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little chance, unless they had the good fortune to be admitted to 
the houses of the nobler and better born, when, with the 
younger members of the family, they might receive scholastic 
teaching from a properly appointed teacher, and be fitted for the 
universities. As a consequence, there were few of the trading 
classes in the towns who could read, and still fewer who could 
write. Colonel Fishwick, in his history of Kirkham, tells us 
that so late as Elizabeth’s reign of the 80 sworn men who had 
control of the affairs of that parish, only one could write, and 
when he failed to attend the meetings the business had to be 
postponed. The religious condition of the people both before 
and after the Reformation was little better. The parochial 
clergy were few and their parishes were extensive, justifying the 
remark which Fuller made a century later that ‘‘ some clergymen 
who have consulted God’s honour with their own credit and profit 
could not better desire for themselves than to have a Lincoln- 
shire church, as best built, a Lancashire parish as largest 
bounded, and a London audience as consisting of the most 
intelligent people.’ The heads of religious houses had succeeded 
in obtaining for themselves the larger portion of the rectorial 
endowments, and hence the majority of the parishes were left to 
the spiritual care of vicars—oftentimes men with little learning 
and still less piety, who were content to accept the small tithes 
as a miserable means of subsistence. The ‘‘ parson” of Wigan 
was a great man in his way, and it is recorded that on one 
occasion at his house in London “ he feasted two kings and two 
queens with their attendants, 700 messes of meat scarce serving 
for the first dinner.” But with the exception of the rectors 
of Wigan and Winwick, the Vicar of Rochdale, and the 
Warden of Manchester, there were few of the parochial clergy 
who were not sprung from the lowest of the people—men rude 
and illiterate, who could read their breviaries and no more, and 
whose lives were scandalously immoral. After the Reformation 
the condition of things was but little better, and the state of the 
clergy was positively worse. James Pilkington. a native of 
Rivington, and the first reformed Bishop of Durham, on visiting 
his native county, found the state of things so deplorable that he 
addressed a letter of remonstrance to Archbishop Parker, who 
was patron and rector of the three large parishes of Rochdale, 
Blackburn and Whalley. The state of the Church was lament- 
able. William Downham was at the time Bishop of Chester, a 
Protestant of very mild type, and not much troubled with scruples 
of any kind. The Archbishop of York had covenanted with him 
for the visitation of the diocese, and Downham, good easy man, 
was content to receive the visitation fees which were collected by 
a deputy. The Vicar of Rochdale was an avowed Papist, who 
kept out of the way and retained a deputy to officiate for him, 
