fe|i4;;u.ic 
 
 WSix 
 
MEMORIALS OF OLD BIRMINGHAM. 
 
 FOUNDERS, FBEEHOLDEBS, AND INDWELLEES, 
 
 FROM THE THIRTEENTH TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 
 WITH PAETICULAES AS TO 
 
 %\t Earliest C^xtrtl^ af ^t %tkxm^^xmx 
 
 Built anti ^ntioixictr in ^uglantr, 
 
 FBOU OBIGINAL ANB UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS. 
 
 BY 
 
 J^^TOULMIN SMITH, 
 
 (OT Lincoln's inn, esqfire, baebistek-at-law, 
 
 FELLOW OF THE EOTAL SOCIETY OF NORTHEKN ANTIQUARIES (COPENHAGEN) 
 
 ■ Let them be well used ; for tliey are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time." 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
 With Illustrations and Facsimiles. 
 
 BIRMINGHAM: WALTER J. SACKETT, 11, BULL STREET. 
 LONDON: JOHN EUSSELL SMITH, 36, SOHO SQFAEE. 
 
 1864. 
 
15471 
 
 
 JOHN EDWAED TAYLOE, PEINTEE, 
 LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. 
 
/9 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Two of the best books in the English language, on subjects 
 of general interest, grew up out of notes upon obscure 
 villages. Selborne, whence arose White's charming " i\^rt- 
 tural History of Selhorne" lies in a corner of Hampshire: 
 AiviBROSDEN, whence arose Kennett's learned " Parochial 
 Antiquities,'' lies in Oxfordshire. The reason why these are 
 good books, is plain. Each of the authors, instead of deal- 
 ing in speculative generalities, took note of what was before 
 him, and followed up his observations on these actual things 
 of real life as far as he was able. There is a vagueness 
 about the consideration of general principles : but when 
 general principles are found applied to instances in life and 
 action, they remain no longer vague : they become under- 
 stood, as an actual part of the world's living existence, or of 
 a nation's growth, strength, and well-being. 
 
 It is from this point of view that the following pages have 
 been written. Birmingham is not a little village, but a large 
 town. It has grown to be a large town during the course of 
 many centuries, and through the influence of that tone of 
 mind which springs from the character of old English Insti- 
 tutions. AVhat is here put together, arising out of what has 
 been done in Birmingham, illustrates equally the action of 
 
iv PEEFACE. 
 
 old English Institutions throughout all England. Though 
 its immediate subject is local, therefore, its interest and ap- 
 plication are general. The facts here collected touching 
 transactions in Wyclifs time, add to the general interest of 
 the subject. 
 
 The same is true of the illustrations given of the growth of 
 English Surnames. Real men and women are here grouped, 
 instead of speculative theories on the origin of names. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that this work pretends to be a 
 History of Birmingham, even for the times it touches on. 
 In " Traditions of The Old Crown House " and in this work, 
 I have illustrated some important events in the early history 
 of the Town, not before examined. But a " History of Bir- 
 mingham" remains to be written. I have been requested to 
 undertake that task; and, if Health and Time permit, I shall, 
 in all likelihood, essay it. Renewing now my acknowledg- 
 ments for the assistance cordially given me by all (save one) 
 with whom I have had occasion to communicate while pre- 
 paring this work, I hope that, should I proceed with the 
 " History of Birmingham," I may invoke the. help, for that 
 work, which so many representatives of old families in the 
 town are able to give. 
 
 The Facsimiles at the end of this work are done in photo- 
 lithogra'phy^ and have been executed by Messrs. Day and 
 Son. 
 
TABLE OF COXTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Tlie Pedigree of Places, and of Persons 5 
 
 The " Mark " of Birmingham f> 
 
 The Spirit of English Institutions U 
 
 The Records of England 10 
 
 " Proper " names H 
 
 Sources of Sui-names ... . 12* 
 
 Changes in spelling, etc I'-l 
 
 " Birmingham," as a Surname 17" 
 
 Endowment of the Priory, a.d. 1285 19' 
 
 Ownership of Land, and its obligations 20 
 
 Meaning of " Mortmain " 22' 
 
 Licence in Mortmain 2.> 
 
 The "Writ " ad quod damnum " 21 
 
 The Prior's Pardon, a.d. 1310 2? 
 
 Birmingham benefactors, A.D. 1285-1310 28; 
 
 What is the King's Power 2'.> 
 
 The feudal system, and English freeholders 3()< 
 
 Classes of old Birmingham freeholders 3".^ 
 
 Founders of Chauntries, a d. 1330, 1347 35 
 
 The Deyseer of Birmingham 2* 
 
 Patronymics '^' 
 
 Foundation in the " Free Chapel," a.d. 1350 4.0 
 
 Piers Plowman and John Wyclif 4-3 
 
 Thcfirst Church of the Eeformation 47 
 
 Choice of the site 4" 
 
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGi: 
 
 The new Churcli begun, A.n. 1375 ,., 51 
 
 Appointing a Chaplain 52 
 
 Agreement between the men of Deritend and the Monks of Tykeford, 
 
 A.D. 1381 53 
 
 The Original Agreement, with Translation 51 
 
 E,obert o' the Grene 61 
 
 Licence in Mortmain for the endowment of the Chaplain of Deritend, 
 
 A.D. 1383 64 
 
 Uncertainties in names 69 
 
 The "Deer-gate-end " ^0 
 
 A new endowment / 3 
 
 Modern " Facilities " 73 
 
 Old free seats and modern pew rents 75 
 
 The Borough of Birmingham, and the Gild of the Holy Cross, a.d. 1392 ... 76 
 
 Affray of Beauchamp against Burdet, a.d. 1431 80 
 
 Illustrations from old Charters, a.d. 1401 to 1589 82 
 
 Lease from Edward Birmingham to John Prety, a.d. 1532 89 
 
 Fate of the " Free Chapel " 90 
 
 Musical Birmingham in a.d. 1552 91 
 
 Tenants and tenancies of the Lord of Birmingham, a.d. 1536-1545 92 
 
 Tenants and tenancies of the Gild of Deritend, a.d. 1547 95 
 
 Tenants and tenancies of the " Free Chapel," a.d. 1547 96 
 
 Tenants of the two Chauntries, a.d. 1547 97 
 
 Tenants and tenancies of the Gild of the Holy Cross, a.d. 1547 97 
 
 Old Streets and their indwellers 98 
 
 The Gild Hall, and its Officers , 100 
 
 Birmingham past, present, and future 101 
 
 Index of Names 103 
 
MEN AND NAMES 
 
 OP 
 
 OLD BIRMINGHAM. 
 
 The ancestry of a Place is a very different thing from the 
 ancestry of a Person. To parade the latter before the 
 world in long pedigrees and particulars, is but vanity: to 
 unravel the former, or make it better understood, is a work 
 of general usefulness. The number of truly great men 
 that have lived in the world, is not very large ; but the 
 growth and greatness of nations are marked in, and be- 
 come best understood by tracing, the growth of the separate 
 groups of men who have lived and flourished there from 
 time to time. 
 
 The quaintly-gabled houses and narrow streets that cluster 
 round the Cathedral of an old but now unenterprising City, 
 have a story of their own to tell ; and the rambling rows of 
 dwellings that, near the crumbling walls of what was once a 
 Strong-hold, formed, not long ago, the " bm-gage tenures " of 
 a decaying Borough, have also their own story to tell. Each 
 story will be interesting and instructive, though the one will 
 be very different from the other. But there are towns that 
 have neither Cathedral nor Strong-hold, and have never had 
 
 B 
 
6 BIKMINGHAM AN ANCIENT "MARK. 
 
 either of these, but which yet have a story to tell that is not 
 less interestinsc and not less instructive than either of the 
 others. There are towns whose beginnings are hoary with 
 age ; which have not been lifted, by factitious accident, into 
 a sudden greatness that has remained stationary, or has de- 
 cayed away ; but which have gone on, from solid beginnings, 
 steadily growing and prospering, and are now among the 
 best-known centres of intelligence, industry, and indepen- 
 dence, in the country ; and therefore are the best safeguards 
 to the State. 
 
 Such a town is Birmingham. The history of its great an- 
 tiquity, and of the people who founded it, is told in its very 
 name.* It may not have sent forth any man of such indi- 
 vidual greatness that his name dazzles the inquirer, and is 
 
 * " 'Ham' is the most sacred, the most intimately felt, of all the words by which 
 the dwellings of men are distinguished. It is of such antiquity as to have become 
 anomalous in some of its grammatical relations ; and it is the word peculiarly 
 devoted in the heathen mythology of the North to denote the earth inhabited 
 by men." {'Codex diplomaticus JBvi Saxonici,' tom. iii.. Preface, p. xxviii.) 
 " This word [ham], as well as the feeling of which it is the symbol, was brought 
 across the ocean by the [North] Teutonic colonists, and it is the most precious of 
 all the gifts for which we thank them." (Taylor's ' Words and Places,' p. 131.) 
 '' The people who believe in Heroes, originally gods and always god-born, pre- 
 serve a remembrance of their ancient deities in the gentile names by which them- 
 selves are distinguished, long after the rites they once paid to their divinities 
 have fallen into disuse ; and it is this record of beings once hallowed, and a cult 
 once offered, which they have bequeathed to us in many of the now unintelligible 
 names of the Marks :" — " great family unions, comprising households of various 
 degrees of wealth, rank, and authority : some, in direct descent from the com- 
 mon ancestors, or from the hero of the particular tribe ; others, more distantly 
 connected, through the natural result of increasing population, which multiplies 
 indeed the members of the family, but removes them at every step further from 
 the original stock ; some, admitted into communion by marriage, others by 
 adoption, others even by emancipation : but all recognizing a brotherhood, a 
 kinsmanship or sibsceaft ; all standing together as one unit in respect of other 
 similar communities ; all governed by the same judges, and led by the same cap- 
 tains ; all sharing in the same religious rites ; and all known to themselves 
 and to their neighbours by one general name." " The following patronymical 
 names I believe to be those of ancient Marks, . . . \_among others] Beor- 
 mingas : — Birmingham, Wariv." (Kemble's ' Saxons in England,' Yo\. I. pp. 56, 
 61, 449, 457.) 
 
THE PRESENT, BORN OF THE PAST. / 
 
 likely to divert him from looking at the story of the place 
 into wandering among the pedigrees of a person. But the 
 Place has a pedigree which it concerns all who are now part 
 of it to know. Whatever Birmingham man pretends to de- 
 spise this pedigree, is little likely to do any honour to the 
 town. 
 
 The science of to-day is founded on the science of yester- 
 day, and that of yesterday rests on earlier steps, each trodden 
 in its day. And the science of to-day cannot be truly under- 
 stood except by tracing those earlier steps. Only the char- 
 latan pretends to a sudden revelation of new science. And 
 it is the same with human society, in the complex forms of 
 it that come before the eye in such an abode of activity as 
 Birmingham. Peoples and towns have grown to what they 
 are from what they have heen : they owe to the temper and 
 spirit and energy, or the lack of these, moving the indwellers 
 who have gone before them, the opportunity, or the lack of 
 opportunity, that there now is, to show the temper and spirit 
 and energy that live within themselves. There has been 
 a past ; there has been a growth ; there is yet more growth, 
 or else decay, to come. What manner of men they were 
 who lived in that past, what their habits were, and what 
 were the institutions that they grew up among and took 
 their part in, it concerns all to know who would hope that 
 the " to come " shall be one of " growth " and not one of 
 " decay." He who would speak shame-facedly of his own 
 town, or would seek to disavow what he and his fathers have 
 owed to it, as a Place having a Pedigree, shows the absence of 
 that moral sense and that tone of mind from which alone 
 Patriotism springs. 
 
 The use of antiquarian studies is, to make the past live 
 again before the eye, and thus to re-animate the links of 
 human life. The mere collecting of scraps and cataloguing 
 of curiosities, without such an aim, is but time wasted in 
 
 B 2 
 
8 NAMES AND PLACES. 
 
 the heaping up of dust and rubbish. What 1 now propose 
 is, to put together a few links in the chain of the Pedigree 
 of Birmino-ham. I take links that have a natural connection 
 with one another, and which throw light upon what, while 
 it is of general interest to all the town, will be found to have 
 also a special personal interest to many. 
 
 Men whose names we know not, can have but a hazy ex- 
 istence in the most vivid imagination. There were brave 
 men before Agamemnon ; but we know Agamemnon, while 
 the others have, for us, no existence. I propose to re-people 
 the Birmingham of the olden time ; and to make some of the 
 men and women who lived in it known to the men and women 
 of to-day, very many of whom are the lineal offspring of 
 those old worthies whom I shall now recall. For I am not 
 about to fill Birmingham with imaginary people. The men 
 and the names that I shall bring up were, every one of them, 
 once alive in and a part of Birmingham. They are, all of 
 them, among those recorded either in the ancient documents 
 that have come to me from my own forefathers, Birmingham 
 men, or in what I have myself found while searching among 
 the national Records of England. 
 
