Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/141

 of the borough, whether by ancestry, prescription, or purchase, and to celebrate a periodical jubilee, rendered distinguished by the rarity of its recurrence. The first royal charter granted to Preston was in the reign of Henry II. It is without date, but held to be about 1179 or 1180. By it that king confirmed to the burgesses of Preston all the same liberties and free customs which he had granted to Newcastle-under-Lyne, the principal of which were a grant of Guild Merchant, exemption from tolls, soc, sac, &c., throughout the kingdom, &c. Dr Kuerden, in his MS. collections in the Heralds' College (vol. iv. p. 23), has preserved a paper entitled, "First Gild Merchant at Preston, second Edward III." (1328). It consists of thirteen rules or ordinances, the second of which ordains that "it shall be lawful to the mayor, bailiffs, and burgesses, their heirs and successors, to set a Guild Merchant at every twenty years' end or erer (earlier), if they have need, to confirm charters, or other distres that 'long to our franchises." From an examination of the Preston Guild roll in the time of Richard II., this festival appears to have been held before the mayor, three stewards or seneschals, nine aldermen, and a clerk of the Guild. From that time till the grant of the governing charter, the entries have been in the same form; but since the reign of Charles II., with one exception (in Anne), all the guilds have been holden before the mayor, the three senior aldermen, who are called seneschals or stewards, four other aldermen, called aldermen of the Guild, and the clerk of the Guild. The officers of the guilds seem to have exercised at some of these celebrations the whole power of legislating for the body corporate and for the burgesses. The guilds form a kind of court of session of corporate legislation, held