'THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CXXVil:LANCASHIRE :-THE TOWNS (Conclusion). ROCHDALE is situated on both sides of the river Rock, forty- eight miles south-east from Lancaster. In the time of Edward the Confessor, Gamel the Thane held two hides in Recedham, and after the Conquest he held two carucates of land here by gift of the new Norman lord, Roger de Poictou. In 1194, Roger de Lacy conferred upon the Abbey of Stanlaw, founded by his father, John de Lacy, Constable of Chester, the advowson of the church of Rochdale. In 1241, Edmund de Lacy (Valletus Regis, or King's page) obtained a charter for a market and fair on Lis manor of Rachdall. The town of Rochdale has no township bearing its own name, but is composed of a part of three town- ships—Castleton or Old Town, Spotland, and Wardleworth. It -seems probable that the first was the original town, and was built round a castle. A portion of the valley below Castle Hill is -called Kill Danes, the site, according to tradition, of a great -slaughter of the Danes. However this may be, about a century go some labourers discovered on this spot a curiously wrought sword and several pieces of ancient armour. From the Lacys the manor passed to the Earls of Lancaster. The Ellands of Elland held the manor in coparceny with the Savilles in the four- teenth century, and the ancient chief rents, payable to the lord of the manor, are still called the " Saville rents." The Duchy rents, called " Rex rents," ceased in the time of Henry VII. At the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth the manor merged in the Duchy, and was demised by that Queen to Sir John Byron, whose descendant, Lord Byron, in 1823, sold the manor and estate to the Dearden family.

In the time of Edward III. sonic Flemings introduced the woollen manufacture into the parish, and it was famous for its woollens in the reign of Elizabeth. In 1610 there were 5 ful- ling mills established on the Spodden or Spotland in the parish. Woollen and cotton manufactures, particularly the former (viz., baizes, flannels, kerseys, and strong calicoes and fustians), are now the staple of Rochdale, which has largely. increased in prosperity and population during the present century. Coal and stone abound in the neighbourhood, and the parish contains 10 collieries. Iron ore has also been found in considerable quantities. Rochdale is now remarkable from the great scale on which the co- operative system has been carried out, and the great literary and social institutions in connection with it. It has water communi- cation through a canal which communicates with the Bridgewater Canal and the Calder and Ribble navigation, and is connect ed by rail- way with the principal towns in the kingdom. It first sent a member to Parliament under the Reform Act of 1832. The population of the Parliamentary borough was in 1861, 31,114. The parish church, of Norman and early English date, stands on an eminence ascended from the lower town by a flight of 126 steps. There are a free grammar-school, founded in 1564 ; another well-endowed free school, called Moss School; a large national school, and several denominational schools in connection with the various chapels in the town.

