survey many parish churches existed, and at this time there were between 200 or 300 vills or villages in the counties of Chester and Lancaster whose names indicate that they had been founded by the Angles and Saxons. A great part of the sea-coast of Lancashire, however, was named by the Danes. The Danish termination for town or place was by," and the West Derby hundred, in which Altcar was situated, was evidently over-run by the Danes. The following names are of Danish origin-Formby, Crosby, Kirkby, Kirkdale, Roby, Ormskirk, Thingwall, Garston, and Widnes. The word Derby itself is from the Danish, "dyr," a wild beast, and "by," a town. The names of Danish chiefs are preserved in Agmunderness, Ormskirk, and Garston.

The Danes at first made summer excursions to the coasts of Lancashire and Cheshire," carrying back with them their plunder to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, but it is not probable that they wintered here before the year 840.

William the Conqueror met with strong and bitter opposition to his dominion in the North of England. The soldiers who were sent to subdue Lancashire, ancient historians represent as looking with dismay from the ancient hill-tops at the forests and heaths and swamps around. The work of subjugation, however, was commenced, and carried on with unmitigated cruelty. Such was the havoc they caused that for nine years the land lay uncultivated, while the inhabitants, in their extremity, ate dogs, cats, horses, and even human flesh. In the end the entire districts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Durham were almost depopulated, and few human habitations were left standing.

In order to obtain a reliable account of the conquered lands, William caused the survey to be 13 Baines' History of Liverpool, p. 3.

12 Ibid, p. 308.

made which is known as Domesday Book. It was commenced in 1080, and finished in 1086. So searching was the enquiry, that neither oxen nor cows nor swine were omitted." The desolation caused by William's army in Yorkshire and Lancashire was so complete, that a number of townships are described as waste, having few houses or inhabitants. Altcar was one of these townships. The following are the brief but pregnant sentences which describe Altcar:-" Uctred held Acrer (Altcar). There is half a carucate of land.

It

was waste." The few inhabitants had probably either been killed, or had fled, or had perished by famine, and their stone and mud cottages were in ruins.

A carucate, or ploughgate was as much land as a yoke of four oxen could keep in cultivation. The quantity of land would be different in various districts, according to the nature of the soil and the strength of the cattle. It was 180 acres on land suited for three years' rotation of crops, and 160 acres on other soils. It was usually divided into three parts, of 60 acres each. One part was sown with wheat, the second with spring corn, and the third was allowed to lie fallow. As Altcar, at the time of the Domesday survey, contained only half a carucate of land, there were only 90 acres of the present 4083 acres in the parish, which had been placed under cultivation; and, if a third lay fallow, only 60 acres actually yielding a harvest year by year. The chief wealth of this period, however, consisted of cattle and swine, which were tended by swineherds, the swine being driven about the woods in search of acorns. The cattle and swine, however, were absent when the Domesday survey was made.

14 Baines' Lancashire, vol. i, p. 89.

15 Baines and Fairbairn's Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. i, p. 523.

Uctred was a powerful and wealthy thane, and, in addition to Altcar, he held the manors of Lathom, Knowsley, Skelmersdale, Kirkdale, Roby, Allerton, Kirkby, Speke, Great Crosby, Aughton, Maghull, Litherland, Walton, Halsall, Dalton, Merton, Lydiate, and probably Ormskirk.

The value of all the land between the Ribble and the Mersey,16 that is, all South Lancashire, at the time of the Domesday survey was £120, or, allowing for the difference of money value, about £13,200," while the population of Lancashire and Cheshire together did not exceed 13,000.

It is difficult for us to realise that there are as many inhabitants in Ormskirk to-day as there were in all South Lancashire eight hundred years ago.

At the time of the Domesday survey, there was no part of England where the population was more scanty, or the land so neglected, as in Lancashire and Cheshire. And after this, internal dissensions, wars, famines, and disease followed each other in succession.18 In addition, all males between 15 and 60 years of age were trained to the use of arms, and were at any time liable to be called upon to leave their agricultural labours for military service. So frequent were these calls during the two hundred years after the Norman Conquest, that every two or three years some quarrel arose which left the land neglected and decimated the population, for purposes of which the people often knew little and cared less. Every man was required to have in his house, ready for use, arms according to his station. By the statute of Winton, passed 13 Edward I, a person having land of the value of £15 a year was to be provided with a horse, breastplate of iron, a sword, and a

16 Baines' Lancashire, vol. i, p, 113.

17 Baines and Fairbairn's Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. i, p. 565.
18 Ibid, vol. i, p. 569.

knife and dagger, while the poorest were required to have bows and arrows. In the reign of Edward IV, shortly after the middle of the fifteenth century, "a law was passed that every Englishman "should have a bow of his own height, and that "butts for the practice of archery should be set up "in every village; and every man was obliged to "shoot up and down on every feast day, or be fined "one halfpenny." 19 We have no field in Altcar called "The Butts," but we have a plot called "Score Ground," which may have been the archery ground.

During the period from the accession of William I to the expulsion of James II (i.e., from 1066 to 1688), the progress of Lancashire was slower than that of any other part of the kingdom.20 Even in 1700, there was not a single town in Lancashire and Cheshire with more than 10,000 inhabitants." Liverpool at that time had probably about 7,000, and Altcar not 150. Up to the middle of the seventeenth century, the Lancashire people remained upon their lands, with little disposition to wander, except that country people began to be attracted to the small towns in their neighbourhood, which were just then rising, and their number was not increased by the immigration of strangers. They married and intermarried, and the same family names were, no doubt, repeated in the registers (if there were any) with unbroken monotony. But the Great Plague and Fire of London (1666) led to a considerable number of people removing to Liverpool and South Lancashire generally. To get beyond all trace of the plague, the people secluded themselves in the most rural

22

19 Ditchfield's English Villages, p. 83.

20 Baines and Fairbairn's Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. i, p. 320.

21 Ibid, vol. ii, p. 3.

22 Ibid, p. 54.

districts, whose roads, or want of them, cut them off from the outside world. Thus we find the following entry among the Altcar baptisms for 1689: Anne, daughter of Charles Richards, of "London, baptized August 24th day." The plague broke out at intervals in various parts of Lancashire to the end of the seventeenth century, when, by slow degrees, it died out.23

In the fenny and marshy districts of Lancashire, malignant and intermittent fevers were frequent. Dr. Leigh, in 1700, gives a full account of pestilential fever which raged in Lancashire from 1693 to 1696.24 From some such visitation Altcar suffered in 1728. In that year, nearly, if not whole families were swept away, the number of deaths being 47 out of a population of probably not 150. We get an idea in Dr. Leigh's work of some of the strange remedies then used to cope with these malignant diseases. Reptiles, such as vipers and adders, were then common in the Lancashire mosses, and he tells us that from the viper was extracted "a wine singular in consumptive, leprous, "and scorbutic cases, likewise a valuable salt, the "most generous cordial in nature." He tells us that "the flesh of the toad supplies one of the "richest cordials," and that this cordial was the means by which many were cured during the pestilential fevers.

As early as the reign of William I, encouragement was given to the country people to remove to the towns. He passed a law that if any bondmen should remove to a town and remain unchallenged for a year and a day, he should be free. Villeins and bondmen are not mentioned in Liverpool after King John's charter, but for 200 years after they are mentioned in the surrounding townships. The chief privilege of a Liverpool freeman was freedom 24 Ibid, vol. ii, p. 62.

23 Ibid, vol. i, p. 699.