THE PROVINCIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CXXIV.—LANCASHIRE :-THE LAND AND THE TOWNS. MHE reserved possessions of the Earldom and Duchy Palatine of Lancaster were very considerable in extent, but by no means of proportionate value in respect of annual proceeds. We gather the names of some of the leading gentry of the county, as we have done before, from the lists of Sheriffs. In 1087 Galfridus was sheriff, and the only one named till 1156. In the period from the accession of Henry II. to the death of Henry III., we find the names of Pigot, Be Montaltop, 0 wra, De Valoniis, Vesei, Be Herlebeek, Fitz-Bernard, De Glanvill, Pipard, Be Cornhill, Rad- cliffe, Walter, Garnet,Vavasor, Pincerna, Tattershall, De Toteshal, Vernon, Lacy, Fitz-Roger, Marshall, Fitz-Re3rnfrid or Reinford, 1Vallensis, Ferrers, Mountjoy, Etwell, De Yeland, Byron, Be Lancaster, Westby, De Thornton, De Lathom, Butler, Redmain, Be Ulvesby, De Chetham, and Deere. Under the Edwards and Richard II. appear the names of Travers, Le Gentyl, Be Lea, De Clifton, Banester, Be Hoghton, De Leyborne, De Bickersteth, Southworth, D'Arcy, Hambury, De Burghton, De Warbur- ton, Be Denon, Clapham, Ireton, Cockayue, Ipree, Townley, Be Bobbeham, Harrington, Standish, and Mollineux. Under the Lancaster and York dynasties we obtain the names of Gerard, Bold, Stanley, Longford, Urswick, Lawrence, Broughton, and Pilkington. Under the House of Tudor the fresh names that come to the front are Osbaldeston, Worsley, Legh, Atherton, Talbot, Tunstall, Langton, Trafford, Hesketh, Holland, Preston, Booth, Holt, Dalton, Fleetwood, Ashton, Fitton, and Halsell. Under the first two Stuarts we find the names of Ireland, Moseley, Barton, Nowell, Fleming, Bindloss, Berwick, Sher- burne, Shuttleworth, Ashall Ashawe or Ashow, Moore, Kirkby, Rawsthorne, Farington, Egerton, Girlington, and Bradshaw. To these the Commonwealth adds the names of Hartley, Hopwood, Wrigley, Barlow, Parker, Starkie, and Cooper. Between the Restoration and the accession of the House of Hanover, we find the names of Middleton, Spencer, Arden, Greenhalgh, Slater, Brooks, Butterworth, Rigby, Johnson of Rishton Grange, Rosthorn, Leigh, Shakerley, Richardson of Rawnhead, Birch, Livey, Ash- nrst, Norris, Manwaring, West, Duckenfield, Hulm, Dauntesey, Cole, Sandes, and Valentine. We cannot pretend to enumerate all those families which supplied the sheriffdom during the Hanoverian period, but we may mention those of Blackburne, Crisp, Gregg, Tatham, Mawdesley, Yates (oi Peel, near Manchester), Greaves, Bushel, Hambleton, Lever, Bankes, Willis, Shaw, Clarke, Fenton, Bailey, Gibson, and Whitehead, as coming to the front in the reigns
of the first two Georges. The rise and prosperity of the manufactur- ing interest of Lancashire has gradually contributed another entirely new landed element to this county, which now shares the power with the older families. The Stanleys hold their own, though the Cavendishes struggle against them in the north and the Molyneux in the south. The Egertons in their various branches have con- siderable influence, and Mr. Wilson-Patten's large possessions and personal abilities have given his family a firm position in the north. The Wilbrahams are powerful, thoughdivided in political sentiments, as, indeed, are the Stanleys. The Clif tons and llopwoods still keep near the front, though they are not so powerful as the preceding. The Cheethams have recruited their strength by the addition of a manufacturing interest, as have also the Shuttleworths and others of the old families. The Towuleys, though Catholics, have never ceased to be felt as a political and social power in the county. The Leghs are still in the front, as are the blended families of Hesketh and Fleetwood. Besides the families of strictly manufacturing origin, whose centre may be said to be Manchester, we have from Liverpool another important mercantile element, represented by such men as the Gladstones, Rathbones, Brownes, Thornleys, &c., while commerce and literature united have left an indelible stamp on the county history in the family of Roscoe. The Heywoods, once distinguished in the annals of Presbyterianism, now represent the banking interest, and with the family of Philips form a connecting link between the urban and agricultural sections of society. The more purely manufacturing families, such as the Henrys and Brights, are very numerous, and this brings us to the history of their natural capital, the city of Manchester, with which we may com- bine what is virtually part of it, the borough of Salford, though it is separated from it municipally and in Parliamentary representation.
