assisted Molyneux in getting up the case. The pleas remain in the Duchy records and have never been printed; but they are too long to quote here, and their general scope may be briefly summarised. The bill of complaint is filed by Molyneux. More's name does not appear in the document, but at its foot is a marginal note testifying to his private cooperation in the matter:-" Somehow you must "amend the bill, which is put into the Duchy "according to this copy, and then the injunction "must be made according to the bill, and then all "is well. (Signed) Wm. More." Molyneux pleads that the Queen is rightfully seized of the mills at which all the inhabitants, by all the time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary, have used and of right ought to grind all their corn; paying and allowing such toll as of ancient time hath been used and accustomed. Giles Brooke and the others have erected divers horse-mills, hand-mills, and querns in the manor, at which they daily grind their corn, whereby the custom of grist of Her Majesty's mills is very greatly hindered, decayed, and impaired, to Her Majesty's disinheritance, and her orator's hindrance in his farm. He prays for an injunction ordering them to cease so doing or to appear at the Duchy Court at Westminster. Elizabeth's Chancellor approved of the latter course, and the refractory citizens duly put in an appearance and filed very full answers. They accused More of being the abettor of Molyneux, and charged him with private malice, having no respect for Her Majesty's benefit or service, or the good estate of the whole inhabitants of the town. They set forth that Liverpool is an ancient borough and port or haven town near adjoining to the sea coast, where divers honorable personages and other Her Majesty's officers repair and resort for the affairs of Her Highness's service

both out and unto Ireland; that Her Majesty's troops at sundry times land there, sometimes to the number of five or six hundred or more, and often lie there a fortnight or three weeks or longer, for lack of convenient wind to transport them; also great numbers of people come from the parts adjoining at the time of the herring fishery, and for the time make their abode in the town. For the better entertainment of these numerous visitors there had, they allege, always been maintained certain horse-mills. Besides the Queen has no water-mills in Liverpool, and her two windmills are not sufficient to serve the whole town; for in time of calm the inhabitants have to resort to water-mills, four, five, or six miles distant. But, irrespective of this, when the wind did serve, the inhabitants had ordinarily ground away from those mills if they pleased-sometimes at John Crosse's windmill or at Norres's water-mill (situated near where the Gallows mill was subsequently built), at Birket (Birkenhead) water-mill, or at others, "at "their wills and pleasures where they could best "be served." John Bird is admitted to be the occupier of the horse-mill belonging to Edward Norres, esquire, "which mill had long continuance" (and by custom is claimed to have become legal). Giles Brooke also has a horse-mill, as he verily "thinketh he lawfully may." William Moore has a horse-mill, and "pretending to have also some "assignment from Sir R. Molyneux of one of Her Majesty's supposed windmills called Townsend "mill," is the alleged prime mover in the whole affair, "seeking thereby to put down all other horse-mills" but his own. They beg that their mills might be allowed them. As to Molyneux stating that owing to their horse-mills he cannot pay the Queen her rents, if they, the said defendants, may be farmers of the Queen's mills

66

66

66

they will put in sureties for payment of the rent, and allow as many horse-mills to exist in the town "as this honourable Court shall think requisite," their own, of course, included.

The sequel to the action does not appear in the records, but it is suggestive that three years later, in 1591, Giles Brooke (after being in conflict with the Corporation respecting a purchase of grain intended for a town bargain) was presented at Port Mote for "suffering a millstone to lie at his door "in High Street so long to the annoyance of his neighbours." No doubt the usual order had been made in the Duchy Court (in fact, Edward More tells us this was so), the illicit mills were pulled down, and Giles Brooke had a loose millstone or two for sale.

EXTINCTION OF THE SOKE.

In most manors, milling soke had been allowed to die out; in others it was purchased. Of course the soke could only be purchased by purchasing the mill to which it belonged. The soke of Wakefield King's mill was purchased in 1853 for £18,000, raised by rates. The soke of Leeds King's mill was purchased from the lord of that manor in 1839 for £13,000. Bradford King's mill was purchased in 1869 for £19,000. The Malt mill of the Manchester Grammar School (the last of the three feudal mills with which the school had been endowed, and all of which were worked on the compulsory system till the middle of the last century), with its soke revenue, was purchased by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company for

4 "The Bradford estate of Col. Smith, of Heath, Wakefield, comprising "steam and water corn mills, called the Queen's mill in Bradford, and "another corn mill in Manningham, with the right of soke in Bradford and "Manningham, and other property, were offered for sale by auction."Yorkshire Post, May 1, 1869.

improvements in 1884, at a considerable annual rental and though the soke was abolished, the school still derives an equivalent for it. Other cases might be cited of this method of getting rid of the old restriction. At Liverpool, except with regard to the £600 paid for Townsend mill, no payments were made for milling soke. The Crosses seem to have allowed their rights at Middle mill to have lapsed. More's rights were contested by the citizens and apparently by the Corporation, who, as early as 1689, we find granting liberty to one William Hands to build a windmill. They may perhaps haye purchased some title to the now shadowy soke of the town, though there seems to be no record of any such transaction. Or, they may have considered that it was included in their 1000 years' lease of 1672; since it was not till 1777 that they purchased the reversion, and "the Queen's Majesty's Corporation" of the old days. became "Lords of the Manor of Liverpool," and actual owners of the milling rights. In any event, they lost no time in throwing milling open to free competition; till, between 1689 and 1773, there were erected almost a score wind corn mills in the town, and Liverpool began to assume somewhat of the aspect of the mill-dotted countries of the Netherlands.

66

MILL OF THE KNIGHTS HOSPITALLERS AT

WOOLTON.

One of the most curious of the soke mills was not a King's mill. It belonged to the Knights Hospitallers, and was a water-mill situated at Woolton. Among the valuable possessions with which the Templars were endowed by our early kings, and which, on the suppression of that order in 1312, passed to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem,

not the least valued were their milling privileges. These assumed two forms. Either the knights were granted mills with power of soke over their own lands, or, if they had no mills, they were endowed with toll-freedom at adjoining King's mills. These rights attached to their estates long after their order had passed away. Some few relics of this exemption may still be seen in various houses. situated on former Templar estates in Leeds, Bradford, and other places, in the form of a Latin cross on the gables; properties so marked having been free from the compulsory soke at the King's mills, so long as soke powers existed.

The branch of the order which settled at Woolton is first locally mentioned by Perry in 1772. But they possessed a water-mill in Woolton Parva early in the 14th century. Their settlement in this place has been matter for conjecture, but it seems to have been due to a grant by Alan de Lydiate, about the reign of Stephen, to the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, of certain lands at Woolton and Ranacres, in pure and perpetual alms and free from all services therefor. These lands were bounded by a creek and a mere, and here the Hospitallers may have built their water-mill. In 1311, the list of tenants of the Duchy (Gregson's Fragments, p. 336) includes "the Master of the Hospital "of St. John in Jerusalem in England, holding "Woolton Parva in free gift, without any service "therefor "terms which agree with those of what I consider the original grant. Still it is to be stated that the first mention of the mill occurs in 1292, when the Hospitallers claimed to have been seised of Little Woolton in virtue of a grant of Henry de Lacy, the documents in connection with which are to be found in the Coucher Book of Whalley Abbey. In 1338, the