BLACKBURN HUNDRED 



of the vale through which the Ribble winds its course is in many parts of 

 great beauty, and the same may be said of the Calder and Hodder valleys. 



Clitheroe Castle was the caput of the hundred/ and there the hundred 

 court was held every three weeks.^ The lord of CUtheroe took all the profits 

 and was not accountable for them to the sheriff. This court was vulgarly 

 termed ' the Wapentake court of Blackburnshire,' and dealt chiefly with small 

 pleas of debt and trespass where the amount claimed was less than 40^./ but 

 pleas of distraint resisted and other pleas of the Crown and pleas by return of 

 the king's writ could not be dealt with.' The lord of Clitheroe had his own 

 bailiff of the wapentake to make distresses and attachments, and also claimed 

 to have suit of all trespasses committed within the hundred either at the suit 

 of the complainant or by virtue of office if no suit were made, and to attach 

 the trespasser to appear in court, and to punish him according to the offence, 

 save in pleas of the Crown. Provided that the word Bloodwite was not named 

 in court by the complainant he claimed also the right to punish a trespasser 

 for violent assault and bloodshed.^ Any thief or other malefactor taken in the 

 fee for an offence which the lord was not competent to try was to be delivered 

 to the king's bailiffs, but the king's bailiffs did not originally enter the fee to 

 make distraint or levy attachments unless the lord's bailiffs went with them. 

 In 1292 the Earl of Lincoln complained that this privilege had since the year 

 1278 been violated by the king's bailiffs.' The lord also claimed amends of 

 the assize of bread and ale broken, infangenthef, utfangenthef, and waif in the 

 hundred, and gallows at Clitheroe, and for himself and his free-tenants to be 

 quit of the custody of felons and thieves arrested, and of common fines and 

 amercements of the county and suits of the county court.* A little later the 

 hundred occurs as a recruiting ground for men to take part in the war in 

 Scotland.' 



The office of king's bailiff of the wapentake of Blackburn was for a long 

 time vested in the family of Singleton, who held the manor of Little Singleton 

 by petty serjeanty by executing this office in this hundred and in Amounder- 

 ness.^° Henry Earl of Lancaster in the time of Edward III granted the 

 bailiwick of the wapentake to the Abbot of Whalley, Gilbert de la Legh, 

 Richard de Towneley and John de Altham." During the Tudor period the 

 hundred court ceased to be held regularly every three weeks and was ultimately 

 held only a few times a year. During the same period two ' great or leet 

 courts of the wapentake of Blackburnshire ' were held for the king in April 

 and October of each year, at which pleas of wounding or attempting to slay, 

 rescues from the king's bailiffs, and trespasses committed on freehold lands 

 held of the Crown in the hundred were presented and tried. ^^ 



2 The Blackburn wapentake is mentioned as such in 1 187 ; Farrer, Lanes. Pipe R. 6t). 



2 Lanes. Court R. (Rec. Soc. Lanes, and Ches.), 48-63 ; De Lacy Compot. (Chet. Soc), 13, in. 



* Duchy of Lane. Ct. R. bifle. 78, no. 1013. Sixteen courts were held in i Henry VIII, before 

 Sir Peter Legh, kt., chief steward of the honor. Presentments were made by the constable and four men 

 from a township. 



5 Pkc. de Quo Warr. (Rec. Com.), 3 8 2d. " Ibid. ' Ibid. 382^. 



8 Ibid. '^ Cal. Pat. 1 301-7, pp. i, 6, 509. 



'^'^ Lanes. Inq. and Extents (Ree. Soc. Lanes, and Ches.), i, 52, 134, 160 ; Plae. de Quo Warr. (Rec. 

 Com.), 388J. The right descended through Singleton to Banastre and Balderston ; later descents may be 

 seen in the account of the last-named manor given below. 



11 Duchy of Lane. Misc. Bks. xii, I. For Gilbert de Legh see Cal. Pat. 1377-81, p. 381 ; and for 

 the Abbot of Whalley ibid. 1 391-6, p. 20Z. 



" Court R. at Clitheroe Castle, i & 2 Edward VI. 



231 



