A quiet, picturesque spot is this same little village of Rivington. There is an air of calm repose and pastoral serenity about it that is pleasant to contemplate. Here the busy hum of looms and spindles is never heard, and, though the shrill whistle of the locomotive may occasionally find an echo, the railway itself maintains a respectful distance, and hides away as if afraid to disturb the peaceful quietude. The church stands a little way back from the road upon a gentle acclivity, from which it overlooks the humbler dwellings that gather round, but without the least air of pretentiousness. It has an ancient and weather-worn appearance, though the present fabric dates no further back than the time of the second Charles; a little octagon cupola rises from the western gable, and the crumbling ruins of an old campanile that now serves as a depository for lumber may be seen in a corner of the quiet graveyard. A little higher up on the other side, crowning a grassy knoll, is the modest meeting-house we are in search of; on the lower slope of what answers for the village green two or three cottages stand at irregular distances from each other and on the opposite side of a little hollow that intervenes is, or rather was, the old grammar school, for it is "old" no longer, the reforming Charity Commissioners having lately overhauled the good bishop's foundation, and caused a new elementary school to be erected on the site; and, in addition, have built a larger and more convenient grammar school near the southern end of the lower lake. The houses are few in number, and are scattered irregularly about in a promiscuous, hap-hazard, stand-at-ease sort of way, without any regard to order or uniformity, so that it is hard to say where the village proper really begins, unless we assume that the village hostelry below the church bank, standing, as it does, with its door invitingly open, may be taken as indicating the threshold. But the "Black-boy," which perpetuates, though very imperfectly, the heraldic honours of the Willoughbys, submitting to the onward march of events, has had to change its position, the site its more primitive possessor occupied having been absorbed when the adjacent reservoir was made.

The memory of a former Boniface of that ancient hostelry is still cherished by the villagers, and quaint stories are told respecting him. The old worthy, it seems, combined with the duties of host on week-days those of chief musician at the chapel on Sundays; his chosen instrument being the violoncello, or "th' great-gronfaither fiddle," as the inhabitants of the little Arcadia were wont to call it; a clarionet and a deep-mouthed but somewhat hiccupy bassoon completing the orchestra, the performers being chosen, like Cremona fiddles, more for age than looks or excellence, enough if only they could produce a sufficient foundation of sound whereon the congregation might raise their superstructure of song. Anniversary sermons and similar high days and festivals were those on which the host of the "Black-boy" put forth his utmost energies, and showed to greatest advantage. Surrounded by a troop of school children, and a galaxy of rustic beauty arrayed in white, and his choir strengthened by the addition of

he then laboured at his bass viol with such energy, that, as is related, on one occasion, being overcome with the sense of his own importance, and the extra exertion necessary for the successful rendering of "Fixed in his everlasting seat," he missed the centre of gravity, toppled over and smashed his monster fiddle.

The chapel in which the Willoughbys worshipped stands, as we have said, at the further end of the village; it is a modest looking structure, and, in its externals at least, plain and simple enough to satisfy the requirements of the most rigid and lugubrious Puritan. But the authoress of "Lancashire Memories" has given such an exquisite description of it that we cannot refrain from reproducing her sketch: "A little gray, old stone building," she says, "half covered with ivy, and one bell that rang, and rang, from ten o'clock until the minister was fairly seated in the pulpit. The pews were gray and worm-eaten, of all sizes and shapes. Some seemed not to have borne age so well as their neighbours, and to have sunk a little on one side under their infirmities. One was distinguished by a wooden canopy over it, and had once belonged to that rara avis, a dissenting peer. One of his descendants, no other than the village schoolmaster, occupied the pew, and in the pride of his descent had painted on the door 'Lord Hugh Willoughby.' When did Dissenters know anything of heraldry? Or the difference between Lord Hugh and Hugh Lord? It converted the baronial ancestor into quite another person. But it did just as well; a lord's a lord all the world over, and Burke's Extinct Peerage had not come out. There was no vestry in the chapel; but the minister wore no gown, so no robing room was required. The bier stood at one end, a perpetual memento mori, and over it hung the bell-rope, looped up on a peg. The minister walked straight into the pulpit from the outer door, and the service began with the clerk giving out the hymn in a thin, feeble, snuffling voice, and, lest any of the congregation had not caught the number, assisted their memories by writing it in chalk on a slate, and suspending it from a nail from the pulpit over his head; the rubbing out of this chalk, ready for the next hymn, occupying a good deal of his time and attention during the succeeding prayer. The music was a bassoon and a violoncello, with a pitchpipe to enable them to start fair, and the singing was confided to the congregation in general. The doors and windows were left open in summer, for no sound could enter more disturbing than the twitter of a bird or the bleat of a lamb. Flies came buzzing in, or a bee hummed her way round, and perhaps settled in one of the posies carried on Sundays by the country girls, and esteemed a sovereign remedy against sleeping during service. It would be difficult to sleep anywhere with such a rich combination of sight and scent as those nosegays of lad's-love and thyme, wall flowers, pinks, and roses. The graveyard was grassy, still, and peaceful; not a gravel walk up to the door; all was grass, silent and calm. The weekly worshippers held it in affectionate reverence, for there they had laid their own kindred, and there they expected to be laid in turn. After service the congregation dispersed seriously and quietly; those who lived in the same direction walking together, discussing the sermon or enquiring after each other's affairs; but all in a hushed, subdued tone that belongs to Sunday in the country. I could fancy there was a stillness in the air peculiar to the day, as if all nature, animate and inanimate, rested the one day in seven, and worshipped in reverential silence."

