A History of Lancashire

by Henry Fishwick

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries many chantries were founded by private individuals in the parish churches, very few of the older foundations being without one or more of these altars, nearly all of which were more or less endowed, and there were buried their founders and their successors, to whose memory stately monuments were therein erected. With the birth of the sixteenth century, it was evident that serious abuses had crept into the monastic institutions, which prepared the way for and finally led to their suppression. The change brought about by the violent measure taken by Henry VIII. must have been greatly felt in Lancashire, where then, as now, great difference in opinion must have existed as to its wisdom or otherwise. There are those who now declare that history justifies the course then taken, whilst there are others who maintain that “neither among the friars, with their public ministry and their international character, nor among the Cistercians of Furness and Whalley, with their industries and agriculture, nor among the regular canons, Augustinian and Præmonstratensian, nor among the Benedictines, with their large place in the national history, their local ties, and their varied work, was there found, when the end was at hand, anything to warrant their wholesale suppression.”[189] Into this question it is not necessary to enter, but it may be briefly stated that most historians agree that, although many of these houses were well managed and regulated, the abbots and priors were often more concerned about the temporal possessions of their orders than for the spiritual benefit to the community, which alone justified their continued existence. And no one can read the literature of those times without coming to the conclusion that, at all events in the popular mind, there was then a strong conviction that the lives of the monks were not regulated by the high standard of morality aimed at by the original founders of their institutions.

Acting upon powers given by Parliament, the King took possession of the religious houses in Lancashire, and with no loss of time conveyed all their lands and tenements to willing purchasers, the abbeys, priories, and other buildings being in nearly every instance unroofed and more or less destroyed, and even the silver shrines, the church plate, and the richly embroidered vestments, were all converted into money, which found its way into the royal coffers.

The Reformation was now accomplished, and the Pope was no longer head of the English Church, which was now controlled by Henry VIII., who not only regulated the appointment of its clergy, but to some extent dictated its form of ritual as well as its teaching: images and holy relics were swept away, as well as many forms of worship considered of Popish origin. Edward VI., to make the matter complete, suppressed the private chantries, and converted their endowments to his own use; and soon afterwards (in 1552) inventories of all church goods were taken, and such as were not deemed necessary to carry on divine service according to the reformed method were to be sold. These lists for Lancashire have been preserved;[190] as a sample of the then furniture of a church, the case of Ormskirk may be taken: in it there were found 2 chalices, 1 cope of old green velvet, 2 copes of old blue silk, a vestment of silver velvet, 1 of tawny velvet with yellow crosses, 1 vestment of green satin bridges,[191] with 2 other vestments, 3 albs, 2 altar–cloths, 1 towel, 3 corporases,[192] 5 bells, 2 cruets,[193] 3 sacring bells, a pair of organs. Organs were now not very common in parish churches; they were, however, found in the churches at Rochdale, Middleton, Preston, and Liverpool; in the latter place the Mayor and Bailiffs in 1588 ordered that there should be a hired clerk who could sing his plain song and prick song and play on the organs. At the time of the suppression of the chantries the number of clergy, including the chantry priests, was considerable in some of the larger parishes; thus we find twenty in Manchester, fourteen in Winwick, fourteen in Blackburn, and eleven in Prescot.

Many of these cantarists, as they were called, were now pensioned off for life. In Lancashire at this time there was a very strong party in favour of the old form of religion; and this wholesale doing away with the institutions which had so long been established in their midst met with almost open rebellion, and thus it was that again progress was arrested in the county.

