for the disposing & erecting seats in the church of St. Werburge 3 September, 1624."[1]
Bishop Bridgeman was present at the consecration of bishop Richard Senhouse to the see of Carlisle at York on 26th September, 1624,[2] in which he took part,[3] after which he returned to Wigan.
On the 29th of October, 1624, he records that the Serjeant of Wigan, Joseph Pilkington, came to desire his leave to take toll from the butchers who came to sell flesh at the wakes on the following day, but he refused to allow it because the Friday market and the St Luke's fair only belong to the town, therefore he bid his own bailiff to collect it. At the same time he records that, as it had been a use among the townsmen to have "that barbarous and beastly game of bear baiting" at the wakes, or on the day after, "the bear wards went to the Mayor, James Pilkington, to ask leave to bait the bears on the market hill on the next Monday;" the mayor sent to the bishop to ask his permission, and notwithstanding his own strong feelings in the matter, he seems to have given way to the mayor's request, and assented that it should be held, for that time, on condition that they waited until after the Monday market was over and the people had packed up their wares.[4] This, he says, he records in the Leger in order that his successors may know that they have the power of stopping such exhibitions if they choose to enforce it.
On the same day the bishop ordered Oliver Leigh to be imprisoned in the Moot hall for keeping alehouse without licence and getting men and their servants into his house to drink and game there; for which fault he made him pay 10s. to the poor according to the statute. He also caused the bailiffs to put John Dolphin, Thomas Dolphin, and John Farebrother in the stocks on Market hill for making a fray, and bloodshed, and abusing Serjeant Pennington.[5]
- ↑ Miscellaneous Tracts concerning the Ecclesiastical History of Chester: collected by R. Holme: Harl. MSS. 1994 (No. 219 new notation). The MS. is fall of clerical errors from one end to the other, and evidently copied by one wholly ignorant of Latin.
- ↑ Family Evidences; Le Neve's Fasti.
- ↑ Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum.
- ↑ Wigan Leger, fol. 99.
- ↑ Ibid.
