The History of the Church and Manor of Wigan/I
History of the Church and Manor of Wigan
AMONGST the ancient ecclesiastical establishments of the county of Lancaster, that of Wigan holds a prominent position. There was a church here in Saxon times, as we learn from the survey of William the Conqueror.
Lancashire, as a county, is not to be found in the Domesday Record, but the southern portion of it is surveyed under the title of "the land between the Ribble and the Mersey." This territory contained the hundreds of Derbei, Neutone, Walintune, Blachburne, Salford, and Lailand; of which the three former are now included in the hundred of West Derby.
In the description of the great manor, or lordship, of Newton, given in Domesday, it is stated that in King Edward's time "the church of this manor had one carucate of land, and St. Oswald of this vill two carucates, exempt from all dues."
"The church of this manor" was unquestionably the parish church of Wigan, while that of St. Oswald will have been that of Winwick.[1] A carucate, or plough land, signifies as much arable land as could be tilled throughout the year by one team of oxen. It is difficult to estimate the acreage of a carucate in any particular locality. In some instances it is estimated to be as low as 60 acres, in others as high as 180 acres.[2] The difference, probably, rather lay in the nature of the soil than in any various system of superficial measurement. The carucate held by the church of Wigan may, perhaps, have contained about 100 or 120 acres; that is to say, this was all the land then under cultivation in the manor of Wigan, which is co-extensive with the present parliamentary borough.
From a very early period, probably before the Conquest, the Parsons of Wigan held the manor of Wigan as an appanage to their church. It was subsequently held by them under the Lords of Newton or Barons of Makerfield, as they were indiscriminately called, who presented to the church as patrons, and to whom the Parsons owed suit. But except as patrons of the church the interest of these mesne lords was little more than nominal,[3] and the Parsons were the real lords of the manor, though in some of the inquisitions post mortem Wigan is mentioned among the manors of the Lords of Newton.
The first Norman Lord of Newton was Robert Banastre, who came over to England with William the Conqueror, and had the barony of Makerfield assigned to him by Roger de Poitou, to whom the King had given the land between the Ribble and the Mersey. His heirs, the Langtons, continued to hold the advowson of the church with but slight interruption till the early part of the seventeenth century, when it passed, on the death of Sir Thomas, son of Leonard, son of Sir Thomas Langton, Knight, without issue, in 1604, with the other Langton estates, under a special settlement, to his cousin Richard Fleetwood of Calwich, in the county of Stafford, Esq., who was created a Baronet by James I. in 1611. It was subsequently sold by his son, Sir Thomas Fleetwood of Calwich, Baronet, soon after the restoration of Charles II., to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, Knight and Baronet, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, with whose descendant and representative, Orlando G. C. Bridgeman, Earl of Bradford, it still remains.
- ↑ Kennett's Glossary to Parochial Antiquities.
- ↑ The ancient parish of Wigan includes the townships of Wigan, Pemberton, Upholland, Dalton, Winstanley, Billinge Higher, Billinge Lower, Hindley, Abraen, Ince, Orrell, Haigh and Aspull, of which the last mentioned is in the hundred of Salford, and the remainder are in that of West Derby. From this I infer that the boundaries of the parish were of prior date to the disposition of the lands by William the Conqueror, for after the Conquest the manor and lands of Aspull were held of the barony of Manchester (see Baines' Lanc. vol. iii. p. 552).
- ↑ ' Mesne Tenures were created sometimes by sub-infeudation, sometimes by insertion of the middle-man (as was probably the case at Wigan). They were extinguished at length by change of law and custom and the seigneury becoming obsolete.