As the circumstances which gave rise to the foundation of the College and Collegiate Church of Manchester cannot be appreciated without the aid of a history dating from the earliest known records of the town, this object will be attempted after the following manner:

First, by an inquiry into the origin of the two

Saxon Kirks of Saint Michael and Saint Mary, Manchester, which were endowed with a carucate of land named the Kirkman's Hulme;

Secondly, by a glance at the period when Roger de Poictiers held all the lands between the Ribble and the Mersey; Thirdly, by a chronicle of the events which took place when the Greslets were Barons of Manchester and Patrons of the Kirk of Saint Mary;

Fourthly, by details of the civil and ecclesiastical state of the town during the baronial sway of the family of La Warre.

the River Medlock, near its confluence with the Irwell. In the various Iters, this station is made to communicate with Cambodunum, Condate, Coccium, and Veratinum.

After the Romans had quitted Britain, which they left to be overrun by uncivilised tribes, a complete dismemberment of the country ensued, which was indicated by the co-existence of a number of small provinces, named fiefs, respectively under the sway of divers petty sovereigns, or masters, of Saxon, Frisian, or northern descent. A fief, or "beneficium," was the reward of territory conferred by a superior upon the condition of services, generally of a military character. The possessors of fiefs formed among themselves an infinite number of small groups, in each of which was to be found some leader, some lord, or some chief, who bore paramount sway. At the same time, there was an absence of all monarchical centralization.

During this incipient state of feudalism, the Saxon district of Salford, in which Manigceastre, or Manchester, was situated, became known under the name of the "Salford Hundred." Like the "Pagus" of which Tacitus writes, it might have furnished a band of one hundred combatants for battle, whence the term "Hundred," under the guidance of some northern chief. It may also be conjectured that the petty prince, or the thegn, resided at Manigceastre, and that the principal

pass or ford of the Irwell, designated, from its superiority, the "Salford," or "the safe ford," had given its name to the territory which constituted the hundred, or shire.

At length another social organization ensued. With the state of feudal proprietorship, there was a fusion of sovereignty. Among the numerous aggregations of Saxon families, differing from each other in population and geographical extent, so as to give rise to the various names of hides, tithings, sowlings, hundreds or shires, royalty was introduced, and, in struggling against competition to maintain for itself a separate and independent existence, produced that manifold and complex state of kingly dominion which particularly characterised the Saxon octarchy. The hundred of Salford then became comprised within the kingdom of Northumberland.

The social constitution of the hundred of Salford next aimed at that more complete development which is described in the records of a later date, namely, the Dom-Boc. Royalty was no longer, as in the Roman period, a brilliant manifestation of temporal power. Kings were little more than great proprietors of fiefs, surrounded by other proprietors almost equally powerful with themselves, and, occasionally, even more so. The king, in contradistinction to inferior lords, was "king-lord," or lord of the principal chieftains, and, through them, of their respective vassals. Great tenants paid homage to their sovereign at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide.

Along with the king-lord who wielded the sceptre of Northumberland, the feudal society of the hundred of Salford was composed of thegns, villains, bordars, and bondmen.

The thegns, from thegnian to serve, were so named from the military service which they performed. The law required one combatant from every five hides of land, and hence, when the ceorl, of an ignoble class, obtained this amount of territory, he was raised to the rank of thegn. Of thegns, however, there were two degrees:

The greater, or royal thegns, acknowledged no other superior than the king, and, as such, they enjoyed in the hundred of Salford, as in other districts, certain privileges and immunities. The lesser thegns were subordinate to such eoldermen as held immediately from the king. They formed a class which the practise of subinfeudation, or subthanage, had created. Thus we read of berewicks in the hundred of Salford, which were held by as many thegns, that is by lesser thegns who gave in their fealty, or adhesion, to some superior or royal thegn. For

instance, the manor of Assheton-under-Line was a berewick of the superior manor of Manchester, whence it has been inferred that Manchester boasted for its lord a royal thegn, while Ashton was possessed by a subordinate thegn.

The villains, or coloni (glebæ inhærentes), originally sprang from a condition of society like that of tribeship, clanship, or septship. They lived in a sort of semi-slavery upon the domains of great chiefs, which lands they cultivated under the stipulation of an annual rent.

The bordars were a still lower class of farmers possessing some smaller portion of soil, under the obligation to serve the superior with eggs and poultry. But the exact nature of their services, generally supposed to be of a very ignoble kind, has not been determined.

The lowest order in the social scale was that of servi, or bondmen, originally captives of war, or malefactors, held in servitude for their crimes, whose persons belonged to their masters, who were employed in domains to work in the fields, or in the interior of houses. Their owners had a right of claiming them wherever found. They were publicly bought and sold in slave-markets.