The old Roman station of Kotucium or M.kmc in...mum seems, as we have seen, to have been placed at the point where the river _Wedlock falls into the Iricell (which latter river now separates Manchester proper from Salford), near what is still called Castle Field. It has been conjectured also that another or summer camp was placed by them at the junction of the river Irk with the Medi, at the other extremity of the street called the Deansgate. The station we know to have been garrisoned during the Roman occupation by an auxiliary body of troops to the Twentieth Roman Legion at Chester,—viz., the First Cohort of Frisians, about 700 strong, who, "though Romanized, were not strictly Roman," and who spoke a tongue which was probably the nearest dialect to the early or Saxon English anywhere to be found. The similarity of the modern Frisian tongue to the modern English is still remarkable, and it is probable that some portion at least of the Frisian nation swelled the ranks of the invading Teutonic hordes who overran and transformed Britain into England. They would find, therefore, if the Frisian cohort remained at Manchester during their occupying invasion of the county, brethren and per- haps allies in the garrison at that station, especially if it be true that in many cases the Roman or Romanized inhabitants of the cities of Britain preferred the ascendancy of the Teutonic tribes to that of the still uncivilized Keltic clans of the agricultural and forest districts, whose petty chiefs attempted, after the abandonment of Britain by the central Imperial Govern- ment, to resume the chieftainships or kingships held by their ancestors before the Roman Conquest. Some faint memories of the struggle which thus ensued may lie at the bottom of the legend of the occupation of Manchester by the Saxon giant, Sir Tarquin or Torquin, but it would be trifling with our readers to affect to deduce any real facts from the legend in the form in which it has descended to us. The Teutonic occupiers, at any rate, do not appear to have chosen the site of the Roman station for their bunt, but to have fixed on a spot further along the Deansgate, between what are believed to have been the two Roman camps, at what was afterwards called Aldport. This was the Manchester of Anglo-Saxon times. The Normans, "eager for the chase, selected the neighbourhood of the Roman summer camp for their settlement," at the other extremity of the Deansgate, "and the Baron's Hull, or Hill, saw a fortified mansion rise on its soil, which eventually, with its neighbouring church and market, fixed Manchester's centre for ages near the old parish church and market-place, shifting the locality from the banks of the Medlock to the vicinity of the Irk. The older town or (Anglo-Saxon) port then took the name of Aid-port. These successive occupations extend over about a mile. Whether the Roman name for Manchester was Mssincium or MANCUNIUM, it is clear that the Saxons followed the first of these forms, for in the oldest MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle the name appears as Mame-ceaster (though another and less valuable MS. has the form of Manige- ceaster). The Normans used the form Mame-cestre, and this Saxon and Norman form of the name appears to have retained its hold for more than a thousand years. "The last mutation, giving Manchester, the modern form of name it still bears, is of not more than four centuries' duration." As to the meaning of the word Mame, Mamuc, or Mancun, philologers are too much divided in opinions, and with too slight grounds for their several decisions, to make it worth our while to mention any of their conjectures.
The present Manchester and Salford are built upon low ground on the left and right banks of the Irwell, by which they have a com- munication with the Mersey, Liverpool, and the sea. In Domesday 13ook two churches are mentioned as belonging to Mamecestre,— St. Mary's and St. Michael's. The Norman baron who established himself here after the Conquest appears as a witness in a charter of the time of William Rufus, and his name is variously spelt, Albert de Gresley, Gredley, Gressel, and Grelle. His son Robert gave his mills on the river Irk to the Cistercian monks of Swines- head in Lincolnshire, and obtained the grant of an annual fair on his lordship of Mamecestre on St. Matthew's Day, and the day before and after. His descendant, Thomas, on the 14th of May, 1301, granted to the burgesses of Mamecestre a charter of the custom of the manor. As he died without issue, John, son of Roger De La Warr, succeeded to this inheritance, and chiefly resided in Baron's Hull or Baron's Yard. His descendant, Thomas, Rector of Manchester, who succeeded his brother as Baron in the ninth year of Henry V., obtained a licence to found a collegiate church, &c., here, which he liberally endowed with lands, &c., including Baron's Hull, and Baron's Yard. On the Dissolution of the Religious Houses in 1547, this house and some of the lands were sold to the Earl of Derby. It was re- founded in Queen Mary's time, but the Earl retained the collegiate house. It was refounded in the twentieth of Eliza- beth, again dissolved, and refounded by Charles I. in 1636 by the name of Christ's College, with a warden, five fellows, two chaplains, singing men, chorister, boys, &c. The collegiate house was purchased from the Earl of Derby in 1653, in accord- ance with a recommendation in Mr. Cheetham's will. The collegiate church, erected in the fifteenth century in the perpendi- cular style, was made a cathedral on the creation of the separate Bishopric of Manchester in 1848. Since the fifteenth century, the church has been frequently repaired and in part rebuilt. The interior is about 180 feet in length by 60 feet in breadth. "The choir is one of the finest in England, and the tabernacle. work is unrivalled," and there are numerous monuments in the church of much interest.
The manor of Manchester passed, on the death of the founder of the college, through an heiress, Joan, to the family of West (the present Earls De La Warr). In 1579 the Wests sold the manor to John Lacye, a citizen of London, who resold it in 1596 to Sir Nicholas Moseley. The manorial rights were purchased in the present reign by the Corporation of Manchester. Manchester down to the Municipal Corporations' Act of William IV. was an unchartered borough, governed by a borough-reeve annually chosen, two constables, and a deputy-constable ; the township of Salford being under a similar government. Both now are incorporated.
"In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the town received great improvements, so that in Leland's time [Henry VIII.] it was reckoned the fairest, best-builded, quickest [liveliest], and most populous town of Lancashire.' Camden also mentions it as being famed in his time [Elizabeth and James L] for the manufacture of woollen clothes, then called Manchester cottons, i.e., coatings. The first authentic mention of the cotton manufacture is made by Lewis Roberts in his Treasure of Traffic, published in 1641, where it is stated, 'The town of Manchester must be also herein remem- bered, and worthily, for their encouragement, commended, who bay the yarn of the Irish in great quantity, and weaving it, return the same again into Ireland to sell. Neither cloth their industry rest here, for they buy cotton-wool in London, that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home work the same, and perfect it into fustians, vermillions, dimities, and other such stuffs, and then return it to London, where the same is vented and sold, and not seldom sent into foreign parts, who have means at far easier terms, to provide themselves of the said first materials." Such was the beginning of the great manufacturing prosperity of Manchester.
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