It has already been stated that during the monkish rule little was done in church–building; indeed, in what is now the Diocese of Manchester,[194] between 1291 and the suppression of the monasteries, there were not a dozen churches erected, whilst during the reign of Henry VIII. seven were built, several of which would perhaps be more properly described as chapels–of–ease; they were Ashworth, Denton, Blakley, Douglas, Hornby, Rivington, and Shaw. On the accession of Mary in 1553, there was a return to the old order of things, and Popery being once again established, the Lancashire Catholics were not slow in taking advantage of the opportunity; thus, we find that in 1558 the Mayor and Bailiffs of Liverpool ordered that the priest of St. John’s altar should say Mass daily between the hours of five and six in the morning, that all labourers and well–disposed people might attend. During the troubled times which followed, two of Lancashire’s sons became martyrs in the cause of the Protestant religion. John Bradford was a native of Manchester, where he was born in the early part of the century; he became Prebendary of St. Paul’s and chaplain to Edward VI., but on his refusal to give up preaching the reformed doctrine he was sent to the Tower, and after an examination before the Lord Chancellor and the Bishop of London, and repeated appeals to conform, he was pronounced to be a heretic, and on June 30, 1554, he was burnt at Smithfield in the presence of a vast concourse of people. On reaching the place of execution he walked firmly up to the stake, and after a short prayer he took up a faggot and kissed it, and took off his coat and delivered it to his servant, and then, turning towards the people, he held up his hands, and exclaimed: “O England, England, repent thee of thy sins! Beware of idolatry, beware of antichrists, lest they deceive thee!” His hands were then tied and the fire lighted, and amidst the flames he was heard to say, “Strait is the way and narrow is the gate which leadeth unto life, and few there be that go in thereat.” Fuller describes Bradford as “a most holy man, who, secretly in his closet, would so weep for his sins, one could have thought he would never have smiled again, and then, appearing in public, he would be so harmlessly pleasant, one would think he had never wept before.”

During his imprisonment he wrote to his mother, then living in Manchester, and tried to console her by the assurance that he was not going to die “as a thiefe, a murderer, or an adulterer,” but as “a witness of Christ, hys gospel and veritye.” He left several sermons which, together with his letters and an account of his life, were afterwards published.

George Marsh was a native of Dean, near Bolton, where he was born about the year 1515, and was brought up to follow agricultural pursuits; but having lost his wife when he was about thirty years old, he left his young children with his father, proceeded to Cambridge, and became a student at the University, and being subsequently ordained, was appointed Curate of Allhallows’, Bread Street, in London, by the Rev. Mr. Saunders (the martyr), then Rector of that church. In 1555 he appears to have been persecuted for his zeal in the reformed religion, and contemplated leaving the country; but before doing so he paid a visit to his mother and his children, and on this occasion the Earl of Derby sent a letter to Mr. Barton, of Smithell’s Hall,[195] near Bolton, to apprehend him and send him to Latham. This order was duly carried out, and after an examination before the Earl, he was imprisoned in what he describes as a “cold windy stone house, where there was very little room,” and where he remained for two nights without bed, “save a few great canvas tent–clothes.” This was in March, 1555. He remained here for over a fortnight, and on Low Sunday (with some others) was removed to Lancaster Castle. After a time the Bishop of Chester came to Lancaster, and, according to Marsh’s statement, he refused to have anything to do “with heretics so hastily,” but at the same time he “confirmed all blasphemous idolatry, as holy–water casting, procession gadding, mattins, mumbling, mass–hearing, idols up–setting, with such heathenish rites forbidden by God.” Subsequently Marsh was sent to Chester, and brought before the Bishop (Dr. Cotes), and there was charged with having preached at Dean, Eccles, Bolton, Bury, and many other places in the diocese, against the Pope’s authority, the Catholic Church of Rome, the blessed Mass, the Sacrament of the Altar, and many other articles; whereupon he did not deny the preaching, but asserted that he had only, as occasion served, maintained the truth touching these subjects. Having firmly refused to recant, the Bishop “put his spectacles on his nose,” and read out his sentence, after which he added, “Now will I no more pray for thee than I will for a dog.” He was then delivered to the sheriffs of the city, and put into prison at the North Gate. On April 24, 1555, he was taken thence to Spittle–Broughton, near the city, being escorted by the sheriffs and their officers, “and a great number of poor simple barbers with rusty bills and poleaxes.”

When at the stake he was again asked to recant, but again refused, whereupon he was chained to a post, and “a thing made like a firkin, with pitch and tar” in it, was placed over his head, and the fire lighted.

The religious persecution was now going on all over the kingdom, and many Protestants from Lancashire, in company of thousands from other parts of England, fled for shelter to foreign countries, there to seek that liberty of conscience which was denied them at home. They mostly went to Geneva, Strasburg and Holland. Towards the end of Mary’s reign, Pope Paul IV. began to insist on the reinstitution of the abbeys and monasteries in England; but it was found that those who now owned these estates declined to part with them “as long as they were able to wear a sword by their sides.”