Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/39

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Memoir of John Harland.

of Seats and Pews in old Parish Churches of the County-Palatine of Lancaster." It is a small pamphlet of sixteen pages, and contains much curious information respecting seats and pews in the Churches of Ashton-under-Lyne, Eccles and Whalley. During this and the early part of the following year he published several "Church Notes" in the Eccles Advertiser, which were afterwards issued in an octavo pamphlet of eighty-two pages, and entitled "The Ancient Parish Church of Eccles; its antiquity, alterations, and improvements. By Crux." Why he adopted this signature when publishing this very meritorious and exhaustive account of an ancient parish church is not known, but he also adopted the same nom de plume when writing to the Reliquary.

In 1864-5 he edited two volumes of "Court Leet Records" of the manor of Manchester. They contain many valuable accounts of the social and civil life of the inhabitants of that city during the sixteenth century. His introduction, preparatory chapter, notes and appendices, are especially curious and interesting. He closed his extracts at the date of the death of Queen Elizabeth; and expressed a hope that other extracts would be made commencing with the reign of James I. This hope was not realised. During Mr Harland's connection with the Manchester Guardian he published in that journal, and in the Weekly Express, a vast number of antiquarian articles of much local interest. A selection from these was issued in two volumes as "Collectanea relating to Manchester and its neighbourhood at various periods." We have here descriptions of Manchester from British to Saxon times; these are followed by accounts of Roman remains, relics, maps, plans, directories, local events, notices of notables, &c., of the highest importance to local history. The second volume more especially deals