[Footnote 107: "Cottons" is probably a corruption of "coatings."] [Footnote 108: Market stede Lane, Deansgate, Mylne Gate, Wething Greve, Hanging Ditch, Fenell Street, Smythy Door, and St. Mary's Gate, are all named in the Court Leet Records 1552-54.] [Footnote 109: From 1522 to 1686, and from 1731 to 1846. The whole have been printed by order of the Corporation, and edited by J. P. Earwaker, Esq., F.S.A.] [Footnote 110: Act passed in 1570 requiring persons to wear woollen caps, made in England, on Sundays.] [Footnote 111: Speed's Plan.] [Footnote 112: Picton's "Liverpool Municipal Records."] [Footnote 113: Corporation Records.] [Footnote 114: Beamont's "Annals of Warrington."] [Footnote 115: Fishwick's "History of Rochdale," p. 44.] [Footnote 116: Fishwick's "Lancashire in the Time of Elizabeth" (Royal Historical Society, vii. 191).] [Footnote 117: Pleadings (Philip and Mary), Record Office.] [Footnote 118: State Papers, Dom. Ser., cclxiii.] [Footnote 119: _Chetham Soc._, xlix.] [Footnote 120: Richard Entwysle of Foxholes. (See "History of Rochdale," p. 408.)] [Footnote 121: Local coal of very inferior quality appears to also have been used. Such entries occur as "four loodes of cole at Hilton delve, 4s.," but this was probably only the cost of the carriage, as the coal would belong to the Shuttleworths, and be got in the quarry.] [Footnote 122: "Bibliotheca Heraldica," p. 582.] [Footnote 123: See "History of Rochdale," p. 352.] [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Allusion has been already made to the superstitious side of the character of the Lancashire people; their belief in omens, charms, witchcraft and demoniac possessions lingered long. This is a fitting place to tell the tale of the "Lancashire Witches" and the so-called "demoniac possessions." The belief that demons or evil spirits took possession of human beings is of very great antiquity, and the popular mind had firmly taken hold of this; whenever a case of this kind occurred, the priest was called in to exorcise the devil, and the Puritan divines were not slow in asserting that if a Roman Catholic could perform a miracle, they at least could turn out an evil spirit, and thus the superstition appears to have been rather fostered than rebuked. One of these demoniac cases[124] took place at an old half-timbered house called Cleworth Hall[125] (in the parish of Leigh), where there lived Nicholas, the eldest son of Edmund Starkie of Huntroyd (near Burnley); he had issue a son John and a daughter Ann, who, with five others, were said to have become "possessed," when John Darrell was called in to exorcise the evil spirit. This Darrell was a graduate of one of the Universities, and was subsequently domestic chaplain to Archbishop Whitgift, and Rector of St. Mary's, Nottingham.