Edward Baines was born in 1774 at Walton-le-Dale. He was educated at Hawkshead Grammar School (where Wordsworth was a contemporary), and then in the lower school of the grammar school in Preston. He then became a weaver, but at the age of sixteen he was apprenticed for seven years to a printer in Preston. In the fifth year of his apprenticeship, he terminated it and moved to Leeds, where he finished his apprenticeship with the printer of the Leeds Mercury, one of two Leeds weekly newspapers.
Edward Baines was later the editor and proprietor of the Leeds Mercury, politician, and the author of historical and geographic works of reference. On his death in 1848, the Leeds Intelligencer (a rival of the Mercury, and its political opponent for over forty years) described his as “one who has earned for himself an indisputable title to be numbered among the notable men of Leeds”.
The Leeds Mercury, by his efforts, became the leading provincial paper of its era in England.
Dame Jilly Cooper, DBE (born Jill Sallitt; 21 February 1937) the author is said to be a descendent of the family.
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The Historian of Lancashire
In the year 1772, the corporation renewed their prosecutions against “merchant strangers,” who had established themselves in the town of Preston, without possessing the qualification as freemen of the borough j and in the corporation books of the date of the 6th of April in that year, the following entry appears : —
” Received into stock from the subscribers to Baines’s prosecution towards paying Mr. Grimshaw’s Bill from Thomas Walshman £47. 7s. 8d.”
And on the credit, or opposite side of the Ledger —
*’ Rec** 27th April, 1 772, from the Mercers, Grocers, &c. Company, within the borough of Preston, the sum of £45, by the hands of Mr. Walshman and Mr. Derbyshire, the wardens, in full for my costs of the Prosecutions against Baines to March Assizes last. ” John Grimshaw.”
With the history of this prosecution, one of the last remaining vestiges of feudal policy, we have reason to be familiarly acquainted. The effect was to subject Mr. Baines to expenses amounting to several hundreds of pounds, and ultimately to oblige him to remove from Preston to Walton-le-Dale. A short time previously, Mr. Baines had married Jane, the daughter of Edward Chew, esq. a gentleman long engaged in the East India trade, maternally descended from the Rigbys of Middleton Hall ; and the author of this work, being the second son of that marriage, was born at Walton on the 5th of February, in the year 1774. Till he had attained almost to manhood, he resided in Preston; he then removed to Leeds in Yorkshire, where he has been long established, but with undiminished attachment to his native county ; inspired by this feeling, he seeks to add to any other honours that he may have attained, the proud distinction of ” The Historian of Lancashire.”
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From the History of the county palatine and duchy of Lancaster. The biographical department by W.R. Whatton
by Baines, Edward, 1774-1848
- Baines’ Role: Baines wrote the main body of the history — covering towns, parishes, manorial history, the county’s governance, and its overall development.
- Whatton’s Role: W.R. Whatton was brought in to write the biographical entries — short lives of significant figures from Lancashire’s history. His contributions were likely included as either an appendix or a dedicated section in one or more volumes or editions.
Read online and download from:
https://archive.org/details/historyofcounty01bain/page/360/mode/2up