to pay yearly for them to the parson of Wigan, for the time being, the sum of 8d.[1]; William Babington, of Woodhouses, coleman, who acknowledged himself tenant at will to the parson for a piece of ground on the waste in Whelley and promised to pay a rent of 18d.[2]; besides many others.
The gathering of the great, or corn, tithe in those days gave much trouble. It was sometimes taken in kind, but more frequently it was let to tenants in the different townships from year to year. The corn tithe of Haigh, for which the Bradshaws at one time claimed a prescription, was now let for a term of years, together with the tithe of two mills, to Roger Bradshaw, of Haigh, Esq., for £16 per annum. At Ince, Upholland, and Dalton, prescriptions were claimed, for the former by Mr. Gerard of Ince at a payment of £4 yearly, and for the others by the Earl of Derby, who had held them since parson Stanley's time, at a payment of £12 13s. 4d. per annum, whereas the rents for the corn tithe of the other townships, when not taken in kind, had varied from year to year. These prescriptions were challenged by Dr. Bridgeman, but unsuccessfully, as will be presently shewn.
In the first year of his incumbency he received Mr. Gerard's £4 but afterwards refused it, and took such of the corn tithe of Ince as he could get in kind. The first mention I meet with of a disputed title to the Ince corn tithe is the following memorandum, in the Wigan Leger, of 22nd September, 1619: "Whereas John, bishop of Chester, now parson of Wigan, hath this year entered upon the tithe come of Ince, as in the right of his church, and hath taken some of it into his barne at Wigan, and is still purposed to take in more, and hath also given license unto other of his parishioners, inhabiting in Ince, to carry in other his tithes of Ince into their barnes for and in his name and right: now because Mr. Thomas Gerrard, of Ince, Esq., who pleads a title and prescription to the said
