your lordships, upon demand, the state of this country and private affection of the most persons of account."[1] Fleetwood himself appears to have been the bearer of this epistle, for a copy of it is enclosed in a letter of the same date from the Earl of Derby to Sir Thomas Heneage, Vice-Chamberlain and Chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, in which, after he had intimated its contents and his own "intent to have the presumption of public and secret papists being temporizers suppressed," he says, "for any particulars touching that sort of this county, this bearer, Mr. Fleetwood, parson of Weegan, a discreet and learned preacher, can inform you truly, whom you may believe."[2]
From the expression used by Fleetwood in one of his letters to Lord Burghley, in which he speaks of himself as dwelling in a desolate part of the county, "from all goodness and good men," it would seem as if he had not carried his neighbours and parishioners at Wigan along with him in his political views. Indeed we know from a schedule of names given in 1590, in a "Vewe of ye state of ye countie Palatine of Lanc., both for Religion and Civil Governmēt," preserved among the State Papers,[3] that most of the leading gentry in or near Wigan were either ill-affected or indifferent to the reformed religion. Of Sir Thomas Gerrarde of the Brynne, knight, Thomas Langton, baron of Newton, Myles Gerrarde of Ince, Esq., and Roger Bradshaw of Haigh, Esq., among the knights and esquires in the commission of the Peace, it is said that, though in some degree of conformitie, yet in general note they were of evil affection in religion, were non-communicants, and the wives of most of them were recusants; and among the "gentlemen of the better sorte" Edward Langton of Hyndley, in Wigan parish, was a "recusant and of such indicted." Roger Rigbie of Blackleyhurst, John Ashton of Bamfurlong, senior, . . . . Ashton, his son and heir, Myles Ince of Ince, Rauffe Worseley of Pemberton, Richard