Such was the organization of Anglo-Saxon society, in the Salford hundred, about the commencement of the octarchy.

At this period, the Saxon church began to possess a history;-which history dates from the era of papal ascendancy, when the influence of the see of Rome over the whole of the states of Christendom was confirmed. The system, derived from the East, which admitted of patriarchs, having been powerful in the church, had already reduced to a subordinate rank archbishops and bishops. The Bishop of Rome then became the sole Patriarch of the West; his claim to supremacy having been aided by the tradition, that Saint Peter had exercised the same spiritual functions. Hence the gradual preponderance which the pontiff had acquired by appeals made to him from all the churches of Europe, to decide grave questions of faith and discipline. And thus the conviction gained ground, that the pope, as the interpreter of the faith, was the chief of the universal church, above all other bishops, above national councils, and even above temporal governments.

In Britain, the influence of the pope was perhaps greater than in any other country in Christendom, owing to this circumstance, that the Anglo-Saxon church had, from its origin, been exclusively under the influence and encouragement of the Bishop of Rome, as was shewn in the apostolic labours of Augustine and Paulinus.

In the district contained between the Ribble and the Mersey, numerous stone crosses are still to be seen at Whalley, Ribchester, and other localities, which remain as the most ancient monuments of the sacred mission of Paulinus. Odinism was dispelled, the influence of which, in the Saxon Manigceastre, or Manchester, was indicated by the cave which lately existed at Ordshal, under the traditional appellation of "Woden's Den." Within this gloomy recess the obeisance of the traveller was invited, while traversing the ancient paved causeway of" Woden's Ford," formed across the river Irwell. Eventually, Woden's cave became the site of a Christian hermitage.

§1. THE KIRK OF SAINT MICHAEL, alport. In the year 689, according to Robert of Brunne, Manigceastre was the temporary residence of Ina, King of Wessex, and Ethelburga his Queen:

"Ina, King of Westsex, for his wife sent "Unto Malmcestre, the Queen till him went." This historical occurrence naturally leads us to suppose that a Saxon keep, or castle, which owed its origin to a thegn, must have existed within, or near the area of the Roman station of Mancunium, whence the later name which this site acquired of the Castle-field. And if a castle really subsisted at this period of Saxon history, we are entitled to suppose that it was not unaccompanied by a church. The legitimacy of this inference is evident from considering what actually took place in Gaul after the dismemberment of the Roman empire. Every feudal proprietor would erect for himself a petty dominion, which was little disturbed by the overruling attempts of kingly authority, then in a state of imperfect centralization. Accordingly, in establishing himself, like the thegn of Manigceastre, within some previously fortified site attributable to Roman design, or engineering, he would collect around him a small assemblage of coloni, or serfs, for whose spiritual interests he would found a church and provide for the maintenance of a priest, named in Manigceastre, a kirkman, who, at the same time, would be the chaplain of the castle. At a later period, Ethelstan required that every thegn should possess in the immediate site of his castle, a church and a bell-house.

In reasoning after this manner, we may suppose that the labours of the early missionary, Paulinus, were in due time rewarded in Manigceastre by the erection of the more ancient of the two churches commemorated in the Dom-Boc, namely of St. Michael. The site was either adjoining the original Saxon fortress of Mancastle, or somewhere within that portion of the older town of Manigceastre, which, in contradistinction to a newer, or more northerly

site, acquired the name of Aldport, or the Old Town. Some remains, conjectured to be ecclesiastical [see Baines' Lancashire, vol. ii, p. 155], were discovered in the year 1821, by some workmen, while making a drain in the township of Hulme, in the exact line of the Roman road from Manchester to Chester, being a few hundred yards to the southward of the Roman station. But, unhappily, these relics possess no very determinate character.

The most satisfactory indication of the existence of Saint Michael's Kirk, within the precincts of Alport, is that which was first commented upon by Whittaker, namely, the annual mart which is still kept up in an open space adjoining the Castle-field, named "Knott Mill Fair." The learned historian of Manchester has supposed this annual commemoration to have arisen from the feast of dedication.

From these investigations it would appear, that the church dedicated to Saint Michael, which is commemorated in the Dom-Boc, may with great probability date from the close of the seventh century, at a time when, in the west of Europe, the church was completely organized, and, in the language of Guizot, had succeeded in bringing into order by means of a moral force, the chaos of material power which had invaded society.

