more than eight or ten shillings of the money of those times, or equivalent to about £50 of our present currency.

Under the Norman system, the district of Oldham seems to have formed a portion of the vast honor of Lancaster, granted by the Conqueror, about 1076, to Roger de Pictaventis, or Roger de Puicton (maternal nephew of the Conqueror), who seems to have been paramount lord of Oldham and Crompton, and to have held them immediately of the crown, as appendages of the royal manor of Salford, which would appear to have been again rendered a demesne of the king. The first Norman baron of Lancaster was likewise paramount lord of Chadderton and Royton, and it is probable they were attached to the barony of Rochdale. Royton was subsequently detached from this connexion, and again rendered feudatory to Salford; and Chadderton was subjected at an equally early period to the honor of Clitheroe. These manorial jurisdictions have withstood the changes of seven or eight centuries without alteration, and they continue to our own times, for Oldham, Crompton, and Royton, are still fees of the court leet of the manor and hundred of Salford, and Chadderton owes suit and service to the court-baron of the honor of Clitheroe.

A considerable time elapsed before the country recovered from the injuries inflicted by the Conquest upon the cultivation of the land and the amount of the population.

It is not till the latter part of the thirteenth and the commencement of the fourteenth century, a period of two hundred years subsequent to the Conquest, that we meet with any records relative to the place.

The Testa de Neville, a survey of the lands of the crown of the age of Edward the Second, 1307-1327,

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