After the death of Theobald Walter, king John, who had the guardianship of that nobleman’s heir, gave two parts of the church to Simon Blund,[136] and later, in 1213, he bestowed the church upon W. Gray, chancellor, for life.[137] Edward I. conferred the advowson of the church of Kirkham upon the abbey of Vale Royal, a monastic house founded by him in Cheshire; but the grant was not made without strenuous opposition on the part of Sir Theobald Walter or le Botiler,[138] a descendant of the Theobald specified above, who maintained that the king had no legal right to the advowson, which belonged to him as heir-at-law and descendant of Theobald Walter, the first. A council assembled to investigate the rival claims, and Edward, having asserted that his father, Henry III., had granted the advowson to his clerk by right of his crown, and not through any temporary power he had as guardian of Theobald Walter’s heir, a statement which Le Botiler’s attorney either could not or would not gainsay, the advowson was adjudged to him, and Sir Theobald lay under mercy.[139] This dispute probably occurred in the 8th year of Edward’s sovereignty, 1280, for we find from the Rot. Chart. that at that date the advowson was granted by the monarch to the abbey of Vale Royal.

In 1286 Sir Otto de Grandison, who was ambassador at the apostolic see, obtained a bull from the pope, Honorius IV., by which the advowson of Kirkham was conferred upon the abbey of Vale Royal for ever,[140] and on the 27th of January in the ensuing year, Edward I. confirmed his former grant.[141]

In the fifty-fourth year of the reign of Henry III., 1269, power was granted by royal charter to the manorial lord of Kirkham to hold a market and fair,[142] and as such privileges were allowed at that time to only a few other towns in the whole county of Lancashire, we must conclude that even at such an early date Kirkham possessed some special advantages or interest to be able so successfully to press its claims to this signal favour. That such important powers as the holding of markets and fairs were not allowed to be exercised without due and proper authority is proved by a warrant which was issued twenty-three years later, in the reign of Edward I., against the abbot of Vale Royal, to which convent the manor of Kirkham belonged, to appear before a judicial court to show by what authority he held those periodical assemblies of the inhabitants. He pleaded that the right had been first conceded to his predecessors by Henry III., and that subsequently the grant had been confirmed by the present monarch, Edward I., in the fifteenth year of his dominion. These assertions having been verified, the abbot was exculpated from all blame, and orders were issued to the justices itinerant in this county to the effect that they were in no way to interfere with the exercise of those privileges, which were to be continued exactly as they had been heretofore.[143] From a copy of a document[144] framed four years later, in 1296, in which the whole of these rights are embodied amongst other interesting matters, we learn that the manor of Kirkham was granted to the abbot and convent of Vale Royal in frank-al-moigne, that is, a tenure by which a religious corporation holds lands for themselves and their successors for ever, on condition of praying for the soul of the donor; that power was given or confirmed to hold a fair of five days duration at the Nativity of St. John the Baptist; that the borough of Kirkham, which had been incorporated by the name of the burgesses of Kirkham in the year 1282, the tenth of the reign of Edward I., was to be a free borough; that the burgesses and their heirs were to have a free guild, with all the liberties which belonged to a free borough; that there was to be in the borough a pillory, a prison, and a ducking stool, and other instruments for the punishment of evil doers; and that there were to be assizes of bread and ale, and weights and measures. Continuing the perusal of this document we find that the abbot of Vale Royal consented that the burgesses should elect two bailiffs from amongst themselves annually, and that these should be presented and sworn; on the other hand, however, the convent reserved to itself the perquisites arising from the courts, stallage, assizes of bread and ale, etc., and annual rents due at the period of festival legally appointed as above. The names of the following gentlemen are appended to the deed as witnesses:—Radulphus de Mouroyd, William le Botyler, Robert de Holonde, Henry de Kytheleye, John Venyal, William de Clifton, Thomas Travers, and others.

