and included in the cemetery. The southerly stretch of this ancient ditch or fosse ran just within the railings, protecting the burial ground in front. When the existing walls were built round the yard great difficulty was met with in forming a good foundation over the site of the moat at different points, as it was found to be filled in with fragments of bricks, mortar, and general rubbish, which seems to indicate that it was abolished when the church itself was in course of reconstruction, and that the old building materials and debris were used for the purpose of raising it to the common level, indicating that the work must have been accomplished either at the rebuilding of 1749, or at some previous and unrecorded one. The moat would be crossed by a bridge of fair dimensions, which was probably situated on the west side, as the sexton lately discovered the well-preserved remains of a straight footpath, paved with long tiles, and running from the church for some distance towards the site of the moat in that direction; the path was between two and three feet below the surface of the ground.

The church was separated from the mother edifice of Kirkham, and had an independent district assigned to it in 1846. The incumbent has the title of vicar.

An Independent chapel was erected by subscription a few years since, and schools subsequently added.

From the report of the Charity Commissioners, we learn that long before the commencement of the nineteenth century there was a school at Hambleton, but no attempt to elucidate more

particularly its origin or date of erection can be hazarded. In 1797 the only endowment it can boast of was left by Matthew Lewtas, a native of Hambleton, and consisted of £200, the interest of which had to be given to John, the son of George Hall, of Hambleton, until he reached the age of twenty-one; and if before or at that time he was appointed master of the school he had to continue to receive the whole of the income whilst he held such mastership, but if, although he was willing to accept the post, some other person should be selected for it, then when he came of age, half of the income passed from him to the school, and he retained the other moiety until his death, when it also went to increase the stipend of the master. The other condition of the will applied to the master, and obliged him in return for the interest or income of the £200, to teach as many poor children of Hambleton as the money would pay for. John Hall never obtained the appointment, so that the present master receives the full interest of the bequest, which is invested on mortgage.

The poor of Hambleton have £2 annually distributed amongst them through the generosity of Sir Nicholas Sherburne, of Stonyhurst, who in 1706, when lord of the manor of Hambleton, charged his estate of Lentworth Hall with this charity.

The yearly interest of £10 was given for the benefit of poor housekeepers in Hambleton by Mary, the daughter of vicar Clegg, of Kirkham, and the wife of Emanuel Nightingale, of York, gent., who was born in 1673.

The statute acres of the township amount to 1,603.

CHAPTER XIV.

PARISH OF LYTHAM.

LYTHAM.

T the commencement of the Norman dynasty, when William I. instituted a survey of his newly-conquered territory, the name of the town and parish which will occupy our attention throughout the present chapter was written Lidun, and was estimated to contain two carucates of arable land. How long this orthography continued in use is difficult to say, but it could not have been for much more than a century, as amongst certain legal documents in the reign. of King John, the locality is referred to under the style of Lethum, an appellation which seems to have adhered to it until comparatively recent years. The derivation of the latter title is apparently from the Anglo-Saxon word lethe, signifying a barn, and points obviously to an agricultural origin, whilst the more antique name of Lidun is possibly a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon lade, implying a river discharging itself into the sea, that is, its mouth or estuary, and tun, a town.

Shortly before the termination of the reign of Richard I. in 1199, Richard Fitz Roger, who is supposed to have belonged to the Banastre family, gave all his lands in Lethum, with the church of the same vill, and all things belonging to the church, to God, and the monks of Durham, that they might establish a Benedictine cell there to the honour of St. Mary and St. Cuthbert. The following is a copy of the document by which the

