Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/88

 Tower, however, coveted the property, and refused to let them in because they ought to have been ready before the going down of the sun. On the morrow he said they were too late, and declared that the mortgage was foreclosed. The wrong done to the Heatons was never forgiven, for the family was utterly ruined; and it is stated that the soul of the wrongdoer is doomed to revisit the scene of his crime until the property is restored. It is also affirmed that no horse from the Tower, so long as it was occupied by an Anderton, could ever be forced to cross the stream into the manor of Heaton. Sir Francis Anderton took part in the Rebellion of 1745, and soon after lost his estates. In 1750 he was reported to be over sixty years of age, and childless; his property was held by the crown under trustees, and eventually passed to the Blundells, he living in retirement until his death. This gentleman's fate is considered to be an act of retributive justice for the wrong done to the Heaton family by his ancestor of the Tower.

MAB'S CROSS the Church of Wigan near one of the four gates called Standish Gate, stands a ruined stone cross, connected with an ancient tradition, which the late Mr Roby, more suo, has expanded and embellished into a long and interesting story; but the principal source he draws from is the genealogical roll of the Bradshaighs, from which we take the old tradition, in the quaint terms of the original:—"Sir William Bradshaigh, second son to Sir John, was a great traveller and a soldier, and married to Mabel, daughter and sole heiress of Hugh Norres de Haghe