Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

BY THE REV.C.N.WRIGHT, M.A.

ASSISTED BY RESIDENTS IN VARIOUS PARTS OF THE COUNTY.

FISHER SON C LONDON.

LANCASHIRE:

ITS

HISTORY, LEGENDS, AND MANUFACTURES.

BIBL

BY

THE REV. G. N. WRIGHT, M. A.

FISHER, SON, & CO. LONDON;

POST-OFFICE PLACE, LIVERPOOL, & 93, PICCADILLY, MANCHESTER,

PREFACE.

THE changes that have passed over the natural landscape of Lancashire, illustrate the transition of England from barbarity to civilization; and the simultaneous mutations in manners, occupation, and society, present a great moral landscape for the analysis of the historian.

At every period of our annals, this broad tract appears to have invited the invader; imperial Rome abandoned her usurpations here to the Saxon, who was in turn dispossessed by a more avaricious tyrant, the galling weight of whose yoke the aborigines were never afterwards able to shake off. Here the descendants of the Norman freebooters raised many monuments of their military despotism, - those spacious castles that decorate the duchy: they granted lands also for the endowment of cells, and chapels, and abbeys, and afforested large districts of the "Honor of Lancaster." Nowhere in England is the reign of feudalism more practically proved than in the Palatinate-the Honor, the Duchy of Lancaster, which became ultimately the cradle of a royal race. Ancient institutions having there attained maturity, the contrast of equal perfection which those of to-day have acquired, in the same locality, becomes more striking. No longer do the sounds of revelry re-echo through the halls of John of Gaunt-the dismal clank of chains, as the lost one passes to the gate of death, alone is heard within-the royal domains are disafforested-and the crouching serf that was sold with the soil, now, in the plenitude of liberty, upturns that soil with the ploughman's share, or, directed to a more artificial life, exercises his energies with the weaver's shuttle. Science, art, and literature have been called in, to aid the rapid revolutions of society, in this great and ancient county, and by these auxiliaries it is, that Lancashire has attained her present territorial rank :—her mineral productions are invaluable and boundless; her manufactures exceed in value those of any equal area in the world; and her commerce is inferior to that of Middlesex only.

In the following delineation of Lancashire, the variety of subjects has afforded opportunity for the introduction of full and ample notices, not only of the past and present state of the County, its agriculture, manufactures, statistics, and the intellectual genius of which it has been the parent; but also gives occasion for biographical sketches of remarkable men who have been the architects of their own fortunes, and whose labours have enriched and adorned their race: to these are added many legends and traditions connected with the crumbling abodes of departed power, with the once calm seats of piety and learning, and with those regions of romance that occupy the northern border of this county, as well as a large portion of those that adjoin it.

« AnteriorContinuar »