THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

CXXVI. -LANCASHIRE :-THE TOWNS (Continued).

T"present Parliamentary borough of Liverpool contained, in 1861, 443,938 inhabitants, and comprises the townships of Liverpool, Kirkdale, Everton, West Derby, and Toxteth Park. From the census returns it appears that Liverpool doubled its population nearly every twenty years since the beginning of the century, and during the sixty years included by the censuses quin- tupled its population. The narrow, inconvenient, and ill-paved streets of former days have been replaced by wide handsome streets and fine public buildings, of which St. George's Hall may be particularly noted. New waterworks for the supply of the town, constructed at a cost of £700,000, and containing a reservoir of 500 acres, were opened in 1856, and the town is supplied with every other convenience of civic life, and ample railway and water communication ; literary and educational establishments, among which may be particularized Queen's College, founded in 1857, a public museum and library founded by Sir William Brown, Baronet, an eminent merchant (built between the years 1858 and 1860) ; a mechanics' institute, opened in 1837, whose buildings cover nearly an acre of land ; an athenmum, lyceum, &c. It has several spacious market-houses, and its markets " are better supplied, perhaps, than those of any other town in the Empire. Ireland and Scotland, particularly the former, furnish grain, live stock, bacon, and butter ; and the Isle of Man, Anglesea, North Wales, and Cheshire send excellent poultry and eggs, with butter and other farm produce." Liverpool is equally well supplied with the means of religious instruction, most religious denominations having here chapels, and schools in connection with them. The most remark- able churches are those of St. Nicholas, St. Luke's, and St. George's. By the Act of William III., which constituted Liver- pool a separate parish, St. Nicholas and St. Peter's were made the two parish churches. Liverpool has numerous charitable institu- tions. The port is now the principal station in this country for the steamers and shipping for America and Australia.

Lancaster, of whose origin in Roman times we have already spoken, is now a very mo lerately prosperous town of 14,487 inha- bitants (the municipal borough, 1861), "standing on a gentle slope, facing the Lune, which is crossed here by a handsome stone bridge of five arches. The summit of the hill is crowned by the bastions of its fine old castle, and the lofty tower of the parish church." The Castle, converted in 1788 into assize and county courts, gaol, and femall penitentiary, is attributed in origin to the 11th century ; it was renovated by John of Gaunt ; repaired in the end of the 16th century, and much enlarged in 1788. The parish church is attributed to the same date as the castle, but was nearly rebuilt in 1759. Lancaster had once a considerable trade with the West Indies, but was superseded in this by Liverpool, and it is now nearly restricted to the coasting trade. Its first charter as a borough was granted by King John. It first sent representatives to Par- liament in 1293, but ceased in 1359 ; resumed in 1547, and was disfranchised for general and habitual corruption by the Reform Act of 1868. The town has two weekly markets, and three fairs in the year for cattle and cheese. Its manufactures are cotton fabrics, silk thread, linen thread, and sailcloth. This last trade has de- clined. A dock was constructed in 1787 about five miles below the town, to avoid the shallows higher up, and to this the cargoes of the larger vessels are conveyed by means of lighters. At the time of the Norman Conquest, Lancaster had sunk to a village ; but a new town grew up around the castle erected by Roger de Poictou on the site of the old Roman station, and it became a flourishing borough during the Middle Ages. It took the Royalist side in the Civil Wars of the reign of Charles I., and was temporarily occupied by the Jacobite troops in the Rebellions of 1715 and 1745. Lancaster must now be called a declining town, its popula- tion having decreased 117 during the years 1851-1861.

