Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/52

 prisoner alive. For that signal service Edward rewarded him with a grant of £500 per annum, until he could receive an equivalent in land wherever he might choose, and created him a knight banneret. "I have seen," says Camden, "a charter of King Edward III., by which he advanced John Coupland to the state of a banneret in the following words, because in a battle fought at Durham he had taken prisoner David the Second, King of Scots:—'Being willing to reward the said John, who took David de Bruis prisoner, and frankly delivered him unto us, for the deserts of his honest and valiant service, in such sort as others may take example by his precedent to do us faithful service in time to come, we have promoted the said John to the place and degree of a banneret; and, for the maintenance of the same state, we have granted, for us and our heirs, to the same John, five hundred pounds by the year, to be received by him and his heirs," etc.

For some time after a truce had been concluded with Scotland, the war, in which the incident narrated occurred, continued with little abatement, and in 1322 this county with others was called upon to raise fresh levies. These constant drains upon its resources, and the devastations committed by riotous companies of armed men, so impoverished our district that the inhabitants of Poulton forwarded a petition to the Pope, praying him to forego his claims upon their town on account of the deplorably distressed condition to which they had been reduced. The taxations of all churches in the Fylde were greatly lowered in consideration of the indigency of the people; that of Kirkham from 240 marks per annum to 120, and the others in like proportion. Further evidence of the poverty of this division may be gathered from a census taken in 1377, which states, amongst other things, that—"There is no town worthy of notice anywhere in the whole of the county"; and again, twenty years later, when a loan was raised to meet the enormous expenditure of the country, Lancashire furnished no contributors.

In 1389, during the reign of Richard II., it was enacted, with a