In 1327 an edict was published by the dean of Amounderness in the church of Kirkham on behalf of the archbishop of York, which commanded that the abbot or some one connected with the convent of Vale Royal, should appear before that prelate at the cathedral of his see on “the third lawful day after the Sunday on which is sung Quasi modo genite vira et munimenta,”[145] to show by what right and authority the Cheshire convent held the church just mentioned. In answer to this summons a monk, named Walter Wallensis, from Vale Royal, appeared before the archbishop on the day named, in 1328, and produced in proof of the title of his monastery to the church, the charter of Edward I., the bull of the pope, and letters from several archdeacons, recognising the proprietorship of the convent. In addition he brought four witnesses, viz., William de Cotton, advocate in the court of York, who stated that for eighteen years the abbot and convent of Vale Royal had supplied the rectors to the church of Kirkham; John de Bradkirk, who said that he had known the church for forty years as a parishioner, and had on many occasions seen the charter confirming the grant of the advowson, etc., to Vale Royal, as for fifteen years he had been in the service of that monastery, and at the time when the present archbishop of York farmed the church of Kirkham, twelve years ago, from the convent of Vale Royal, had been the bearer of the money raised from this church to that dignitary at York; Robert de Staneford, of Kirkham, who gave similar evidence, and bore witness to the existence of the charter of Edward I., which he had seen; and Robert de Blundeston, of Vale Royal, who gave evidence as to the genuineness of the documents produced having been admitted by Roger de Nasynton, public notary, etc. The result of these attestations was that the case was dismissed against the abbot of Vale Royal, and his right to the church of Kirkham, with all its chapels, fruits, rents, etc, allowed to have been fully proved.[146]

In 1334 a mandamus was issued by Edward III., at York, to Robert Foucher, the sheriff of Lancashire, stating that, contrary to a charter of Edward I., which prohibited the sheriffs from making distraints on the rectors of churches or on estates with which the churches had been endowed, he had “under pretext of his office lately entered into the lands and tenements near Kirkham, which are of the endowment of that church, and had heavily distrained the abbot of Vale Royal, parson of that church”; and ordering the said sheriff to abandon the claim, and to make restitution of anything he might thus have illegally obtained, and “by no means to attempt to make any distraint in the lands and tenements which are of the endowment of the aforesaid church,” at any future time.[147]

Somewhere about the year 1332 a monk, named Adam de Clebury, who held the temporalities of Shrewsbury Abbey, sued Peter, the abbot of Vale Royal, for five hundred marks, which he declared were the accumulated arrears of twelve marks, ordered to be paid annually by Theobald Walter, to the former monastery, out of the funds of the church of Kirkham, according to the issue of a trial in the king’s court, between Theobald and the convent of Shrewsbury, respecting the advowson, etc., of that church in 1195. Peter is said, in the Harleian manuscript, from which this account is taken, to have “redeemed that writ and many others from the sheriff of Lancashire,” from which it may be understood that he had paid the sum demanded, or in some conciliatory way settled the case during his lifetime, for we hear no more of the matter until shortly after his death in 1342, when an action to enforce a similar payment was brought against his successor, Robert de Cheyneston. This ecclesiastic, however, is said to “have manfully opposed the abbot of Shrewsbury,” and to have journied up to London to hold an interview with him on the subject, at which, after “many allegations on each side, he gave to the abbot of Shrewsbury £100 to pay his labours and expenses,” and in that manner the dispute was brought to a termination about the year 1343.

In 1337 Sir William de Clifton, of Westby, made an offer to the abbot of Vale Royal to purchase certain tithes from him for twenty marks, and on the ecclesiastic refusing to entertain this proposition, the indignant knight became most unruly and outrageous in his conduct, as shown by the following charge which was that year preferred against him by the abbot, who stated:—

“That he had thrust with a lance at a brother of the monastery in the presence of the abbot and convent; that he had retained twenty marks which he was pledged and bound to pay to the abbot, in order to weary him with expenses and labours; that it was the custom, from time immemorial, for the parishioners of Kirkham to convey their tithe-corn to their barns, and there keep it until the ministers of the rector came for it; but that he (Sir William Clifton), in contempt of the church, had allowed his tithes and those of his tenants to waste and rot in the fields, and very often by force and arms had driven away the tithe-collectors; he also had compelled a cart of the rector, laden with hay, to remain on his land for upwards of a month, and in derision had made the rector’s mare into a hunting palfrey; he also had neglected to keep the tithes of his calves, pigeons, orchards, huntings, and hawkings, and would not allow the procurator, under threat of death, to enter his estate, but he and his satellites had irreverently burst into the sanctuary of God, where they had assailed the priests and clerks, and impeded them in the discharge of their duties. Moreover the aforesaid knight would not permit any of his tenants who were living in flagrant sin, to be corrected or punished by the ordinaries.”[148]

In concluding the above list of misdemeanours, the abbot complained that Sir William had ordered a severe flagellation “even to the effusion of blood,” to be inflicted on Thomas, the clerk, in the town of Preston, and that this scourging had taken place as directed, in the presence of the under-mentioned gentlemen, who seemed to have been well pleased with the vigorous measures adopted by the knight, and to have rendered him willing assistance when called upon:—