Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/428

 Syngleton, in Kirkeham, by vertue of a lease made out of the Duchie to S^r Richarde Houghton, knight, the 26th day of Februarie, in the ffirst yere of the raigne of our soveraign lorde the kinge, that nowe is (1547), unto the ende of 21 yeres the next following; wherein the said S^r Richarde covenanteth to pay yerely duringe the said time to a Pryest celebrating in the said Chapelle the sum of 49s. The said Chapelle is distant from the parishe Church of Kirkeham 4 myles; Richarde Godson, the Incumbent, of the age of 38 yeres, hath the said yerely salarie of 49s." Thomas Houghton, of Lea, the son of the knight, appears to have had some difficulty in inducing sundry of the Singleton tenants to recognise his right of proprietorship after the death of his father, for we find him pleading in the duchy court in 1560-61 that he held the "lands of the late kynge in Singleton, also a house called the chapell house, with three acres of land in the tenure of W^m Yede, a chapell called Singleton chapell, in Singleton aforesaid, with the chapell yarde thereunto belonging, one house or cottage called Corner-rawe, and a wind-*mill; and that the tenants thereof, Robert Carter and James Hall, had never paid any rent, and refused to do so."

In 1562 the Charity Commissioners of Edward VI. founded a "stipendarye in the Chapelle of Syngleton in Kyrkeham."

At the archiepiscopal visitation of the diocese of Chester in 1578, the following list of charges was brought against the curate of Singleton:—"There is not servyse done in due tyme—He kepeth no hous nor releveth the poore—He is not dyligent in visitinge the sycke—He doth not teach the catechisme—There is no sermons—He churcheth fornycatours without doinge any penaunce—He maketh a donge hill of the chapel yeard, and he hath lately kepte a typlinge hous and a nowty woman in it."

From that time we hear no more of the old chapel of Singleton, but the chapel-house, alluded to above, was at a later period flourishing as an inn, and bearing the same name; at the Oliverian survey, in 1650, it was stated that there was a newly erected chapel at Singleton, but that it had no endowment or maintenance belonging to it, and that the inhabitants prayed that it might be constituted a parish church with a "minister and