CHAPTER V.
THE COLLEGE AND THE “WIZARD WARDEN” OF MANCHESTER.
Of those who make up the mighty tide of human life that daily sweeps along the great highway of traffic between the Manchester Exchange and the Victoria Railway Station, how few there are who ever give even a passing thought to the quaint mediæval relic that stands within a few yards of them—almost the only relic of bygone days that Manchester now possesses—the College. Pass through the arched portal into the great quadrangle, the College Yard as it is called, and what a striking contrast is presented. Without, all is noise and hurry and bustle; within, quietude and seclusion prevail. The old place is almost the only link that connects the Manchester of the present with the Manchester of yore; and surely it is something to feel that within this eager, striving, money-getting Babylon there is a little Zoar where you may escape from the turmoil, and the whirl, and the worry of the busy city, and, forgetting your own chronology, allow the memory to wander along the dim grass-grown aisles of antiquity, recalling the scenes and episodes and half-forgotten incidents that illustrate the changes society has undergone, and show how the past may be made a guide for the present and the future.
A wealth of interest gathers round this old time-worn memorial, and its history is entwined with that of the town itself. That lively and imaginative antiquary, Whitaker, has striven to prove that upon its site the subjects of the Cæsars erected their summer camp, but the story, it must be confessed, rests on but a slender foundation. There is little doubt, however, that the Saxon thegn fixed his abode here, and dispensed justice according to the rude fashion of the times—which means that he did what seemed right in his own eyes, and hanged those who ventured to question the propriety of his proceedings. The Norman barons who succeeded him, the Gresleys and the La Warres, the men who bore themselves well and bravely at Crecy, Agincourt, and Poictiers, held their court here for generations, until good old Thomas La Warre, the last of the line, the priest-lord as he has been called—for he held the rectory as well as the barony of Manchester—gave up his ancestral home as a permanent residence for the warden and fellows of the ancient parish church which he caused to be collegiated. But the splendid provision he bequeathed was not long enjoyed by the ecclesiastics for whom it was intended. In 1547, when the minor religious houses were suppressed, the college was dissolved, and the lands, with the building of the College House, reverted to Edward VI., who granted them to Edward Earl of Derby, subject to the payment by him of some small pensions and other charges. On Queen Mary’s accession the Church was re-collegiated, and the deeds of alienation in part recalled. But the College House and the lands pertaining to it were never recovered, though some of the wardens were considerately allowed by the Stanleys to occupy part of the premises that had belonged of right to their predecessors.
In the eventful times which followed, the building experienced many and various vicissitudes. At the time the fierce struggle between Charles I. and the Parliament began a part was used as a magazine for powder and arms, for we read that when the Commission of Array was issued Sir Alexander Radcliffe, of Ordsall, and his neighbour Mr. Prestwich, of Hulme, two of the commissioners nominated in the King’s proclamation, attended by the under sheriff, went to Manchester “to seize ten barrels of powder and several bundles of match which were stowed in a room of the College.” During the troublous times of the Commonwealth the building was in the hands of the official sequestrators, as part of the forfeited possessions of the Royalist Earl of Derby; and at that time the monthly meetings of the Presbyterian Classis, the “X’sian consciensious people” as they were called, were held within the refectory. A part of the building was transformed into a prison, and another portion was occupied as private dwellings. In 1650, as appears by a complaint lodged in the Duchy Court of Lancaster, “a common brewhouse” was set up on the premises, the brewers claiming exemption from grinding their malt at the School Mills, to which by custom the toll belonged, on the plea that the brewhouse was within the College, the old baronial residence, and therefore did not owe such suit and service to the mills.
About the same time a portion of the College barn (between the prison and the College gatehouse) was converted into a workhouse, the first in Manchester, having been acquired by the churchwardens and overseers in order that it might be “made in readiness to set the poor people on work to prevent their begging.” Another part was used for the purposes of an Independent church, the first of the kind in the town, and which would appear to have been set up without “waiting for a civil sanction.” The minister was John Wigan, who at the outset of his career had been episcopally ordained to Gorton, which place he left in 1646, and fixed his abode at Birch, where, we are told, “he set up Congregationalism.” This brought him in collision with the “Classis.” Subsequently he left Birch, entered the army, became a captain, and afterwards a major. The church which he founded in the College barn is alluded to by Hollinworth. How it came to be established here would be inexplicable but for the explanation Adam Martindale gives of the matter. He says:—
The Colledge lands being sold, and the Colledge itself, to Mr. Wigan, who now being turned Antipædobaptist, and I know not what more, made a barne there into a chappell, where he and many of his perswasion preached doctrine diametrically opposite to the (Presbyterian) ministers’ perswasion under their very nose.