Wakefield, will long be remembered with respect and esteem. THOMAS PERCIVAL, M. D. F. R. S. and R. M. S. was a native of this town, where he was born 1740, and died at Manchester in 1804. He lost both his parents during his infancy; and the guardianship of his early years devolved on his uncle, a learned and eminent physician of this town, who also died before his nephew had attained his tenth year. After receiving the rudiments of his education at the free grammar school, he was enrolled the first student of Warrington academy in 1757, where he continued about three years, and then removed to Edinburgh, where he studied physic for three winters. The year 1763 was spent in London for the same purpose, when, by the friendship of Hugh Lord Willoughby, of Parham, he was unanimously elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He afterwards visited Paris, and other places on the Continent, and in 1765, took his degree of M. D. at Leyden, on which occasion he published his thesis, "on the Effects of Cold on the Human Body." In 1766 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Nathaniel Basnett, Esq. and in 1767 settled at Manchester, where he soon had a very extensive practice, and his merits ensured him proportionable success, which he pursued, with universal respect, till his death. He was well known in the literary world, by his "Father's Instructions to his Children; Moral and Literary Dissertations; and Medical Ethics," besides many excellent papers in the Memoirs of the Manchester Society, of which he was one of the principal founders and ornaments. The Society have testified their unanimous respect to his memory, by placing a marble tablet over the chair which he had so many years occupied as their president. His works, with "memoirs of his life and writings," have recently been published in four volumes. SALFORD-HUNDRED occupies the south-eastern corner of the county, and has Yorkshire for an eastern boundary; is divided from from Cheshire by the rivers Mersey and Tame, whilst the hundred of Blackburn abuts against its northern bounds; and the hundreds of Leyland, and West Derby, attach to the western extremity. This large district contains the great manufacturing towns of Manchester, Ashton, Rochdale, Bury, and Bolton *; is intersected by portions of the canals known by the names Rochdale, Bridgewater, Ashton, and Bolton and Bury; besides which the river Irwell is navigable westward to the Mersey. Though most of this district is rather flat, yet on the Yorkshire side, the hills rise to considerable altitude; and the whole courses of the Irk and Irwell rivers, north of Manchester, are distinguished by high and steep banks. At the various sources of the Medlock, the grounds are bold, and the hills are lofty. A great part of this hundred is occupied by the steril mosses of Ashton, White, and Chat; besides several uncultivated tracts of moor-land. Coalpits are numerous; and the plentiful supply of that useful fossil has tended materially to promote the establishment of trade. Every town abounds with warehouses, shops, and factories; and every village and hamlet presents an industrious and restless scene of human activity. At the period of dividing counties into hundreds, and those again into parishes, this part of Lancashire was but thinly peopled, and consequently separated into a few portions, or parochial divisions only; but as the prodigious increase of manufactures has attracted a vast augmentation of inhabitants, the original parishes have been repeatedly divided and subdivided. From this circumstance also, most of the old land proprietors have sold or let their estates, deserted their venerable and uncomfortable mansions, and sought rural retirement and picturesque beauty in other counties, where land was less valuable, and where their habitations would be less annoyed with the smothering smoke of furnaces, or the boisterous manners of the lower orders * Little Bolton, and Oldham, are also marked as Towns in the official reports of the population; in which work, the whole number of houses in this hundred is set down at 30,750, and persons, 177,682. orders of society. It is a lamentable fact, that where these associate in large numbers, as in great commercial and manufacturing towns, they acquire depravity and generate vice by social confederacy; and this is likely to continue a growing evil, unless a more general system of moral instruction be adopted; to promote which, honesty and probity should be publicly encouraged, and vicious pursuits unequivocally reprobated and punished. MANCHESTER. The name of this place implies the pre-existence of a Roman Station; and it has been satisfactorily proved, by the learned historian of ancient Manchester, that the Romans possessed an important military post on the banks of the rivers Irwell and Medlock, which streams unite their channels at this place. Though the present town offers but few attractions to the antiquary; and though such a traveller may find but