ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



there was still usually required on the greater festivals, the offerings at the 

 chapel continued to go to the rector, and the tithes were still paid to him. 

 In a few cases, indeed, these were severed from the rectory, and the parochial 

 chapelry became an independent parish. North Meols, described as a chapeP"" 

 (perhaps of Halsall parish) in the middle of the twelfth century, is included 

 among the parishes in the Taxatio of 1291. The church of Ashton-under- 

 Lyne seems to have been originally a chapel in the parish of Manchester, and 

 the mention of a joint endowment in Domesday Book suggests doubts whether 

 it had yet become the centre of a distinct parish.^"^ If the statement of the 

 same record as to the churches of Amounderness is to be interpreted strictly, 

 the parishes of Lytham, Garstang, Chipping, and Ribchester must have been 

 formed between 1086 and 1291, and were perhaps originally chapelries.^"^ In 

 this county there was but one clear instance of the free chapel exempt by 

 special privilege from dependence upon any parish church, and even from the 

 jurisdiction of the ordinary.^"* The church of the little hospital of St. Mary 

 Magdalen at Preston enjoyed these privileges, being of the foundation and 

 patronage of the lords of the honour of Lancaster.^"* Henry de Lacy, when 

 he gave to the monks of Stanlaw the church of their new home at Whalley, 

 withheld the chapel of St. Michael in the castle at Clitheroe, and Queen 

 Isabella, upon whom the honour of Clitheroe was bestowed for life by the 

 crown on the attainder of Lacy's son-in-law Thomas of Lancaster, continued 

 to treat it as a free chapel."" But fifty years afterwards the abbey regained 

 possession on the ground that the chapel had no rights of baptism or 

 burial, nor any papal privilege such as other free chapels could show."* Some 

 parochial chapels may have grown out of private oratories in which the cele- 

 bration of mass was at first only licensed, under restrictions devised to pre- 

 serve the rights of the rector of the parish, for the benefit of the lord of the 

 manor and his household."^ Others, like Saddleworth, were from the outset 

 chapels of ease for a district remote from the parish church. William de 

 Stapleton, the founder of Saddleworth chapel between 1 1 94 and 1 2 1 1 , had to 

 bind himself and his heirs not to subtract their tithes and oblations from the 

 mother church of Rochdale, to the parson of which the chaplain was to be 

 presented and swear obedience."* The appointment of the chaplain was 

 sometimes, however, reserved to the rector of the mother church. When the 

 archbishop of York in 1230 granted a cemetery to the chapel of Caton, owing 

 to its distance from Lancaster and the danger of the ways, the lay lords of 



"» Lanes. Pipe R. 323. "' Dom. Bk. i, 270. 



'" See above, p. 8. Garstang was claimed in 1 205 as a chapelry of St. Michaels-on-Wyre, but the verdict 

 of a jury was that within living memory it had always been a parish church ; Lanes. Pipe R. 197. In 1241 

 Aymer des Roches, rector of Preston, failed in an attempt to establish that Chipping was a chapel appendant 

 to Preston and not the church of an independent parish ; T. C. Smith, Rec. of Preston Par. Ch. 26. 



'™ Phillimore, op. cit. 1823. 



'" Lanes. Chant. 208 ; see below, ' Religious Houses.' 



'» Whalley Cotuher, 226. 



"* Ibid. 226-36. The question was re-opened more than once, but-the king and the dukes of Lancaster 

 ultimately ratified the rights of the abbey. See ' Religious Houses,' under Whalley Abbey. 



'"' Such a private chapel was allowed by the priory of Burscough to Henry de Tarbock in the early part 

 of the thirteenth century. He was to have a chantry in his oratory at Tarbock, but he and his family were to 

 attend the mother church of Huyton on Christmas Day, Candlemas, Easter Day, Whitsunday, Michaelmas 

 Day, and All Saints' Day with due oblations. No parishioners might use the chapel, and all its offerings were 

 to go to the mother church under a penalty of £,^ for subtraction ; Reg. of Burscough, fol. 44^. Tarbock 

 chapel, however, never became parochial. 



"" Whalley Coucher, 147. The founder's son gave an endowment of land ; ibid. 148. 



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