Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/93

In this year, 1622, the bishop appointed the parish to remove all the seats in the body of the church from the old chancel downwards, and to make them all uniform; for whereas parson Fleetwood had formerly caused plain forms to be made through the body of the church (which were framed of the old church timber which they took from the Rood loft, and some other timber which they called Robinhood's timber), divers townsmen and others began afterwards to set up other fashioned seats over their pretended burial-places, and every one of them was of a different fashion, which so deformed the church that he enjoined the parish to new seat the whole body of the church. They put off from time to time, however, till he peremptorily decreed that all the seats should be cast out which were not uniform, and divers of them he removed, and gathered Mr. Fleetwood's old forms together and so made the middle Ile uniform. But because those forms were uneasy, having no backs, the parishioners at another meeting agreed that all the body of the church should be new-seated, and desired the bishop to choose out some fashion according to which they might make their seats, and they promised every one to be at the charge of his own seat. But notwithstanding their promises nothing was done, whereupon he appointed John Wigan of Leigh, carpenter, who had made his chancel roof, and John Hamson and Rigby, joiners, of Wigan, to buy timber in Standish wood, and set them about the work, and for the six first seats in the middle Ile (next below his old chancel over which the organ then stood) he paid John Wigan £4, and for the rest he agreed with them to pay them 10s. for every single seat, whereof there are above 30 on each side, and he himself disbursed all the money hitherto paid, both for the timber and work; but John Ince of Ince, Richard Molyneux of Haukley, Robert Mawdsley, and others, promised to repay the money which those seats cost which are set over the places where their ancestors lie buried. If they did not, he intended to bestow them upon others, and so with the rest, for he found none of the parish to have any right to any