Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/18

Rh receipts at £566 12s. 1d. He has omitted to reckon the manor rents, which will have been afterwards handed over to him by Mrs. Massie, the widow of his predecessor. There is another short statement of this year's receipts, probably written later when all the arrears had been gathered in, entered by him in his Wigan Leger Book, a folio volume still preserved among the evidences of the rectors of Wigan, which differs slightly from the other, and is as follows:

"Dr. Massye died the 16th January, 1615. From that to Christmas, 1616, wch is one whole year, Dr. Bridgeman received of Wigan: Imprimis his maynes yelded £40 11 0: parson's meadow £24 7 6: Hall meadow, conygrew, haselgarden £9 6 8: Easter Book £33 13 7: Lamb & Wooll £11 4 4: Mortuaryes £4: Pigs £2: Geese £3 6 0: Tyth-hay 51s: Composition for Ince Corne £4: for Dalton, Holland £12 13 4: for Haigh £16: for corne in kind of Wigan £70: Pemberton £55: Orrell £35: Billinge & Winstanly £106: Aspull & Hindley £90: Abram £40: Midsomer rents of the Manor £16 19 2: Hemp and flax £1 6 8. Summ: total £577 7 2." [It should be £577 19 3.] He subsequently added to his annual receipts by recovering some of the rents and services which had been allowed to lapse.

The account of Dr. Bridgeman's disbursements for the year ending at Christmas, 1616, in which he was instituted to the rectory of Wigan, affords an interesting study of the expenses, habits, reading, and requirements of a learned and wealthy divine of the reign of King James I., enjoying at that time, from his private property and ecclesiastical preferments, an income of between seventeen and eighteen hundred pounds a year.