Page:Lancashire Legends, Traditions, Pageants, Sports, Etc., with an Appendix Containing a Rare Tract.djvu/90

 east gallery, where two mangled figures of whitewashed stone preserve the remembrance of Sir William Bradshaigh, of Haigh, and his lady Mabel—he in an antique coat of mail, cross-legged, with his sword partly drawn from the scabbard by his left side, and on his shoulder his shield, charged with two bends; and she in a long robe, veiled, her hands elevated and conjoined in the attitude of fervent prayer. The history of this valorous knight and his lady is preserved in the family pedigree of the Bradshaighs in the terms already given. In 1664, when Sir William Dugdale made his visitation, he sketched a drawing of the monument, as it then stood, upon the family pedigree, now in the possession of the Earl of Balcarres. Sir William was not only outlawed for slaying the Welsh knight, but in the Inquisitiones ad quod damnum of Edward II. (1317-18), he is designated "a felon." Mab's Cross stands at the top of Standish Gate, Wigan, at the entrance to the town from the Standish road, and consists of the base of a pillar and half a shaft of four sides, rounded off by time, to which the lady made her weekly pilgrimages, in penitential attire, from the chapel at Haigh Hall, a distance of two miles, in an age when ten years' widowhood was not thought a sufficient expiation of the crime of taking a second husband.

ORMSKIRK CHURCH. church is a large massive structure, on a slightly rising ground, north-west of the town, and has a tower commanding a fine view of the Irish Sea, Liverpool, Preston, &c., and also a spire at the south-east corner, which is