Bolton, called Le Moors, to distinguish it from Bolton-le-Sands, in the same county, and from several Boltons in Yorkshire, is situated 11 miles north-west from Manchester, on the Croale or Crole, an affluent of the Irwell, which separates it into two parts, the township of Great Bolton on the south bank, and the chapelry of Little Bolton on the north bank. The manor of Boltune was one of the possessions which Roger de Poictou received from the Conqueror, but no church existed here as late as 1291. There was one, however, before the Reformation, since, on the institution of the bishopric of Chester by Henry VIII., that King annexed to that see the prebend of Bolton-le-Moors, in Lichfield Cathedral. In 1534 it is described as a curacy and prebend of Lichfield, while in the Liter Regis, Bolton Church, dedicated to St. Peter, is referred to as a vicarage in the patronage of the Bishop of Chester. " The parish church stands on a precipitous eminence at the eastern extremity of the town. The manor was successively owned by the families of Merscheys, Blun- derville, Ferrers, and Pilkington." In the reign of Henry VII. the Earl of Derby became possessed of nearly all the land in the town of Bolton, but part of it was confiscated during the Commonwealth. After several changes, the manorial rights became divided among several families, the principal being the Earls of Derby and Bradford. As early as the reign of Richard I., an aulnager or measurer by the ell was appointed in this place; " and as his office was to measure all cloths made for sale, and to mark them with the King's seal, bear- ing the maker's name and the length of the pieces, it is probable that the woollen-cloth trade existed here as early as the twelfth century." As early as 1337, at any rate, some Flemish clothiers had established themselves here. Leland informs us that the manufac- ture, which in his time bore the name of cottons, but which in reality was woollen fabrics, as well as the spinning of yarn, pre- vailed in Bolton in the reign of Henry VIII., and it appears from an act passed in the eighth of Elizabeth, that it was found neces- sary to appoint deputies to assist the aulnager in Bolton, among other places. Other branches of trade were introduced by French refugees, and the manufacture of cloths was improved, and in many of its kinds originated by some emigrant weavers who came from the palatinate of the Rhine. The first mention of the manufac- ture of real cotton goods is in the year 1641, when " Bolton is named as a principal seat of the manufacture of fustians, vermilions, and dimities. Fuller, in 1662, says that Bolton was then the staple place for the making of fustians, which were brought there from all parts of the country ; and the cele- brated Humphrey Chetham, who lived at Turton, in this parish, was amongst the wholesale dealers in these articles, Bolton being the principal mart for the unfinished and Manchester for the finished goods." Mr. Biome, writing in 1673, calla Bolton "a fair and well-built town, with broad streets," and "good for cloth " and " a place of great trade in fustians." Cotton goods were produced in considerable quantities in Bolton about the middle of the last century. But " the real prosperity of the town dates from 1770-1780, when the inventions of Richard Ark- wright, himself a native of Bolton, began to come into operation, and from this time its progress was rapid in the extreme." Samuel Crompton, who lived at Hall-in-the-Wood, near Bolton, invented the mule. The opposition, however, " made by the labouring classes of Bolton to the improvements in machinery has at various times driven the moat lucrative branches of employment from that town to other places," and the mule and power-loom enriched several other towns before they were permitted in Bolton. At length, common sense triumphed, and cotton factories began to spring up in the town, followed by foundries and machine manufactories. The town is now a principal seat of the cotton manufacture, the articles chiefly produced being muslin, super- fine printing calicoes, quiltings, and counterpanes ; the articles being generally warehoused and sold by their manufacturers at Manchester. In 1861 there were upwards of seventy cotton mills, which employed above 17,000 workers. " There are also extensive bleaching-grounds, besides paper mills, machine works, and large iron-foundries," The prosperity of Bolton has been fostered, and to a great extent founded, by the presence of coal in considerable quantities, a great many boal-mines having been opened in different parts of the parish. Bolton had repre- sentatives in Parliament conferred on it by the Reform Act of 1832, and was made a municipal borough in 1838. It was long distinguished by its rough " up-and-down fights," by which quarrels were settled among the labouring classes, and which fre- quently ended in deaths. The social stamp of the population used to be pretty plainly marked in the saying, "A Liverpool gentleman, a Manchester mon, and a Bolton chap," and in the sarcastic epithet of Bolton "the A-thens of Lancashire." The town has several chapels as well as churches. There is a free grammar-school, founded in 1641, of which Ainsworth and Lempriere, of widely- spread dictionary fame, were masters. There are also National, British and Foreign, and Sunday Schools, and other numerous charities, educational and otherwise, endowed at various periods, among which we may mention a donation by a Mr. Popplewell and his sisters in the early part of the present century of £27,700. The population of the borough of Bolton was in 1801 only 18,583 ; but in 1861 it had risen to 70,395. The men of Bolton distinguished themselves, along with those of Blackburn, under Sir Edward Stanley, at the battle of Flodden. We have already spoken of the storm and slaughter of Bolton in the Civil Wars of Charles I., and the execution there of the Earl of Derby in 1651.

Bury is situated nine miles north by west from Manchester, on the left bank of the Irwell, about two miles from the confluence of the Roche with that river. It is placed among hills, which surround it on the north and east, and give it the appearance of occupying a low position, though it really stands upon rising ground. Once a castle stood close to the town, not far from the parish church, on the banks of what was then the course of the Irwell, but now a fertile tract of land is left in the valley between its ancient and present bed. The castle was destroyed in the Civil War in 1644, but the place where it stood is still called Castle Croft, and fragments of stone, coins, &c.,;.have been from time to time dug up from its foundations. The manor was in the hands of John de Lacy in the reign of Henry II., and afterwards passed to the families of the De Burya and Pilkingtons. The manufacture of woollen cloth became a staple article of trade in the town in the fourteenth century, and this continued in the reign of Henry VIII. In that of Elizabeth it was made the seat of an aulnager. On the introduction of the cotton manufacture it gradually superseded in Bury that of woollens. " In 1738, John Kay, a native of Bury (though at the time residing in Colchester) invented the fly-shuttle, and in 1760 his son Robert invented the dropbox, by which patterns of various colours are woven nearly with the same facility as plain calico ; the setting of cards by machinery also originated in the same family, and in Bury. In 1791, Henry Whitehead, the postmaster of Bury, suggested other improvements in the machinery. But the greatest impulse to the prosperity of Bury was given by the establishment of large print works on the bank of the Irwell by a firm of which Sir Robert Peel, the first baronet, and father of the Premier of that name, was the head. In a house close to Bury the Premier, Sir Robert himself, was born. A statue was erected to his memory in the town soon after his death. There are a dozen coal-mines within the limits of the parish. Like the other towns of Lancashire, Bury enjoys excellent railway communication, and the town has been greatly improved in appearance. A free school was founded in 1726 ; another school in 1748. There are also several churches and

chapels. The Reform Act of 1832 bestowed on it the privilege of returning a member to the House of Commons. The population of the Parliamentary borough was, in 1861, 37,563.

