Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/261

setl'd a preacher in one of y^e parish churches, I think S^t Maries, in the City of Chester, was then also possess'd of a Vicarage at Eastham (about six miles distant from y^e City, value £68 per annum), where he lived with his wife and family in a very happy condition, till, the wars breaking out and y^e Parliament forces drawing on to besiege Chester, he was compel'd to withdraw his family and effects into y^e City for succour, where his great and good friend and Pastor y^e Lord Bishop Bridgeman, then Lord Bishop of Chester, accommodated him with several rooms and lodgings in his own Palace; and yet the aged Bishop, dreading the hardships of a siege, voided the place, leaving my Father in his Palace, who continued diligent in his ministry, frequent[ly] preaching to the Garrison there."^[1]

The bishop had already been fined £3,000 by the Parliament, and in 1650 his palace, with all the furniture, was sold for £1,059.^[2]

On leaving Chester he retired to Morton Hall, near Oswestry, in Shropshire, which belonged to his son Orlando in right of his wife, the heiress of the Kynastons of that place. Here he passed the remaining years of his life in reading and devotion; and here he ended his earthly pilgrimage. The only official act of his which I meet with after the time of his leaving Chester is the admission of one John Holme to the vicarage of Rostherne, void by the death of William Shenton, on the presentation of Peter Venables, of Kinderton, in the county of Chester, Esq., which is thus subscribed by the bishop: "Morton in com, Salop ultimo Julii, 1648. Recepi p' supranominatum Joh'em Holme. Fiat Institution. Jo. Cestrien."^[3]

The bishop was buried on 11th November, 1652, in the neighbouring church of Kinnerley,^[4] where a great number of the clergy

1. Correspondence of Nathan Walworth (Chetham Society, vol. cix.), p. 85.
2. Notitia Cestriensis, vol. i. p. ii.
3. Family Evidences.
4. MS. Shropshire Parish Registers, vol. i. p. 105. This work consists of three MS. folio volumes containing extracts from the registers of most of the parishes in the county of Salop. They were transcribed for Mr. Wm. Mytton, the well-known Shropshire antiquary, and were formerly preserved among the Halston MSS., but are now in the writer's possession. The extracts from the Oswestry registers, out of which