of all the communicables' names since Easter, and promise henceforth to be diligent in the due performance thereof.
|
corâ
in presentiâ
|
Jo: Cestrien. Jacob ffyet Ro. Fogge Tho. Wasse Willm. Tempest." |
In December, 1634, the bishop notes in the Wigan Leger: "Memorand. Will. Caterall, being in Moot hall for debt wch he owed to Barnabe Markland for a horse, desired me and my men to bestow so much on him as we pleased for his relief; whereupon I sent him from Lever, by his wife who came thither to crave it, 26s. 8d.; and Laur. Booth, Mr. Charles Jones my chaplen, and Tho. Darcy gave her 15s.; wth wch he was redeemed out of prison. But because in future tymes I think the Town may pretend, by this instance, a power & liberty to arrest my servants, (wch in the sutes 'twixt parson fleetwood and them they laboured to prove but could not) therefore I thought good here to remember to my successors, the truth of this particular; viz. that he hath not been my servant any tyme these 3 or 4 years; but departed from me and served Sr Rowland Cotton in Shropshire, who dying now very lately, he came to Wigan to his own house (wch is Mr. Catteral of the Crook his land) and then was arrested. As for the town court they have it only by my favour upon the Lords' entreaty to me, but by the charter, 24 Edw. III., the court of pleas there given is limited, and sutes concerning the King and parson excepted."
There is under date of 29th June, 1634, a letter of bishop Bridgeman's to Lord Wentworth, Lord Deputy of Ireland, preserved among the Strafford State Papers, which, as I meet with so few of the bishop's own letters, I shall here transcribe in full:
"My honourable and very good Lord,
I cannot let this Bearer depart out of my Diocese without a Blessing on you for preferring of him, whom I have found a learned, painful, honest, peaceable and religious Minister, and such a one as (if you had