 There is an intimate connection between Men and their 
 Names, in reference to the Places where the same Names are, 
 through generation after generation, often found; while the 
 circumstances under which the Names have come to be re- 
 corded, and the changes which those Names have often 
 undergone, bring before us a picture of the manners and in- 
 stitutions that prevailed in the days when, from time to time, 
 those Men lived and bore those Names. 
 
 The means of knowing the men and the names that 
 flourished in past times, are to be found much more fully in 
 England than in any other country ; and the reason why this 
 is so, is itself very significant. It arises out of the essential 
 characteristics of true English Institutions. 
 
" RESPECTABLE " MEN. 9 
 
 The universal spirit and the living breath of all the Insti- 
 tutions known and cherished from the earliest times by the 
 Common Law of England, before empirical Acts of Parlia- 
 ment became the ever-changing fashion, were the principles, 
 that every man is an item in the State ; finds his place in it 
 as a member of the community wherein he dwells; and has 
 positive duties to fulfil towards it, in that community, as his 
 contribution to that common good of which, as an item in the 
 State, he enjoys the benefits. The practical basis on which 
 those active Institutions rested was, that the men of a neigh- 
 bourhood must know their own business better than any one 
 else can know it ; and that they will themselves more honestly 
 try to do, and will assuredly in the end more successfully do, 
 their own business, than any one else can do it. But the con- 
 dition, rightly and rigorously enforced so long as constitutional 
 principles were duly respected, was, that the business must he 
 done : it must not be shirked. Selfishness and slothfulness 
 had no prerogatives allowed them, and no worshipful place 
 was found for them, under such Institutions. The display of 
 these characteristics had to wait for the modern costly devices 
 of governing by centralized Bureaus, Commissioners, and In- 
 spectors, before it could get even covered with a conventional 
 varnish of " respectability." While those Institutions were 
 active, every man lived with the habit, as a regular and es- 
 sential part of his life, of taking his share in the business of 
 his neighbourhood. He grew up with a daily growing know^- 
 ledge of his duties and responsibilities ; and passed through 
 life in the practice of these as a part of his business which he 
 neither sought to shirk, nor would it have been "respectable" 
 for him to shirk. It was not necessary, then, for any Jacob to 
 write "Letters to respectable men ;"* for true respectability 
 
 * "Puncli" is a periodical that has been able to last through many years in 
 London, because it struck the vein, not of low joking, but of genuine humour. 
 Several imitations of " Punch " have been started, but none of them have ap- 
 
10 RECORDS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 r^—laiC'Worthiness, to use the good old word— can only consist 
 in the fulfilment, by every man, of his duties to his neighbour, 
 his neighbourhood, and his country. The education of men 
 was thus true and constant, and not merely superficial and 
 delusive. They learned what they themselves would have to 
 do, as real items in the State and responsible members of 
 their own neighbourhood, from the habitual practice which 
 was seen before their eyes throughout their childhood and 
 youth and till their own time came. 
 
 Happily, it was an incident to this thoroughly practical 
 system of true education, life, and citizenship, that not only 
 was the business of each neighbourhood done, and well done, 
 but that, in every place where it was done, what was done 
 was carefully recorded. In many cases, the names of those 
 who were the doers Avere also always recorded. The enor- 
 mous mass of these Records that have been kept safely down 
 to our own day, cannot be conceived of by those who have paid 
 no attention to the subject. It was truly said, more than 
 two hundred years ago, that these Records are " the richest 
 Pearls, Treasures, and Jewels of the Nation." 
 . These Records reach from long before the time of Domes- 
 day Book ; Domesday Book is one, and a highly interesting 
 one, among them ; but their variety is very great, and their 
 
 proached their original. The " Town Crier" of Birmingham is not an imitation 
 of " Punch ; " and it has thoroughly deserved the success which it has achieved. 
 It often displays a true humour and an ability surpassing even those of " Punch" 
 in its best days. I have no knowledge whatever who may be the writer of a series 
 of Papers that have appeared in the " Town Crier," under the title of " Jacob's 
 Letters to ' respectable men ';" but those papers are equally excellent in purpose and 
 in tone. Under the growing and most grave evil in England, of indifference to 
 the duties that every man owes to his neighbourhood, and so to the State, these 
 letters can hardly fail to arrest the attention of those Birmingham men and fa- 
 thers whose indifference is the result, rather of that spread and increase of uncon- 
 scious ignorance which have followed upon the mischievous course of much modern 
 legislation, than of the criminal omission, quite equal in guilt to criminal commis- 
 sion, which is the quality and only true description of any man's conscious and 
 deliberate indifference to public duties. 
 
"proper" names. 11 
 
 special subjects are innumerable. A few have been printed; 
 an incomparably greater mass remains in manuscript. A 
 very large and invaluable quantity of them is collected in 
 the Public Eecord Office ; but great quantities still remain 
 in other Public and also in many Private collections. The 
 Rolls of Shires, of Hundreds, of Cities and Boroughs, of 
 Courts of Law, of Manor Courts, of Parishes, of Taxation, 
 of Inquiries made on special occasions : — all these, and many 
 others that it would be tedious to enumerate, tell us the men 
 and the names that have lived in England, and have kept the 
 inheritance safe for us, through many centuries. In addition 
 to these, a very rich mass of Records, giving the like infor- 
 mation in other ways, lies hidden in the older class of Deeds 
 or " Charters ; " which, being done in the sight of the open 
 and regular assembly of those who had come together to 
 fulfil their duties to their neighbourhood, have always several 
 names recorded at the foot of the Deed or Charter itself, or 
 of the indorsed record of the actual delivery of the property, 
 as witnesses to the transaction. This class of Records re- 
 mains chiefly in private hands. 
 
 In order that the Men of whom I am about to speak may 
 not be hidden, instead of being identified, by the Names re- 
 corded, it is necessary to say a few words as to hoAv English 
 surnames have arisen, and how they may be traced. 
 
 The fore -name, christened, or " christian " name, is the 
 " proper " name of a man or woman. Surnames are of 
 much later introduction; and, being liable to be changed 
 at will, are of inferior authenticity. " It is requisite that 
 special heed be taken to the name of baptism ; for that a 
 man cannot have two names of baptism, as he may have 
 divers surnames. ... A man may have divers names [?'. e. 
 surnames] at divers times, but not divers Christian names."* 
 
 * Coke upon Littleton, 3 («). See also Lord Coke's Fourtli Institute, p. 5. 
 A very ridiculous attempt was made in 18G2, by a certain Lord Lieutenant of a 
 
12 SOURCES OF SURNAMES. 
 
 Surnames, adopted at first merely for the sake of further 
 distinguishing individual men, only become Family names 
 when they have been used as " names of continuance " in the 
 same family through more than one generation. 
 
 Surnames became originally added on to men's " proper " 
 names, — 
 
 (1) From the place whence they came, or where they 
 lived : and of this class there are two distinct kinds ; the one 
 {a) being the names of towns or other territorial known 
 places ; the other (b) being names taken from the particular 
 spot or thing in or near to which the person dwelt, — as a 
 homestead, a wood, a river, a well, a church, a moor, a green, 
 a tree, etc. etc. 
 
 (2) From an office held, or trade or occupation engaged in. 
 
 (3) From the name of the father, either whole or short- 
 ened, and with some addition or change marking the sur- 
 name as a patronymic. This sort of surname is much more 
 numerous than might, at first sight, be suspected.* 
 
 County, to prevent a gentleman from using his right to change his surname. 
 Of course the attempt failed. The subject was treated of by me, with many 
 illustrations, in the ' Parliamentary JRememhrancer,' vol. vi. pp. 48-50. 
 
 * So many names, not commonly suspected to have such an origin, spring from 
 this source, that it will be instructive to quote the following from Verstegan's 
 " Restitution of decayed intelligence " (1634, p. 307), though the list thus given 
 is by no means complete. 
 " Of the proper name of Alexander, commeth the sirnames of Saunders, and 
 
 Saunderson, 
 Of Andrew, commeth Andrews, and Anderson. 
 Of Bartholomeiv, commeth Bat, Bats, and Batson. 
 Of Christopher, commeth Kit, Kits, and Kitson. 
 Of David, commeth Davis, Davison, Dawes, and Datvson. 
 Of Edmund, commeth Edmmis, and Edmunson. 
 Of Gilbert, commeth Gibson and Gibbons. 
 
 Of Senry, commeth BLarris, BLarison, and as it seemeth Hawlcins. 
 Of John, covcyme^ Johnson, JacJcson, and Jenlcinson. 
 Of Laurence, commeth Larhin, and Lauson. 
 Of Nicholas, commeth Nicols, Nicolson, and Meson. 
 Of Peter, commeth Piers, Pierson, Peterson, PerMns, and PerJcinson. 
 Of Richard, commeth Bichardson, Dicks, Dicson, Dichins, and Dickinson. 
 
NAMES AND " ADDITIONS." 13 
 
 (4) From some personal characteristic, either of body, 
 mind, or habits. 
 
 (5) From a mere whimsical nickname, the humour of 
 which made it become attached to the man and his family. 
 
 Instances of all these sorts of surnames will be found 
 among the men and names with which I shall re-people old 
 Birmingham. 
 
 In describing men in formal writings, now, it is usual to 
 put after the name what is called the "addition"; — that is, 
 a statement of the place of dwelling, together with profession, 
 trade, or position in life. It will have been seen that sur- 
 names themselves were originally, in most cases, nothing else 
 than such " additions;" and we shall be able to follow many 
 surnames from the time when they thus began, down to 
 the time when, the surnames having become fixed in fami- 
 lies, a new "addition," in the modern sense, began to be 
 used. 
 
 Some people imagine that the insertion of the little par- 
 ticle " de " in a name is rather a fine thing, and sounds aris- 
 tocratic. There cannot be a greater mistake. In point of 
 fact, such an insertion, if it had now any meaning, would 
 show that the family is of such mushroom origin that it has 
 not yet even acquired any true surname. The " de " is merely 
 the Latin for " of," and was, naturally enough, often used in 
 old Latin documents, instead of the English word, in order to 
 translate the descriptive addition which had not yet become 
 a true surname. In many cases, however, the English par- 
 
 Of Robert, commetli Roberts, Robins, Robinson, ^oJA'iMs, otherwise written Hop- 
 Tcins, and Hobson. 
 
 Of Roger, commeth Hodges, Hodgeson, Hodgeskins, and HodgeJcinson. 
 
 Of Simon, commeth Simmes, Simpson, SimMns, and Simcocks. 
 
 Of TJiomas, commeth Tomson, Tomlcins, and TomJcinson. 
 
 Of William, commeth Williams, Williamson, Wilson, Wilkes, Wilkins, Wilkin- 
 son, Wilcocks, and Bilson. 
 
 Of Walter, commeth Wats, Watson, Watkins, and Watkinson, and hke it is 
 that hereof also commeth Atkins and Atkinson." 
 
14 DESCRIPTIVE PARTICLES. 
 
 tide had become in such common use that a translation of it 
 into Latin was not thought of; and sometimes we €nd that 
 a man of marked character would not allow his good English 
 name to be thus distorted into Latin. 
 
 Intelhgent readers would be rather astonished to find the 
 mere translated form " de " substituted for " of " by modern 
 writers mentioning such names as Florence of Worcester, 
 William of Malmesbury, Gervase of Tilbury, Geoffry of Mon- 
 mouth. And the boldest amender of the text of Shakspeare 
 would pause before putting " de," in place of the English 
 word, in the mouth of Sir AVilliam Lucy when he asks — 
 
 " Where is tlie great Alcides of the field, 
 VaHant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury ? 
 Created, for his rare success of arms, 
 Great Earl of Washford, Waterford, and Valence, 
 Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield, 
 Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton, 
 Lord Cromwell of Wingfieid, Lord Furnival of Sheffield, 
 The thrice victorious Lord of Falconbridge ? "* 
 
 The truth is, that the modern use of " de," in any English 
 surname, is a piece of very ridiculous and unmeaning affec- 
 tation, and betokens only ignorance. No name can have 
 become a true family surname till the mere descriptive 
 particle, whether English or translated into Latin, has been 
 dropped. The particle marks it as a, personal surname. 
 
 It is necessary to bear in mind the changes of shape, as 
 well as those of spelling, that names have often undergone, 
 while passing from a mere means of descriptive distinguish- 
 ment into family surnames. These changes have been very 
 Ccipricious, and have been going on through all times, even 
 up till our own day. 
 
