Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/379

 hold a market and fair, and as such privileges were allowed at that time to only a few other towns in the whole county of Lancashire, we must conclude that even at such an early date Kirkham possessed some special advantages or interest to be able so successfully to press its claims to this signal favour. That such important powers as the holding of markets and fairs were not allowed to be exercised without due and proper authority is proved by a warrant which was issued twenty-three years later, in the reign of Edward I., against the abbot of Vale Royal, to which convent the manor of Kirkham belonged, to appear before a judicial court to show by what authority he held those periodical assemblies of the inhabitants. He pleaded that the right had been first conceded to his predecessors by Henry III., and that subsequently the grant had been confirmed by the present monarch, Edward I., in the fifteenth year of his dominion. These assertions having been verified, the abbot was exculpated from all blame, and orders were issued to the justices itinerant in this county to the effect that they were in no way to interfere with the exercise of those privileges, which were to be continued exactly as they had been heretofore. From a copy of a document framed four years later, in 1296, in which the whole of these rights are embodied amongst other interesting matters, we learn that the manor of Kirkham was granted to the abbot and convent of Vale Royal in frank-al-moigne, that is, a tenure by which a religious corporation holds lands for themselves and their successors for ever, on condition of praying for the soul of the donor; that power was given or confirmed to hold a fair of five days duration at the Nativity of St. John the Baptist; that the borough of Kirkham, which had been incorporated by the name of the burgesses of Kirkham in the year 1282, the tenth of the reign of Edward I., was to be a free borough; that the burgesses and their heirs were to have a free guild, with all the liberties which belonged to a free borough; that there was to be in the borough a pillory, a prison, and a ducking stool, and other instruments for the punishment of evil doers; and that there were to be assizes of bread and ale, and weights and measures. Continuing the perusal of this document we find that the abbot of Vale Royal consented that