Preston, situated on the right bank, and near the head of the estuary of the Ribble, where it receives the Darwen and the Lostock, is supposed by some antiquarians to have been the Saxon suc- cessor of the Romano-British Ribchester, eleven miles up the river. Dr. Kuerden, however, has endeavoured to prove that Preston itself, or its immediate neighbourhood, was the site of a Roman station, and that this, and not Ribchester, was the

RurnonuNuse of Ptolemy the Geographer. He adduced, among other arguments in support of this hypothesis, the fact of remains of a Roman highway or strata being found extending from a little to the north side of Ribchester in a westerly direction, and passing a little more than a mile north of the present town of Preston, on its way (through Kirkham) to the sea coast, which highway the country people in his time still called the lratling Street. Remains of another Roman highway were also, he tells us, visible, leading northwards from Preston, by Fulwood and Broughton, in the direc- tion of Garstang and Lancaster. There is a little topogaphical fact which may be held to confirm the theory of Dr. Kuerden, and which has not, as far as we are aware, been hitherto notieml. Anyone who looks at the ordnance map of Lancashire in the line in which the old roadway seems to have passed from Ribchester to the neighbourhood of Preston, will find a place called "Three-Mile Cross." This is about four English miles, in direct measurement, from Ribchester, and three miles measured in the opposite direction bring us almost exactly to where the two Roman highways above mentioned must have crossed one another a little to the north of Preston. Very near this point—perhaps a little to the south-west —" upon a high ground between Preston and Spaw Brow, and a little to the east of Tulketh Hall, is a perfectly square area, formed by a ditch, and considerably elevated in the centre. In later times, it was the site of a church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalen, and hence probably called the Maudlands. Seven or eight small pieces of silver were dug up near this mound, which appeared to have been suspended and worn, as each of them was perforated." We must here leave the question without pronouncing a decided opinion. We can conjecture with more certainty as to the origin of the Saxon town of Preston. At the consecration of the monastery and church of Ripon in 705, after it had been built or rebuilt by Archbishop Wilfrid, among other donations to the new foundation, we find mention made of lands near Bak in Hasmun- derness. The parish church of Preston was dedicated to St. Wilfrid, and perhaps was erected on these lands. The district of Amounderness was given by Athelstan to the church at York, and probably these successive connections with great cathedral churches led to the gathering of ecclesiastics on the spot, and the name of the new town,—Priests' Town. Vestiges of religious houses in Preston still remain to attest to this origin of its name. The church at York abandoned, or lost, its possessions in Amounderness, and Tostig, the brother of King Harold II., became the owner of Preston. At the Norman Conquest it passed to- Roger de Poictou. At the time of Domesday Survey Amounderness contained only sixteen thinly-inhabited villages, and three churches, Preston, Kirkham, and St. Michael's belonging to Preston, and all the rest of the hundred was waste. Preston became a borough by prescription, and received thirteen Royal charters from the time of Henry II. to that of Charles II. It was partly destroyed by

Robert Bruce in 1322. It declared for the King in the Civil Wars of Charles I., and was besieged and taken by Fairfax. 1Ve need not refer more particularly to the occupa- tion of the town by the Jacobites in 1715, and their surrender to. the Royal forces.

The town is built on an eminence, rising 120 feet from the Ribble, which is crossed by a bridge of three arches. It is now a considerable and thriving town, of 82,985 inhabitants (in 1861). It has grown rapidly in the present century, owing to " its central position, its vicinity to an important coal district," and excellent canal and railway communications. It is now one of the great seats of the cotton manufacture, which dates from 1791, and has several iron-foundries and manufactories of machinery. The Ribble is navigable at spring tides as far as Preston Marsh for vessels of 250 tons. There are three markets in the week, and four great fairs in the course of the year, " the first of which, called the Great Saturday,' is celebrated for its show of horses. The town has long been celebrated for its " Guild Merchants," instituted by Henry III., for the renewing of the freedom of the burgesses, &c. These (the occasion of a festival) have been celebrated. during the last century every twentieth year, before that very irregularly. The town, which has returned members to the House of Commons intermittingly from 1295 and continuously from the reign of Edward VI., was, before the Reform Bill of 1832, one of the constituencies in which all the inhabitants (potwollopers) had votes, and the franchise was restricted by that Act. The town has a grammar-school founded in 1688, and other schools, sup- ported by subscriptions, besides those more immediately in con- nection with the religious denominations who have chapels in the town.

