The History of the Church and Manor of Wigan/Oliver de Langton

by George Thomas Orlando Bridgeman

Oliver de Langton, who, as Rector of Wigan, in 1451, covenanted, for himself and his successors, to pay £20 yearly to the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield.^[1] I suppose him, therefore, to have been admitted in that year. The pedigree of the Langtons in Baines's Lancashire gives an Oliver de Langton as younger son of that Henry de Langton, Baron of Newton, who died in 7 Hen. V. If this were the present rector, he will have been the brother of his predecessor, James de Langton.

In his time the churchyard of Wigan appears to have been the scene of some battle or civil brawl, in which human blood was shed, for by his letters of 15th March, 1457-8, R[eginald Boulers], Bishop of Lichfield, issues a commission to Ralph Ducworth, S.T.P., Vicar of Prestecote, and Sir Edward ffarington, Rector of Halsall, to inquire into the facts of the case. He tells them that since he heard that the cemetery of the parish church of Wigan, in his diocese, had been notoriously polluted by violence and the unlawful shedding of human blood, he had interdicted it from ecclesiastical sepulture until full reconciliation should have been made, and desires them to hold a legal inquiry as to the person by whom it had been polluted, and who had been the cause or occasion of it, and return to him a faithful report of the matter.^[2] It is unfortunate that no record of the return has been found in the Diocesan Register, for it would probably have recorded matters of interest connected with the History of Wigan. Oliver Langton was still living in 1462-3, when, as parson of the church of Wigan, he appears, by his attorney, against Robert Merik, late of Bedford, in the county of Lancaster, husbandman, and Matthew Astley, late of the same place, yeoman, in a plea for recovery of a debt of six marks, which he claimed from each of them.^[3]

After this I meet with no mention of any rector of Wigan till after the close of that century.

1. Ex inf. Rev. F. P. Parker, from Lichfield Cathedral Muniment Room.
2. Lichfield Dioc. Reg.   Commissio ad inquirendum supra pollucionem cenuterii de Wygan, Dat, sub sigillo nostra in manerio nostra de Beaudesert xv die mensis Martii anno Domini mccclvii et nostre translacionis anna quinto. Entries concerning the pollution of churches and churchyards are not infrequent in the Lichfield Diocesan Register. A commission of inquiry was usually issued with power to interdict the churchyard, if found to be polluted, and to keep it closed until reconciled by an episcopal service. The form may be seen in Maskell's Ritualia, This course of treatment is one among many proofs that the churchyard, by virtue of consecration, was wholly under ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The parishioners' rights were contingent, and subject to suspension by interdict, with no remedy at common law (ex inf. Bishop Hobhouse).
3. Plea Rolls, Lanc., 2 Edw. IV. (Lent term).