SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



Danes, appreciated the convenience of a waterway, and Preston doubtless 

 became a centre (sheltered by Lancaster Castle to the north) for undisturbed 

 industry and traffic. In the aid for the marriage of the king's daughter raised 

 in 1 1 68-9 by tallage of the demesne lands, when the towns of Lonsdale 

 rendered ^^b \y. \d., Preston and its dependencies were assessed at ^^1°-'' 

 Its advance was rapid, for in 1 176 it was prosperous enough to be assessed at 

 ^16 lOJ. The men of Preston in 1179 obtained a charter granting their 

 town free customs, which the king had already given to his burgesses of 

 Newcastle-under-Lyme. For this charter, which they had to travel up to 

 Winchester to receive, they paid 100 marks, and undertook to pay an 

 increment of ^^6 to their annual farm of ^9, making a total of ^(^15 annually. 

 The mercantile supremacy of Preston can be best realized from the fact 

 that Lancaster did not attain to the dignity of a free borough till 1 193, when 

 John, then count of Mortain, granted his burgesses of Lancaster the same 

 liberties as he had granted to his burgesses of Bristol, with release of 

 suit to his mill, customary ploughing, and other servile customs. King 

 John confirmed the Preston charter in his second year for a payment 

 of 60 marks," and also granted the town a fair of seven days in every 

 year, in the month of August.*' Almost parallel with these concessions to 

 Lancaster and Preston was the founding of Liverpool, and its initiation as a 

 free royal borough, when in his tenth year (1207) the king transplanted the 

 main population of West Derby thither," and issued a proclamation that all 

 persons taking burgages there might have ' in the town of Liverpool all the 

 liberties and free customs enjoyed by any borough on the sea coast.' " 



In 1246 the celebrated John Mansel, parson of the church at Wigan, 

 obtained borough rights for that town, with all the privileges appertaining to 

 a hanse and merchant guild.*' Manchester, in the hands of the Grelley 

 family, obtained none of these royal grants, though it received a baronial 

 charter in 1301.'° 



The importance of concessions such as were made to Lancaster and 

 Preston and of the start given to Liverpool and Wigan, based as they were on 

 the economic conditions of the more favoured English towns, can scarcely be 

 over-estimated. They are the more important because they prove how at the 

 beginning of the thirteenth century, though severely handicapped by remote- 

 ness of geographical situation, Lancashire had taken a place with the rest of 

 industrial England. 



Although no markets are expressly mentioned in the Pipe Rolls before 

 Henry III,'"* we know that the larger towns served as distributing centres for 

 the manors and vills that lay about their circumference. But if markets are not 

 referred to we learn something about prices in the beginning of the thirteenth 

 century, and are thus able to compare them with the standard of a hundred 

 years later. In the year 1209-10 the sherifFhad to pay 5J. a quarter for wheat, 



'' Mag. Rot. Pip. 15 Hen. II (1168-9), R. 15, m. \%d. 



'^ Ibid. 2 John (l 199-1 200), R. 46, m. 17. Nova Oblata. 



" Farrer, Lanes. Pipe R. 123. " Ibid. 225. 



" Pat. 9 John, m. 5. Cf. Ramsay Muir, Munic. Government in Liverpool. 



'» 30 Hen. Ill (1246), Plac. de Quo Warranto (Rec. Com.), 372. 



^ Mamecestre (Chet. Soc), i, 181-2 ; Tait, Mediaeval Manchester, c. iii. The borough existed before 

 the charter mentioned. 



'"' The grant of a market to the little town of North Meols in 1219 was withdrawn in 1224 because it 

 was inimical to the neighbouring markets. Fine R. 4 Hen. Ill, m. 8 ; Close R. (Rec. Com.), i, 608. 

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