 For example, there have been two families well known in 
 Birmingham and its neighbourhood in modern times, the 
 one called "Holte," the other "Attwood." Both names 
 
 * Henry VI., Part I., Act 4, Scene 7. 
 
CHANGES OF SHAPE AND SPELLING. 15 
 
 sprang from local residence ; the former being descriptive of 
 a man who lived near a small wood (and we have also the 
 equivalent names " Littlewood " and " Smallwood"), and who 
 was therefore called " atte holte ;" the latter being descrip- 
 tive of a man who lived near a larger wood, and who was 
 therefore called " atte wood.'' In the one case, the particle 
 was by-and-by dropped, and the family surname became 
 " Holte ;" in the other case, the particle was run into one 
 with the latter word of the description, and the family sur- 
 name became " Attwood." 
 
 There was, not long ago, a name of old standing in Bir- 
 mingham, as " Rustin '" or " Ruston."* In the fourteenth 
 year of King Henry the Sixth (a.d. 1436), an appeal of 
 murder was brought, at Coventry, by Thomas Smyth, as bro- 
 ther and heir of Richard Smyth, against Richard Ruston and 
 another man. Ruston tried to get off, by pleading that his 
 name was Buxton^ and not Ruston ; to which Thomas Smyth 
 replied, that he was as well known by the name of Ruston as 
 by that of Ruxton. 
 
 No name ought to be better known or more respected in 
 England than -that of the great Lawyer and Patriot, Sir Ed- 
 ward Coke, as the name is always now spelled (and who 
 is generally called " Lord Coke"). Yet his name was com- 
 monly spelled by his contemporaries "Cook," and it appears 
 so spelled in Rushworth.f On the other hand, the old War- 
 
 * See " Traditions of The Old Crown House," p. 26. 
 
 t See, for example, the very memorable debate on the Petition of Hight, record- 
 ed in Eushworth, I. p. 568 ; in which the brave old man Coke, who had himself 
 been Speaker of the House of Commons, Lord Chief Justice of England, and 
 Lord of the Treasury, besides being incomparably the greatest Lawyer that Eng- 
 land ever produced, gave utterance, in words of dignity and firmness never sur- 
 passed, and it may be safely said never equalled, within the walls of Parliament, 
 to the noble declaration that, — " Sovereign Powee is no Parliamentary word. 
 In my opinion it weakens Magna Charta and all our Statutes: for they are ab- 
 solute, without any saving of Sovereign Power ; and, shall we now add it, we shall 
 weaken the foundation of Law, and then the building must needs fall. Take we 
 heed what we yield unto. Magna Charta is such a fellow that he will have no 
 
16 FULLER ON NAME-CHANGES. 
 
 wickshire name of "Broke," though still lingering in that 
 shape in one or two rare instances, has settled down into 
 " Brooke."* 
 
 But much greater changes than these have taken place, 
 both in the whole shape of some surnames, and in the spell- 
 ing of what is meant to stand for the same name. This 
 cannot be better illustrated than by quoting the words of old 
 Fuller:!— 
 
 " It is necessary to observe^ that Sirnames of families have been 
 frequently altered^ some famiKes deposing their old, and assuming 
 neic names_, on several occasions ; But chiefly for, 
 
 " 1. Concealment in time of Civil Wars. A name is a kind of face 
 whereby one is known; wherefore taking a false name is aVizard where- 
 by men disguise themselves ; and that lawfully enough, when not frau- 
 dulently done to deceive others, but discreetly in danger, to secure 
 themselves. Thus, during the contest ^twixt York and Lancaster, 
 Carington of Warwickshire took the name of Smith ; La Blunt the 
 name of Gro'ke in Buckinghamshire ; with many others. 
 
 " 2 . For advancement when adopted into an estate ; as Newport the 
 name of Hatton in Northamptonshire ; Throckmorton the name of 
 Carew at Beddington in Surrey ; as, long before, Westcoat the name 
 of Littleton in Staffordshire. 
 
 " Besides, the same sirname, continued, hath been variously altered 
 in writing. First, because time teacheth new orthography, altering 
 spelling as well as speaking. Secondly, the best Gentlemen anciently 
 were not the best Scholars, and (minding matters of more moment) 
 were somewhat too incurious in their names. Besides, writers in- 
 grossing Deeds, were not over-critical in spelling of names, knowing 
 well, where the person appeared the same, the simplicity of that age 
 would not fall out about misnomer. 
 
 "Lastly, ancient families have been often removed into several Coun- 
 ties, where several writings follow the several pronunciations. . . . 
 
 Sovereign. If we grant this, by implication we give a Sovereign Power above 
 all these Laws. We must not admit of it ; and to qualify it is impossible. Let 
 us hold our privileges according to the Laio." This was spoken in the House of 
 Commons on 17th May, 1628. See, further on, the Note f to p. 29. 
 
 * See " Traditions of The Old Crown House," p. 43. 
 
 t " Worthies," p. 51 (ed. 1662). 
 
" BIRMINGHAM " AS A SURNAME. 1 7 
 
 '^ Hence it is that the same name hath been so often disguised^ unto 
 the staggering of many, who have mistook them for different. . . . 
 The name of Roper in Darbyshire, changed from Musard to Ruhra- 
 spatJui, Rospcar, Rouspcc, Rooijer, Roper. . . . However such diver- 
 sity appeareth in the eye of others, I dare profess that I am dehghted 
 with the prospect thereof." 
 
 Other changes in names took place through the habit, so 
 common some centuries ago, of writing with contracted marks 
 in place of syllables. The places of the letters, too, have 
 often got transposed ; just as has been done in such familiar 
 instances of words in common use as "bird," instead of 
 " brid ; " " ask," instead of " acs." 
 
 The first men and names that will naturally be glanced at 
 in connection with Birmingham, are those of the family that 
 was, for many centuries, identified with the place, as resident 
 manorial Lords of the Borough of Birmingham and Deritend. 
 And the history of the surname of this family, itself sup- 
 plies us with several interesting lessons as to the identifi- 
 cation of surnames, and gives strong caution against coming 
 too hastily to conclusions, even from actual and undoubted 
 Records. 
 
 It would, at first sight, be naturally concluded that a name 
 recorded with prominence as " William " or " Walter " de 
 Birmingham^ in an old Latin record, certainly treats of a 
 member of this family. But the conclusion would be over- 
 hasty. Li the "Patent Roll" of 6 Edward IL (a.d. 1313), 
 there is a statement of facts as to an outrage done " at [apud] 
 Birmingham," against "Walter of [de] Birmingham." No 
 County is named, and it would seem beyond doubt that the 
 place meant is Birmingham in Warwickshire. Should it 
 happen, however, to the industrious inquirer to turn over 
 the " Fine Roll " of two years earlier, he will, if he is 
 careful enough, alight upon the record of a grant to " Walter 
 
18 "little BIRMINGHAM." 
 
 of Birmingham " of the Hmidreds of North and South Er- 
 pyngham in the County of Norfolk. And if, his attention 
 thus roused, he painfully prosecutes his search, he will find, in 
 certain other Eolls, called " Coram rege E-oUs," a complete 
 record of the outrage above named, and will learn that it was 
 committed at " Little Birimngham " [" apud parvam Bir- 
 mingham, ad manerium domini Walteri de Birmingham"], 
 in the County of Norfolk. 
 
 On the other hand, the name " de Birmingham " may be 
 found given to a man in the old Latin Records, and the 
 place meant may be Birmingham in Warwickshire, and yet 
 the person have been no sort of relation to the family of the 
 manorial Lords. Thus, I have found a record of a pardon 
 granted, on the 10th March, 1327, to " Roger the barber of 
 Birmingham " [_Rogero le harher de Birm?/nghani], as one 
 among other pardons granted after the political disturbances 
 of that time. 
 
 Again, no one would dream that the name " Peter Dapifer " 
 disguises a distinguished member of the family of the Bir- 
 mingham manorial Lords. Yet such is the case. In Ed- 
 ward I.'s time, William of Bh-mingham, then manorial Lord, 
 in a very important question then raised as to his rights 
 within the Manor, himself described an ancestor of his by 
 this name of " Peter Dapifer ; " the surname thus given being 
 merely descriptive of an office held by Peter of Birmingham, 
 who flourished in the twelfth century. 
 
 The same family illustrates the early use, and the gradual 
 dropping, of the merely descriptive particle "of" (" de " in 
 the Latin Records), and the adoption of the j^lace of abode 
 as a true " surname of continuance." To test the estimation 
 in which the family that made Birmingham its chief seat 
 was held, I have searched the " Patent Rolls " for the earliest 
 Commissions that were ever made out in England, after the 
 time when two fresh " Conservators of the Peace " had been 
 
FOUNDERS, IN A.D. 1285. 19 
 
 added, by Act of Parliament, to the ancient Officers wlio ful- 
 filled the duties of Conservators of the Peace. I find that 
 tlie first Commission thus issued was dated 8th March, 1327 ; 
 and in that Commission the only two Conservators named 
 for the County of Warwick are " William of Birmingham " 
 and ''John Murdak." This very plainly shoAvs the position 
 then held by this family in the County. A few years later, 
 ■when a fresh Act of Parliament had increased the number 
 of these Conservators (then first called " Justices of Peace ") 
 to five, at the outside, of the " most worthy," I find, again, 
 that, in the first Commission issued under the new Act, and 
 dated 20th March, 1361, among the five names for WarAvick- 
 shire, one is '• Fulco of Birmingham." Twenty-one years 
 later I find, in a Commission appointing the Justices of Peace 
 for the County of AVarwick, dated 20th December, 1382, the 
 two names " Thomas Birmingham " and " John Birmingham." 
 So that, while the position of the family was thus plainly 
 maintained in the County, the descriptive particle " of " 
 (" de " in the Latin) was now at length dropped, and " Bir- 
 mingham " became, henceforth, the true family surname. 
 
 By what strange chance it befell that the surname of some 
 brandies of the "Birmingham" family became distorted, 
 through a process like Avhat is described by Fuller, into 
 " Brindejone," 1 have elsewhere shoAvn.* 
 
 In 1285, three persons gave lands for the endoAvment of 
 the Hospital of St. Thomas [the Apostle] in Birmingham. 
 These Averc, Tho.aias of Maidenhacche, Avho gave ten acres 
 of brushwood in Aston ; William of Bik.aiinghaim, Avho also 
 gave ten acres of brush Avood in Aston ; and Ranulfii of 
 HuGBY, Avho gave three acres of land in Saltley. These facts 
 are learned from a document that is found on the Patent 
 Poll of the 14 til year of Edward the First. It will be seen 
 that the surnames of all these three men are merely descrip- 
 
 * Sec " Traditions of The Old Crown House," ])p. 5)^, 51. 
 
20 OWNERSHIP OF LAND, 
 
 tive ; the first of them, being taken from a homestead ; the last 
 two being taken from the well-known Warwickshire to-wns. 
 
 The record thus remaining on this Patent Roll, is the last 
 of a set of three documents that once existed, of which the 
 two earlier ones have been lost. Nor is the loss surprising, 
 for they were both written on small pieces of parchment, of 
 which the biggest was not larger than one of these pages. 
 There was a third one, also separate, which had the great 
 seal of England attached to it ; and it is of this third one that 
 the document above quoted from the Patent Roll is a copy^ 
 preserved there as a permanent record of a matter that con- 
 cerned the State. 
 
 In many cases, the first two in similar sets of triple records 
 remain still in existence. Instances of this will presently 
 be given. And in order that these, as well as the document 
 which will be next quoted, may be understood, it will be 
 well to explain, at once, the origin and meaning of such triple 
 records. They give striking illustrations of the strength 
 and working of those Institutions of England the character 
 of which has already been stated. 
 
 The Common Law of England attached certain conditions 
 as inseparable from the holding of Land. Such a thing as 
 irresponsible ownership is absolutely unknown to the Common 
 Law of England. Not only this : — it is entirely repugnant 
 to the whole spirit of that Law. Those who sometimes talk 
 of the " burdens on land " show, by the use of such a phrase, 
 a strange want of knowledge of the history of English Insti- 
 tutions and of English Law. Those Institutions and that 
 Law, before modern empirical legislation began, never re- 
 cognized a " right " or a " property " without the accompani- 
 ment of a corresponding responsibility and obligation. To all 
 landed property was inseparably attached what was called, 
 from the importance to the whole State of the matters in- 
 cluded within it, the trinoda necessitas , a triple obligation 
 
AND ITS OBLIGATIONS. 21 
 
 without which our fathers were unable to conceive of the 
 lightness of any pretence to the possession of land. This 
 triple obligation was, Military Service, works for the Defence 
 of the realm, and the maintenance of Highways and Bridges. 
 But, besides these, which concern the State as a whole, other 
 obligations and services were attached to the possession of 
 land, which were of first-rate importance towards the work- 
 ing of the Institutions of the country. Among these were, 
 the obligation to attend the Courts or assemblies where the 
 business of the neighbourhood was done, and to take part in 
 the business done there ; to serve on juries ; to make the pay- 
 ments that became due at certain times and in certain events ; 
 and other things, some of which will be afterwards named. 
 