§ 2. THE SAXON PARISH OF MAnchester. After the conversion of a Saxon district, such as the hundred or shire of Salford, to Christianity, each Christian agglomeration, at first rather inconsiderable, would form a parish, having for its religious chief a priest, or "kirkman." Mr. Whittaker (more solito,) has speculated diffusely upon the original extent of the parish, or thegnland, of Manigceastre, proceeding upon the supposition, certainly a gratuitous one, that it was commensurate with the recorded extent and boundary of the barony during a much later period of its history, namely, in the reign of Edward the Second. În quoting the recommendation of a council of the church, summoned A.D. 678, by Theodore, he has remarked, that as dioceses had been made commensurate with provinces, in like manner parishes would now be made commensurate with baronies, the church being in the centre of them, and has thence inferred that the thegnland, or parish of Manchester, "was skirted by the parishes of Eccles and Flixton on the west, and washed by the currents of the Mersey and Tame on the south; that it reached up to the hills of Saddleworth on the east, and bordered up to the parish of Prestwich on the north.”

The obligation of tythes, collected in each pa

rish, owed its first enforcement to Offa; who, in 747, ordered a previous law, framed for that purpose, to be strictly put into execution.

§3. THE DIOCESE AND PROVINCE WITHIN WHICH

THE SAXON CHURCH OF MANCHESTER WAS
CONTAINED.

The union of all such parishes as happened to be agglomerated round a city, in a circumscription a long time vague and variable, formed the diocese, over which was placed a bishop; who was, in fact, the source as well as the centre of diocesan organization. Saint Michael's Kirk of Manigceastre was at first in the diocese of York, of which Paulinus was the first bishop. Subsequently, the episcopal see of Lichfield was created; which, in the year 656, was held by Diuma, the first bishop, conjointly with the see of Lindisfarne. And when Northumbria had fallen under the dominion of the West Saxons, the tract of land between the Mersey and the Ribble, within which Manigceastre was included, became dissevered from the diocese of York and was annexed to that of Lichfield.

Again, as the city of York, the Eboracum of the Romans and the metropolis of Northumbria, possessed riches, population, and influence, all the dioceses adjoining to it composed an ecclesiastical province, which was under the direction of a metropolitan, or archbishop. His residence became the chief site of the provincial council, which, as the president, he convoked. He was also charged to confirm and to give his consent to such bishops as had been elected within the province, to receive accusations, and to submit them to councils which alone had the right of judgment.

But, besides the archbishopric of York, Offa, in the year 747, prevailed upon Adrian the First to make the see of Lichfield archiepiscopal; which in the subsequent reign of Egfrid was revoked, when Lichfield became finally annexed to the province of Canterbury.

Owing to these changes the Saxon parish of Manigceastre, in its removal from one see to another, became in turns comprised within the archbishoprics of York and Canterbury.

During this constitution of the Anglo-Saxon church, the episcopal influence was considerable. In the tenth century, Ethelstan enacted a law, whereby bishops were empowered to sit occasionally in courts of judicature, to inspect the proceedings of the civil magistracy.

Numerous also were the edicts which appeared for the support of the influence and supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, as Patriarch of the West. In 727, Ina, King of the West Saxons, established regulations for the annual payment of a penny for

each house to the papal see, which was called Rome scot, or Peter pence. Offa, in 747, confirmed this provision, upon the occasion of a pious visit which he made to Pope Adrian.

§ 4. THE TOWN OF MANCHESTER IS DESTROYED

BY THE DANES.

After the dissolution of the octarchy under Egbert, there took place a less complex centralization of monarchy in England, whereby the government of the country was surrendered to one power superior to all other local influences. The Anglo-Saxon dynasty then arrived at the greatest height of rule, of which the feudal institutes of the kingdom were susceptible.

Subsequently, Northumbria fell under the dominion of the Danes and other northmen. In the reign of Ethelred, all lands became subject to a tax, named Dane-geld, as a compensation for Danish forbearance. Manigceastre was then overrun by a horde of plundering northmen, and, according to old writers, was "sore defaced by the wars of the Danes."

Early in the tenth century, when the Northumbrian Danes had begun to encroach upon the borders of Mercia, Edward the Elder, in the system of defence which he adopted, wrested Manigceastre from the power of its invaders; and, as historians add, "because the inhabitants had behaved themselves manfully in the British wars, the Saxon monarch repaired the town beyond the river Mercia, then accounted the south-east of Northumberland." Mancastle then underwent a renewed state of defence, and was subsequently attached to the estates of the crown.

