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The Vicar of Blackburn eventually resigned on account of his 
ignorance, and the ‘ill Vicar” of Whalley, as Pilkington styled 
him, is said to have been a man of low habits, loose morals, and 
so little learned that he was unable to read intelligibly. Burnley, 
Colne, Padiham, Haslingden, Samlesbury, and Rossendale, were 
in no better plight, and in most of the chapelries the complaint 
of ignorance, drunkenness, and licentiousness was general. The 
curate of Stretford, near Manchester, kept an alehouse, and his 
neighbour, the lector, or reader, of Chorlton, eked out a miserable 
subsistence by doing a little pawnbroking privately, but being 
found out, he was required to pay 2s. to the poors’ box. The 
endowments of these small chapelries were very inadequate, 
many of the benefices being worth no more than £4 or £5 a 
year. The curate of Blackley when prosecuted in 1581, for 
teaching without a licence, pleaded poverty, and affirmed that 
his stipend was only £2 3s 4d.a year. The Vicar of Rochdale 
paid the “ preste” of his chapel of Saddleworth £3 every half- 
year and thought he had done handsomely, while many had to 
depend on the voluntary principle, and be content with the small 
offerings of their flocks. In many other places the clergy were 
equally ill-paid and the people as badly served. With such 
laxity in the Church it is no wonder that immorality should pre- 
vail to so large an extent among the people, the masses of whom 
it is to be feared were neither very refined nor very virtuous. 
Delighting in eruel sports, such as bull-baiting, bear-baiting, 
and given to all manner of unlawful gaming, lewdness, and 
boisterous revelry, the alehouses to which the more dissolute 
resorted—and they were innumerable—were the scenes of riots 
and feuds, which not only caused annoyance and scandal to the 
better disposed, but endangered the public peace to a greater 
degree than we can now easily conceive, and in the interests of 
morality it became necessary for those in authority to suppress 
by all lawful means such disorderly proceedings, and to punish all 
itinerant bearwards, vagrants, and other such disorderly persons. 
In August, 1585, the Magistrates of Lancashire passed a series 
of resolutions respecting the government of ale-houses, the prin- 
cipal of which were, that no alehouse should be kept without a 
license being first obtained at the Quarter Sessions, a rule not 
before observed: no ale was allowed to be sold for more than 
one penny for a quart. ‘“ Rogues and valiant beggars” and 
“strange beggars of foreign shires’’ were not permitted to exercise 
their vocation in the county, and warning to this effect was to 
‘be given openlie in all parish churches” within the county, 
and none were to have license to beg except in their own hundred, 
and none were to use ‘“‘ begginge’’ who were able to work: no 
licenses were thenceforth to be granted for begging except at the 
General Quarter Sessions, 