 The land itself was the security that all these obligations 
 and services should be faithfully discharged. Fines, and 
 sometimes even forfeiture, followed in case of nonfulfilment. 
 The original possessor of a large estate often granted part of 
 it to another man, able to discharge a proportionable share 
 of the obligations and services ; and the latter sometimes 
 again granted part of his thus acquired estate to a third man, 
 with a proportionable share, again, of the obligations and 
 services. So far as the State w^as concerned, the fulfilment 
 of the obligations and services was looked for at the hands 
 of the original possessor, or his representative, who was 
 deemed to hold from the Crown (as representing the State). 
 The others held from those, or their representatives, who 
 made grants to them, in as many several steps as there had 
 been several grants of parts of the original estate ; each 
 grantor, or his representative, being called, in the old Latin 
 records, a "medius," or link in the chain of responsibility.* 
 
 * As my object, here, is simply to make the origin of mortmain understood, I 
 put the above statement in the simplest way, without complicating it with 
 either the 32nd Chapter of the Magna Charta of Henry III., the Statute of Quia 
 Emptores (18 Edward I.), or any other. None of these afiect the practical prin- 
 ciple here touched on, or the consequences that followed from its application. 
 
 C 
 
22 THE "DEAD HAND." 
 
 It will be seen at a glance, that this very simple but com- 
 plete system for ensuring the fulfilment of men's obligations 
 and maintaining the institutions of the land in action, would 
 be broken in upon if any man were let grant away his land, 
 or part of it, to a person or body which, from the nature of its 
 existence, could not discharge all or some of the above-named 
 inseparable obligations and services ; — unless, indeed, it could 
 be clearly shown, that land enough remained to the grantor 
 to guarantee the full discharge of the original obligations 
 and services by himself. Now Corporate Bodies,* whether 
 lay or clerical, and all priests in their corporate capacity as 
 holders of particular cure of souls, are, from the nature of 
 their existence, unable to fulfil some of these obligations and 
 services. Consequently, the Common Law always held that 
 grants made to either of these were absolutely void ; because 
 they were attempts to grant away land, which can only be 
 held on the condition that well-known obligations and ser- 
 vices shall be discharged by the living hand of a man, to a 
 corporate Body or person which, being unable to discharge 
 these obligations, was, in so far as they were concerned, no 
 better than a mere dead hand (mort main). 
 
 In some times of national strife, the Law had become 
 evaded, and grants had been secretly made " in mort-main" 
 that is, to some of these " dead hands." Early therefore in 
 the reign of Edward the First (a.d. 1279), the Law was for- 
 mally and emphatically set forth again, in a declaratory 
 Statute.! After reciting that such grants had been wrong- 
 fully made, " without Licence of the Chief Lord of whom 
 such Fees p. e. lands held with the attached conditions] be 
 holden immediately," and that " thereby the Services that are 
 
 * Corporations may consist of one person or of many. In the former case, sticli 
 as the Crown, the Eector of a Parish, etc., it is called a "Corporation Sole ;" in 
 the latter, it is more commonly distmguished as a " Corporate Body." 
 
 t I have fully shown the meaning and importance of " declaratory statutes '' 
 in my work on " Local Self Government," pp. 155, 254, 256. 
 
LICENCE IN MOET-MAIN. 23 
 
 due of such fees^ and which from the beginning ivere provided 
 for the defence of the Realm, are wrongfally withdraivii,'' this 
 statute declares that. " if any person, religious or other,'' holds 
 such aliened lands [that is, lands thus granted away], the im- 
 mediate lord, whoever he be, may " enter into the land so 
 aliened, within a year from the time of the alienation, and 
 hold it in fee as an inheritance ;" that, if this immediate lord 
 does not thus enter into and take possession of the land, the 
 next immediate lord may enter into and take possession of it, 
 within half a year after the year's close ; and that the right 
 of thus entering and taking possession shall pass on and 
 belong to each " medius," one after the other, until, if no 
 " medius " enters, the Crown may enter and take possession ; 
 not to keep the land in the King's hands, however ; for it is 
 declared that he " shall infeofF others therein \_i. e. dispose of 
 the land as fees again], on the condition of certain services to 
 be done for us for the defence of our kingdom." Thus the 
 original purpose of making these " fees," as held " from the 
 beginning," would be restored and still kept alive. 
 
 It has been said that, if it could be shown that enough 
 land remained to the grantor to insure the discharge of his 
 obligations, the grant in mort-main would not be against Law. 
 But it was clearly necessary to guard this avenue to mort-main 
 very carefully. The only way in which legal proof could be 
 given that such a state of things truly existed, was by the 
 production of a formal express Licence from the chief lord 
 of the " fee," who was the one most directly interested, per- 
 sonally or in his representative capacity, in the due discharge 
 of those obligations. The Crown, as representing the State, 
 having, it has been seen, the ultimate power of entry upon 
 lands so granted, no thorough security could be had unless 
 such a License had been obtained from the Crown. And 
 all Licenses so obtained were recorded on the Patent Eolls, 
 beiiig matters that concerned the whole State. These Licenses 
 
 C2 
 
24 THE WRIT " AD QUOD DAMNUM," 
 
 almost invariably begin, as might be expected, by referring 
 to the general Law forbidding mortmain. The document 
 of 1285, which has led to these remarks, is such a " Licence 
 in Mortmain."* 
 
 Such a Licence in Mortmain could not, however, be granted 
 at pleasure, or upon caprice. Fixed and regular preliminary 
 steps had to be taken ; and what these were, deserves the 
 most careful attention from all who value free institutions, or 
 wish to understand them. 
 
 The first of these preliminary steps was, the issue of a Writ 
 to the Escheatorf of the County wherein the land lay, 
 requiring him to summon a jury of twelve good and law- 
 worth | men of the neighbourhood, to inquire whether it 
 will be to any one's injury, and, if so, to whose injury, and 
 how, if the proposed grant be made. 
 
 This is the Writ called the Writ ^'- ad quod damnum;'' 
 and whosoever thoroughly understands the nature of this 
 writ, its meaning, working, and eiFect, will understand the 
 full spirit of the English Constitution, and will know more 
 of what the active motion of that spirit is than he will 
 learn from any number of formal treatises thereon. 
 
 Besides the simple inquiry shortly stated above, this jury 
 had to inquire in detail, and to record under their seals, what 
 
 * The first words of tliis License contain the clause referring to the general 
 law, as above named. It may be interesting to quote the words, which are as 
 follows : — " Licet de communi consilio regni nostri providerimus quod non liceat 
 viris religiosis seu aliis ingredi feodum alicujus ita quod ad mortuam manum de- 
 veniat sine licencia nostra et capitalis domini de quo res ilia immediate tenetur." 
 
 t The Escheator was a County Officer, appointed chiefly for the purpose of 
 doing what was necessary towards making Inquiries as to the descent and holding 
 of land. 
 
 J " Legales." This is commonly translated " lawful," which is nonsense. 
 The real meaning of the word is, the opposite of " outlaw ; " that is, men in the 
 full enjoyment of all the rights of freemen which are guaranteed by law. It is a 
 most expressive word, thus truly translated. The phrase itself is found, in these 
 exact terms, in the ancient Anglo-Saxon charter of the City of London, where 
 it stands thus : — " eallra ^gsra laga weor^e," i. e. "tvorth all the laws." 
 
A CONSTITUTIONAL SAFEGUAKD. 25 
 
 " mediiis," or, if more than one, how many, existed between the 
 intending- grantors and the Crown ; and, furthermore, whether 
 the lands that would remain to the intending grantors, after 
 the grant had been made, would be enough to secure the dis- 
 charge of all the services, charges, and obligations of all kinds, 
 the discharge of which was the condition under which they 
 held their lands. If any of these services or obligations should 
 be escaped from, through the granting of any of the land 
 in mortmain^ a heavier burden than before would of course 
 fall on other persons, and so the country would suffer. The 
 closing words of the writ ad quod damnum, put this with 
 a very striking clearness. The inquiry was to be made into 
 all the particulars enumerated, " So that, hy the grant and 
 assignment aforesaid, through default of [the grantors], the 
 Country may not he charged or hurdened more than has been 
 wont.'"* 
 
 * It will be useful to those who wish, to understand this subject, to have an 
 authentic enumeration of some of the usual conditions under which every "fee " 
 was held. I give, therefore, the exact words of so much of one of these original 
 writs ad quod damnum as marks out what inquiries were to be made ; quoting 
 from a writ that was issued for an inquiry in Birmingham in 1350. — " Dili- 
 genter inquiratis si sit ad dampnum vel prejudicium nostrum aut aliorum si 
 concedamus [licenciam] ; et, si sit ad dampnum vel prejudicium nostrum aut 
 aliorum, tunc ad quod dampnum et quod prejudicium nostrum et ad quod 
 dampnum et ad quod prejudicium aliorum, et quorum, et qualiter, et quo modo ; 
 et de quo vel de quibus teneantur [terrse, etc.], et per quod servicium, et qua- 
 liter, et quo modo, et quantum valeant per annum in omnibus exitibus juxta 
 verum valorem eorundem : et qui et quot sunt medii inter nos et prefatos Ful- 
 conem et Eicardum de messuagio et terra predictis ; et quae terraB et qute 
 tenementa eisdem Fulconi et Kicardo remaneant ultra donacionem et assigua- 
 cionem predictas, et ubi, et de quo vel de quibus teneantur, et per quod ser- 
 vicium, et qualiter, et quo niodo, et quantum valeant per annum in omnibus 
 exitibus ; et si terrse et tenementa eisdem F. et B,. remanencia ultra donacionem 
 et assignacionem predictas sufficiant ad consuetudines et servicia, tani de pre- 
 dictis messtiagiis et terra sic datis, qtiam de aliis terris et tenementis sibl reten- 
 tis, dehita, faciendum, et ad omnia alia onera que sustinuerunt et sustinere co»- 
 sueverunt — ut in sectis, visibus franci plegii, auxiliis, tallagiis, vigiliis, fiuibus, 
 redempcionibus, amerciamentis, contribucionibus, et aliis quibuscunque oneribus 
 emergentibus — sustinendum, et quod iidem F. et E. in assisis, juratis, et aliis 
 recogniciouibus quibuscunque, poni possint, prout ante donacionem et assigna- 
 cionem predictas poni consucverunt : Ita quod Vatria, per donacionem et assigna- 
 
26 INQUIRY ESSENTIAL. 
 
 Upon this writ there followed the Inquiry. The result of 
 that inquiry was embodied in a document wherein were always 
 recorded the Names of the good and law-worth Men by whom 
 the inquiry had been made. It is much to be regretted 
 that the record of the inquiry held before the issue of the 
 Licence in Mortmain of 1285 has been lost; for it would 
 have given us twelve more names of early Birmingham free- 
 holders. 
 
 If this Inquiry showed that the grant would not be to 
 any one's injury, and would not cause the evasion of any 
 obligations or services, nor the charging and burdening of 
 the country more than had been wont, the " Licence in Mort- 
 main " was issued. In some rare cases, explained by spe- 
 cial circumstances, a conditional License was granted in the 
 first instance ; the condition being, that an Inquiry should be 
 afterwards duly made, and that the case should be found one 
 in which the Licence could be lawfully granted. But such 
 cases are so unusual that it would not have been necessary 
 to mention them here but that, in a memorable instance 
 that will presently be named, this form of Licence happens 
 to have been what was asked for and obtained. 
 
 It follows from all this, that, if any land had been given 
 away in mortmain to a corporate body or person, and had 
 been appropriated by that body or person, without the issue 
 of the writ ad quod damnum and due inquiry made there- 
 upon, there was a distinct breach of the Law, and the land 
 was liable to be seized by the Crown at any time. The only 
 way to get rid of this danger was, for those who held the 
 land to obtain from the Crown a " Pardon." 
 
 Now it happened in Birmingham that, at the end of the 
 thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries, the 
 example that had been set by Thomas of Maidenhacche, 
 
 cionempredictas, in ipsorum Fulconis et Sicardi defectum, magis solito noii oneretur 
 seu gravetur." 
 
A prior's "pardon." 27 
 
 William of Birmingham, and Ranulph of Rugby, was fol- 
 lowed by several neighbours, who added their contributions 
 towards the endowment of the Priory of St. Thomas the 
 Apostle. Most of these endowments were, individually, not 
 large ; and it was this fact, doubtless, that led to the over- 
 sight of the Wiit ad quod damnum, in each of the separate 
 cases. But, put altogether, the amount of these endowments 
 was large, and the risk of forfeiture became dangerous to 
 the Priory. So, just twenty-five years after the Licence in 
 Mortmain which has been already quoted, a " Pardon " was 
 obtained by the Prior of Birmingham, which is recorded on 
 the Patent Roll of the year 1310, and which enumerates 
 both the givers and the gifts. 
 
