Such scenes of riot and disorder were fatal to the prosperity and municipal hopes of Liverpool; but there was no escape from their unwelcome patrons. Both the great houses fought for York; and in return Edward the Fourth granted to Stanley the borough of Liverpool and other estates formerly belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster; while Molyneux was made chief forester of West Derby, steward of West Derby and Salford, and constable of Liverpool castle. Richard the Third again gave to the Stanleys large grants in Lancashire, and confirmed the Molyneux people in their offices,[513] and Henry the Seventh favoured their claims. The lords were great and important people in those days, and the little town of no account. Its independence died away, and the troubles of the ferm revived in their old bad form. The question of the lease was never settled, but in any case it passed out of the hands of the corporation. From 1495 it was for many years granted to David ap Griffith, who when he became mayor in 1502 had it renewed to him. Henry the Eighth leased it in 1525 and 1529 to his widow and son-in-law for terms which were to expire in 1566. In 1537, however, it was let to Thomas Holcraft, who sublet it to Sir William Molyneux. The mayor and corporation under Edward the Sixth declared the authority of the Molyneux family to be illegal, and claimed under the old lease granted to Griffith. For many years they fought obstinately in the case, holding perhaps that the house of their old mayor more nearly represented the town and its interests than the house of Molyneux; and one of them was thrown into prison for his resistance under Mary.[514] The ferm was not finally granted to the corporation till 1672; and Liverpool was for a couple of centuries so sorely tried by the necessity of keeping well with the two great families that overawed it as well as with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,[515] whether in the collecting of its scanty taxes or the choosing of its burghers for Parliament, that the history of its civic developement long remained of no importance.[516]
THE towns on ecclesiastical estates form a distinct group, whose lot was materially different from boroughs on ancient demesne or on feudal lands. All lay property was subject only to laws and customs which had been ultimately determined by the necessities of social or political expediency, and which, dealing with secular possessions for secular purposes, were capable of being unmade as they had been made. But the towns which were reckoned among ecclesiastical estates lay under the special conditions that governed those estates, where religious and supernatural influences had been forced into the service of material wealth, and the attempt was made by spiritual authority to fix fluctuating political conditions into perpetual immutability. Prelates of the Church professed to rule with a double title, not only as feudal lords of the soil, but as guardians of the patrimony of S. Peter, holding property in trust for a great spiritual corporation, and exercising an authority maintained by formidable sanctions. If the watchwords of property are always impressive, among lay folk they are still open, under sufficiently strong pressure, to reasonable discussion; and it is admitted that temporal rights may be plausibly exchanged for others more expedient, or may be fairly bartered away as a means of buying a continued and secure existence. The Church, however, by a fruitful confusion of the terms ecclesiastical and religious, assumed to hold property by another tenure than any temporal owner; girt round about by tremendous safeguards to which the lay world could not aspire, and leaning on supernatural support for deliverance from all perils, it could the better refuse to discuss bargains suggested by mere political expediency.