WEST DERBY HUNDRED 



LIVERPOOL 



of the south-east tower.'" The cost of the addition 

 was £^.6 1 3/. I o^d. The stone was obtained from 

 Toxteth Park, the wood from the royal forest, now 

 controlled by Molyneux, and the money from the 

 Duchy Exchequer. Throughout the period the 

 expenditure in repairs of the castle was large and 

 constant."* The effect of the establishment of the 

 Stanleys in the tower, and of the Molyneuxes in the 

 castle, was to leave the borough very much at the 

 mercy of the two great noble houses entrenched 



Molyneux. Axurt 

 a cross moline or. 



Stanley. Argent 

 on a bend azure three 

 harts' heads cabotsed or. 



in their midst, especially at a period when the 

 Crown was perfectly incapable of maintaining order. 

 Simultaneously, the prosperity of the borough steadily 

 diminished,'"* and it was not till the beginning of the 

 17 th century that it again stood on the level to 

 which it had attained at the beginning of the iSth, 

 cither in population or in trade. 



The decay is most strikingly demonstrated in the 

 history of the lease. The last of the continuous 

 series of burgess leases which followed the quarrel 

 with the Crown expired in 1449, and apparently 

 the burgesses found themselves 

 unable to offer to continue 

 it. A royal agent, Edmund 

 Crosse,"' of the local family 

 already noticed, appears ; but 

 could only collect a little less 

 than j^ig in 1450, and 

 jfi5 14J. in 1452, as com- 

 pared with even the reduced 

 rent of £z'^ 6s. 8</. long paid 

 by the burgesses. The most 

 striking decline is in the 

 market-tolls, which in 1450 

 yield only £2, though in 

 1327 they had yielded ;^io, and in 1346 much 

 more. The failure of Crosse to produce increased 

 revenues enabled the burgesses to get a new farm 

 in 1454"' at the low rent of £iy 6s. 8a'., but they 

 were £/. in arrears on the first year, though they 

 had never been in arrears when they had to pay £■^9. 

 In 1 46 1 Edmund Crosse again rendered account "* : 

 the town was at farm, whether held by himself or 

 by the burgess body it is not possible to say. But 

 it was a ' new farm, ' and the rent was only ^^ 1 4. Dur- 



Crosse. Quarterly 

 gules and or a cross po- 

 tent argent in the first 

 and fourth quarters. 



ing the period of this lease the Crown, disregarding its 

 terms, made a special grant of one of the mills "° and 

 of one of the two ferry-rights,"" apparently with the 

 desire of increasing the yield. The burgesses held a 

 lease 31^^14 from 1466 to 1471 ; but for the last two 

 years of the period no account was rendered. The 

 civil war had broken out afresh after Warwick's insur- 

 rection, and the burgesses were either suffering from 

 its effects, or seized the opportunity to withhold pay- 

 ment. When Edward IV was again safely established 

 on his throne, he did his best to exact arrears for these 

 two years ; but never succeeded in getting from the 

 poverty-stricken burgesses more than j^9 of the ^^28 

 due from them.'" He did not renew their tenure, 

 but granted a lease, this time unquestionably a per- 

 sonal lease, to Edmund Crosse (1472) at £l\ 2/.'" 

 The burgesses never regained the lease. But even 

 Crosse was unable to pay so modest a figure. Three 

 years later(i475) his son, on having the lease renewed,"' 

 got the extra 2/. knocked off again, and obtained also a 

 concession of the two rural mills of Ackers and Waver- 

 tree, in addition to the burghal mills. But this was 

 not enough. In the next year (1476) he obtained a 

 revised lease,"* by which the rent was reduced to £11. 

 This represents probably the lowest ebb of Liverpool 

 prosperity. When, in 1488, the lease passed out of 

 the hands of the Crosses and was granted to David 

 Griffith,"' the rent was raised to £\ii\ this was in- 

 creased to £\\ 6s. %d. in 1528,"* and at that figure 

 it remained. Evidence is lacking as to the trade of 

 the port during this period ; but its absence is in itself 

 significant. And indeed it is needless to ask for more 

 striking evidence of the decay of the borough than that 

 afforded by tfie leases of the farm. At the same time 

 the very misery of the place, removing it from all 

 envy, saved to it some valuable privileges."' The 

 control of the burgess body over the waste, their right 

 to conduct their own courts, and the extension of their 

 governmental authority over the non-burgess inhabi- 

 tants, should probably be regarded as having been estab- 

 lished by usage in this periodof helplessness and poverty. 

 It is with the Tudor period that the material for 

 Liverpool history begins to be abundant. To the 

 regular records of the borough, which begin in 1555, 

 there is prefixed a collection of ' elder precedences,' 

 some of them dating from 1525; and in addition, 

 the national or duchy muniments provide ampler 

 material than before. But the reign of Henry VII, 

 the period of transition, is still very scantily supplied. 

 Substantially all that is known of this period is that 

 in 1488 Henry VII gave a lease of the farm to 

 David Griffith,"" in whose family it remained till 

 1537"° at the increased rent of ^^14 ; that in 1492 

 he empowered Thomas Fazakerley™ to form a fishing 

 station on the shore of the waste, between Toxteth 

 Park and the Pool ; that in 1498 the burgesses were 

 summoned to a Quo Warranto'"^ plea which does not 

 seem to have been heard ; and that in i486 he made 

 to one Richard Cook'"' a grant of ferry at ^3 per 



183 Okill Transcripts, iv, 208 ; Cox, 

 ' Liv. Castle,' Trans. Hist. Soc. (new ser.) 

 vi, 195 ff. 



'*• Okill, iv, 208, has summarized these 

 expenditures from the Mins. Accts. 



1^* A like decline is observable in the 

 prosperity of Preston at this period, 

 though the circumstances, apart from the 

 weakness of the Crown and the distress 

 caused by the war, were different from 

 those of Liverpool, 



lae Duchy of Lanes. Mins, Accts. bdle. 

 loi, no. 1800; 117, no. I94i< 



187 Ibid. loi, no. 1804. 



188 Ibid. 102, no. 1820. 



'89 Duchy of Lane. Chan. R. 3 Edw. IV, 

 no. 54 ; Hist. Munic. Govt, in Liv. 318. 



"» Chan. R. 8 ; Hist. Munic. Govt. 319. 



191 Duchy of Lane. Mins, Accts, bdle. 

 102, no. i8j8. 



"^ Duchy of Lane. Chan, R, no. 55 ; 

 Hist. Munic. Govt. 321. 



13 



198 Chan. R. 55 i Hist. Munic. Govt. 324. 

 19'' Chan. R. 57; Hist. Munic. Govt. 325. 

 195 Duchy of Lane. Misc. no. 21. 

 19« Croxteth Mun. (Liv. box 10, R 2, 

 no. 2). 



197 On this sec Hist. Munic. Govt. 62-6. 



198 Hist. Munic. Govt. 328. 



199 Ibid, 329, 330, 331. 



2™ Duchy of Lane. Reg. Bk. 

 ""^ Hist. Munic. Govt. 401. 

 ™ Ibid. 327. 



Digitized by IVIicrosoft® 



