pages 108-109

Manchester                 109

castreshire" (v. 78). Whatever the precise comparative meaning of "fairest and best-builded," there can be no doubt that in Leland's time, and for a long subsequent period, Manchester was rich in houses of the Elizabethan type, including many occupied by families of note. The greater number of these would be "magpie," or wood and plaster fronted, in black and white, the patterns, though simple, often very ingenious, as indicated in relics which have only lately disappeared, and in the old country halls of the same period still perfect, which we shall come to by and by. The style of the inferior kind is shown in an old tavern, the "Seven Stars," in Withy-grove.
At the commencement of the Civil Wars Manchester was important enough to be a scene of heavy contest. The sympathies of the town, as a whole, were with the Parliament; not in antagonism to royalty, but because of the suspicion that Charles secretly befriended Popery. It was the same belief which estranged Bolton - a place never in heart disloyal, so long as the ruler does his own part in faithfulness and honour. Standing in the Cathedral graveyard, it is hard to imagine that the original of the bridge now called the "Victoria" was once the scene of a deadly struggle, troops filling the graveyard itself.