The chapel of Rivington, with which the memory of the Willoughbys is so closely associated, presents a venerable aspect, though it has no very great antiquity to boast of. At the passing of the Act of Uniformity, Samuel Newton, who had been minister of the Episcopal Chapel, withdrew, but returning some time after and his place remaining unoccupied, he was allowed "to preach in the church without disturbance." When the Conventicle Act was in force the good people of the place frequently assembled to celebrate public worship in the open air at a place called Winter-hill, a part of the mountainous ridge of which Rivington Pike forms so prominent a feature. Seats were cut out of the side of the hill so as to form a kind of amphitheatre, and in the centre a stone pulpit was erected from whence the assembled throng were usually addressed.

The present chapel was built in the early part of Queen Anne's reign—in 1703, it is said, and about the time that Hugh, Lord Willoughby, the first of that name, with his co-trustees were causing so much anxiety to poor Vicar Rothwell by retaining the funds of Horwich Episcopal Chapel, and threatening "against justice and honesty" to build a meeting-house with them. Like many other chapels erected contemporaneously, it was built and endowed for the promulgation of doctrines accordant with those of the Church, but enforced by a Presbyterian form of government; eventually Arian sentiments were introduced, and it has experienced the declension almost universal with English Presbyterian congregations. There is a tradition current that when these changes were introduced they were received with so much disfavour that a worthy couple in the neighbourhood who had a child born to them at the time, determined that it should be named Ichabod, believing, as they said, the glory to have departed.

The building, clothed in its mantle of verdant ivy, stands a little way back from the wayside in the midst of its own graveyard and encompassed by a grey stone fence that looks as old as the structure itself. Having obtained the key, we passed through the little wicket into the enclosure—

A few shrubs grasp the cold earth, and you can see where flowers have been planted by loving hands, but there is no gravelled path, and so you have to pick your way round the grass-grown hillocks, stepping from dwelling to dwelling of the listless dead, and over the half-sunken flag-stones, many of them bemossed with age and appearing as if about to sink into the graves of those they commemorate. Time, as Hawthorne says, gnaws an English gravestone with wonderful aptitude. Our climate soon gives an antiquity of aspect, and the moisture encourages the moss and lichens to fill up the lettered furrows with a living green that obliterates the inscription while the beloved name it records is yet fresh upon the survivor's heart—

Unlocking the door, we entered the little sanctuary, which looks as though it had remained undisturbed since the time when the Willoughbys were in the heyday of their power. The interior is plain and simple almost to ugliness, and a chill pervades the place that tends more to inspire a melancholy gloom than to attune the mind to reverent devotion; the pavement is damp and uneven, and the mildewed and worm-eaten pews, though doubtless favourable to the quiet slumbers of bucolic Rivingtonians, suggest the idea that the worshippers in this Nonconformist Zion have little sympathy with demonstrative worship, and are not much given to indulgence in æsthetic gewgaws—at all events, that whatever their tabernacle may have done for the promotion of piety, it is not likely to do much for the cultivation of taste. The pulpit is placed in the centre against the wall, and directly opposite is the high seat of the synagogue—the pew or enclosure set apart, when the chapel could boast a peer among its worshippers, for the lordly owners of Shaw-place—importance being given by a wooden canopy, somewhat faded and decrepid in appearance, that overshadows it, and nowadays spinsters or bachelors who occupy the seat of honour are liable to have their thoughts distracted by the notice that stares them obtrusively in the face, "Marriages may be solemnised in this chapel," a reminder that might have been useful in former days when, as we have seen, there was an apparent forgetfulness, if not reluctance, on the part of some of the lordly occupants to enter the holy estate.

There is not much display of mural literature; a small marble tablet perpetuates the name of Thomas Lowe, of Rivington, and Alice his wife, but the only sepulchral memorial deserving of especial notice is a singular coffin-shaped slab, inscribed with a pretentious pedigree and a long laudatory epitaph, erected in recent years by a descendant of the Willoughbys who had evidently less mercy for the marble-cutter than admiration of the hereditary dignities of his departed ancestors.

It is about four or five yards in height, and adorned with a number of small shields blazoned with the armorial ensigns of the family alliances. Here is the inscription:—

In memory of Thomas eleventh Lord Willoughby of Parham in Suffolk, of Horwich, Adlington and Shaw-Place in this county who died February 20th, 1691, aged 89. Also of Eleanor, Lady Willoughby, who died in 1665, aged 67. And Hugh their eldest son, twelfth Lord Willoughby, who died in June 1712, aged 75. Also of Anne, his Lordship's first wife, who died in 1690, aged 52. Likewise the Lady Honora, his second wife, eldest daughter of Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh, and relict of Sir William Egerton of Worsley, Knight of the Bath, second son of John, Earl of Bridgewater and his countess Elizabeth, daughter of his Grace the Duke of Newcastle. She died in 1750, aged 77. A truly congenial pair, fondly attached to rural scenes and retirements, and endeared to all around them by the urbanity, benevolence, and purity of their lives, evinced at their favourite retreat Worsley Hall, Lord Willoughby in pursuits like the Noble Earl himself, a spirited agriculturist affording employment to vast numbers on that fine domain, a dower possessed in right of her ladyship's first espousal, having issue thereby John and Honora Egerton.

