Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 1.djvu/81

 Alice, late wife of John Gerard of Bryn, the said writing of obligation, in which it is contained that Lawrence de Standish is bound to the said James de Langton in the sum of £1,000 sterling; after the said Alice died the said Alexander possessed himself of the said writing, &c. Hence it appears that there were counter suits going on between the said James de Langton and the Standishes — all of which were probably determined by the decision of the 24th of Hen. VI. before mentioned.

I do not find any further mention of James de Langton, and the next Rector that I meet with is

, who, as Rector of Wigan, in 1451, covenanted, for himself and his successors, to pay £20 yearly to the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield. I suppose him, therefore, to have been admitted in that year. The pedigree of the Langtons in Baines's Lancashire gives an Oliver de Langton as younger son of that Henry de Langton, Baron of Newton, who died in 7 Hen. V. If this were the present rector, he will have been the brother of his predecessor, James de Langton.

In his time the churchyard of Wigan appears to have been the scene of some battle or civil brawl, in which human blood was shed, for by his letters of 15th March, 1457-8, R[eginald Boulers], Bishop of Lichfield, issues a commission to Ralph Ducworth, S.T.P., Vicar of Prestecote, and Sir Edward ffarington, Rector of Halsall, to inquire into the facts of the case. He tells them that since he heard that the cemetery of the parish church of Wigan, in his diocese, had been notoriously polluted by violence and the unlawful shedding of human blood, he had interdicted it from ecclesiastical sepulture until full reconciliation should have been made, and desires them to hold a legal inquiry as to the person by whom it had been polluted, and who had been the cause or occasion of it, and return to him a faithful 