On Sunday, the 15th of December, 1622, Elianor Bridgeman, the bishop's daughter, an infant of a month old, was buried in the old chancel near the seat where the bishop was accustomed to sit.[1]
On the 24th of the same month, "being Christmas Eve and properly no market day, the bishop instructed his steward, Mr. Richard Walton, to prohibit the Serjeants and bailiffs of the town from receiving toll, because the wastes and streets are the parson's, and persons coming to them on such like unusual markets set up standings in the streets, and the steward instructed the jury to find that the town's Serjeants and bailiffs who had received the like toll on the Saturday before the wake day had wronged the lord of the manor; which was not found at first, for alderman Robert Barrow, being foreman of the jury, pretended that the streets were not the wastes, but when the steward began to impanell another jury, Barrow and his fellows found a verdict that the parson had been wronged, and the Serjeants and bailiffs forbore to take the tolls which were gathered that day for the parson to the amount of 5s.," which he gave to the collectors for their pains, and recorded it here lest they should again begin their encroachments on the manor and liberties.[2]
It appears that Roger Baron and James Scot, the then bailiffs of the town of Wigan, had been attached, on the 22nd of August, 1622, to make answer at Lancaster, in pl'ito transgr. pr. ejectione firme, to Richard Walton, the bishop's steward, to whom he had sealed a lease of the pendice chamber at the lower end of the Moot Hall, over the first shop, for the trial of the church's right thereto. The trial should have taken place at the spring assizes, but William Ford, the mayor of Wigan, and the aldermen and burgesses came to the bishop, on 6th March, 1622-3, and desired him to forbear the suit for those assizes, promising to yield him content upon his return from London, and if in the meantime they could find nothing more for their right, they would confess the inheritance to belong to the church.[3]
