POLITICAL HISTORY 



having a free tenement there of the clear yearly value of £^, whether there 

 was such a place, and if there were not the indictment was to be quashed. 

 Indicters who prevented their victims from appearing by fear of being beaten, 

 maimed or killed, were to be punished by imprisonment, fine and ransom."^ 

 In 1 42 1 it was further enacted that those put in exigent or outlawed in the 

 county palatine should not forfeit any of their property outside the county,'" 

 Evidence of continued lawlessness in the county and on its borders during 

 this reign and the next is only too abundant, though here too false charges 

 seem to have been frequent. One or two examples of this lawlessness may 

 be given. In March, 141 5, Sir John Byron of Clayton, with an armed band 

 of twenty-eight men, carried off his mother, dame Joan, from Colwick, in 

 Nottinghamshire, to Lancashire, and made her enter into an obligation of 

 £1000 before the Mayor of Wigan not to alienate any lands descended to 

 her."* 



Six years later Parliament was obliged to take extraordinary measures 

 against a band of wild youths from Westmorland seeking the life of Sir John 

 Lancaster ; they had taken refuge in the woods and mountains between that 

 county and Lancashire, and could not be reached by either sheriff.*" In 1432 

 a petition was presented by William Scott of Hamerton in Bowland, alleging 

 that Henry Bradley of Slaidburn, and Ellis Bradley of Ribchester, lurked in 

 the hills out of the reach of sheriffs and frequently beset his house by night 

 to kill him so that he could not live there. He asked that they should be 

 summoned under heavy penalties before the King's Bench.'" 



The failure of the Lancastrian government to suppress local disorder was 

 sufficiently evident before the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses. In that 

 struggle the county of course ranked as a royalist district, but the dynasty did 

 not obtain such a solid and unwavering support from its leading magnates as 

 its close connexion with the house on the throne might have promised. The 

 last two centuries had seen many changes among the great families of the 

 county. Of its old Norman barons only the Butlers of Warrington survived 

 obscurely in the male line. In South Lancashire the Banasters of Newton 

 had been succeeded by the Langtons, the Grelleys of Manchester by the la 

 Warres and the Wests, whose chief interests were outside the county. The 

 more recent importance of the Hollands had passed away when an heiress 

 carried their lands into the house of Lovel of Oxfordshire and Northampton- 

 shire. In this part of the county now the two most prominent families 

 were those of Molyneux and Stanley, who had only quite lately come to 

 the front. 



"' Rot. Pari, iv, 120, 127, 147 ; v, 28. 



"' Ibid, iv, 147. This was renewed from Parliament to Parliament until 1453, when it was made 

 perpetual ; but two years after it was repealed by the Yorkist Parliament of July, 1455, on the plea that it 

 encouraged ' foreign men which for the most parte hathe noo thyng within the same Contee ' to commit 

 'orrible oiFences' therein ; ibid. V, 53, 268. It was re-enacted by Henry VII in 1491, the adnullation of 

 1455 being attributed to ' suggestion unresonable and sinistre labours of persons not best disposed, for theyre 

 owne singular avauntage and to the grate prejudice and grugge, singular hurte and jeopardie of all your true 

 Leiges oute of the said shire.' It was again repealed, however, in the same year. 



'" Early Chan. Proc. Bdle. 6, No. 294. 



"* Ret. Pari, iv, 163. The special process devised to enforce the Act against giving liveries was extended 

 to the county palatine by a statute of 1429 ; ibid. 348. 



"' Ibid. 416. In January, 1437, Isalsella, widow of John Butler, of Bewsey, petitioned the king for justice 

 on William Poole, of Wirral, gentleman, who in the previous July carried her off from Bewsey ' naked except her 

 kertyll and smoke,' into the wilds of Wales. She had been recovered by a special commission under the 

 great seal, but Poole was still at large ; ibid. 497. 



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