Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 1.djvu/119

Rh stand to such further order therein as by the said Chancellor and council should be considered in that behalf.

It would appear that the contending parties afterwards came to terms; and Richard Kyghley, parson of Wigan, by an indenture bearing date 11th February, 33 Hen. VIII (1542), demised the parsonage of Wigan and all tithes, &c., to the said John Ketchyn for a term of 30 years, at a rent of £100 per annum, payable to Kyghley and his successors. But in this lease Kyghley reserved to himself and his successors, parsons of the Church of Wigan, a right of re-entry in case the rent, or any part of it, should be more than 40 days in arrear; and as the parsonage house and lands and the tithes of the several townships were afterwards sub-let by Ketchyn to many different tenants for the remainder of his lease this clause gave rise to various complications and disputes between the subsequent parsons and the respective sub-tenants under Ketchyn's leases.

When Ketchyn had secured his new lease, to which he obtained the consent of the ordinary as well as that of the patron, he resold the next presentation to the church to Sir Richard Gresham, knight, citizen and alderman of London, and Thomas White, citizen and merchant-tailor of the same, and their assigns, on the last day of February, 1542-3. He made a lease of a moiety of the tithe corn, hay, hemp, and flax of the township of Billinge, parcel of the parsonage of Wigan, to William Gerrard for a term of 29 years, and a lease of the other moiety to Thomas Gerrard, Esq., for a similar term ; and then made over all his own estate and interest in the said parsonage to Sir Thomas Langton.

In the meantime the care of the church was left entirely to the curate, and the affairs of the town became unsettled by reason of the absence of the lord of the manor.