Cestr. Rectori de Wigan de molendino aquatico horreo et Rodd. terre cum p'tinen. menc'onat in Inditament. modo capt. verss Aliciam Letherbarow vid. et Jacobum Darrowe miller."[1]
The bishop was prevented, however, from obtaining possession at that time, for they sent to Preston that night and got a certiorari to call the case before the judges at Lancaster at the next assizes. But knowing that her husband, ten years since, had been indicted at Lancaster for this mill (ut supra), and that it would now go against her there, her father, William Prescot, rode up to London and petitioned the king to stay proceedings and refer the matter to the Lord Bishop of Lichfield, James Lord Strange, and Sir George Booth, that they might examine into her complaint and mediate some charitable end for her relief.
The king granted a reference accordingly, which was dated on 3rd August (1628).
Since the parson's title to the inheritance of the said mill was clearly proved at Ormskirk, Alice Letherbarrow now pleaded that the parson, Dr. Bridgeman, had made her husband a lease for twenty-one years, by order of the four lords, to whom it was referred by King James, 23rd February, 1618, and produced William Ford for a witness, who said that one of the lords motioned a lease, but he could not depose that a lease was made, though Dr. Bridgeman promised to make him one.
To which the bishop answered: 1. A promise is no lease. 2. He offered him a lease as soon as he came home, and ofttimes, but he refused to take any lease (proved by judge Winch's order at the assizes, 20th August, 1618), and said that the mill belonged to him by other title of his own and not by the parson. 3. In the four lords' order there is not one word of such a lease. 4. If they had ordered him to make him a lease, why did he never demand it in ten years' space? 5. He is now dead; it is impossible to make a lease to him. 6. As for the term of twenty-one years, it was never mentioned. The two lords justices knew
- ↑ Wigan Leger, fol. 167, 168, 169.
