A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



The officers ot the Guild were the mayor, who 

 wis also mayor of the borough, stewards and alder- 

 men. The following is a list of mayors: 1 328, 

 Aubred son of Robert; 1397, William de Erghum 

 (Arkholme) ; 141 5, Henry Johnson ; 1459, Robert 

 Hoghton ; I 500, William Marshall ; 15+2, Thomas 

 Tipping; Ij6z, Thomas Wall; 1582, George 

 Walton; l6oz, Henry Catterall ; 1622, William 

 Preston ; 164.2, Edmund Werden ; 1662, James 

 Hodgkinson ; 1682, Roger Sudell ; 1702, Josias 

 Gregson ; 1722, Edmund Assheton ; 1742, Henry 

 Farington ; 1762, Robert Parker; 1782, Richard 

 Atherton ; 1802 and 1822, Nicholas Grimshaw ; 

 1842, Samuel Horrocks ; 1 862, Robert Townley 

 Parker; 1882, Edmund Birley ; 1902, the Earl of 

 Derby." The meetings sometimes lasted a fortnight. 



To return from this digression, we find that in the 

 time of Henry Duke of Lancaster (1 351-61) the 

 courts of the duchy were held at Preston, 86 and once 

 at least the parish church served as a court-house." 

 Usually they seem to have been held at Lancaster, 

 but in time of pestilence were transferred to Preston.* 8 

 An inquiry as to the obstructions to the passage of 

 vessels up the Ribble was ordered in 1 3 59.™ A 

 matter of this kind may have contributed to the 

 decline evident in the importance of the town in the 

 I 5th century. ' The burgesses were fewer in number 

 in 1459 than in 1415. The old freemen, sons of 

 fathers who had been in the guild, had dwindled 

 down ... to about ninety persons,' though the 

 foreign burgesses had slightly increased to forty-five. 

 The new in burgesses admitted in 1459 numbered 

 ninety-three, the roll being thus doubled.' 



In 1536, during the excitement of the Pilgrimage 

 of Grace, the Earl of Derby made Preston his head 

 quarters, but on 30 October was able to publish the 

 king's proclamation and desire the gentlemen to 

 go home. 31 The Earl of Sussex was there in 1537 

 on a similar work for the pacification of the north ; 

 he thought there was ' not a scarcer country both for 

 horse meat and man's meat in England.' As to his 

 mission, he expected to leave the people as ' obedient, 

 faithful, and dreadful subjects ' as any in England." 

 Leland visited the place about that time, and writes 

 thus : ' Half a mile beyond Darwen I passed over 

 the great stone bridge of Ribble, having a v. great 



arches. From Ribble Bridge to Preston half a mile. 

 Preston hath but one parish church. The market 

 place of the town is fair. Ribble goeth round about 

 a great piece of the ground about town, yet it 

 toucheth net the town itself by space of almost half a 

 mile. ... A mile without Preston I rode over 

 Savock, a big brook, the which, rising in the hills 

 a iii. or iv. miles off on the right hand, not very far 

 ofF goeth into Ribble.'" 



The town and district were hostile to the Reforma- 

 tion. Even at present, in spite of former penal laws 

 and the vast changes effected by modern industries 

 with their new populations, Preston remains a 

 stronghold of Roman Catholicism. Various inci- 

 dents recorded in the accounts of the church and 

 the separate townships give evidence of the state of 

 affairs in the time of Elizabeth, and a few more may 

 be added to illustrate a matter of such importance. 