little to gratify his curiosity, yet the elaborate dissertations, in 2 vols. quarto, by the Rev. Mr. Whitaker, entitled "The History of Manchester," are calculated. to deceive the stranger into a belief, that here would be an amples field for the researches, and abundance of food for the appetit of the professed virtuoso and confirmed antiquary. To obviate any erroneous inferences of this nature, it may be proper to ap prize the reader at once, that the present Manchester is an inmense manufacturing, mercantile, and trading town, consisting of a great number of streets, lanes, alleys, and courts, which are crowdedly filled with warehouses, factories, and shops. At the extremities of the town, however, as near London, Bristol, and Birmingham, are many comfortable and handsome houses, either standing alone, or congregated in rows, places, and pa rades. To furnish the reader with just ideas of the place, it will be necessary to advert to its ancient history; and endeavour, in a concise manner, to display its progressive augmentation, and present state. Respecting a British settlement here, previous to the conquest of of England by the Romans, it would be futile to record and publish conjectures; and it would be equally chimerical to endeavour to ascertain the original occupation of the place by those conquerers. Mr. Whitaker, however, observes, that Agricola established á post here, called Mancunium, "in the year of Christ 79." The same writer also asserts, that "a castle was built on the site of Castle-field; and the protection of a castle constantly gave rise to a town." He proceeds to state, that "the dimensions of Mancenion, the British name of the place, are still" (in 1771) “ visible. It filled the whole area of the present castle-field, except the low swampy part of it on the west, and was twelve acres, three roods, and ten perches in extent. Terminated by the windings of the Medlock on the south, south-east, and south-west, it was. bounded on the east by a fosse, on the west by the present very lofty bank, and on the north by a long and broad ditch." This description applies to the British fortress; for after the Romans possessed it, they abridged the limits of the castrum, and, according to the same writer, reduced it from an area of "thirteen acres of our statute measure, to about five acres and ten perches.” After describing many transactions, &c. which Mr. W. says must have taken place, he proceeds to state, that "the new erected fort, in castle-field, now became a stationary castrum of the Romans, and the Romans now settled a garrison within it. The new erected fort, in castle-field, still retained the name of the ancient fortress upon it, and Mancenion was only changed into MANCUNIUM." It will be tedious to follow our author through all the minute particularities of history, description, and critical disquisition, which he indulges in; and it may suffice to remark, that though all traces of a military station are obliterated, yet a few Roman antiquities have been found here. These serve to prove the identity of the station, and the names of the cohorts, &c. that were established in it. Besides some sepulchral urns and coins, here have been found altars and inscribed stones. One of these, with the following inscription, was discovered on removing the rubbish that obstructed "the Prætorian gateway of the Roman camp camp in castle field." It is described in the following terms, by the learned Dr. E. Holm, of Manchester, who has supplied the characters, here printed, in Italic capitals. CHOR. I. FRISIAVO N. Q. VI MVNI M. P. XXIIII. "Probably; Cohortis primæ Frisiavonum quæ viam munivit millium passuum viginti quatuor; which may refer to the construction of the military road between Mancunium and Condate; as the distance between these stations, fixed by Richard of Cirencester, in his tenth Iter, at twenty-three miles, measures, according to Mr. Whitaker, twenty-two English, which are nearly equivalent to twenty-three Roman miles and three quarters*. The relic before us is of importance, as it enables us to restore the proper appellation of the cohort that garrisoned Mancunium; concerning which antiquarians have been misled, by an ambiguous contraction in the inscription at Melandra castle, and probably in that transcribed for Camden, by Dr. Dee. It is farther valuable, as it may serve to vindicate the authority of Pliny, and the purity of his text, in regard to a subject on which they have been questioned, in a work of great erudition, published by an eminent scholar of the seventeenth century +. The Frisiabones, or adopting the reading of Harduin's MSS. Frisiavones are twice mentioned by the elder Pliny; first, as inhabitants of an island situated at the mouth of the Rhine, between the Maese and the Zuyder Zee; and secondly, as a nation of Belgic Gault. The former are supposed, by Harduin, to have been a body of emigrants from the latter. The name is likewise preserved in an inscription * History of Manchester, I. 102. |