Barrow and the rest of the jury wrangled much at it, yet confessed that in their memory it was an open place, and no room for private use under lock or door, but an open entry to the Moot Hall whereto every man might come at pleasure out of the street, notwithstanding the Moot Hall door was shut. At last the jury entreated him to respite it till the next court, to which he yielded, lest they should think he now pressed them in spleen or revenge of Barrow's forwardness, who was then suing Mr. Blundell and other justices of peace for false imprisonment. On the following day, however, he sealed a lease of the pendice chamber to Mr. Richard Walton, his steward, in order that he might try his title thereto, because old Henry Wakefield and others deposed that they remembered when the place under it was part of the waste or street, and that one Foster, a butcher, father to Degory Foster, now living, having married the daughter of Nicholas Low, who had the next shop, and having no place to keep shop in, obtained licence of the bishop's predecessors "to build a shop there; and shortly after there was a hovel or pent house built over it and covered with straw, under which they went from the stairs that lead to the Moot Hall along over the said shop in an open entry, whereto any man might come; till of late Wm. Banks, or Marsh, being mayor, built it up into a chamber, wherein since they keep their meetings, and call it the Town's Counsell Chamber, or pendice chamber."[1] There is a memorandum in the bishop's hand-writing pinned to the margin: " Wm Ormshaw told me, 21 March, 1621 (test. Mr. Kay & Jo. Marsh) that after his brother, Foster's father, had built up the said shop, he made the shed over it, and repaired it, till of late he agreed with the town and gave them 20s to maintain the said roof and discharge him of it."
Mr. William Sherlock (son of old Mr. Sherlock, curate of Farnworth), schoolmaster of Wigan Grammar school, and late one of the bishop's curates at the parish church, was buried in
- ↑ Wigan Leger, fol. 65, 66.
