Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/256

Rh in those days, as it had been in the times of Elizabeth and James I., for those about Court to present annual gifts to the King, and to receive presents from him in return. In the bishop's Leger there is given a list of the plate he possessed in 1640, among which were a large number of silver gilt bowls which had been given to him from time to time by James I. and Charles I., all of which were sold in 1643 to pay for "hose & shooes & clothes for the English Irish souldiers who came from Ireland to Chester to help the King against the rebels in Cheshire." At the breaking out of the civil war Lord Clarendon says: "the city of Chester was firm to the King by the virtue of the inhabitants and the interest of the bishop and Cathedral men;" and when the King and his son Charles, Prince of Wales, came to Chester on Friday, 23rd September, 1642, they were entertained by the bishop at his palace, where they remained until 28th September. In the spring of the following year, 1642-3, the Houses of Parliament passed an ordinance to sequester the estates of the bishops, and other delinquents, as they styled those who remained true to the King and refused to join the rebels. "Thus the rents and profits of the sees and capitular bodies, which lay within the reach of the parliament army, were seized, and the rest of the loyal clergy were sequestered under the character of scandalous ministers. And now most of the silenced lecturers and other preachers, who within the last ten years had left the kingdom, either for non-conformity, debt, or intemperate behaviour, returned at the invitation of the juncture. These men were preferred to the sequestered benefices; but then, to keep them servile and true to the cause, they were but, as it were, 'tenants at will,' and held their livings only durante bene placito." At this trying time the town of Wigan was eminently loyal to