PREFACE.

The earliest topographical work in the English language, alphabetically arranged, is the "Dictionarium Angliæ Topographicum et Historicum," of William Lambarde, author of the "Perambulation of Kent," written about the year 1570, but which remained in MS. till the year 1730. It is a collection of materials intended for a complete topography of England, but the design of the author was superseded by the appearance of Camden's Britannia, in 1586; the concealment of the MS, is much to be regretted, as the author having brought to his task great learning, much good sense, and, for that age, considerable taste, the example of his work though left imperfect, would have encouraged other topographers to pursue a similar vein of enquiry.

In 1606 John Speed published his "Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain." In this work the author has arranged the names of the various places in each county in single and separate alphabets: those in Lancashire amount to about seven hundred in number: no other information than the hundred in which each place is situated is given, and the description of the whole county itself, consisting merely of short extracts from what Camden had recently published, is comprised in a single folio page. In 1656 appeared "Villare Anglicum, or a View of the Towns of England, collected by the appointment of Sir Henry Spelman, knight." This work is merely an incorporation of Specd's several lists into one alphabet, and so far became of considerable utility. In 1668 Speed's tables were republished in a small quarto, with the title of "A Book of the Names of all the Parishes, &c., in England and Wales." In 1680 John Adams published his "Index Villaris, or an Alphabetical Table

of all the Cities, Market Towns, Parishes, Villages, and private Seats in England and Wales," in folio. This work is an extension of the Villare Anglicum, as it contains not only the county and' hundred in which each place is situated, but also the latitude and longitude, the deanery in which it is included, and the value of the living in the king's books. The Index Villaris became in some request, and ran to a third edition.

In 1751 a work appeared with the title of "England's Gazetteer, or an accurate Description of all the Cities, Towns, and Villages of the Kingdom," in 3 vols. 12mo., by Stephen Whatley. This author possessed very valuable materials, and his book, being executed with much accuracy and spirit, exhibits an interesting view of the state of England in the middle of the last century; it has formed the basis of all the subsequent topographical dictionaries of England, and many of them, even the more recent, are still little more than mere copies of Mr. Whatley's publication. In this work the term Gazetteer seems first to have been adopted in a topographical sense, and, though the author has not given his reasons for this appropriation of the word, it is not improbable that the hint was taken from a sentence of Mr. Locke, in his "Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study," which expresses that" an English gentleman without geography cannot well understand a gazette." The word gazetteer, borrowed from the French gazetier, originally meant merely the writer of the gazette; and by Dr. Johnson it is explained in no other signification than that of a writer of news. The French still restrict their word to the same meaning, though, with us, gazetteer in this sense has become entirely obsolete. The word seems first to have been wrested from its pristine meaning by its application to the title of a popular newspaper, about twenty years before Mr. Whatley's book appeared; but his adaptation of the name to a topographical purpose was considered so happy, that Gazetteers of the world, and or most of the kingdoms in it, soon followed, and have been continued in various subdivisions, to the present hour. This author cleverly

enough defines his work as "a compendium, copious but concise, particularising the manufactures and other useful circumstances by which each town is peculiarly distinguished, enumerating all the several remarkables of nature or art, which each place affords." A judicious description of these "remarkables" seems indeed to constitute the essence of a gazetteer, to which the addition of historical events and biographical notices must be esteemed as a happy improvement; the one carrying back the imagination to the condition and manners of former ages; the other as the record of departed worth, frequently conferring an interest on the meanest village, and rendering even the dryness of topography itself efficacious as a stimulus to moral example.

The title page of The New Lancashire Gazetteer exhibits so complete an abstract of its contents, that a brief explanation of some points is all that is further requisite. Following the usual example of topographers, the nature and value of each living in the county, as stated in the king's books (1535), have been given, though the amount is so extremely remote from its real value, and, the relative proportion in different places so entirely dissimilar, that no scale can be applied to judge from this source of the actual revenue of any benefice. Mr. Bacon, in his edition of the Liber Regis, published in 1786, partially attempted something of such a nature, but with small success. The only use, therefore, of this information, except that of gratifying curiosity, by showing the difference in the nominal amount occasioned by the lapse of three centuries, is in reference to the circumstance, that no holder of a living amounting to £8 in the king's books can accept the incumbency of another benefice, without vacating the former, unless such incumbent be chaplain to the king, or to one of the nobility, or by his obtaining a dispensation from the archbishop of Canterbury. The occasional prefix "discharged" means that the rectory or vicarage has been exempted by subsequent acts of parliament from the payment of first fruits. In the names of the patrons some errors may possibly be found, as the sale of an advowson may have taken place, which the

parties from prudential motives did not choose to render public. Such errors, however, can be but few, as the presentations in the county of Lancaster are chiefly in the hands of ecclesiastical digni- . taries, or in great families. The chapelries and perpetual curacies, unless a patron is expressly mentioned, must be understood as in the gift of the incumbent of the parish in which such chapelry is situated.

or curacy

In the population census, published by order of government, a distinction is made between chapelries and townships which at the present period does not strictly apply, those places only appearing as chapelries which are mentioned as such in the king's books, though several of the townships contain an episcopal chapel of more recent erection, and consequently are equally chapelries with the others. Townships seem to have been originally the same as tythings or vills; which, by the constitution of king Alfred, about the year 890, consisted of ten freemen, or frank pledges, and were subdivisions of the more ancient hundred. After the general institution of parishes, according to the best antiquaries, in the reign of king Edgar, about seventy years later, the tything, which was only a civil division, became merged or identified with the parish, which was an ecclesiastical division, and was considered as the more important. In the southern part of the kingdom a parish seldom contained more than one tything; but in the thinly peopled districts of the north this particular seems not to have been regarded, as there, indeed, the frank pledges, remote from each other, were scattered over such a wide waste of uncultivated country, that in many parts they could scarcely be said to form a vill or tything at all. At various periods many of these separate and distant dwellings of the freemen became subsequently the nucleus of a village, now forming a modern township, several of which in Lancashire are commonly found in one parish.

The institution of parishes appears to have been a gradual work, and in this, then almost desolate county of Lancaster, their boundaries seem to have been extended according to the