charge of the parish (as appears by the Kubrick in the Comunion Book), and that, by canon made by the King and church a° 1603, [they] had appointed the same in express words; and that the Comon Law did not charge the parson with it; besides that they could have no such custome, for in time of popery (and particularly in Queen Marye's days) the laity did not receive the cup; and if there had been such a custome yet that interruption had broken it; but expressly Mrs. Christian Fleetwood, wife of parson Fleetwood, and Gregory Turner, parson of Sephton, late school mastr of Wigan (but now Justice of peace), were present and offered to depose that parson Fleetwood in his time did not find the Wine at the monthly comunions (whereof he was the first beginner) but caused the collections to be made in the time of the receaving amongst the communicants, and when the comunion was ended he took the money and told it on the Table, and out of it he took so much as paid for the wine, and gave the rest to the churchwardens for the poor."[1] After this time Dr. Bridgeman no longer provided the bread and wine, but charged the churchwardens to provide them.
The year 1618 (being the 3rd year of his incumbency at Wigan) must have been one of heavy expense to him. In this year he had to pay off the remainder of his costs for the trial of the previous year, and in the same year he made considerable additions to his parsonage house, the Hall of Wigan, where he built the parlour and garden chambers, gallery, stairs, and private chapel, into which he put a stained glass window in the following year.[2] But he had now begun to receive some benefit from his recovered
- ↑ Wigan Leger, fol. 24.
- ↑ Family Evidences. There was no architectural beauty about this little private chapel, which was about 20 feet in length by 18 in breadth, and abutted on the south-east end of the house. It had been used as the late rector's study when the present rector came in 1864, and when it was pulled down with the rest of the house in 1873 there were traces of there having formerly been a large wide window at the south east end, which I take to have been that farthest from the altar, probably somewhat like those in the Gerard or Walmesley chapel of the parish church.