Also in memory of Edward the thirteenth Lord who died unmarried, in Flanders, valiantly fighting under the renowned Duke of Marlborough, in April 1713, aged 37 years.

Also of Charles, his brother, the fourteenth Lord, who died June 12th, 1715, aged 34, sons of the Honourable Francis.

Also Hester, Lady Willoughby, his wife, who died in 1758, aged 73 years, youngest daughter of Henry Davenport, Esqr., of Darcy Lever, a surviving branch of the ancient family of the Davenports of Davenport in the county of Chester, and eventually heiress to her brother and sister, an eminently distinguished family amongst the Dissenters of that period. Educated in the adjoining township under their relative, the venerable Oliver Heywood, M.A., the Father of the Nonconformist Divines, and a native of Little Lever.

Lastly in memory of the Right Honble. Hugh, their only son, and fifteenth Baron Willoughby of Parham, who expired at his house in London, unmarried, January 17th, 1765, aged 51. Interred by his Lordship's express desire in the family vault of his ancestors within Horwich Church, February 9th, and had a befitting funeral for so exalted a character and Peer of the Realm; the Nobility, Officers of State, Patrons and Directors of the various Institutions joining the solemn cavalcade through the City to St. Alban's on its route to Lancashire which journey occupied nigh three weeks; in whom too the male line of this branch became extinct.

A constant attender and supporter with his revered and early widowed and exemplary mother of this Chapel and to which he bequeathed the sum of £100. Here, as the Son, the Brother, the Friend, above all as the Christian his name is perpetuated. An elegant and accomplished scholar who, after enjoying the advantage of foreign travel for some years returned to England, filled with a patriotic devotion for his native country. Open, kind-hearted, and magnanimous, he commenced his onerous Parliamentary duties, and soon gave evidence of that legislative talent which afterwards shone forth with so much splendour, conferring upon him, by being unanimously chosen Chairman of the Committees of the House of Peers, an official reward and the lasting esteem of his most gracious Sovereigns George II. and III. to the close of a transcendently brilliant political career. With his universally acknowledged refinement of taste, enriched abroad and extensively cultivated at home, and his judicious bestowal of patronage, exercised in the promotion of Literature, Science and the Arts, in whatever walk his comprehensive mind discerned genius or oppressed worth, his fostering hand brought forth the "flower born to blush unseen," which in speedy requital for such true greatness of soul obtained for him the additional very high appointments, viz., President of the Society of Antiquaries, and Vice-president of the Royal Society, succeeding the learned Martin Foulkes, Esq., Vice-president of the Society for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts; a trustee of the British Museum, and one of the Commissioners of Longitude. A nobleman who adorned the title derived from his forefathers by his own social and domestic virtues; leaving a grateful nation to deplore his unexpected removal from this sublunary state and two sisters, his co-heiresses at law, the Honble. Helena, wife of Baxter Roscoe, Esqr., and the Honble. Elizabeth, the wife of John Shaw, Esqr.

As a tribute of affectionate regard due to so lamented a Servant, Philanthropist and Relative, this monument is erected by his grand-nephews and nieces.

Friends we have had—the years flew by,
How many have they borne away?
Man like the hours is born to die,
The last year's hours, oh, where are they?
Catch then, O catch the transient hour,
Improve each moment as it flies,
So teach us in our solemn hour,
That we ourselves are dying flowers.
He dies—alas! how soon he dies,
Yet all these flowers now lost by death
In other worlds shall brightly bloom,
Spring with fresh life, immortal breath,
And burst the confines of the tomb.

Recorded in the Museum:—"The illustrious Lord Willoughby, who holds a distinguished place in the Temple of Science and as a pre-eminent personage elected to fill the two offices vacant by the demise of the justly celebrated Martin Foulkes, Esqr., powerfully aided in design and furtherance of its object this stupendous structure, by his unremitting zeal and matured conception as a virtuoso. Founded in his 39th year A.D. 1753." Extract from Lysons:—"His Lordship's stipend from Government was 1,200 guineas per annum. He was a father to the poor, a benefactor and protector of indigent deserving authors, a munificent patron of learning, music, painting, and poetry, and a statesman who sought without fear or favour the common good." These mementoes of five generations and alliances of a patrician race summoned to Parliament 7th Edward II., 1313, are faithfully detailed from authentic documents possessed only by the writer himself, who snatched them from oblivion, and compiled chiefly for the Antiquary and Herald, every vestige beside regarding them being flagrantly destroyed with the ancient sacred edifice wherein reposed their bodies.