A century afterwards, Mancastle became possessed by Canute the Dane, whose ancient proprietorship is still commemorated in the ancient mill turned by the river Medlock, which has since continued to bear the name of "Knute's Mill," now corrupted into "Knott Mill." Until the time of Canute, the lands had been burdened with the obligation of supporting the king during his progress through the country. But the more considerate Danish monarch undertook, from the demesne lands of the crown, or from the royal farms, to relieve his people from the heavy impost. Accordingly, the profits of the mill adjoining Mancastle, named Knute's Mill, were devoted to this beneficent purpose.

We know nothing of the state of the church of Manchester during the Danish invasions. Much of the discipline of the English church is said to have been abused; whence the laws of Edgar, enacted about the middle of the tenth century, regarding the celibacy of the clergy, and concerning

fasting and confession. Canute, the Dane, in compensation for the atrocities of his countrymen, continued the reform by still newer ecclesiastical laws, and ordered many churches and houses which had been destroyed, to be repaired.

With the accession of Edward the Confessor to the throne of England, the Saxon line of monarchs was restored. This king, like his predecessors, possessed manors in divers parts of the kingdom. Between the Mersey and the Ribble he had various lands distributed among its five districts, named Hundreds. It is also expressly stated, in the Dom-Boc, that " King Edward held Salford."

It has been shewn that the older of the two churches commemorated in the Norman survey, was that of Saint Michael, situated in Alport, either within, or adjoining the Roman station of Mancunium, subsequently named Castle-field. When the Dom-Boc was compiled, both the castle and the older church were in a process of decay. It must be recollected, that for upwards of a century, the Danes had made Manigceastre the constant scene of their devastation and slaughter; and when they had nearly destroyed the town and fortress, it would be very natural for the Saxon natives, amidst the encouragements held out to them by their revived line of Saxon monarchs, to avail themselves of a stronger position afforded by the immediate vicinity of Mancastle, where another town, and even fortress, might be built. Such a superiority the confluence of the Irk and the Irwell would promise, independently of the convenience which it would possess of commanding the chief and best ford of the river, namely Salford, or the safe ford. Hence may be explained the reason why the town was removed to the ground which it subsequently occupied, about a mile north of the more ancient site of Alport. As Saint Michael's Church, therefore, would be at an inconvenient distance from the newer town, another church arose, which was dedicated to Saint Mary.

§ 6. THE NEWEr church of saint mary. With regard to the site of the kirk and kirkyard of Saint Mary in Manigceastre, it lay to the south or south-west of the present market-place. According to the tradition which has been collected by Mr. Whittaker, it stood at the termination of Saint Mary's-gate, formerly a narrow avenue, at its eastern end. It is also stated by the late Mr. Gresswell, that an ancient stone arch had been discovered on the easterly and south side

of the present Saint Mary's-gate, the remains of which were to be seen in a wine vault, formerly in the occupation of Mr. Ridings.

Remains of the cemetery, attached to the kirk, are said to have been indicated at the time when the present church of Saint Ann's was built. Vast quantities of bones were dug up, deposited in their cells, and discovered everywhere as the foundations were carried along, about two yards deep in the ground.-[History of Manchester, 4to., vol. ii, p. 412.]

The late Mr. Barrett has also stated, that when the floor of a bookseller's shop, on the site of the present new Exchange, was taken up, he saw a brick vault in which human bones had been deposited.[See his MSS. in the Chetham Library.]

In the year 1742, a similar discovery was made during an excavation at the eastern termination of Saint Mary's-gate, on the south side of the street, west of Byrom's-court. The workmen went through seven or eight feet, and then came to evident graves.

These observations attest the great extent of the original church-yard of Saint Mary; which, in a general manner, may be considered as having Exchange-street, and an easterly portion of Saint occupied the present area of Saint Ann's-square, Mary's-gate.

7. THE CARUCATE OF LAND GRANTED TO THE CHURCHES OF SAINT MARY AND SAINT MICHAEL.

The donation of a carucate of land to the two churches of Manigceastre was in pursuance of the practice of Charlemagne, at the end of the eighth century. He ordered, that there be given to each church, under the name of "Mansus Ecclesiasticus," a "metairie," free from all kinds of charges and of imposts.

In Manigceastre a carucate of land was given to the two churches of Saint Mary and Saint Michael. The carucate has been supposed, with good reason, to have been the hamlet, and tract of land annexed to it, of the "Kirkman's Hulme," which had been devoted by some Saxon thegn to the support of the "kirkman," or "persona ecclesia" of the Saxon town of Manigceastre; who, from this donation of land, would acquire the rank of a mass-thegn; a term then used in contradistinction to a "world-thegn," who, among other military services, was required to furnish one miles for every five hides of land, and to serve his sovereign two months upon each requisition. The estates of the mass-thegn, on the contrary, were exonerated from military and all other services.

At what time the grant of a carucate of land