Oldham, placed near the source of the Irk, and not far from its junction with the Medlock, 64 miles north-east from Manchester, has risen entirely since 1760, when it consisted only of about 60 thatched houses ; but it became the seat of the cotton manufac- ture, and in 1785 there were within the chapelry six cotton mills, and in 1862 there were upwards of 200 mills, employing about

25,000 hands. Hat-making, once its staple manufacture, is still ex- tensively carried on. The town was made a Parliamentary borough, with two representatives, under the Reform Act of 1832. There is a small grammar-school and a large blue-coat school (founded in 1807, but not opened till 1833), founded by a Mr. Henshaw, a hat manufacturer ; and several other schools, national, Lancastrian,. &e., and several churches and chapels. The population of the municipal borough was 72,333 in 1861.

Ashton-under-Lyne, with which we must conclude our notice of the towns of Lancashire, is an old agricultural parish, which has sprung into fresh life and new prosperity from the introduction in modern times of the cotton manufacture. Its earlier name was Estun, and the manor passed from Roger de Poictou through many families, being held of the chief lord, the baron of Man- chester. The De La Warra held it once, and in the reign of Henry- VIII. Thomas Ashton died seized of it. The town is situated on an. eminence rising from the northern bank of the river Tame, 64 miles- east from Manchester. The Old Hall, a curious relic of the past,

has been variously assigned to the fourteenth or fifteenth cen- tury, and probably stands on the site of an earlier baronial castle. Adjoining the Hall are the remains of a prison—called

The Dungeons—evidently still older. The town long had the name of a borough, without any attendant charter rights ;

but, in 1831, the inhabitants revived the office of mayor,, which had lain dormant for twenty-six years, the appointment being made by the court leet of the manor, and the borough has since been explicitly incorporated. The Reform Act of 1832 gave it the privilege of returning one member to Parliament. As in other towns of Lancashire, the woollen trade was the first great industry in Ashton, but the cotton came in with the spin- ning-frames, and in 1769 there was extensive weaving in the parish of the light fabrics of ginghams, muslin, and calicoes ; and the silk

trade was afterwards introduced. In 1864 there were about ninety cotton mills A work in the town. There is a free school,, scantily supported, with several other schools, churches, chapels, &c. The population in 1861 was 34,886.

Besides the remarkable natives of this county whom we have already mentioned, Lancashire produced Cardinal William Alan or Allen, the last of the English Cardinals in the Tudor period ; Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, who died in 1520, styled by Fuller " a foe to monkish superstition and a friend to university learning ;" and John Christopherson, Bishop of Chichester, de- prived by Queen Elizabeth, a scholar and linguist, according to- Fuller, who was active in procuring the fine donation of Queen, Mary to Trinity College, Cambridge, but equally active in burn- ing the bones of Bucer at Cambridge. As the county was one of the strongholds of Roman Catholicism, so it gave birth to the.

Protestant proto-martyr, John Rogers, and to his brother martyrs John Bradford and George Marsh. Edwin Sandys, Arch- bishop of York in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, was a native of Hawkahead. Richard Bancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury in the same reign, is also said by Fuller to have been a native of this county, which produced several other prelates of greater or less eminence. The Standish family, of Standish, six.

miles to the south of Charley, produced several remarkable men._ John Standish was knighted with William Walworth for wound- ing Wat Tyler ; Sir Ralph Standish was a distinguished commander in France in the wars of Henry V. and Henry VI. ; Henry Standish, Bishop of St. Asaph, assisted Queen Catherine of Aragon in the divorce case ; and the name of the Puritan Miles.

Standish, on the other side of the Atlantic, is well known. Jeremiah Markland, the classical scholar of the eighteenth cen- tury, belonged to a family residing near Wigan. John Weever, the antiquary, and author of the Funeral Monuments of 'Great Britain, was born in this county in 1576. George Romney, the

painter, was born at Dalton in 1734, and George Stubbs, another well-known painter in the eighteenth century, was born at Liver-

pool ; John Byrom, one of our minor poets in the same century, was born near Manchester ; and Jobn Collier, the author of the celebrated Tim Bobbin, was a native of Warrington. We have• already mentioned the names of Roscoe, Peel, Arkwright, and Crompton.