since that year they have been and still are held at intervals of twenty years. A special gild mayor is appointed on each occasion. The first mention of a procession at the gild is in 1500. One of the most important items of business was the enrolling of freemen, and the gild rolls are records of the population. In 1397 the gild roll contained the names of over 200 in-burgesses and 100 foreign burgesses; in 1415 the number of in-burgesses was 188, which in 1459 had declined to 72. In 1582 there were over 500 in-burgesses and 340 out-burgesses. There is no evidence for, but rather against, the common statement that Preston was burnt or razed to the ground during the Scottish invasion of 1322. The town suffered severely from the Black Death in 1349–1350, when as many as 3000 persons are said to have died, and again in the year November 1630 to November 1631, 1100 died of pestilence. During the Civil War Preston sided with the king and became the headquarters of the Royalists in Lancashire. In February 1643 Sir John Seaton with a Parliamentary force marched from Manchester and successfully assaulted it. A strong Parliamentary garrison was established here and its fortifications repaired, but in March the earl of Derby recaptured the town. The Royalists did not garrison it, but after demolishing the greater part of the works left it unfortified. After the battle of Marston Moor Prince Rupert marched through Preston in September 1644 and carried the mayor and bailiffs prisoners to Skipton Castle, where they were confined for twelve months. On the 17th of August 1648 the Royalist forces under the duke of Hamilton and General Langdale were defeated at Preston by Cromwell with a loss of 1000 killed and 4000 taken prisoners. During the Rebellion of 1715 the rebel forces entered Preston on the 9th of November, and after proclaiming the Chevalier de St George king at the cross in the market-place, remained here for some days, during which the government forces advanced. The town was assaulted, and on the 14th of November General Forster surrendered his army of about 1400 men to the king's forces. In 1745 Prince Charles Edward marched through on the way south and north, but the town took no part in the rebellion. The borough returned two members from 1295 to 1331, then ceased to exercise the privilege on account of poverty till 1529, but since that date (except in 1653) it has always sent two representatives to parliament. The curious institution of the mock mayor and corporation of Walton, which was at its foundation in 1701 a jacobite association, ceased after 1766 to be of any political significance and lapsed in 1800. There was probably a church here in Saxon times and it is believed to be one of the three churches in Amounderness mentioned in Domesday Book. In 1094 it is named in a charter of Roger de Poictou. The early dedication was to St Wilfrid, but probably about 1531, when it was rebuilt, it was re-dedicated to St John. At the time of the Reformation, many, especially among the neighbouring gentry, clung to the old faith, and there is still a large Roman Catholic population. There were two monastic foundations here: a hospital dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, which stood on the Maudlands, and a Franciscan convent of Grey Friars situated to the west of Friargate. In the 18th century Preston had a high reputation as a centre of fashionable society, and earned the epithet still familiarly associated with it, “ proud.”
See H. Fishwick, History of the Parish of Preston (1900).
PRESTONPANS, a police burgh and watering-place of
Haddingtonshire, Scotland, on the Firth of Forth, 91⁄2 m. E. of
Edinburgh by the North British railway. Pop. (1901), 2614.
A mile to the east of the village is the site of the battle of the
21st of September 1745, in which Prince Charles Edward and
his highlanders gained a complete victory over the royal forces
under Sir John Cope. Colonel James Gardiner was mortally
wounded after an heroic stand, and an obelisk in the grounds
of his house at Bankton, close to the battlefield, commemorates
his valour, while the ballad of Adam Skirving (1719–1803),
“ Hey, Johnnie Cope!" has immortalized the rout of Cope.
Until the beginning of the 19th century, the salt trade was prosecuted with great success, the pans having been laid down as long ago as 1185, but the industry has declined. There are manufactures of fire-bricks, tiles and pottery, besides brewing and soap making. In the vicinity there is an extensive coal-field. Fisheries are still of importance, although the bed of Pandore oysters (an esteemed variety) has lost something of its former fertility. There are harbours at Morrison's Haven to the west and at Cockenzie and Port Seton to the north-east, which practically form one village, with a population of 1687. The cross of the barony of Preston dates from 1617. Schaw's Hospital Trust, at one time intended for the education and maintenance of the children of poor parents, has been modified, and the bequest is used to provide free education and bursaries, while the building has been leased by the trustees of Miss Mary Murray, who bequeathed £20,000 (afterwards increased to £30,000) for the training of poor children as domestic servants.
PRESTWICH, SIR JOSEPH (1812–1896), English geologist,
was born at Clapham, Surrey, on the 12th of March, 1812. He
was educated in Paris, Reading and at University College,
London, where under Dr D. Lardner and Edward Turner, he
paid special attention to natural philosophy and chemistry,
and gained some knowledge of mineralogy and geology. Circumstances
compelled him to enter into commercial life, and until
he was sixty years of age he was busily engaged in the City as
a wine merchant. He devoted all his leisure to geology. His
business journeys enabled him to see and learn much of the
general geology of England, Scotland and France, and this so
effectively that at the time of his death he ranked as the most
eminent of British geologists. As early as 1831 he commenced,
during holiday visits, to make a study of the coal-field of Coalbrookdale
in Shropshire, and the results of his observations
were communicated to the Geological Society of London in
1834 and 1836, and embodied in a memoir published in 1838.
His name is, however, especially known in connexion with his
researches on the Eocene strata of the London and Hampshire
Basins (1846–1857): he defined the Thanet Sands and the
Woolwich and Reading Beds, and studied the sequence of
deposits and of organic remains and the method of formation
of these and the succeeding strata of London clay and Bagshot
Beds. So highly appreciated were his essays on the subject
that in 1849 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal by the
Geological Society of London; and in 1853 he was elected F.R.S.
In the course of his observations he was led to study questions
of water supply and published in 1851 A Geological Inquiry
respecting the Water-bearing Strata of the Country around London,
a work that at once became a standard authority; and his
extensive knowledge in that respect procured him a seat on
the Royal Commission on Water Supply, appointed in 1866. From
1858 the question of the antiquity of man engaged his attention.
On various occasions statements had been made as to the
association of flint implements formed by man with the bones
of extinct mammals which belonged to more remote periods
than those generally assigned for the appearance of the human
race on this earth, but the evidence adduced had usually been
disregarded by geologists as not affording sufficient proof of
the point. Prestwich, together with Dr Hugh Falconer and
Sir John Evans, saw the desirability of a closer examination
of the facts, particularly in regard to the implements discovered
by Boucher de Perthes in the gravels of the Somme valley;
and their investigations in France and England yielded evidence
which proved that man existed contemporaneously with the
Pleistocene mammal (Phil. Trans. 1861 and 1864). In 1865
a Royal Medal was awarded to Prestwich by the Royal Society.
In 1866 he was chosen one of the commissioners appointed to
inquire into the several matters relating to coal in the United
Kingdom; and he subsequently contributed an important
Report on the Quantities of Coal, wrought and unwrought, in the
Coalfields of Somersetshire and part of Gloucestershire, and another
Report on the Probabilities of finding Coal in the South of England
(1871). His researches on the Crag Beds of Suffolk and Norfolk,
his report on Brixham Cave, his papers on the Channel Tunnel
and the Chesil Bank, among others published during the years
1868–1875, may be mentioned.
In 1870 he married Grace Anne McCall (née Milne), niece of Dr H. Falconer, and author of the Harbour Bar and other works (see Essays Descriptive and Biographical, by Grace, Lady