 From this Pardon I now take the names of those Birminsf- 
 ham men and women who thus, nearly six hundred years 
 ago, gave houses and lands and income out of their own sub- 
 stance, towards the founding and endowing of the Priory of 
 Birmingham. At the same time, I state what it was that 
 each gave, in order that the sort of property then held in the 
 town may be better understood. The reader must, through- 
 outj keep in mind the enormous difference in the value 
 of the same nominal amounts of money between that day 
 and this. 
 
 In this and the other cases that will follow, I give the 
 spellings of the surnames, whether merely descriptive or 
 having become true " surnames of continuance," as I find 
 them, inserting the modern form of the word between 
 brackets where any doubt seems likely to arise. The mere 
 descriptive 'particles I give in their English forms, where they 
 have been translated into Latin in the original.* When 
 such a particle appears in its English form in tlie original 
 
 * The Latin tongue not possessing what we now mean by the gramiriatical 
 " article," the degraded forms of ille, ilia, are used to express the masculine 
 and feminine of " the." Thus we find " le," " la," " de Ic," " de la." 
 
28 GIVERS AND GIFTS. 
 
 record, I put [sic] after the surname. The description of the 
 gifts made I translate in each case, and use the modern spelling. 
 
 GIVERS, ANB GIFTS MADE, TO THE PEIOEY 
 OF ST. THOMAS THE APOSTLE, IN BIEMINGHAM, 
 
 Between a.d. 1285 astd a.d. 1310. 
 
 John op Someey^ seven acres and one rood of land, in Bordesley. 
 
 William op BukmingehaMj twenty -two acres of land and half an 
 acre of meadow, in Birmingham. 
 
 Roger the moul, four acres of land in the same town. 
 
 Geoppry op Copton, one acre of land in the same town. 
 
 William Coebyn, half an acre of land in the same town. 
 
 Nicholas m the dale, one acre of land in the same town. 
 
 EoGER OP Makyntotst, twelve-pcnce of rent in the same town. 
 
 Roger atte gate, five-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 William Aygnelet, six-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 William Jori, six -pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 Alexander the mercer, six-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 William op Dodeston, six-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 Roger the moul, aforesaid, one acre of land and six-pence of rent 
 in Duddeston and Birmingham. 
 
 Hamon Cissor [? Carver], two shillings of rent in Birmingham. 
 
 John op Pakynton, four-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 Roger Preust, two-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 Richard Lumbard, two-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 Edith, who was the wife of Warin Jori, one penny of rent in the 
 same town. 
 
 Ralph Kokeyn, six-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 Alexander the kene, two-pence of rent in the same town. 
 
 Joan Bawe, a cottage in the same town. 
 
 William Tycito, a cottage in the same town. 
 
 Richard atte nasshe [sic], a cottage in the same town. 
 
 John op Clodeshalb, a cottage in the same town. 
 
 Richard Fokeram, a cottage in the same town. 
 
 Clarice the daye, a cottage in the same town. 
 
 John the carpenteEj a cottage in the same town. 
 
 William Aygnelet, a cottage in the same town. 
 
 Cristiana the raggede, a cottage in the same town. 
 
THE LAW AND THE KING. 29 
 
 Nicholas m the dale^ one acre and a half of land in Duddeston. 
 
 William op the shawe^ one messuage and half a " virgate* ^' of 
 land in. the same town. 
 
 Ralph Wombestrong, foui' acres and one rood of land in Saltley. 
 
 Roger op Little Barre, two acres and one rood of land in the 
 same town. 
 
 Simon op Rokeby [Rugby], half an acre of land in the same town. 
 
 Peter atte broke [sic], four-pence of rent in Erdington. 
 
 Thomas of Maydenhache, ten acres of laud in Astou. 
 
 This " Pardon " bears the date of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on 
 the 26th day of December, in the fourth year of Edward the 
 Second (1310). With that carefulness to keep within the 
 law which so strikingly marks the proceedings found stated 
 in our early records, before any one had dreamed of using the 
 phrase " the King can do no wrong " in the preposterously 
 inverted and unmeaning sense in which it is now often used, 
 the operation of this Pardon is limited, by its o"wn express 
 terms, to so far only as the King's power in the matter 
 actually reached (" quantum in nobis est "). No pretence of 
 *' Prerogative Power " is set up.f 
 
 Two things will strike the reader upon looking at these 
 names and gifts -,— firsts the great number of freeholders that 
 this list, even taken alone, shows that there then were in Bir- 
 mingham ; second^ how few of the surnames had yet become 
 true family surnames, or are other than merely descriptive. 
 
 * The " virgate" is the same as what is often found under the name of " yard- 
 land." It is a variable quantity, ranging, in different places, from fifteen acres 
 up to even forty. I have explained the word in " The Parish," p. 512, note 
 {second edition). What is meant in this case seems to be, the garden and pad- 
 dock adjoining the messuage. 
 
 t See the Note t before, p. 15, for Lord Coke's own language. On a subject 
 that is of so much constitutional importance, it is well to give some further quo- 
 tations, the spirit of which cannot be mistaken. " Though no manner of person 
 or cause be unsubject unto the King's Power, yet so is the power of the King 
 over all, and in all limited, that unto all his proceedings the Law itself is a rule. 
 The axioms of our regal government are these, Lexfacit reffem.— the King's grant 
 of any favour made contrary to the Law is void : Rex nihil potest nisi quod jure 
 potest. . . What power the King hath, he hath it by Law ; the bounds and 
 
30 THE FEUDAL SYSTEM, 
 
 As to the first point, it is so common a thing for political and 
 social writers and talkers to assume a wholly imaginary state 
 of things, as having existed under what they call by the hazy 
 name of " the feudal system," that when a reader comes, for 
 the first time, across a true picture of the past, such as has 
 now been quoted, and others that will presently follow, he 
 will naturally be puzzled. Writers of some pretensions even 
 tell their readers that the Laws relating to land in England 
 have been framed, and are upheld "for the express pur- 
 pose of keeping the land in the hands of a few proprietors; 
 of depriving the peasants and small shop-keepers of any part 
 of it, and of the influence which its possession confers ; and 
 of supporting a great proprietor class."* Such statements are 
 best answered by looking at the facts themselves, as found 
 by the actual records of the times, and as incidentally illus- 
 trated by earlier writers, speaking of their own times. 
 
 Sir John Fortescue was Lord Chief Justice of England, in 
 the time of Henry the Sixth. His celebrated work on the 
 
 limits of it are known. Tlie entire community givetL. general order, by Law, tow 
 all things publicly are to be done : and tbe King, as tbe Head thereof, the 
 highest in authority over all, causeth, according to the same Law, every particu- 
 lar to be framed and ordered thereby. The whole Body Politic maketh Laws, 
 which Laws gave power unto the King." (Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," 
 pp. 446, 465 : ed. 1705). " He can do no wrong, saith the old maxim : that is, 
 he can do nothing against the Law ; nor is anything to be judged for his benefit 
 that is not warranted by Law." (Lord Somers's " Security of Englishmen's Lives," 
 p. 66, ed. 1681). And Bracton, centuries earlier, had written, "Hex habet su- 
 periorem, Deum: item Legem, per quam factus est Kex. . . Potestas itaque sua 
 juris est, et non injurise ;" and much more to the same effect. There is in Mat- 
 thew Paris (p. 355, ed. 1684), a picturesque account of the marriage of Henry 
 III., and of the carrying before him of the sword " Curtana," as a symbol of the 
 constitutional limits to the power of the Crown. 
 
 It is very necessary to caE attention to these things, at a time when books pre- 
 tending to teach what the constitution of England is, actually lay it down that the 
 Crown is above the Law, and when Members of Parliament listen in subservient 
 silence to Ministers who are continually sheltering their own misdoings under 
 the pretence of the " Prerogative of the Crown." 
 
 * This passage actually occurs in Mr. Kay's work on " The Social Condition 
 of Europe," published in 1850. The same sort of thing is being constantly 
 assumed as a real statement of the present state of facts. 
 
AND ENGLISH FREEHOLDERS. 31 
 
 Laws of England, is written in the form of a dialogue between 
 himself and the young Prince, which is represented to have 
 been carried on during the exile of both in France. Ex- 
 plaining to the Prince how it is that, in England, indepen- 
 dent Juries are able to be put in action in whatever case 
 • arises in any part of the country, Fortescue says: — "The 
 same country [England] is so filled and replenished with 
 landed men, that therein so small a little hamlet cannot he 
 found wherein dwelleth not a knight, an esquire, or such 
 a householder as is there commonly called a Franklin, en- 
 riched with great possessions ; and also other freeholders^ and 
 many yeomen having sufficient estate to make a jury in form 
 aforementioned. . . . After this manner, oh ! mighty prince, 
 are none other realms of the world disposed and inhabited. 
 For, though there be in them men of great power, of great 
 riches and possessions, yet they dwell not one nigh to another, 
 as such great men do in England ; neither so many inheritors 
 and possessors of land are elsewhere as in England^* 
 
 It cannot be necessary to do more than refer to what is 
 said on the same subject by Lord Bacon, in his Essay " Of 
 the true greatness of Kingdoms and Estates." 
 
 As to the Names of these old Birmingham freeholders, 
 out of the thirty-three that are found in this " Pardon," not 
 more than eleven, at the outside, had then become true sur- 
 names, the rest remaining merely descriptive. Those eleven 
 are, Corbyn, Aygnelet, Jori,f CissorC?), Preust, Lumbard, 
 Kokeyn,f Bawe, Tycito,t Fokeram, and Wombestrong. 
 
 It is not my present purpose to go into the origin of every 
 name that is given. Space will not allow me to do more 
 than call attention to the manner in which diff'erent names 
 
 * I adopt liere tlie translation published in 1672, except where the sense of 
 the Latin original does not seem fully given. 
 
 t These names certainly, and probably others in this list, are found elsewhere 
 with diiferent spellings, but representing much the same sounds. See the extract 
 from Fuller, before, p. 16. 
 
32. HOW TO DESCEIBE A MAN. 
 
 illustrate the growth of surnames in England, and to the va- 
 riety of forms in which some of these have come down to us. 
 
 Of the above eleven names, Corhyn remains to this day 
 in that shape : Aygnelet seems preserved to us under the 
 several shapes of the place Inkleys, and the names Ingley^ 
 Ingall, Aylet, and Ault^ all known in Birmingham : Jori seems 
 known to us under the disguise of Jolly : Cissor, Preust, and 
 Lumbard, had probably not long lost their descriptive par- 
 ticle ; the first being in fact the Latin word for " Carver " 
 (Scissor) ; and perhaps it ought to have been thus set down 
 in the list ; but, having no particle before it in the original, 
 I have left it in the dignity of a true surname.* Preust 
 is clearly " the Priest," and Lumhard as clearly the " man 
 from Lombardy." Bawe not improbably remains among us 
 under the varying forms Barrow and Barr. 
 
 Of the descriptive names that seem taken from territorial 
 places, there are those from Somery^ Birmingham^ Cofton, 
 Malcynton, Buddeston, Pakington, Clodeshale, Little Barr, and 
 Bughy. Of those taken from particular spots or things, there 
 are, Nicholas in the dale. Bog er atte gate, Bichard atte nasshe^ 
 William of the shawe, Peter atte broke, and Thomas of mayden- 
 hache. Of those taken from offices, trades, or occupations, 
 there are, Alexander the mercer, John the carpenter, and pro- 
 bably, as before said, Hamon Cissor. There is not, among 
 the number, one patronymic. But of names taken from 
 personal characteristics, there are, Alexander the Tcene, Clarice 
 the daye, and Cristiana the raggede. Boger the moid (mole) 
 is a nickname. 
 
 Some of these names deserve closer remark. 
 
 The name Nicholas in the dale recalls the time when 
 
 " Every slieplierd told his tale 
 Under the hawthorn, in the dale." 
 
 It is long since the hawthorn tree spread its green 
 
 * It stands on the same footing with " Dapifer : " sec before, p. IS. 
 
DALES, WOODS, AND BROOKS. 33 
 
 boughs, and scented the air with its sweet May-flowers, in 
 the place whence this man took his name, and since the 
 shepherd gathered his flock around him there, at sunrise, 
 and told their number over, that he might be surely able to 
 report, at even-song, that the tale was right.* But the old 
 name by which the spot was known more than five hundred 
 and fifty years ago in Birmingham, still lingers in " Dale 
 End," and I shall show that there formerly stood there a 
 " Dale Hall." The surname " Dale," the descriptive particle 
 being dropped, remains a Birmingham surname. 
 
