For the rest, there remains but to remark upon this singular epitaph, dated 1685, in Walton-le-Dale church, before we have over the bridge into Preston:
“Here lyeth the body of a pure virgin, espoused to the man Xt Jesus, Mrs. Cordelia Hoghton, whose honorable descent you know. Know now her ascent.”
Crossing the Ribble and looking backwards, the view along the dale to where Walton stands is charming; but with the extraordinary expansion of the Lancashire cotton-spinning industry, and the building here of many new mills, it seems like to be an expiring charm of scenery. Already the mills have come across from the north to the south bank of the river.
Preston has always been known as “proud.” The old rhyme ran:
Proud Preston, Poor people, High church, Low steeple.
But the rhyme long since went out of date. One would hesitate to declare that Preston is in any sense poor, while certainly the reproach of its church having a low steeple has been removed these many years past; for the spire of St. Werburgh is a particularly fine and lofty one, rising to a height of 303 feet. If it be necessary to find an origin for that supposed pride of Proud Preston, I should look for it in the fact that the town has always been the capital of the Duchy of Lancaster, and not in the story of its ladies once considering themselves too superior to mate with the commercial men of the neighbourhood.
“Proud Preston” occupies a proud position, on lofty ground overlooking the Ribble and its extensive flats. Its name, “Priest’s Town,” derives from the site having been the property of a Benedictine priory once situated here, but before the time of the priory, it was named “Amounderness,” from the ridge, or ness, then, even more than now, a striking object across the levels. Penwortham, on the opposite side of the river, was in that early period the chief place, for there stood the great castle of the Earls of Chester, giving security to peaceable folk against the incursions of the Scots; but when the county of Lancaster was made a Duchy, and the defence centred at Lancaster, Penwortham decayed and Preston grew populous. The unwisdom of this move across the river to a site without strong defences was immediately made apparent, for no sooner had Preston grown into an important town than the Scots, under Robert Bruce, came and burnt nearly the whole of it.