1. Richmondshire, vol. ii. p. 440.

transfer was effected :—“Richard Fitz Roger, to all men, both French and English, who may see this letter, greeting: Let all and each of you know, that I, with the consent and wish of my wife, Margaret, and my heirs, for the Salvation of my lord, Earl John, and for the souls of my Father and Mother, and mine and my heirs, have given and granted, and with these presents confirm as a pure and perpetual offering to God and the Blessed Mary and St. Cuthbert, and the monks of Durham, all my estate of Lethum, with the church at the same vill, with all things appertaining to it, in order to build a house of their own order; namely, within these divisions-From the ditch on the western side of the cemetry of Kilgrimol (Lytham Common) over which I have erected a Cross, and from the same ditch and Cross eastward, going along the Curridmere (Wild Moss or Tarns) beyond the Great Moss, and the brook, as far as Balholme (Ballam), which brook runs towards Snincbrigg (Sluice Bridge). Likewise from Balholme directly across the moss, which my lord John, earl of of Moreton, divided between himself and me, as far as the northern part of Estholmker (Estham), going eastward as far as the division of the water which comes from Birckholme (Birks), and divides Etholmker and Brimaker (Bryning), following this. division of water southward as far as the middle point between Etholme and Coulurugh (Kellamergh), and thus returning towards the west and going southward across the Moss as far as la Pull from the other side of Snartsalte (Saltcoats), as it falls upon the sand of the sea, and thus going southward across to Ribril to the waterside, and thus following the line of the water to the sea on the west, and so to the ditch and across aforementioned," etc., etc. In a charter dated 1200-1, it is specified that the whole of the lands of Lytham, amounting to two carucates, had been presented by King John when earl of Moreton, to Richard Fitz Roger, by whom, as just shown, they were immediately conveyed to the monks of Durham.

There are unfortunately no means of ascertaining the extent or appearance of the Benedictine cell established at Lytham, but its site would seem to have been that now occupied by Lytham Hall, in the walls of some of the offices attached to which remains of the ancient monastic edifice have been incorporated. Dr. Kuerden alludes, in a manuscript preserved in the Chetham library, to an

undated claim of feudal privileges in Lytham, by which the prior of Durham asserted his right to have view of frankpledge in his manor of Lytham, with waif, stray, and infangthefe1; emendations of the assize of bread and beer; wrecks of the sea; exemption for himself and tenants in Lytham from suit to the courty and wapentake, and from fines and penalties; to have soc, sac, and theam; and finally, to have free warren over all his lands in Lytham, and all royal fish taken there. During the reign of Edward I. the legality of the ecclesiastic's assumption of the sole right to wreckage was called in question, ultimately ending in litigation, and at Trinity Term, York, the verdict of the jury was given against him. In the twenty-third year of his sovereignty, Edward I. granted the wreck, waif, and stray of Lytham to his brother Edmund, the earl of Lancaster. Amongst the Rolls of the Duchy is the record of an agreement, entered into in 1271, between Ranulphus de Daker, sheriff of Lancaster, Richard le Botiler, and others, for arranging and fixing, with the consent and approval of Stephen, the prior of Lytham, the boundaries between the land of Lytham and Kilgrimol, and that of Layton. The priors of Lytham were entirely dependent on the parent house until 1443, when they solicited and induced Pope Eugenius to issue an edict declaring the prior of that date and his successors perpetual in their office and no longer removable at the will and dictation of the monks of Durham. Afterwards, in the same year, letters patent were received at the Lytham cell, pardoning the application to the papal See and granting the request; but the union between the two houses was not absolutely dissolved, for we find that, in addition to the various properties at Lytham and Durham continuing to be valued together, the cell and domain of the former place were granted in 2 Mary, 1554, to Sir Thomas Holcroft as part of the possessions of the Durham convent. In

2.

1. Infangthefe.—The power of judging of theft committed within the manor of

Lytham.

Soccum. The power and authority of administering justice.

Saccum.-The power of imposing fines upon tenants and vassals within the

lordship.

Theam.—A royalty granted for trying bondmen and villeins, with a sovereign power over their villein tenants, their wives, children and goods, to dispose of them at pleasure. This badge of feudal slavery was abolished in England during the reign of Charles II.

3. Rot. Lit. Pat. 22 Hen. vi. p I, m. 6.