Chapter XXXV: Appendix: I

The history of the parish of Whalley in Lancashire affords an interesting illustration of the growth of parochial organization. The original parish was a vast tract of wild hilly country, fifty miles long, covering two hundred superficial miles, in the north-west corner of Lancashire, chiefly forest and moor, with fertile pastures in the broad valleys of the Ribble, the Hodder, the Calder, and their tributaries. The Saxon rectors were also lords of the manor; they were married men, and the rectory, together with the manor, descended from father to son. These facts suggest that the lord of the manor, in early days after the Conversion, turned his house into a semi-secular monastery such as those we have described (p. 35), retaining the headship of it for himself, and handing it down to his heirs; and that in course of time, instead of developing into a monastery of a stricter kind, it changed into the parochial type of rectory. From the earliest known time, and throughout the Saxon period, however, the reverend lords of the manor rejoiced in the title of dean, the Bishop of Worcester having committed to them large ecclesiastical jurisdiction over this remote and inaccessible corner of his diocese.

After the Conquest, the lordship of this part of the country, including the Manor of Whalley, was given to Henry de Lacy, who laid claim to the advowson of the benefice of Whalley; but for a time the difficulty was got over by De Lacy presenting the hereditary claimant, De Lacy thus establishing a precedent of right of presentation, the hereditary claimant treating it as nothing more than a certificate that he was the rightful heir.

The names of the deans for several generations are given in a “Description of Blackburnshire,” which was probably written by J. Lindlay, Abbot of Whalley (A.D. 1342-1377); they are Spartlingus, Lewlphus, Cutwulph, Cudwolphus, Henry the Elder, Robert, Henry the Younger, William, Geoffry the Elder, Geoffry the Younger, and Roger.

The decree of the Lateran Council in 1215 prohibited these hereditary successions to benefices, and Roger, the last dean, resigned the benefice and surrendered the advowson to the De Lacys, and “settled at the Ville of Tunlay as the progenitor of a flourishing family yet subsisting after a lapse of six centuries, legitimate descendants of the Deans of Whalley and Lords of Blackburnshire.”[641] Thereupon De Lacy presented Peter de Cestria to the rectory,[642] and during his incumbency (in 1284) appropriated the rectory to the Monastery of Stanlaw.

Before this date--how long before is not known--there were already in the parish seven chapels of old foundation. Three of them--Clitherhow, Calne, and Burnley--are named in a charter of the time of Henry I.; a fourth--Elvethan--is named in a charter of the time of Richard I.; the rest are not named till the grant of the advowson of H. de Lacy in 1284. The probability is that the first three or four had, from time to time, been founded by the old Saxon deans, in the villages which sprang up in their extensive manor; the remainder, perhaps, at a later period between the Conquest and the last quarter of the thirteenth century. They were all endowed with glebe land of about thirty-five acres each.

At the next vacancy, the convent of Stanlaw entered upon its enjoyment of the Rectory of Whalley. How they served it is not known. In old times there is evidence that the dean had at least a chaplain and clerk to aid him in his duties. Probably the convent retained the staff of assistant clergy, whatever it might be, and added another in place of the rector.

In 1296 the abbot and convent of Stanlaw, with the leave of their founder, H. de Lacy, and with the sanction of Pope Nicholas IV., removed their house to the more healthy site afforded by their new estate at Whalley. Two years after, in 1298, Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, ordained the foundation of a perpetual vicarage with a manse, thirty acres of meadow and corn land, with rights of pasturage, etc., and the altarage of the mother church and its seven chapels.

Thirty-two years afterwards, on the petition of the abbot and convent, who represented the necessities of the house (it was in that year that the foundation of the abbey church was laid) and the immoderate endowment of the vicarage, Roger, Bishop of Lichfield, reduced the endowment of the vicarage to a manse and yard within the abbey close, with a pittance, for which he was to pay 13_s._ 4_d._ a year, hay and oats for his horse, the glebe lands of the chapels, and fifty-six marks in money, for which he was to bear the burden of the chapels, find a priest for each chapel, bread and wine for the Holy Communion, etc. The fourth vicar, William de Wolf, was required, before his presentation, to bind himself by oath never to procure an augmentation of the endowment.

So things continued till the death of the fifth vicar, John of Topcliffe, brother of the abbot, when the abbot and convent presented one of themselves to the vicarage, and so added its endowment to the revenues of the house.

The next matter of interest in the history of the parish is the beginning of new foundations to supply the spiritual needs of new centres of population. Padiham was founded in 30 Henry VI.; Whitewell, Holme, and Marsden between the reigns of Henry VI. and Henry VII.; then Newchurch in Rossendale, 3 Henry VIII.; Goodshaw, 32 Henry VIII.; Newchurch in Pendle, 35 Henry VIII.; Accrington was taken out of Alvetham in 1577; and lastly, Bacup in Rossendale was founded in 1788.

To complete the story: at the dissolution of the monasteries the Abbot of Whalley was hanged on a charge of treason. The king made a compulsory exchange of the great tithes of the parish of Whalley, on which he seized as part of the abbey property, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, for some of the lands which belonged to the Kentish see. Archbishop Juxon augmented the living by surrendering to it, on the renewal of a lease which brought it within his power, the whole Easter roll and surplice fees, on condition that the curates of the chapels should receive the house, and pay to the vicar in different proportions £42, which, with £38 hitherto paid, would augment the vicarage to £80. Archbishop Sancroft, on a subsequent renewal (1685), with the fine purchased lands to provide stipends for the curates of the chapels-of-ease hitherto unprovided for.

The record of an inquisition in the time of the Commonwealth into this and neighbouring churches survives, and gives an interesting account of the parish and its chapelries. In every case the account ends with the statement that the inhabitants desire to be made a parish.