 Thus the Guild of 1582 was marked by a complaint 

 from Lawrence Wall, one of the principal burgesses, 

 that George Walton, the Guild mayor, was promoting 

 the celebration for his own gain, while he himself 

 opposed it as ' tending to mere superstition, as may 

 appear by the view of the ancient records of the 

 said town concerning the keeping of the old guild 

 merchant there, 34 tending to this effect that the guild 

 should begin with procession and a mass of the Holy 

 Ghost — now not tolerable — and divers other super- 

 stitious rites and ceremonies now abrogated.' Wall 

 had urged the mayor — but in vain — to execute the 

 statute against unlawful games and plays, such as the 

 keeping of common bowling alleys, unlawful playing 

 at cards and dice. The mayor and his wife had been 

 ordered by the ecclesiactical commission to receive the 

 holy communion but had not done so. 36 



Next year it was the Bishop of Chester who 

 denounced it and two other places as having a people 

 ' most obstinate and contemptuous ' of the Eliza- 

 bethan laws on religion ; he desired the government 

 ' to deal severely and roundly with them.' 36 



In the autumn of 1600 a priest named Robert 

 Middleton, a Yorkshireman educated at the English 

 College at Rome, was arrested near Preston by Sir 

 Richard Hoghton, and after being examined by him 

 and Thomas Hesketh 37 was delivered to the mayor 

 of Preston, who sent him to Lancaster Castle. On 



ia Details of the celebrations down to 

 1882 may be seen in the work already 

 cited, Abram's Memorials. It contains, 

 for example, the minute account of the 

 Guild of 1682 given by Dr. Kuerden. 

 The Guild sermons on this occasion, 

 preached by Richard Wroe and Thomas 

 Gipps, were afterwards printed. 



26 Final Cone. (Rec. Soc. Lanes, and 

 Ches.), ii, 130, &c. 



2: Assize R. 450, m. 8. There was 

 probably no other public building in the 

 town large enough for a court-house. 



23 Final Cone, iii, 140 ; this was in 

 1466. Lancaster retained a monopoly of 

 the assizes and quarter sessions until a 

 century ago, but in the 1 7th century, if 

 no earlier, the Chancery Court of the 

 duchy was held at Preston, which became 

 a lawyers' town. 



29 Dep. Keeper s Rep. xxxii, App. 346. 



80 Preston Guild R. xxi. 



»1 L. and P. Hen. Fill, xi, 922, 947, 

 1212 (3). 



82 Ibid, xii, 695. 



83 Itin, v, 97. Camden's notice of 



Preston some fifty years later is but 

 brief: 'A great and (for those countries) 

 a fair town, and well inhabited ' ; Britannia 

 (ed. 1695), 752. Taylor, the Water Poet, 

 Drayton, in Polyolbion, and ' Drunken 

 Barnaby ' have verses about it in the first 

 part of the 17th century. 



34 The * articles and points ' agreed upon 

 in 1500 and 1542 show that the guild was 

 proclaimed on three preceding market 

 days, and all burgesses were expected to 

 attend on the first day, going in proces- 

 sion from the Maudlands through the 

 town and hearing mass of the Holy Ghost 

 in company with the mayor and alder- 

 men. Afterwards the enrolling began, 

 when new burgesses could be admitted to 

 the franchise ; Abram, Memorials. 



85 Duchy of Lane. Plead. Eliz. exxvii, 

 W 11. From these it appears further 

 that the mayor, either before or after 

 Wall's interference, empanelled a jury 

 who sanctioned a right of way over 

 certain of the complainant's land in the 

 Newfield. 



About the same time Wall alleged that 



74 



William Hodgkinson, lately bailiff, had, 

 ' of a covetous humour,' unjustly levied 

 certain dues ; ibid. W 10. 



86 Foley, Rec. S. J., v, 392, quoting 

 S. P. Dom. Eliz. clxiii, 84. 



37 Ibid, viii, 1367, quoting S. P. Dom. 

 Eliz. eclxxv, 83. 'The priest . . . 

 had no letters nor any other thing of 

 importance found upon him saving only a 

 popish service book.' In reply to his 

 examiners, ' being demanded whether he 

 have said mass, christened children, 

 married any person, or reconciled any to 

 the Church of Rome he said he had done 

 »o and all other things concerning a priest, 

 and saith that such as he hath reconciled 

 he doth instruct them to be Catholic. 

 Being required to declare whether he 

 used in his reconciling or otherwise any 

 persuasion that if the pope should invade 

 the realm of England for alteration of 

 religion with force, whether those that 

 are reconciled to the Catholic Roman 

 Church should take part with the queen's 

 majesty against the forces of the pope 

 coming for such a cause, to that he saith 



