Preston was probably the first town in Lancashire which had a free school regularly endowed; it is said to have been established in the fourteenth century, but was certainly there in the time of Henry VI., as in 1554 a plaintiff in the duchy court spoke of it as having then been in existence for "the space of 100 years,"[117] and the incumbent of the chantry in the parish church, founded by Helen Houghton (about 1480), was required to "be sufficiently lerned in grammar" to teach the scholars. Manchester was indebted to Hugh Oldham, the Bishop of Exeter (a native of Lancashire), for its first free school. In 1515 the Bishop conveyed certain lands to the Wardens of Manchester for the purpose of paying a master and usher to teach the youth of the district, who had, as the indenture sets forth, "for a long time been in want of instruction, as well on account of the poverty of their parents as for want of some person who should instruct them in learning and virtue." Before his death, in 1519, he had built the school which has for so long done honour to its founder. At Kirkham a free grammar school had been, or was just about to be, founded in 1551, when Thomas Clifton, of Clifton, bequeathed "towards the grammar schole xxˢ." And in 1585 the parish authorities took possession of the school-house in right of the whole parish. This school appears subsequently to have fallen into decay or been given up, for in 1621 Isabel Birley, who had been all her life an alehouse-keeper in Kirkham, being "moved to compassion with pore children shee saw often in that town," went to the church (where the thirty sworn men were assembled) with £30 in her apron, which she wished to give for the building of a free school; her example fired the others with enthusiasm, and the requisite sum was soon raised. The history of this well-known school is interesting. When Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, besides these schools there were free grammar schools at Prescot, Lancaster, Whalley, Clitheroe, Bolton, and Liverpool, but within the next fifty years many more were added, amongst them being those at Burnley, Hawkshead, Leyland, Rochdale, Middleton, and Rivington (near Bolton). To most of these early-founded schools libraries were attached, in some of which still remain many valuable sixteenth-century books. The belief in witchcraft and its kindred superstitions was firmly rooted amongst the people; on this subject something will be said in another chapter, but _en passant_ it may be stated that in 1597 a pardon was granted to one Alice Brerley, of Castleton (in Rochdale), who had been condemned to death for slaying by means of witchcraft James Kershaw and Robert Scholefield.[118]