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Of the smaller towns, Burnley, Bury, and Rochdale, were 
rising into importance and each becoming-a centre of the trade 
that contributed to the wealth and importance of the county. 
Before the suppression of monasteries the heads of the two 
religious houses of Furness and Whalley were the most important 
personages in the county; their establishments were maintained 
with regal splendour, and each had a retinue of servants that a 
prince might envy. The Stanleys were their great rivals in 
magnificence and the display of sumptuous hospitality. When 
the fierce war of the Roses was ended Lord Stanley was the only 
baron who came out of the great struggle with added power and 
splendour. The Harldom of Derby was conferred on him, and 
his immediate successors in the title more than sustained the 
reputation for magnificence which he acquired. The old 
chronicler Camden, on the death of Edward, the fourth Earl of 
Derby, said that ‘with him the glory of English hospitality 
seemed to have passed away.” In Lancashire, and also in the 
adjoining county of Chester, a style of architecture prevailed, 
which, if not peculiar, was nowhere else practised so commonly 
or on so grand ascale. The great difference between.the timber 
mansions of Lancashire and those in other parts of the kingdom, 
were, that while using a material common to all, the former 
were distinguished by their extravagant solidity and their strength 
and ingenuity of construction. While the upper classes were 
living in the full enjoyment of their wealth, the thrifty manufac- 
turers in the prosperous inland towns were accumulating riches, 
becoming themselves small landowners, and by their enterprise 
establishing a new world of commercial energy. Though trade 
increased, and their gains were large, it was long before refine- 
ment and luxury found their way into their dwellings, and in 
their habits and education they were but little removed from the 
common people who were ignorant and superstitious, but as 
merry and boisterous as they were illiterate and rude. Before 
the Reformation education had made but little progress. When 
the first of the Tudors ascended the throne there was not a single 
public school from one end of the county to the other, and had 
Shakspeare’s Jack Cade been there he would have had no cause 
to reproach Lancashire men, as he did Lord Say, with having 
“most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting 
‘a grammar school.’”’ When the Reformation had been accom- 
plished only three such schools had been founded—Farnworth 
in 1507, Manchester in 1515, and Warrington in 1526. Before 
the close of Elizabeth’s reign the number had been increased 
to 24. For the boy of ‘‘ pregnant wit,” as Hugh Oldham phrased 
it, there were the schools attached to the monasteries where he 
might obtain some kind of learning better or worse, and be 
trained for the priesthood; but those of the middle class had 