After this fulsome eulogy, which offends alike against piety, simplicity, and truth, may we not exclaim with Sir Thomas Browne in his Hydriotaphia, "Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes and pompous in the grave, solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre."

Any account of the Willoughbys would be incomplete that did not make mention of that preux chevalier, the hero of Zutphen, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and the idol of popular fame, who, if he did not bear the name, was yet of the blood of the Willoughbys—Peregrine Bertie, Lord Willoughby of Eresby, whose valour was proved on many a hard-fought field, and whose name so often rang on the plains of the Netherlands—

His mother, the Lady Katharine Willoughby, the only daughter and heiress of William the ninth lord by a Spanish lady of high birth, Mary Salmes, after the death of her first husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, brother-in-law of King Henry VIII., became the wife of Richard Bertie. On the accession of Queen Mary she was forced to fly from her own country to escape the cruelties and persecutions of Bishop Gardiner, whose enmity she had drawn upon herself by some imprudent manifestations of her dislike of his character in the preceding reign. Accompanied by her husband, she sought refuge in the Low Countries. "On an October evening," says Lucy Aikin in her "Memoirs of the Court of Elizabeth," "followed only by two maid-servants, on foot, through rain and mire and darkness, the forlorn wanderers began their march to Wesel, one of the Hanse towns. On their arrival, their wild and wretched appearance gave them, in the eyes of the inhabitants, so suspicious an appearance that no one would harbour them; and while her husband ran from inn to inn vainly imploring admittance the afflicted duchess was compelled to betake herself to the shelter of a church porch; and there, in that misery and desolation and want of everything, was delivered of a child, to whom, in memory of the circumstance, she gave the name of Peregrine." The son who first saw the light under these inauspicious circumstances was, at her death in 1580, and in her right, summoned to Parliament as tenth Lord Willoughby. Two years afterwards, when Elizabeth, on account of the hostility of Philip of Spain, was desirous of cultivating a closer friendship with the Northern Powers, Lord Willoughby was selected as her special envoy to the King of Denmark to invest him with the Garter as a token of her goodwill. Subsequently, when the battle between the two great principles that divided Europe was being fought out by England and Spain, he had many opportunities of distinguishing himself and won undying fame.

Elizabeth had sent an army to assist the Protestant people of the Low Countries to maintain their civil privileges and their religious faith against Philip and against Rome. Leicester, who had the chief command, was unable to cope with so skilled a general as the Prince of Parma, and the campaign was a disastrous one. Among the heroes in that little band was the rare scholar, the accomplished writer, the perfect gentleman, the darling of the English people, Sir Philip Sidney, and with him his intimate friend, the brilliant and quick-witted—the bravest of the brave on the battle-field—the "good Lord Willoughby"—"Good Peregrine," as his "most loving sovereign," Elizabeth, familiarly styled him in one of her letters. The following story of his prowess at the battle of Zutphen, in which Sidney received his mortal wound, is related in a comparatively modern work, "Five Generations of a Loyal House":—

On the 22nd September, 1586, an affray took place, in which Lord Willoughby pre-eminently distinguished himself by valour and conduct, and many others with him upheld the glory of the English name. Sir John Norreis and Sir William Stanley[16] were that day reconciled; the former coming forward to say, "Let us die together in her Majesty's cause." The enemy were desirous of throwing supplies into Zutphen, a place of which they entertained some doubt; and a convoy, accordingly, by orders of the Prince of Parma, brought in a store, though an insufficient one, of provisions. A second, commanded by George Cressiac, an Albanois, was despatched for the same purpose, the morning being foggy. Lord Willoughby, Lord Audley, Sir John Norreis, and Sir Philip Sidney encountering the convoy in a fog an engagement began. The Spaniards had the advantage of position, and had it in their power to discharge two or three volleys of shot upon the English, who, nevertheless, stood their ground. Lord Willoughby himself, with his lance in rest, met with the leader, George Cressiac, engaged with, and, after a short combat, unhorsed him. He fell into a ditch, crying aloud to his victor: "I yield myself to you, for that you be a seemly knight," who, satisfied with the submission, and having other matters in hand, threw himself into the thickest of the combat, while the captive was conducted to the tent of the general, Lord Leicester. The engagement was hot, and cost the enemy many lives, but few of the English were missing. Willoughby was extremely forward in the combat; at one moment his basses, or mantle, was torn from him, but recaptured. When all was over, Captain Cressiac, being still in his Excellency's tent, refused to acknowledge himself prisoner to any but the knight to whom he had submitted on the field. There is something in this and the like incidents of the period, which recall us very agreeably to the recollection of earlier days of chivalry and romance. Cressiac added, that if he were to see again the knight to whom he had surrendered himself, in the armour he then wore, he should immediately recognise him, and that to him and him only would he yield. Accordingly, when Lord Willoughby presented himself before him, in complete armour, he immediately exclaimed: "I yield to you!" and was adjudged to him as his prisoner. It was in this skirmish that the gallant and lamented Sir Philip Sidney, the boast of his age, and the hope of many admiring friends, received the fatal wound which cut short the thread of a brief but brilliant existence. During the whole day he had been one of the foremost in action, and once rushed to the assistance of his friend, Lord Willoughby, on observing him "nearly surrounded by the enemy," and in imminent peril: after seeing him in safety, he continued the combat with great spirit, until he received a shot in the thigh, as he was remounting a second horse, the first having been killed under him.

