Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 1.djvu/172

160 at a yearly rent of 4s. Fleetwood repeats his charge against them, that they had violently and unlawfully broken into his fields and carried away his hay, illtreated his servants and procured their wrongful arrest and imprisonment, that the said Hyde unlawfully kept possession of his meadow, and that he and other of the defendants had intruded into the possession of the messuage, tenement and shop mentioned in the bill, detaining the rent due for them, and had framed and contrived sundry leases and other conveyances to the prejudice of the complainant's rectory and church. A commission was issued, but I find no decree in the matter, which was probably amicably arranged, as the "parson's meadow" (which appears from the after pleadings to have been the close or meadow in question) is now held in demesne by the rector.

There was also a complaint laid by Fleetwood in the Duchy court on 28th April, 1598, against Rauffe Worseley, gent, John Bankes, Thomas Snarte and Henry Bibby, for a riotous assault. There is no bill recorded, but Rauffe Worseley denies the charge of riot, and speaks of himself as one who was a "dutifull comer to the churche, and a dutifull hearer of dyvine service, and so hath alwaies bene, and hath also moved and persuaded divers others to doe the lyke, whych have bene, and yett are, backe ward e in religion, as he thinketh much the rather by reason of the neglecte and contempte of the complainant (Fleetwood) in not observing that forme and order of praier and admynistration of the Holye Sacraments whych ys, to this defendant's knowledge, appoynted by the boke of comon prayer." A commission was issued and a list of interrogatories drawn up to be administered to certain of the defendants, as to whether Robert Thompson, minister of Wigan, was assaulted by the said defendants, struck on the head with staves, otherwise illtreated and his hat knocked off, also as