From the earliest returns extant, we find that Lancashire only sent two knights to Parliament. The first Lancashire returns extant are for the Parliament of 1259, when the county was represented by Mathew de Redman (who a year before had been the Member for Cumberland) and John de Evyas, the lord of the manor of Samlesbury, in the parish of Blackburn. For 1296 there are no returns, but in the following year the knights of the shire were Henry de Kighley (probably one of the ancestors of the Kighley of Inskip, in St. Michael’s–on–Wyre) and Henry de Boteler, eldest son of William de Boteler, Baron of Warrington. From this time to the present a fairly complete list has been preserved.[97] To the Parliament of 1295 were also summoned two burgesses from the boroughs of Lancaster, Preston, Wigan and Liverpool; and the Sheriff in making his returns volunteered the statement that there was no city in the county. The first recorded members for these four enfranchised boroughs were, respectively, for Lancaster, William le Despencer and William le Chaunter; Preston, William FitzPaul and Adam Russell; Wigan, William le Teinterer and Henry le Bocher; Liverpool, Adam FitzRichards and Robert Pynklowe. The sending of representatives to Westminster was at this time not always looked upon as a coveted honour, but rather as a binding obligation to be got rid of at the first opportunity. True, the members were paid for the whole time they were absent from home, a knight getting four shillings a day, and a burgess two shillings; but this amount and the long journey to and from London, with the danger and difficulties to be encountered on the way, did not offer a strong inducement for a burgess or a knight to leave his own home for sometimes a considerable period. The fact that these early members were selected from a class comprising the dispencer, the dyer, the butcher and the “chaunter,” shows that the title of “M.P.” was rather at a discount than a premium in this county, at all events. Lancaster and Preston sent members until 1331, and did not again do so until 21 Henry VIII. (1529). Liverpool and Wigan ceased to return to Parliament after 1307, and the privilege was not renewed until 1547; in the interval the Sheriff’s returns were to the effect that there “was no city or burgh from which any citizen or burgess can be sent by reason of their low condition and poverty.” From this practical disenfranchisement it may be inferred that after the visitation of the plague ([see p. 74]) the towns of Lancashire were slow to recover their former position, and that such trade as there had been in the early part of the fourteenth century had not returned.
It has been frequently stated that soon after the Act passed by Edward III. (in 1337), by which Flemish weavers and others were invited to settle in England, a large number of them came to Lancashire and established their trades in Bolton, Rochdale and other towns. This statement is not borne out by facts; the trade of these districts did not at, or soon after, this time rapidly develop, neither is there any marked influx of foreign names, such as would naturally have followed such an invasion,[98] and which are very noticeable in some of the more southern parts of the country. In Lancashire were found now, as in “The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman,” in 1362:
Bakers, Bochers, and Breusters monye,
Wollene websteris: and weveris of lynen,
Taillours, tanneris, tolleres in marketes,
Masons, minours, and mony other craftes,
Dykers and Delvers.
and “Cokes [cooks] and knaves crieden, ‘hote pies hote.’” There were also drapers, needle–sellers, ropers, and various other traders, and ale–houses in plenty.
The food of the poorer classes consisted of cheese, curds, therf–cake (oat cake), beans, flavoured with leeks, parsley or cabbages, with occasionally a little bacon or pork, and less frequently fish. The more well–to–do classes fared much more sumptuously, as flesh, game and fish were all obtainable. Lancashire had yet no seaport of any great importance; the only two worth recording were Liverpool and Preston. In 1338 all the ports in the country were required to furnish ships according to their size and commerce. Liverpool could only send a single barque with a crew of six men, and 200 years later this port had only twelve vessels, carrying 177 tons and navigated by 75 men;[99] yet in 1382 the port was important enough to warrant the issue of a precept to the Mayor and Bailiffs of the town prohibiting them from exporting corn.[100]
The ships which went to the port of Preston in the middle of the fourteenth century ([see p. 66]) could not have been of large dimensions.