causeway at his court gate, which they did: and that they might not be unprovided of moneys in time of need, he caused two layes to be laid generally through the parish by the overseer for the poor, whereof one was to be reserved in the hands of Edmund Winstanly, churchwarden in the town, and the other in Richard Worthington's hands, of Pemberton, churchwarden. For the parish he charged them not to disburse "any penny" of these two layes but only upon such as might chance to be infected, and such uses as concerned the plague. Likewise he advised them to choose out some to be searchers of the bodies of men dying, and to agree for their wages weekly; and to tell him what men were fit to be allowed to keep ale houses, that he might suppress the rest; and he caused the signs of the inns to be taken down now for a while to prevent the abode of travellers in their town,[1] &c. On 13th September he gave order to the churchwardens that none should be buried in Wigan church during the time of the plague, for that the infection is now in Mary Bibby's house, two of her children have died of it and a third hath the sore now running on him; yet her sister and two of her children are escaped out and wander the country, and one Grimshaw (who is to marry her) hath also gone out of that house and is lodged in Haigh, so as it is now uncertain what places in the parish are free from infection; therefore he charged them to suffer none to be buried in the church without his privity: but this was not to prejudice any man's interest or claim to bury in the church for the future.[2]
The precautions used appear to have been successful in preserving the town from the ravages of the plague, for the number of burials at Wigan at the close of 1625 were but little above the average.
In the bishop's accounts for this year, under the heading of law expenses, an item of £4 occurs for resisting an attempt by the Earl of Devon[3] to set up a prescription for tithes at Abram.
- ↑ Wigan Leger, fol. 106.
- ↑ Ibid., fol. 107.
- ↑ Family Evidences (i.e., bishop Bridgeman's Leger, marked No. 2). The person here called Earl of Devon will have been Sir William Cavendish, K.B., the first Earl of Devonshire, so created in 1618, who died 3rd March, 1625-6.