 The name Boger atte gate is, in the Latin, " Rogerus ad 
 portam." He perhaps lived near to the gate whence " Der- 
 yat-end " got its name.f The names "Gates" and "Yates" 
 still flourish, while " atte gate " has, in some parts of Eng- 
 land, though I think not in Birmingham, drifted into the 
 surname " Agate." Bi chard atte nasshe gives an instructive 
 illustration of how surnames get shape. This man or his 
 father lived near an ash tree. The letter " n " was slipped 
 in after " atte " and before " ash," for mere ease in sounding 
 the words, just as we use " an " instead of " a " before words 
 beginning with a vowel. So the descriptive name became 
 " atte nasshe," according to the spelling of the time ; and, 
 when the particle was dropped, it became " Nash," which 
 remains a not uncommon surname. " Shaw " being another 
 name for a wood, we have " of the shawe," in addition to 
 " atte holte " and " atte wood." As in the case of " Holte," 
 the particle has here been dropped, and the name is now 
 known as " Shaw." In the same way, " atte broke " has be- 
 come " Brooke " and " Brooks." But " Attenbrook " also re- 
 mains still known as an English surname. 
 
 * One who was a better artist than linguist, not long ago made the odd 
 mistake of treating those two lines of Milton's ' L' Allegro ' as if the allusion 
 were to a love-tale whispered by a shepherd to a maid, instead of being to the 
 regular duty of the shepherd in his daily life. 
 
 t See " Traditions of the Old Crown House," p. 45, note. See also on this 
 subject, Is'otes hereaftei", on pages 71, 64. 
 
34 MEN AND WOMEN OF QUALITY. 
 
 The surnames " Mercer," " Carpenter," " Keen," and 
 "Kean," will be immediately recognized as sprung from 
 others in this list, the particle, as in other cases, having 
 been dropped. And the name " Mole " is a respectable 
 modern name, sprung, no doubt, from an ancestor whose 
 shortness of sight led to his getting the nickname of " the 
 mole." 
 
 The two names Clarice the daye., and Cristiana tlie raggede^ 
 give curious examples of surnames that have sprung from 
 personal characteristics. In the old Northern tongue, there 
 is the word " da," and in the closely kindred Anglo-Saxon 
 there is the word " daag." Both have much the same original 
 meaning, which is that of unreadiness of mind or dress. The 
 original words and meaning are both still living among us, in 
 the words " daze " and " daggle." A person is " dazed," that is, 
 bewildered; or " daggles," that is, shows untidiness in dress. 
 " Day " is a common and respectable Birmingham name now ; 
 but the particle has been dropped, and with it, no doubt, 
 the qualities whence came the original descriptive name. 
 The name of Cristiana the raggede needs no explanation. In 
 modern times, the surnames " Wragge " and " Eagg " have 
 dropped not only the foregoing particle but the last syllable, 
 and so hardly remind us of the origin of the name. 
 
 It is worth notice here, that names derived from perso- 
 nal characteristics and fancied resemblances to qualities of 
 animals, were very common among all the Northern races. 
 They often seem whimsical enough, but were soberly used 
 as means of distinguishment. I may quote the first lines of 
 part of an old Northern saga to illustrate this common habit. 
 Some of the surnames here stated run quite parallel with 
 Clarice the daye, Cristiana the raggede, and Boger the moid. 
 
 " There was a man," says the saga, " named Thokd, who 
 married Fkidgerd, daughter of Thorek the idle. Thord 
 was son of Biarni buttertub, grandson of Biarni ironsides, 
 
FOUNDERS OF CHAUNTRIES. 35 
 
 son of Ragnar hairy-breeches [Lod-brok]. Thokd and 
 Fridgerd had a son named Snorri, who married Thorhild 
 the partridge, daughter of Thord the loud. They had 
 a son named Tiiord horsehead." 
 
 The affah' of the " Pardon " which has supplied us with 
 these rehcs of the Men and Names of Okl Birmingham, seems 
 to have made it thoroughly known to the freeholders of the 
 town, that it was unfitting to make any endowment without 
 going through the regular course which the Law required. 
 Less than twenty years after its date, Walter of Clodes- 
 hale, no doubt a son of the John of Clodeshale named in 
 the Pardon, set about founding a Chauntry and endowing a 
 priest to perform daily service for the souls of himself and 
 Agnes his wife in the old Church of St. Martin. This was 
 one of two Chauntries established in Birmingham by the same 
 family, and which were always afterwards known as the j^rs^ 
 and second Chauntries. They were treated together by the 
 Commissioners in Edward the Sixth's time, and will be most 
 conveniently so treated now. 
 
 The fo'st of these two Chauntries was founded in 1330 by 
 Walter of Clodeshale : the second was founded in 1347 by 
 Richard of Clodeshale. The terms of the former founda- 
 tion were, as usual, for the performance of daily service for 
 the souls of the founder, his wife, and their ancestors. But 
 the terms of the latter foundation were peculiar. Richard 
 of Clodeshale seems not to have thought it a sufficiently 
 profitable investment to take precautions for the state of his 
 soul hereafter : he wished to be comfortable in this world, as 
 well as to smoothen his course through purgatory. So the 
 terms of his endowment are, for the performance of daily 
 service " for the well-being of Richard himself and AHce his 
 wife, and for the souls of Richard and Alice when they have 
 gone from this light" \^pro saliibn statu ipsius Bicardi et 
 
86 GROUPS OF FREEHOLDERS. 
 
 AUcie uxoris ejus, et animahus eorum Bicardi et Alicie cum ah 
 hac luce emigraverunt]. 
 
 The Writ ad quod damnum for the foundation of the first 
 chauntry, was issued on the 19th February, 1330 ; and the 
 Inquiry under it was held on the Eriday next after the feast 
 of Saint Mark the Evangelist (25th April) in the same year. 
 The names of the freeholders who formed the jury for this 
 inquiry were, — William Verite; — John Corbyn; — John atte 
 HOLT [sic']; — John the porter; — William of Neuport; — 
 Thomas Mareschal ; — Thomas Corbyn ; — John of Colsull ; 
 — Adam of Packewode ; — John the deyseer of Birmingham ; 
 — John the fychelere; — and, William the mey. 
 
 The Writ ad giiod dajnnimi for the foundation of the se- 
 C0716? chauntry was issued on 27th April, 1347; and the In- 
 quiry under it was held on 26 th June in the same year. The 
 names of the freeholders who formed the Jury for this 
 inquiry were, — Henry Morys; — John son of Gilbert; — 
 Geoffry Morys ; — Egbert Page ; — Thomas son of John ; — 
 William the kynges; — William Colemon ; — John Parys; — 
 William son of Margery ; — John Burgeys ; — Henry Cole- 
 mon; — and, John Erewes. 
 
 It is remarkable that, while the list of 1330 repeats only 
 one, the list of 1347 does not repeat a single one, of the 
 names of 1310 ; nor does the list of 1347 repeat a single one 
 of the names of 1330. So that, within less than foruy 
 years, we get the names of more than fifty freeholders of 
 Birmingham, either actually living at the same time, or within 
 the immediate memory of those then living. And of course 
 this is by no means a complete list of all who were then free- 
 holders in the town. 
 
 These two lists give some remarkable fresh illustrations of 
 the origin and growth of surnames. Out of the twelve jury- 
 men of 1330, only four (two of these with the same name) 
 bore true family surnames ; namely, Verite, Corbyn (twice, 
 
THE DEYSEER OF BIRMINGHAM. 37 
 
 and also found in 1310), and Mareschal. But the list of 1347 
 gives us eight (though two pairs of them are the same) out 
 of the twelve names, in which the descriptive particle had 
 been dropped, and which had so become true family sur- 
 names ; namely, Morys (twice), Page^ Parys, Burgeys^ Cole- 
 mon (twice), and Frewes. In the list of 1330, there are four 
 descriptive surnames taken from places, namely John atte 
 holt, William of Newport, John of Coleshill, and Adam of 
 Packwood. The list of 1347 does not contain a single name 
 of this class. The list of 1330 contains also four other names 
 belonging to classes of which not a single example is to be 
 found in the list of 1347 ; namely, names descriptive of office, 
 occupation, or personal characteristics. These names are 
 Joh7i the porter, John the deyseer of Birmingham, John the 
 fychelere, and William the mey. 
 
 The last three of these names claim special remark. We 
 have had ^'the harher of Binningham;''* but there was a 
 special reason, in that case, why the place of abode should be 
 given, besides the occupation. The same reason does not 
 apply in the case of a list of men who were necessarily all 
 Birmingham men. It follows, that John the deyseer must 
 have held some office of special trust that was identified with 
 the town, and the title of which was " the deyseer." But 
 what was a "deyseer"? It is not easy to answer this ques- 
 tion with certainty. Tyrwhitt was puzzled to understand the 
 meaning of the word " dey " in Chaucer's line, — 
 
 " She was as it were a maner dey."t 
 
 But the true meaning of that word cannot apply here.j It 
 seems to me most likely, though I would speak cautiously, 
 that the word " deyseer" was a local name given, at least in 
 Warwickshire, to the man appointed to collect the Clergy 
 
 * Before, p. 18. t TheNonnes Prestes Tale. 
 
 X "Deigia" and "deigr" mean, in the old Northern tongue, dampness, damp. 
 Hence our word " daii'y." The " dey" kept the dairy. 
 
 D 
 
38 GREETING THE " MET." 
 
 tax. Formerly, when subsidies were granted by the Com- 
 mons to the Crown, the Clergy granted a separate subsidy. 
 "Fifteenths," ''Tenths," "Half-tenths," were names given 
 to such subsidies. The Clergy-grant was well known as a 
 " disme," — quite a distinct thing, it must be remembered, 
 from the " tythe" payable to the Clergy. Collectors of 
 these "dismes" were appointed, and were recognized by Par- 
 liament.* In the Hundred Eolls of Edward the First, I 
 find " Eoger the disser of Coventry." This name plainly cor- 
 responds, with but a slight difi"erence in the spelling, to "John 
 the deyseer of Birmingham."! 
 
 I cannot be certain that '-'■the fychelere" is only a disguise 
 for " the fisher " (the old word for " fisherman"), though there 
 can hardly be much doubt about it. But of the meaning of 
 " the mey," there is, happily, little room for uncertainty. It 
 is the pure old Anglo-Saxon word "mseg," meaning near 
 friend, or relation, and seems to have been often used as dis- 
 tinctive when a man was adopted into another family, as, for 
 instance, in the case of a son-in-law. The name is very often 
 found in the old Hundred Rolls and other records. I have 
 little doubt that the word " mate," by which working men, 
 both in town and country, are in the habit of addressing one 
 another when they are engaged on any work together, and 
 know not each other's actual names, is the relic of the same 
 genial word and meaning, j 
 
 There remain four names to be noticed, which are found 
 in the list of jurymen of 1347, belonging to a class of which 
 there is not a single example to be found in either the 
 Pardon of 1310 or the jury list of 1330. These are John 
 
 * Two illustrations will enable any one to verify the facts. See Eolls of Par- 
 liament 8 Edward II. (a.d. 1314), Pet. No. 113 ; E. P. 5 Henry V. (a.d. 1417), 
 Pet. No. vii. 
 
 t A remarkable entry on the Parliament Eoll of 10 Henry YI., suggests 
 a possibility that " deyseer" (" disser") may mean " Tythingman." 
 
 J In the Anglo-Saxon, there is the word "' maca," obviously from the same root. 
 
PATRONYMICS. 39 
 
 son of Gilbert, Thomas son of John, William the Kinges, 
 and William son of Margery. All these are patronymics. 
 Most likely Gilberts, Gilbertson, or Gibson, was the name by 
 which John was called among familiars, though the name, 
 when translated into Latin, was put in a more formal shape. 
 Thomas would, in the same way, be called Johnson. The 
 Kinges means the son of a man who had got to be called 
 " the King," from the conspicuousness with which he had 
 played the part of " King " in some of the public games and 
 shows which were then both universal and frequent.* There 
 was, indeed, one of these games that was known by the ex- 
 press name of " The King-game," and we sometimes find 
 actual record kept of the persons who filled the part of 
 "King" and "Queen" on the occasion.! The addition of 
 the letter "s" to a father's name, has the same significance as 
 the addition of the word " son." 
 
 The most curious of these four patronymics, however, — if 
 the fact does not make it necessary to coin the new word 
 matronymic — is, perhaps, William son of Margery. It is not 
 often that a freeholder has thus got a descriptive name from 
 the mother's, instead of from the father's, side. Margery 
 was, it will presently be seen, a favourite woman's name at 
 that time; and the existence of such names as Megson, Meggs, 
 and Gerison, shows that the descendants of Margaret's son 
 have been many and wide spread. 
 
