A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



churches. Considering the very small space allotted to the district the 

 number given compares favourably with what is vouchsafed in the case or 

 some of the midland and southern counties." It comprises more than a 

 fourth of the parish churches which are recorded to have existed before the 

 end of the thirteenth century. The Taxatio of Pope Nicholas drawn up in 

 1 29 1-2 enumerates forty-eight, to which must be added eight which cer- 

 tainly existed then, but from poverty or other reasons were excluded from 

 the list ; ^' of the fifty-six at least forty-seven can be traced back in records 

 to the twelfth century, and nineteen are mentioned in documents of the 

 eleventh. 



Ten of the seventeen or eighteen Domesday churches belonged to the 

 district between the Ribble and the Mersey and to the diocese of Chester, 

 whither the see of Lichfield had been removed in 1075 by its first Norman 

 bishop Peter, a chaplain of the Conqueror. In every case but one a con- 

 siderable pre-Conquest endowment of land is recorded, and some had had 

 extensive immunities ; this doubtless accounts for their being mentioned. 



The most highly endowed were Whalley (St. Mary) '" and Winwick 

 (St. Oswald)," each of which had under the Confessor two carucates of land 

 tree of all ' custom.' In other words, each had a glebe assessed at some 240 

 arable acres, the fines for all emendable crimes and offences committed within 

 its limits were taken by the church itself and its land was exempt from 

 danegeld. Warrington (St. Elfin), Wigan, and Walton-on-the-Hill each 

 had a carucate of land, and the first was quit of all ' custom ' except geld.''' 

 In Manchester the church of St. Mary and the church of St. Michael had 

 held a carucate of land with the same immunity ; '^ St. Michael's was at 

 Ashton-under-Lyne, and its close association with Manchester suggests that 

 this comparatively small parish was not yet quite independent of the mother 

 church. The priest of Childwall is entered as the tenant T.R.E. of half a 

 carucate in (free) alms." Two bovates, or a quarter of a carucate, was the 

 endowment of Blackburn church." In Leyland Hundred a priest is inci- 

 dentally mentioned among the tenants of Roger the Poitevin's vassals in 

 1086.'' This has been thought to imply the existence of a church at Leyland.^*' 

 Although, with this exception, the information given all refers to a date twenty 

 years before the Survey there is no reason to suppose that the churches lost 

 any of their land. Five of the churches mentioned or implied were closely 

 associated with the great hundredal manors of the crown into which this 

 district was divided before the Conquest. At Warrington, Blackburn, and 

 perhaps Leyland the church was actually in the royal vill ; Manchester was 



'' In Bedfordshire, for instance, only four are named. 



yll" '"f^'f^'\ ^':' ^""^ "^^ ^"'°°= '"-^"'^^ to above for the exclusion in 129 1 of certain churches are 

 suppled by the In,uu.Uo ^onarumoi I 3 + . (Rec. Com.), 35-41. It is as follows -.-Deanery of MancheZ 

 and Backburn: Manchester, Middleton, Bury, Fl.xton, Radcliffe, Ashton-under-Lyne Prestwich RoU 

 Rochdale Eccles, Blackburn, WhaUey. Z)....ry ./ ;^.m«^,« .- Warrington, lS wfnS Prt^"!' 

 Childwall, Huyton, Sefton, Aughton, Ormskirk, Halsall, North Meols, WalL-;n- the Hill W^n' n ' 



ofLe^knd: Leyland, Croston, Eccleston, Standish, Penwortham. Deanery ./^«^l»"rL P "^ 7? 

 ham, Lytham, St. Michaels-on-Wyre, Garstang, Poulton, Ribchester, Chip^rrCock ,har^ T ' ' 



Dcnery cfLonMe and Kendal: Heysham. Halton, Tunstall, Melling, TathaS^ c'lau^ on m'rton Wh't ' 



" Dom. £?. i, 270. 51 Ibid. 2691J. 3j T, ■ , 



"^^''^■""°- '^ Ibid. 2693. '^ Ibid 270 3.,,., 



- A suggen.on has, however, been made that Croston may have been the mother churchof the hundred 



6 



