passed by this town, and the discovery of an urn, Roman coins, pottery, &c. found here, conspire to justify the opinion of Dr. Whitaker, that the Romans had some settlement at this place. Near the east end of the town is a piece of land called Saxifield, to which is " attached an avanessant tradition of some great engagement, and the death of some great chieftain in the turbulent and unrecorded æra of the heptarchy *." In an old charter of free-warren to the Townley family, the term of Saxifield-Dyke occurs.

Burnley, in its ecclesiastical character, is subordinate to Wha!ley; and the chapel here, with those at Colne and Clithero, appear to have existed at the time of Henry the First: but the oldest part of the present building does not indicate an earlier date than the time of Edward the Third. Some part was certainly erected in the reign of Henry the Eighth, as is clearly exemplified by an indenture printed in the History of Whalley, and dated the twenty-fourth of that king's reign. By this document, "Thomas Sellers and Nicholas Craven" undertake to " rebuild, within four years, the north and south hylings of Burnley church, with eighteen buttresses, and every buttress having a funnel upon the top, according to the fashion of the funnels upon the new chapel of our Lady of Whalley; and that the said hylings shall be battled,

"No part of the English history," says Dr. Whitaker, "probably was so defiled with bloodshed, none assuredly has been so indistinctly delivered to posterity as that of the heptarchy: contemporary historians were neither many, nor copious; and succeeding ones have treated with contempt transactions which they were unable to retrieve with exactness. The contests of the petty princes of the heptarchy, says Milton, with his accustomed boldness, are no more entitled to remembrance or recital, than the battles of crows and hawks in a summers day." Though the sentiment of this passage be truly judicious, yet the learned author forgets, or has failed to discriminate the fact, that the period of British history, and even that of the Anglo-Roman era, are equally, or even more "indistinct," obscure, and unauthentic, than that relating to the heptarchy. Indeed English literature has not been benefitted and enriched with any express historical work on either of the former subjects, whilst upon the latter the labours and genius of Turner, (in lis Anglo-Saxon history,) have been laudably and acutely exercised.

battled, after the form of a battling of the said chapel, having onę course of achelors more than the said chapel hath, for the sum of sixty pounds. Sir John Townley, and Sir Gilbert Heydock, vicar of Rochdale and daine of Blackburn, to determine whether they deserve a farther reward." "Instead of the north and south" haylings," however, as expressed in this contract, the north and middle aile were actually rebuilt, and the south aile remained in its original state, low and narrow; indeed a disgrace to the rest of the church, till the year 1789, when the population of the town having undergone a sudden and considerable increase, a faculty was granted to certain persons, empowering them to pull down, and re-edify the said aile, and erect a gallery over it. This was accordingly executed at an expence of more than 1000l. with little more than the addition of a gallery, to what in the time of Henry the Eighth, might have been performed, and actually had been contracted for, at the price of 301 *." At the east end of the north aile is a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary; now the property, and the burial place of the Townley family. This was founded as a chantry to Sir John Townley, Kut. in the fifteenth of Henry the Seventh. On the walls are several shields of arms cut in stone, with different empalements, in commemoration of several persons interred. Among these is a large mural monument, to the memory of Richard Townley, Esq. who died in 1706, and to whose memory a long Latin inscription bears honorable testimony. In this church there appears to have been four chantries, regularly endowed. The curacy is now valued at about 3001. + yearly.

Here is a Grammar-School, which is endowed and supported by several different benefactions; and in the twenty-second of Edward the First, Henry de Laci, Earl of Lincoln, obtained a

charter

* History of Whalley, p. 298.

In the second year of Edward the Sixth, the curate was allowed only 41. Ss. 11d. or "his wages yearly."

charter for a market every Tuesday, or Wednesday; at the same time he procured the privilege of a yearly fair to be held for three days. The market is now held on Monday, and here are also five fairs annually.

This place, like many of the Lancashire towns, has experienced a prodigious augmentation in its houses and population, within the last fifty years; and according to the returns printed for the House of Commons, in 1801, the township of Burnley contained 687 houses, and 3305 inhabitants. The cotton manufacture, in all its branches, is now fully and extensively established in this town. A few fulling mills for the woollen trade are still supported here: and on the two rivers immediately in the vicinity, are corn-mills, fulling-mills, a mill for grinding woods, &c. for the dyers, and several cotton factories. Among the mansions in the neighbourhood of Burnley, that of

TOWNLEY-HALL, a seat of John Towneley, Esq. is the most considerable. At an early period, probably in the reign of Stephen, or Henry the Second, the name of Henry de Tunlay occurs in an ancient deed, written in a semi-Saxon character: but this person, according to Dr. Whitaker, "had no relationship to the present family." Some ancestors of these resided here previous to 1181, and the name continued to be spelt as above, as lately as the time of Edward the Third. Since which era it has been written Thonlay, Tounelay, Tounly, Towneley, and Townley.

At a short distance south of the present mansion is a knoll, called the Castle-hill, on which it is presumed that the first dwelling-house was erected. The present is a large venerable structure, and its principal parts form three sides of a quadrangle. At the inner angles are two square embattled towers, and at each corner is a buttress, "formed for ornament and use." About a century back, the house occupied the four sides of a quadrangular court; and from the style of its architecture, combining with the general shape and extent, must then have assumed a grand collegiate-like appearance. The north-east side of this, now taken away, contained two turrets at the angles, a gateway, a chapel,

and