 Little more than three years had passed since Richard 
 OF Clodeshale had endowed the second Chauntry in old St. 
 Martin's Church, when an endowment on a larger scale took 
 place in another Church in the town which was then much 
 resorted to, though all trace, even of its existence, is now 
 gone. This church is called, in old records, the "Free Chapel " 
 
 * I have giren some account of these games in " The Paris//," pp. 49G-50G, 
 515, 516, 521, 522, etc. {second edition), 
 t See an example quoted in the " The Parish," p. 515. 
 
 D 2 
 
40 THE "FREE CHAPEL" OF 1S50. 
 
 of Birmingham ; and it deserves in itself to be remembered 
 with an attention greater than a mere Chaiintry, though the 
 Chauntry endowment no doubt helped to sustain its impor- 
 tance in the town. 
 
 On 3rd July, 1350, a Writ ad quod damnum was issued to 
 John of Windsoe, Escheator of Warwickshire, to hold an In- 
 quiry touching grants proposed to be made by Fulco of Bir- 
 mingham and Richard the spenser, of messuages and lands 
 in Aston and Birmingham, for the support of a Chaplain who 
 should celebrate divine service daily for the souls of William 
 the mercer and Margery his wife, of Robert the spen- 
 ser and Isabella his wife, of Henry of Caldewell and 
 Margery his wife, and of their ancestors, at the altar of the 
 blessed Mary in the Church of the Hospital of Saint Thomas 
 the Martyr in Birmingham.* 
 
 It is noteworthy that all the six names mentioned in this 
 writ are descriptive only ; three being taken from territorial 
 places, and three (two of them being the same) from the 
 calling or office of the bearer. Fulco of Birmingham has 
 been named before : f William the mercer was perhaps the 
 son of Alexander the mercer."^ 
 
 Upon this Writ a jury was summoned, and an Inquiry 
 was made at Birmingham on the 19th July of the same year. 
 The names of the Jurymen who made this inquiry are as 
 follows : — Richard of Shirynton ; — Richard atte chapelle 
 [sic']', — Thomas of Wytton; — John Coleyn; — William of 
 the neowehay ; — john michel ; — richard judden ; — ■ 
 Thomas Michel; — John Kempe ; — Thomas of Stretton; — 
 John Philip; — and, John the raggede. 
 
 All these names are new, except the descriptive surname 
 of John the raggede. The bearer of this name was probably 
 a son of Christiana the raggede.^ Six out of the twelve 
 
 * It is from this writ that the quotation is taken that is given in the note to p. 25. 
 t P. 19. X See before, p. 28. § See before, pp. 28, 34. 
 
THE NEW HEY. 41 
 
 names (two being the same) are " suraames of continuance," 
 while six are merely descriptive names ; all the latter, except 
 John the raggede, being taken from places, either territorial 
 or special. These are so obvious that two only among them 
 need any remark. 
 
 Thomas of Stretton was no doubt some relation to the 
 Rohert Stretton who was Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield 
 from 1359 to 1385, and who was one of the parties to a very 
 important transaction that will presently be mentioned, 
 William of the neowehay bears a doubly descriptive name. 
 " Neowehay " is a drawling way of spelling " new-hey ; " that 
 is, " new inclosure." He or his father dwelt at some place 
 that had been freshly made into an enclosed homestead- 
 There are, near Birmingham, more than one place still 
 bearing the name "Hey." Each of these must have been, 
 at some time, a " new hey." One of them I have already 
 mentioned.* From one of them, no doubt, this William 
 got his descriptive name. By-and-by, the two particles were 
 dropped, and the name "Newey" has ever since been some- 
 what common in Birmingham. 
 
 The name John Philip probably records an ancestor of 
 him who, three centuries and a half later, gave the land 
 whereon to build the church now called St. Philip's Church. 
 The name is found spelled, however, in several ways. 
 
 It may be not uninteresting to add, that this Jury reported 
 that one house and thirty acres of land in Aston, being part 
 of what was proposed to be granted for the purpose before- 
 named, were held of the Lady of Aston at three shillings a 
 year, and that the Lady of Aston held them of John Bote- 
 TOURTE ; the said Lady and John being the " medii " between 
 the King and Fulco and Richard, the intending endowers 
 and that another house and seventy acres of land in Bir- 
 mingham, being the remainder of what was proposed to be 
 
 * " Traditions of The Old Crown House," pp. 43, 55 ; and see after, p. 96. 
 
42 RELIGION AND HUMANITY. 
 
 granted, were held of John of Sutton at six shillings a year ; 
 this John of Sutton being the " medius " between the king 
 and FuLCO and Eichard. The jury goes on to describe these 
 houses and land, and their actual value ; and adds, that other 
 lands and rents in Birmingham, and elsewhere in the County 
 of Warwick, remained to Fulco and Eichard, beyond the 
 proposed endowment, and were held of John of Sutton by 
 Military Service ; and that those remaining possessions were 
 enough to satisfy all obligations, " so that, by the gift and 
 assignment aforesaid, through default of Fulco and Eichard, 
 the Country will not be charged or burdened more than has 
 been wont."* 
 
 The issue of the Licence in Mortmain in this case was 
 delayed for some months ; but it was done at last, on the 
 12th February, 1351. 
 
 I pass on now to a transaction very different in its kind 
 from endowments made towards giving ease to souls in pur- 
 gatory. But I cannot leave such endowments without the 
 remark that, whatever form of faith a man may hold, there 
 is something that must touch every heart not dead to human 
 sympathies, when these traces are met with of the anxious 
 piety of those who, putting faith in " the sacred prevalence 
 of prayer" on behalf of the souls of their no longer living 
 kindred, took much pains and gave great gifts to ensure that 
 such prayers should be constant. 
 
 In the time of Edward the Third, however, men's minds in 
 England began to be deeply stirred by the flagrant abuses 
 that had grown up in the Church establishment, through the 
 wide-spread perversion of Church endowments to personal 
 selfishness, instead of those endowments being devoted to 
 the Public ends for which alone the endowers gave them. 
 Thoughtful and sincere men raised up their voices in the de- 
 mand for an earnest reality of practical religious teaching. 
 
 * See before, p. 25. 
 
PIERS PLOWMAN AND JOHN WYCLIF. 43 
 
 The gross remissness, ignorance, and misdoings of the clergy, 
 had been the subject of often repeated complaints in Parlia- 
 ment.* A native English poet now arose, who boldly de- 
 nounced, in nervous language, and, though wrapped in pictu- 
 resque allegories, in the plainest manner, the short-comings 
 and mis-teachings of the clergy, and the mischiefs done by 
 the monastic orders; and who declared, with a wonderful 
 simplicity and undistorted truthfulness, what the reality of 
 Christian teaching should be. And what Piers Plowman 
 was thus saying in a tongue that all the People could under- 
 stand, and in a manner that was most attractive to them, and 
 in verses that soon became familiar through the land as 
 household words, was soon after more scholastically, but not 
 less energetically said, and repeated in many shapes and 
 through many years, by one who was indeed a Priest, but 
 who, himself undertaking the great work of translating the 
 Bible into English, denounced the lives and mis-teachings of 
 the priesthood, and began a new system of earnest teaching, 
 with a strength and purpose and unremitting vigour that have 
 made even Roman Catholic historians confess that John 
 
 * Some illustrations of tliese I produced, when giving evidence before the Select 
 Committee of the House of Lords on Church Eates in 1860 ; and they are printed 
 with the Eeport presented to the House by that Committee. The evidence which 
 I then gave, having been referred to in subsequent debates in Parliament, as well 
 as elsewhere, will not be unknown to some of my readers, and is easily accessible 
 to all. I will now, therefore, only shortly refer to the Statute of Carlisle(A.D. 
 1306), the Statute of Provisors (a.d. 1350), the Eolls of Parliament of 20 Edward 
 III. (a.d. 1346), and the Eolls of Parliament of 50 Edward III. (a.d. 1376), for 
 striking proofs and illustrations, not only of the strong public feeling that was 
 warm and growing through all that time upon this subject, but of the very clear 
 and precise knowledge that men had as to the true purposes, now often misunder- 
 stood, of Church foundations and endowments. It will be found brought vividly 
 before the reader, that whereas Churches were founded " to inform the People of 
 the Law of God, and to make hospitalities, alms, and other works of charity, m 
 the places where the Churches were founded," the Parishioners had been left to 
 " perish in body and soul," and were obliged to " cease sending their children to 
 school ; " and, in short, that " Holy Church is more hurt by such bad Christians 
 than by all the Jews and Saracens in the world." No wonder " Eeformers" 
 arose, and that, when they arose, they were eagerly listened to. 
 
44 PARISH CHURCHES. 
 
 Wyclif was the father of the Reformation in England.* In 
 the midst of all this, — but, as I have elsewhere shown,f in 
 immediate connection with it, — a case that arose out of the 
 non-fulfilment of a parson's duty, was brought before the 
 Courts of Law ; the judgment given in which left no one able 
 any longer to pretend that Parish Churches were raised for 
 the sake of the parsons ; and which put at rest for ever any 
 halting doubts as to whether it is within the spirit, and con- 
 formable to the practice, of the Common Law of England, 
 that the inhabitants of any parish should, of their own mo- 
 tion and by their own consent alone, repair the Church of 
 their parish to make it fit for their own use.J 
 
 Piers Plowman's Vision was written about 1362, and soon 
 
 * "A new teacher appeared, who boldly rejected many of the tenets which his 
 countrymen had hitherto revered as sacred. ... In proof of his doctrines he 
 appealed to the Scriptures, and thus made his disciples judges between him and 
 the bishops. • . .Wyclif made a new translation ; multiplied the copies with the 
 aid of transcribers ; and, by his 'poor priests,' recommended it to the perusal of 
 their hearers. In their hands it became an engine of wonderful power. . . .The 
 new doctrines insensibly acquired partisans and protectors in the higher classes ; 
 a spirit of inquiry was generated ; and the seeds were sown of that religious revo- 
 lution which, in little more than a century, astonished and convulsed the nations 
 of Europe." (Lingard's History of England, vol. iii. pp. 265, 310 ; fifth edition.) 
 
 Some contemporary verses tell us that, 
 
 " Assumpsit Wyclyf multas hsereses violando 
 Catbolicamque fidem, dogmata falsa serens." 
 ('Political Poems,' etc., edited by Thomas Wright, vol. i. p. 458.) 
 
 Mr. Shirley, the editor of the lately published volume entitled " Fasciculi Ziza- 
 niorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif, cum tritico," teUs us that the preface to 
 Wyclif 's book ' De dominio divino ' seems " the true epoch of the beginning of 
 the English Heformation." And the same learned writer fixes the date of the 
 publication of that work as, " at the latest, in 1368." He believes it to have been 
 a year or two earlier. 
 
 t See Evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Lords, in 
 1860, as before mentioned. 
 
 X I have printed a translation of this remarkable case in " The Parish," p. 
 584 (second edition). The most important parts of it are also given in my Evi- 
 dence before the Lords, in 1860, already mentioned. The before-named com- 
 plaints made in Parliament of the misconduct of the clergy, expressly include 
 the charge that they " sufier the noble buildings, in old times there made, wholly 
 to fall to decay," though the original endowments were meant to supply means 
 for reparation of the churches, as well as for the support of the parsons. 
 
PRACTICAL CHRISTIANITY. 45 
 
 reached and long kept an extraordinary popularity. John 
 Wyclif was writing, preaching, and teaching, from about 
 1361 to 1384. The case which put the rights of Parishion- 
 ers in theii- Parish Church beyond a doubt, was adjudged 
 in 1370. 
 
 The spirit of the practical Christianity that Piers Plowman 
 taught, may be judged of by the descriptions that he gives of 
 Mercy and Charity : — 
 
 "Goddes Mercy is moore 
 Than alle hise otliere werkes ; 
 And al the wikkednesse in this world 
 That man myghte werche or thynke, 
 Nis na-moore to the Mercy of God 
 Than in the see a gleede [hot cinder]."* 
 
 And again, 
 
 " Charite ne chaffareth noght, 
 Ne chalangeth, ne craveth. 
 
