In Middleton Church there was a brass to the memory of Sir Ralph Assheton and his bowmen, and a painted window still remains to commemorate the event. Of the general state of some of the larger towns of the county, we have a brief record from the pen of that careful antiquary John Leland, who went through Lancashire in 1533. Manchester he says was "the fairest, best built, quickest [_i.e._, liveliest] and most populous town in Lancashire; well set a worke in makinge of clothes as well of lynnen as of woollen, whereby they have obtained, gotten and come vnto riches and welthy lyuings, and have kepte and set manye artificers and poor folkes to work;" and in "consequence of their honesty and true dealing, many strangers, as wel of Ireland as of other places within this realme, have resorted to the said towne with lynnen yarne, woollen, and other wares for makinge clothes." So great a name had Manchester now got for the making of woollen cloth that in an Act passed in 1552 Manchester "rugs and frizes" are specially named; and in 1566 it became necessary to pass another Act to regulate the fees of the queen's _aulneger_ (measurer), who was to have his deputies at Bolton, Blackburn and Bury. The duty of these officers was to prevent "cottons, frizes and rugs" being sold unsealed. Cottons were not what is now meant by this term, but were all of woollen.[107] Cotton manufacture did not begin until a century later. Manchester at this time probably consisted of some ten or a dozen narrow streets[108] and lanes, all radiating from the old church; its water was from a single spring rising in what is now Fountain Street, and which flowed down Market Street to Smithy Door. The town business was conducted in a building called the "Booths," where the court of the lord of the manor was held, and near to which stood the stocks, the pillory and whipping-post, and not far distant was the cucking-stool pool. These streets were narrow, ill-paved, or not paved at all; the houses were of wood and plaster, with the upper stories projecting and mostly roofed with thatching. The only church in Manchester was the collegiate or parish church, which stood on the site of the present cathedral in the time of Edward VI.; the lord of the manor of Manchester was Sir Thomas West, Knight, ninth Baron de la Ware. The early records of the Manchester court leet[109] have been preserved, and furnish some interesting details of the life of the dwellers in the town at this period.