Preston has always been known as “proud.” The old rhyme ran:
Proud Preston,
Poor people,
High church,
Low steeple.
But the rhyme long since went out of date. One would hesitate to declare that Preston is in any sense poor, while certainly the reproach of its church having a low steeple has been removed these many years past; for the spire of St. Werburgh is a particularly fine and lofty one, rising to a height of 303 feet. If it be necessary to find an origin for that supposed pride of Proud Preston, I should look for it in the fact that the town has always been the capital of the Duchy of Lancaster, and not in the story of its ladies once considering themselves too superior to mate with the commercial men of the neighbourhood.
“Proud Preston” occupies a proud position, on lofty ground overlooking the Ribble and its extensive flats. Its name, “Priest’s Town,” derives from the site having been the property of a Benedictine priory once situated here, but before the time of the priory, it was named “Amounderness,” from the ridge, or ness, then, even more than now, a striking object across the levels. Penwortham, on the opposite side of the river, was in that early period the chief place, for there stood the great castle of the Earls of Chester, giving security to peaceable folk against the incursions of the Scots; but when the county of Lancaster was made a Duchy, and the defence centred at Lancaster, Penwortham decayed and Preston grew populous. The unwisdom of this move across the river to a site without strong defences was immediately made apparent, for no sooner had Preston grown into an important town than the Scots, under Robert Bruce, came and burnt nearly the whole of it.
PROUD PRESTON
Charters to the number of fifteen, ranging from the time of Henry the First to that of Charles the Second, have been conferred upon Preston; mostly in recognition of its importance as capital of the Duchy of Lancaster; and desirable privileges, such as the right of gaol and gibbet, tumbril and pillory, were added, so that Preston might deal, quite independently of Lancaster, with cases arising here, that demanded those engines of justice.
Still, it was ever a prosperous and busy town, as the antiquity of its guilds proves; and suffered considerable loss in the Parliamentary war, when it was the scene of two struggles between Royalists and Roundheads. The first was in 1643, when the townsfolk were divided in opinion, and fighting took place in the streets: the second in 1649, when a Royalist army, commanded by Sir Marmaduke Langdale and the Duke of Hamilton, was driven from Clitheroe to Ribbleton Moor, on the outskirts of the town, by Cromwell, with a numerically inferior force.