Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/227

"Most humble duty remembered. May it please your Grace. I have delivered your letter to our dean & chapter forbidding them hereafter to let any part of the Abbey Court, in which the houses of the bishop and the dean and other churchmen do stand, unto a common brewer and malster, as this dean and prebendaries had formerly done. I owe you for this as much as my health and perhaps my life comes to. For truly ever since my being bishop of this see, which is now almost 20 years, I have scarce had a month's health together whilst I lived at Chester, by means of the smoke & other annoyances which came thereby. And now, though I am most unwilling to trouble your weighty employments at this time, yet I hope it will not offend you, if once more I crave your Grace's advice in a business which more nearly concerns the publique. The Mayor of Chester and his brethren have discontinued from our cathedral service about 12 years together till this last year, when an ingenuous merchant, who had sometime been a chorister and grammar scholar of our church, broke that schism, and came diligently to our Quire at the beginning of service every Sunday, & there continued reverently till service & sermon were fully ended. But he sat in the seat on the South side of the Quire door over against the dean's seat, so oft as he came to the Quire, as all his predecessors (for ought I can learn) have always done without interruption and ever since the erection of our cathedral, the prebendaries sitting, half of them next the dean, & the other half next the Mayor on the other side, and after them the aldermen and other gentlemen. But on a sudden our dean (although he have no ecclesiastical jurisdiction) yet without my consent and the votes of his brethren, commanded the sub-sextons to keep the Mayor out of that seat, whereupon he & his successor have since abandoned our Quire service and sermons, so as we shall have scarce five lay persons present besides the consistory and my family, whereas formerly the whole city came to it. It is such an unseasonable quarrel for these times (and, as I hear, is taken notice of in Scotland) as, if I may deliver my thoughts, I would have it sopited, at least till the Scottish business be abated. And then afterwards, I doubt not but one word from the higher powers will reduce them to obedience, as shall be thought fit. And therefore, not to trouble his Majesty, or the

State, with the notice thereof, if you thought fit to write to me a private letter signifying that you hold it meet that the Mayor shall sit as his