The story of Sidney's death has been told by his friend Lord Brooke, and the affecting anecdote of his demeanour when he was carried faint and bleeding from the walls of Zutphen inspires a love and reverence for his name, which never ceases to cling about the hearts of his countrymen. "Passing along by the rear of the army," says his biographer, "where his uncle (the Earl of Leicester) the general was, and being thirsty with excess of bleeding, he called for some drink, which was presently brought him. But as he was putting the bottle to his mouth he saw a poor soldier carried along, who had eaten his last at the same feast, ghastly casting up his eyes at the bottle; which Sir Philip perceiving took it from his head before he drank, and delivered it to the poor man with these words,'Thy necessity is yet greater than mine.'"

When the Earl of Leicester abruptly left for England Lord Willoughby was by his direction appointed to the chief command, in which he was subsequently confirmed by the Queen herself. He was not less magnanimous than brave; and, disdaining the servility of a Court life, is thought to have enjoyed on this account less of the Queen's favour than her admiration of military merit would otherwise have prompted her to bestow upon him. Some time after the defeat of the Armada he retired to Spa, ostensibly for the recovery of his health, but more probably in resentment of some injury inflicted by a venal and treacherous Court, the intrigues of which his noble nature scorned; but Elizabeth, unwilling to lose the support of one of her bravest and most popular captains, addressed a letter of recall to him. He does not appear, however, to have been actively engaged in any of the expeditions against Spain which ensued; though he was subsequently appointed Governor of Berwick, an appointment he held until his death in 1601. His son was afterwards created Earl of Lindsay, and the title of Duke of Ancaster has been borne by his descendants.

There are other names associated with the annals of Rivington of equal historic interest with those of the former lords of Shaw Place, and foremost among them must be ranked that of the worthy prelate, who in the golden days of the maiden Queen, when he had risen to be Bishop of Durham, and out of the love he bore to his native county founded the free school at Rivington for the "bringing up, teaching, and instructing children and youth in grammar and other good learning, to continue for ever." In good Bishop Pilkington's early days the opportunities of learning were few; the well-born might get admission to the house of some great territorial lord and there receive a scholastic training, but to those of lowlier birth the monasteries were almost the only available sources, and the youths there educated were usually trained for the priesthood. The heaviest reproach that Shakespeare's Jack Cade could heap upon Lord Say was "that he had most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school." Little progress had, however, been made in "corrupting the youth" of Lancashire, for at the time of the Reformation there were only three such schools in the county—Farnworth, Manchester, and Warrington—and they had then been only recently founded; hence the common people, as may be supposed, were rude and uncultured, and, though the merriest of Englishmen, were as illiterate as they were merry; even the thrifty manufacturers were in very little better case, for in only very few instances did they know how to write their names.[17]

The Pilkingtons derived their patronymic from the manor of that name in Prestwich parish, where they were located shortly after the Conquest, though Fuller in his "Worthies of England" assigns, but without any apparent authority, a much earlier date, and tells us that one of them fought under Harold at the battle of Hastings, and, being pressed, put on the dress of a thatcher and so escaped; whence the family crest and the allusive motto, "Now thus, now thus." But in this the pleasant old chronicler is clearly at fault, for the crest of the Pilkingtons is not a thresher but a mower, and the motto imputed to the family belongs to the Traffords. Fuller says he had the story from his "good friend, Master William Riley, Norroy King of Arms," a Lancashire man. Whatever its origin—and tradition, if never wholly accurate, is seldom entirely destitute of foundation—it is a singular coincidence that the same, or nearly the same, story is applied to the Traffords, the Levers, and the Bridgeman family.

An offshoot of the Pilkingtons was settled at Rivington in the first half of the fourteenth century, and the old hall was the residence of this branch of the family for many generations. The earlier history of the family is involved in much obscurity, but in the 10th Edward III. (1336-7) Robert, a younger son of Sir Roger de Pilkington and his wife Alice, sister and heiress of Henry de Bury, obtained a grant of the manor of Rivington from Alexander, son of Cicely de Rivington. This Robert Pilkington was in the time of Richard II. a juror in the great Scrope and Grosvenor cause, which occupied the court of the Lord Marshall of England four years in determining the conflicting claims of Sir Richard le Scrope and Sir Robert le Grosvenor to bear for arms on a field azure, a bend or—a golden bar placed diagonally across the shield. Heraldry in those days was the recognised mark of hereditary honour and gentility, and coat armour had an intrinsic value. The suit in which Robert Pilkington, of Rivington, took part has scarcely a parallel in history; deeds, chronicles, monastic records, and muniments that purported to date back to the fabulous days of King Arthur were submitted; and John O'Gaunt, Owen Glendower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and scores of lords, knights, and esquires, the surviving veterans from the wars of Edward III., who had beheld the blazonry borne before the walls of Ascalon, in the Crusades, in northern France, under the standard of the Black Prince, on the plains of Crescy and Poictiers, and many other famous places and fields of fame, were called as witnesses. As the humourist has it—

Robert Pilkington, by his wife Katharine, daughter of J. de Aynesworth, had a son Alexander, his heir, who, as appears by an inquisition taken 9th Henry V. (1421-2), held seven parts of the manor of Rivington of his cousin, Sir John Pilkington, Knight; he settled his estates 8th Henry VI. (1429-30), and was succeeded in turn by his son, Ralph Pilkington, who died 30th January, 15th Edward IV. (1476). His inquisition was taken at Eccles on Monday before the Purification of the Virgin, 17th Edward IV. (26th January, 1478), when it was found that Robert Pilkington, who was then 28 years of age, was his son and next heir.

