it in 
honour and dignity, being the capital of the duchy. 
Liverpool had risen into considerable importance during the 
Plantagenet reigns, but its fortunes were then on the wane, and it 
had come to be accounted as a kind of dependency on the more 
important port of Chester. In 1565 its population was only 
about 900, less than one-third of that of Preston. Bolton was 
the great rival of Manchester, and at one time bade fair to outrun 
it in the race for wealth. When Leland described Manchester as 
the most populous town, he added “ Bolton-upon-Moore market 
standeth most by cottons: divers villages in the moors about 
Bolton do make cottons :” and so the two towns became the chief 
resort for both woollen and cotton manufactures. 
Warrington was a thriving town with a population of over 2,000, 
the inhabitants being for the most part engaged in the manu- 
facture of sailcloths. It was protected by a fortified residence, 
and its church was accounted the most important in the hundred. 
Wigan, which at one time was the most populous as well as 
the most wealthy town in the West Derby hundred, could boast 
considerable antiquity, and had the honour of sending two 
representatives to Parliament in the time of Edward III, but it 
had passed the heyday of its prosperity, and like Liverpool had 
for long abstained from exercising its privilege on account of its 
poverty. 
