Page:The History of the Church & Manor of Wigan part 2.djvu/277

and was elected fellow of Magdalen 7th July of the same year;^[1] but his father would not allow him to accept the fellowship.^[2]

In November of the same year he was admitted to the Inner Temple,^[3] and was called to the Bar 10th February, 1632.^[4] He was made Vice-chamberlain of Chester, 27th July, 1638;^[5] and steward of the Liberties of William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1639.^[6] His first official appointment in the law was probably that of King's counsel in the Duchy of Lancaster.^[7] In 1640 he was returned as member for Wigan in the parliament summoned to meet at Westminster on 13th April. He was made solicitor to the Prince of Wales by patent under the broad seal in May of the same year;^[8] and knighted by King Charles I.

On 29th August, 1642, he was expelled the House of Commons for deserting its services and assisting in the defence of Chester for the King against the Parliament;^[9] for which he was also struck out of the commission of the peace in October of the same year.'^[10] But when the King summoned the members of the two houses that were faithful to him to meet at Oxford in 1644, he took his seat in Christ-church Hall as the lawful representative of Wigan, and was one of the King's commissioners at the Uxbridge negotiations in January, 1645-6.^[11] As a reward for his services he was appointed attorney-general to the court of Wards and Licences by patent under the great seal at Oxford passed by Lord Littleton. When Oxford capitulated to Fairfax, Sir Orlando first retired to Morton Hall, his seat in Shropshire, and afterwards came privately to London, where he practised as a

1. Dic. Nat. Biogr.
2. Family Evidences.
3. Dic. Nat. Biogr.
4. Ibid.
5. Helsby's Ormerod's Cheshire, vol. i. p. 60. Sir Orlando Bridgeman's biographer in the Dic. Nat. Biogr. says that he was Chief Justice of Chester in 1638; but this is doubtless a mistake. Sir John Bridgeman, of Prinknash, knight, a very distant relation, died Chief Justice of Chester in 1638, and was succeeded in that office by Sir Thomas Milward (Helsby's Ormerod, vol. i. p. 65). His appointment to the Vice-chamberlainship will have been that to which Laud alludes in his letter of August, 1638, (see p. 401).
6. Family Evidences.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Parl. Hist., p. 611, quoted by Lord Campbell.
10. Civil War Tracts of Lancashire (Chetham Soc, vol. ii.) p. 60.
11. Dic. Nat. Biogr.