The Battle of Bosworth Field proved as fatal to the fortunes of the parent stock of the Pilkingtons as to the power of their royal master, Richard III. They were devoted adherents of the house of York, and bore a part in the bloody contest which ended the struggle between the Red and White Roses, and alike terminated the power of the feudal barons, the line of the Plantagenet kings, and the political system under which England had been governed by them for more than three centuries. For his adherence to the fortunes of the fallen monarch Sir Thomas Pilkington's estates were forfeited to the victorious Richmond, and by him bestowed upon his crafty stepfather, Thomas, Lord Stanley, first Earl of Derby, the only noble who survived the wars of the Roses with added power and splendour, he having given to him almost all the lands forfeited in the north; the originally great possessions of his house being swollen by enormous grants of the estates of Sir Thomas Broughton, of Broughton; of Sir James Harrington, of Hornby; of Francis, Viscount Lovel; of Sir Thomas Pilkington, and what Sir Thomas had inherited by descent from the heiress of Chetham—in fact, from these forfeited possessions of the Pilkingtons came all the lands which the Stanleys obtained in the Salford Hundred. If there is any foundation for the story of a Pilkington having disguised himself to escape his pursuers, it must have been after the fatal fight at Bosworth, and not at Hastings, as Fuller affirms. There is a common belief that Sir Thomas Pilkington was captured on the occasion of Richard's overthrow, sent prisoner to Leicester, and there put to death; but the statement is incorrect, for this devoted servant of the fallen king was afterwards in arms against Henry VII., and took part in the action at Stoke Field, near Newark, where he lost his life, June 6, 1487, the occasion being that on which Lambert Simnel, the pretended Edward Plantagenet, was taken prisoner.

Though Robert Pilkington, of Rivington, also fought on the side of the Yorkists at Bosworth, his lands appear to have escaped the general wreck, and his descendants continued in the occupation of the ancestral home for several generations. Richard Pilkington, a son or grandson of this Robert, was born in 1480, and had to wife Alice, daughter of Lawrence Asshawe, of Hall-on-the-Hill, in Heath-Charnock, a township adjoining Rivington, which would appear to have come into the possession of the Asshawes by marriage with a heiress of the Harringtons of Westby. The Asshawes at a later date also owned lands in Flixton, where they had a residence, Asshawe Hall, which still exists. Round this family Mr. M'Dougall has thrown the halo of romance, and under the title of "The Ladye of Asshawe" has enshrined in verse a lingering tradition that possibly possesses some faint glimmerings of truth, with, however, much that is undoubtedly apocryphal.

A branch of the family was seated at High Bullough, in Anglezark, in the reign of Henry VIII.; and from this line, through James, younger son of John Asshawe or Shaw, as the name began to be written, who married Mary Gerard, a daughter of the house of Ince, descended the Shaws who were seated at Shaw Place, in Heath Charnock, before that mansion passed into the possession of the Willoughbys, and were residing there when Sir William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms, made his visitation in 1664, Peter Shaw then registering a pedigree of six descents. We shall make acquaintance with the Shaws of High Bullough and Shaw Place in the course of our inquiries.