Our limits compel us to mention very briefly and cursorily some of the other leading towns of Lancashire. Warrington, situated on

the right bank of the Mersey, opposite to the Roman station of VERA.TINUM, on the Cheshire side, is a busy little town of

26,431 inhabitants (the municipal borough), has a parish church of Saxon origin,—" a large, massive, cruciform structure,"—with an ancient crypt under the chancel, and a tower rebuilt in 1696.

The town was one of the earliest seats of manufacture in Lanca- shire. Coarse linens and checks were the fabrics first made, after which huckaback was manufactured, and after that sailcloth and sacking. In the days of stage-coaches it was the great thoroughfare between Manchester and Liverpool, since which period the opening of the railway system has kept it in close communication with both these towns and the rest of the kingdom. It has some of the advantages of a port, through the Mersey and Irwell Navigation. At spring-tides, vessels of from 70 to 100 tons' burden can navigate the river up to Warrington Bridge. The town is now remarkable for the variety of its manufactures. Among these cotton-spinning and power-loom weaving are prominent. Soap, flint, and plate- glass manufactories exist on a large scale, and it is the principal seat of the manufacture of " Lancashire tools." It has long been celebrated for its malt and ale. It has two markets in the week, two fairs in the year for horses, cattle, and cloth, and one once a fortnight for cattle. It had a representative in Parliament bestowed on it, for the first time, by the Reform Act of 1832.

Wigan is situated on a hill, on the Douglas, forty miles south by east from Lancaster, in the centre of an extensive coal-field.

The old town is chiefly on the right bank of the river ; the modern suburb of Scholes is on the left bank. The town is scat- tered and irregular, but well built. It is of considerable antiquity,

and is a borough by prescription, though not mentioned in Domes- day Book. Its older name is Wibiggia. Its earliest extant charter dates from Henry III., in 1246. It returned two members to

Parliament in the 23rd of Edward I., and twelve years afterwards,

but then ceased to return any till the sixteenth century. A patent for paving the town and erecting a bridge over the Douglas

was granted in the 7th of Edward III. The parish church " is a stately old edifice, in the perpendicular style, and with a square tower." The free grammar-school was founded in the reign of

James I. A blue-coat school was established in 1773, and there

are several other schools. The great prosperity of the town dates from recent times. Its staple industries now are the carding and spinning of cotton, the weaving of muslin; calicoes, and fustians,

and the manufacture of coarse linens, and more recently of silks. In 1720 an Act was passed for making the Douglas navigable from Wigan to the Ribble, where the latter river empties itself into the sea. This now forms part of the system of the Leeds and Liver- pool Canal Company. The population was in 1861, 37,658. The town has now railway communication with the other towns of Lancashire and the rest of the kingdom.

Blackburn is situated twenty-one miles north north-west from Manchester, on a rivulet, called in Domesday Book Blacke-bourne. With the surrounding district, it was a manor in the reign of William the Conqueror, who granted it to Ilbert de Lacy. There is said to have been a castle here, of which there is now no trace. Camden mentions the place as a thriving market-town in his day. " The eminences in its neighbourhood (by which it is sheltered)

are naked, and in winter the place has a dreary aspect." It is irregularly built, partly from the differing nature of the tenures of the land. The parish church dated from Saxon times, but has been rebuilt (in 1819) on a new site. The grammar-school was founded in the reign of Elizabeth, and there are several other

schools and educational establishments connected with the various religious denominations. The Reform Act of 1832 first gave Blackburn the right of sending representatives to Parliament. Its claim to this and its prosperity were due, among other things, to its proximity to a coal-field a few miles to the south. The manufacture of "a kind of cloth, made of linen warp and cotton, each partly of dyed thread, thence called Blackburn cheques," was carried on here as early as 1650. This was superseded by that of Blackburn greys,—linen and cotton printed in an unbleached state. In 1767, James Hargreaves, a working-man and a native of the town, produced his spinning-jenny, but was driven out of the town, and eventually of the county, by enraged public feeling ; and it was not till 1810-12 that the cotton manu- factures took firm bold in Blackburn. Now, however, its staple is the spinning of the coarser kinds of calicoes, and their weaving by the power-loom. The population of Blackburn was in 1861 63,126, against 15,083 in 1841.