Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/109

288 leave to enclose a piece of the waste in Whelley Lane to make a place for recreation or bowling for the people (for which he charged them no rent).

By the death of King James I. on 27th March, 1625, bishop Bridgeman lost a kind patron and constant friend, who esteemed him highly.

On 25th April the feoffees of Billinge chapel came to Wigan hall to excuse themselves for keeping Mr. Tempest out of their chapel on the previous day, whom the bishop had sent to preach there and to take the cure because he had displaced Mr. Bolton the former reader. They professed that they did so only because they were not aware that he had come by the bishop's appointment, and therefore they had agreed to keep him out until they had spoken with the bishop, to know if he had sent him there; and now that they knew it from himself they acknowledged that it lay entirely with him to put in a curate there. In recording this in the Leger the bishop remarks that after looking at the deeds which they shewed him he does not find that the chapel has ever been consecrated, but thinks that the reader has only had some toleration allowed him to read there.

In the spring of that year he attended the parliament at Westminster which had been summoned by the new King, Charles I., to meet on 17th May, 1625; but being taken ill before the end of the session he obtained leave to return to Wigan. This was the year of the plague, which seems to have commenced in the South of England. There is an item in the bishop's accounts of £10 sent by him to be given to the poor of Exeter (his native city) then infected by the plague, which he gave to old Fogg to be distributed by Ignatius Jordan, the deputy Mayor. About Midsummer the plague spread greatly in London, and it became necessary to take precautionary measures to prevent it from spreading throughout the land. Hence the following order in council was issued from Oxford to be distributed by the archbishops to their suffragans in their respective provinces.