Fuller says, and the statement has obtained currency by frequent repetition, that Richard Pilkington, who married the daughter of Lawrence Asshawe, built the church of Rivington, but the statement is not strictly accurate, though it was no doubt through his exertions that the building then existing received consecration. That there was an ecclesiastical foundation here at an earlier date is evident from the "humble complaint" which Richard Sim, the churchwarden, and other inhabitants of the chapelry in 1628 addressed to Bishop Bridgeman. It appears that a claim had been set up by one Thomas Breers to the inheritance of the church and churchyard as his lay fee, on the ground that it had formed part of the possessions of Richard Pilkington, and had been conveyed by his grandson, Robert Pilkington, to Thomas Breers, the elder, the claimant's father. A reply was filed declaring that long before the inquisition taken on the death of Richard Pilkington (1551) the inhabitants of Rivington, Anglezark, Hemshaw, and Foulds, in the parish of Bolton-le-Moors, and who were then reckoned to number five hundred, at their own cost had built the said chapel "upon a little toft and quillit of land" in Rivington, there to celebrate divine service, sacraments, and sacramentals, which were performed accordingly "for manie yeres of antiquitie;" and that afterwards Richard Pilkington made great labour and took great pains with Dr. Bird, the Bishop of Chester, and desired him to dedicate the same chapel and chapelyard to God and His Holy and divine service, and the same was consecrated the 11th day of October, 1541. They further showed that Queen Elizabeth, by a grant under the great seal dated at Westminster 13th May, in the eighth year of her reign (1566), did, amongst other things, at the petition of James Pilkington (son of Richard), Bishop of Durham, grant to the governors of the Grammar School in Rivington and their successors, that from time to time and ever afterwards there should be in the said chapel sacraments and sacramentals celebrated, and other divine services used, and also baptising of infants, celebration of matrimony, burying and inhumation of the dead within the said chapel and chapelyard, and all other rites, celebrations, prayers, and services in the said chapel for ever, there to be used in all and every construction and purpose, as is, are, or ought to be used in the parish church of Bolton-in-the-Moors. And that ever afterwards the people and inhabitants within Rivington, Anglezark, Hemshaw, and Foulds on their own proper costs should find, from time to time, one discreet, learned, and fit chaplain or minister to serve in the said chapel, and make his residence there, and to perform all divine offices in the said chapel, and all other things there which may or ought to belong to the office of rector (sic) of the said parish church of Bolton, or any other rector or curate or parish church of England. And that the said inhabitants should not be compelled or bound to repair to the parish church of Bolton, or to any other church or chapel, to hear divine service, or to receive the sacraments, to bury their dead, or to celebrate matrimony, but only to the chapel of Rivington. They also offered to depose and prove that, time beyond the memory of man, they and their ancestors had quietly enjoyed the said church or chapel and chapelyard, with all the freedoms, privileges, and immunities thereof, and had continually repaired, maintained and upholden the same, and had also as then kept and provided a sufficient minister and preacher at the same, and they therefore besought the Bishop to continue the privileges to them, their heirs, and successors for ever. The inhabitants established their case, and under date November 15th, 1628, the Bishop confirmed all their rights to them.

It would thus seem that originally Rivington had been a kind of minor (succursal) chapel of ease, erected for the accommodation of the people, who, residing in a remote hamlet, found it inconvenient on all occasions to resort to the mother church, and had been licensed for public worship, without, however, possessing the full privileges and characteristics of a church until, through the influence and exertions of Richard Pilkington, the Bishop of Chester was induced to consecrate it.

It will be seen that at that early date the good people of Rivington appointed their own minister, a circumstance that goes far to confirm the belief that, though the Pilkingtons might have been liberal benefactors, they were not the actual founders of the church. The inhabitants have ever since continued to exercise the right of patronage, the incumbent whenever a vacancy occurs being elected by the votes of the ratepayers, a practice that is not without its disadvantages, as people of all religious beliefs and of no religious belief at all have equal rights in the selection of the minister, and exercise them, not always with a view to the church's efficiency or usefulness.

The old chapel—doubtless a very primitive-looking structure—was rebuilt in 1666, and within the last few years has undergone a thorough restoration. By whomsoever founded, it is clear that one of the most liberal contributors to the endowment was George Shaw, of High Bullough, a kinsman of Richard Pilkington's wife, whose name is perpetuated in the following inscription on a small brass placed below one of the windows on the north side:—

Here Lyeth the Bodye of George Shaw, Gentleman, who was the fourth sonne of Laurence Shaw of High Bullough in the county of Lancaster, who in his Lyfe time gave £200 to be as stocke for ever for the use of the Church of Rivington, the profitts whereof to be paid yearly to a Preaching Minister at this Church. And at his death hee gave, besides other large legacies to his kinsfolkes and friends, the sume of £100 to be as stocke for ever, the profitts whereof to be yearly distributed amongst the Poor Inhabitants of Rivington, Andlesargh, Heath Charnock and Anderton, on Peter's Day and Michael's Day, by even portions; And £190 (being the remainder of his Estate) hee also gave to be bestowed on land or laid upon a rent charge for ever, the profitts whereof to be lent from tyme to tyme gratis to the poore tennants within the townes aforesaid towards the paying of their Fynes for such tyme and at the discretion of Mr. Alexander Feeilden and Mr. George Shaw his Executors, and their heires, and others named in his last Will. Hee dyed November the VIII day, anno Doni, 1650, being of the age of 73 years.

The memory of the Pilkingtons is preserved in the following inscription on a memorial in the church:—

Vivit post Funera Virtus. Richard Pilkington qui Templum hoc condidit hic sepeliebatur año Dñi 1551, et maii 24, tunc doñica Trinitatis, ac ætatis suæ 66, bonæ memoriæ Vir.

Alicia Asshaw ei uxor 12 liberos ei peperit, è quibus tres concionatores fuerunt et Cantabrigiensis à Collegio S. Johannis ac ea vivit octogenaria. Fathers teach yor children nurtur & learning of the Lorde.

Jacobus istorum filius creat' Episcop' Dunelme 2 Martii año 1660, et ætatis suæ 42, hanc Scholam aperuit anno 1566 et Templum. Children obey yor parents in ye Lord.

Richard Pilkington, who married Alice Asshawe, and died on the 24th May, 1551, had a numerous family. One of his daughters, Katharine, became the wife of John, son of James Shaw, of Shaw Place, in Heath Charnock. Of the sons, Charles, the eldest, died young; George succeeded to the family inheritance, and left a son, Robert, his heir, who by his will dated 16th November, 1605, left the manor of Rivington, with his other estates, in trust to Mr. Serjeant Hutton, Thomas Tildesley, Esq., and Mrs. Katharine Pilkington, who sold the manor to Robert Lever, of Darcy Lever. His only daughter and heiress, Jane, in 1653, became the second wife of her kinsman, John Andrews, of Little Lever, son and heir of Nicholas Andrews, of the city of London, an offshoot of the old Northamptonshire family of the Andrews of Charwelton, and his wife, Heath, daughter of Thomas Lever, of Little Lever Hall, a captain in Cromwell's army; and the lordship has continued in their descendants to the present time. James, the third son of Richard Pilkington, became Bishop of Durham, and of this distinguished member of the family we shall have more to say anon. Francis Pilkington, the fourth son, died in 1597. Leonard, the fifth son, became master of St. John's College, Rector of Whitburne and prebendary of Durham; his grandson, a stout Church-and-King man, who had to compound for his estates on account of his adherence to the cause of the unfortunate Charles I., acquired extensive possessions in Ireland, and founded the line of the Pilkingtons of Tore, in the county of Westmeath, represented at the present day by Henry Mulock Pilkington, Esq., as well as that of Pilkington of Carrick, in Queen's County. John, the sixth son, like his brothers, James and Leonard, was in holy orders, and became archdeacon of Durham with a prebendal stall in that cathedral, three of the sons of Richard Pilkington thus attaining to distinguished positions in the Church, and holding, respectively, the offices of bishop, archdeacon, and prebendary of Durham.

James Pilkington, "the good old Bishop of Durham," as Strype calls him, first saw the light in the year 1518, three years after good Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, had founded his grammar school at Manchester, when Wolsey was in the plenitude of his power, and the learned Erasmus was winning renown by his Greek translation of the New Testament; the year in which Martin Luther, by his denunciation of the new-fangled doctrine of indulgences, shook the foundation of the Papacy, and cleared the way for that mighty change in religious thought and sentiment the full meaning of which is tersely comprehended in the one word which marks the epoch—the Reformation. Young Pilkington received his earliest instruction in the seminary where so many Puritans were trained—the Grammar School at Farnworth, which had been then lately founded by William Smyth, of Widnes, Bishop of Lincoln, the companion in his boyhood's days of Hugh Oldham, of Exeter, Manchester's great benefactor. It is probable that Thomas Lever, a younger son of John Lever, of Lever Hall, so intimately associated with Pilkington in later years of study, labour, and exile—the future master of St John's, Cambridge, and the favourite preacher of Queen Elizabeth—was attending the same school at the time, so that the two, being about the same age, may very likely, as Dr. Halley suggests, have been taught by the same teacher, and whipped with the same birch.

Pilkington subsequently entered at St. John's, Cambridge, at that time a stronghold of the reformed doctrine and a favourite resort of Lancashire men, where he had his quondam schoolfellow, young Lever, as a fellow collegian. At the University he greatly distinguished himself by his zeal in promoting the revival of Greek literature. In due time he obtained the degree of doctor of divinity, and was also elected a fellow of his college. He became famous for his eloquence and his success as a preacher of the reformed doctrines; and in December, 1550, he was presented by the young King Edward to the vicarage of Kendal, but did not enjoy that preferment very long. On the death of his royal patron he ranged himself on the side of the partisans of the hapless Lady Jane Grey, but he does not appear to have been very actively concerned in the futile attempt to place her upon the throne. On the accession of Queen Mary the fires of martyrdom were kindled. John Bradford's preaching brought him to the stake, and Pilkington would doubtless have shared the fate of the Manchester martyr had he not prudently withdrawn from his vicarage and sought safety abroad, where he remained for some years a voluntary exile, three other Lancashire men being his associates in adversity—his old companion, Lever, who afterwards became Archdeacon of Coventry; Alexander Nowell, of Read, in Whalley parish, the future Dean of St Paul's; and Edwin Sandys, of Hawkshead, in Furness, whom Queen Elizabeth promoted to the Bishopric of Worcester, and who subsequently became Archbishop of York. While at Geneva, Basle, and Zurich Pilkington read lectures and became associated with the leading Calvinistic Reformers, whose views in relation to ecclesiastical rites and ceremonies he warmly espoused, though when he attained to power, strict Puritan as he was, he was never so rigorous in enforcing them as his friend Lever.

With the close of the short reign of Mary the glare of the Smithfield fires died out. On the accession of Elizabeth, Pilkington, being no longer in peril, returned to his own country, and on the 20th of July in the following year (1559) was elected master of St. John's College, Cambridge—that in which he had graduated. He was one of the six divines appointed to revise the Book of Common Prayer, and for these and other services he was, on the 26th December, 1560, nominated to the vacant see of Durham. On the 20th February following, Elizabeth issued her warrant for his election to the palatinate. He was consecrated on the 2nd of March, received part of the temporalities on the 25th, and on the 10th of April following was enthroned at Durham,