 He is glad with alle glade, 
 And good til alle wikkede. 
 And leveth [liketh] and loveth alle 
 That oure Lord made." f 
 
 Piers Plowman very plainly told " prelates and preestes" 
 that hypocrisy is not religion. Whatsoever it is, says he, — 
 
 " That ye prechen to the peple, 
 Preve it on yowselve, 
 And dooth it in dede : 
 It shal drawe you to goode. 
 If ye leven as ye leren [teach] us 
 We shul leve yow the bettre."]; 
 
 * Passus quintus de visione. 
 
 t Passus decimus quintus. It is impossible not to be reminded, by these words, 
 of Coleridge's fine lines in " The Ancient Mariner," — 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small ; 
 For the great God who loveth us 
 He made and loveth all." 
 X Piers Plowman is written in the old English alliterative rime : that i?, the 
 cadences of time in which the verses are composed, are made to linger on the 
 
46 EAELY REFORMERS. 
 
 The author of Piers Plowman's Vision is understood to 
 have been a Monk of Malvern. John Wyclif found a sup- 
 porter in John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was the 
 owner of Kenilworth Castle, and a Justice of the Peace for 
 Warwickshire ; while Lutterworth, where Wyclif lived from 
 the beginning of 1374 till his death in the last days of 1384, 
 is very near to the borders of Warwickshire. The teachings 
 of both Piers Plowman and Wyclif would, then, necessarily 
 be well known in the market-town of Birmingham and the 
 neighbourhood. 
 
 Now it happens that Deritend, though within the Lordship 
 of Birmingham,* lies within the Parish of Aston. In the 
 same Parish, and adjoining Deritend, is Bordesley ; which, 
 though a less important and less populous place than Deri- 
 tend, had from of old a separate Court Leet and Court 
 Baron of its own, distinct from those of Aston. For secular 
 purposes then, both these places had long, at the time I am 
 speaking of, had an existence quite independent of Aston. 
 Aston itself was so dependent on Birmingham that the 
 Parish is called, by two such authorities as Spelman and 
 Camden, " Birmingham's Aston." 
 
 Whether Sir Richard Shobenhale (to give him his full 
 clerical title), who, towards the latter end of the fourteenth 
 century, happened to be Vicar of Aston, was a Parish Priest 
 of the sort that Piers Plowman and Wyclif so vigorously 
 denounced, cannot perhaps be now known with certainty. 
 But this much is certain ; — that the inhabitants of Deritend 
 and Bordesley had become moved by the spirit that breathed 
 
 ear by tte repetition of tlie initial letter of prominent words. This is usually 
 done by tbe initial letter of two leading words in tbe first line of a couplet, 
 being the same as the initial letter of one leading word of the second line of the 
 couplet. The last quotation above given contains three couplets, each of which 
 fulfils this very ancient English rule of rime. 
 
 * " Traditions of The Old Crown House," p. 45, note. See also both the ancient 
 deeds of which facsimiles are given in that work. 
 
THE FIRST CHURCH OF THE REFORMATION. 47 
 
 through the teachings of Piers Plowman and Wyclif, and 
 had grown thoroughly dissatisfied with being dependent, for 
 their religious services, upon Aston Church and its Vicar. 
 It is easy to understand the feelings that waxed strong and 
 stronger on this subject, and the settled wish that arose to 
 have an independent Chui'ch of their own within their o-vvn 
 borders ; feelings and a wish that were helped to ripen into 
 determination by that important Judgment of Law, which 
 put beyond doubt the right of parishioners to repair their 
 Parish Church for their own use. It seemed to the men of 
 energetic minds who then dwelt in Deritend, to be only 
 applying the same principle one step further if they should 
 build an entirely new Church for themselves. And this, 
 accordingly, the men of Deritend and Bordesley, joining 
 together for the purpose, set about to do. The Chiu'ch 
 which they thus built was the first actually new built Church 
 of which there is any record, as the fruit of the teachings 
 of the true fathers of the Reformation in England. The 
 building of this Church becomes therefore a memorable 
 event in the history of England, and of the Reformation in 
 Europe. It is a specially memorable event in the history of 
 Birmingham. 
 
 In those dim times of early England whereof we leam 
 from the " venerable Bede," we know that the foundation of 
 Churches was going on, and was urged as a duty incumbent 
 upon those who held large landed possessions.* The for- 
 mation of "Parishes" must have become generally settled 
 between that time and the close of the tenth century ; for, 
 while we find in Domesday Book the record of new Churches 
 having been then lately built, we find the further fact that 
 such new Churches had already then begun to be called 
 " Chapels." Numerous examples of Churches thus bearing 
 
 * See, for example, Hist. Eccles. lib. 5, capa. iv. v.; Epist. ad Ecgbert (pages 
 306, 307, of Smith's edition of Bede). 
 
48 THE ADVOWSON. 
 
 ihe name of " Chapels," though independent of any Parish 
 Church, might be given from later records. They seem 
 to have been generally founded, as Parish Churches had 
 been, by single, or a few, landowners. There are, however, 
 some instances that approach more nearly to the manner of 
 foundation of the Church built in Wyclif 's time in Deri- 
 tend ; though none seems to be known that is of so early a 
 date, and of which the history is able to be recovered in so 
 clear a manner, as the Church that has been now known for 
 nearly five hundred years as the " Chapel of St. John the 
 Baptist of Deritend."* 
 
 When a wealthy landowner had built a Church at his own 
 cost and on his own land, for the use of his tenants and his 
 neighbours, it seemed to follow, as a matter of course, that 
 he should himself appoint the person who was to celebrate 
 divine service there. And it would follow, on the same 
 principle, that when the inhabitants of a place themselves 
 built a Church, at their own cost and for their own use, they 
 should themselves appoint the person who was to celebrate 
 divine service in their Church. This was the view which 
 the men of Deritend and Bordesley took, and which helped 
 them in their determination to build a new Church for them- 
 selves. It was only thus that they could secure the services 
 of one of Wyclif 's own followers. 
 
 The choice of a site for the new Church seems to have 
 been determined by circumstances that are well worthy of, 
 
 * There is a curious account, in tlie Domesday Book of Suffolk (fo. 281 (b)), 
 of a Chapel built by four brothers, on their own land, because the Parish Church 
 woxild not hold all the Parishioners. The interesting document given in Bishop 
 Kennett's " Parochial Antiquities " (under year 1428) is of fifty years later date 
 than Deritend Chapel, besides differing materially from the document that wiU 
 presently be given. It is, however, probably the nearest illustrative comparison 
 that can be taken. There are several pages in Kennett, following p. 584 of the 
 edition of 1695 (Vol. II. p. 262 of edition of 1818), which treat of the foundation 
 and incidents of " Chapels," and the relations usually kept up between these 
 and the Mother Church. 
 
CHOICE OF A SITE. 49 
 
 attention. A knowledge of them may often help to explain 
 the shape of plots of ground, and the position of old build- 
 ings, near to the highways of old market-towns and cities. 
 
 The age of The Old Crown House has been already shown.* 
 Even were that house not still standing, it could be shown 
 that the part of Deritend whereon the oldest dwellings stood, 
 is that which lies on the left-hand side of the road going 
 out from Birmingham towards Warwick or Coventry ; the 
 side on which one who came into the town, as old Leland did, 
 from the Warwick or Coventry road, would observe that 
 "the water ran down on the right hand." It was because 
 the river Rea ran along that side, that it became the earliest 
 seat of homesteads, from which the water was thus easily 
 reached. A path to the water, both from The Old Crown 
 House and from the House that was once the property of the 
 last Lord of Birmingham, is, as I have already stated, particu- 
 larly mentioned in ancient deeds relating to those two houses.f 
 
 The opposite side of the road in Deritend, seems to have 
 remained long without houses. In 1285 a Statute was 
 passed, called the Statute of Winchester, which required 
 that, where there were no houses, — " Highways leading from 
 one market-town to another shall be enlarged, where woods 
 hedges or dykes be, so that there be neither dyke, underwood, 
 nor bush, whereby a man may lurk to do hurt, within two 
 hundred feet of the side of the way ; and so that this statute 
 shall not extend unto oaks nor unto timber trees, where it is 
 clear underneath. . . . And if perchance a park be near to 
 a highway, it is needful that the lord of the park set back 
 his park so far that there shall be a breadth of two hundred 
 feet from the highway." There are the strongest grounds 
 for believing that the latter was the state of things on this 
 side of the Deritend highway. But whether it were so or not, 
 
 * " Traditions of The Old Crown House." 
 
 t " Traditions of The Old Crown House," pp. 6, 39. 
 
50 PLEASANT PLACES OF OLD. 
 
 makes, it will be seen, no difference as to the existence of the 
 open strip of ground two hundred feet in breadth. 
 
 On looking, upon Bradford's plan, at the space occupied, 
 more than a hundred years ago, by the houses, with their 
 gardens, on the side of the street opposite to The Old Crown 
 House, it will be seen that the breadth, all along that side, 
 from the river to just opposite The Old Crown House, is 
 remarkably equal ; and measurement shows this breadth to 
 be just two hundred feet. From opposite The Old Crown 
 House to Bordesley, it widens a little, by encroachment on 
 the street, but the inner line remains the same.* No such 
 regularity is to be found on the other side of the street. 
 The conclusion is inevitable, that, at the time when the 
 Statute of Winchester became Law, there were no houses 
 on this side. It was an open space, with oaks and other 
 timber trees giving shade and beauty to what, in spring time 
 and in summer, would be the pleasant resort of the young 
 for games and of the old for pastime. The same space would 
 remain still thus open at the time when the inhabitants 
 determined upon building a new Church for themselves. A 
 better site they could not have ; and accordingly they chose 
 nearly the middle point of this open ground to build their 
 new Church upon. Having ample room, the new Church 
 was, according to custom, set straight with the points of the 
 compass, but not with the line of the road. 
 
 As the river Rea now runs, and as this street is laid down 
 upon modern maps, the new Church, commonly called 
 " Deritend Chapel," will not seem to have been put so near 
 this middle point as in fact it was ; for the course of the E,ea 
 has been more than once changed. About one-fourth part 
 of the length of Deritend lies on the Birmingham side of 
 where the stream now runs. There cannot be the least 
 
 * In " Traditions of The Old Crown House," a copy is given of so much of 
 Bradford's Plan as takes in these parts and shows these facts. 
 
THE NEW CHURCH BEGUN. 51 
 
 doubt that the Rea once ran precisely upon, and in fact 
 formed, the boundary. The course of the river was however 
 changed, long ages ago, to suit the uses of an ancient Mill 
 that will be named hereafter ; and it was again changed, after 
 1784, under an Act passed in that year, "for rebuilding the 
 Bridge over the river Rea, at the Town of Birmingham, called 
 Deritend Bridge, and widening the avenues thereto ; and for 
 widening and varying the course of the said river near the said 
 Bridge, and making a weir and other necessary works to pre- 
 vent the lower part of the said town from being overflowed." 
 Under the same Act, some alterations were also made in the 
 street near to Deritend Chapel; including some of the 
 buildings that had, after the Chapel was built, grown up on 
 that side of the street, and even the wall of the Chapel-yard 
 and some of the yard itself; from which latter, thirty-nine 
 square yards were taken, and thrown into the street. The 
 present Deritend Chapel thus stands considerably closer to 
 the street than did the Chapel first built there.* 
 
 The new Church was begun, according to trustworthy 
 tradition, in the year 1375.f Facing the title-page of this 
 volume, I give an authentic view of the Church thus built. 
 But this view is from an original sketch of the Church made 
 while the Rea was more distant, on that side of the street, 
 than it now is, and before the original building was pulled 
 down, in 1735, to give way to the larger but much less archi- 
 tecturally attractive present Chapel of St. John's, Deritend. 
 No one can look at this view of the old Chapel, and not feel 
 with how much truth it was that Leland said of the street 
 which he passed along, on the one side of which he saw 
 
 * The present chapel itself covers more ground than the old one did ; and 
 the enlargement took place partly on the side next the street. This fact, added 
 to what is above stated, will make the chapel seem to have shifted its place, 
 relatively to surrounding objects. 
 
 t The documents that will presently be given, prove that it was finished before 
 1381. So that this tradition cannot be far wrong. 
 
52 FRESH DIFFICULTIES. 
 
 The Old Crown House, and on the other this " propper 
 Chappell," and between them, on each side, the over-sha- 
 dowing elms, that this was indeed " a pretty street as ever I 
 entered."* 
 
 But it was not enough to build a Church. Divine Service 
 must be celebrated there. And here our good fathers, the 
 men of Deritend and Bordesley, were met by fresh difficul- 
 ties. Neither Piers PloAvman nor John Wyclif was in much 
 favour among many of the beneficed clergy. The Refor- 
 mation of religious teaching and of priestly life which those 
 illustrious fathers of the English Reformation taught, was by 
 no means agreeable to the most active rulers of the Church. 
 And the men of Deritend and Bordesley had to deal with 
 rather a formidable array of those whom Piers Plowman and 
 Wyclif denounced. First, there was the Vicar of Aston him- 
 self; who could not but feel that his authority was much 
 weakened by the building, without his consent asked or 
 given, and still more by the use, of a new Church within the 
 borders of his Parish. Next, the Rectorial appropriator 
 of the Parish was itself an ecclesiastical corporation, and 
 one seated afar off; namely, the Monks of Tykeford. It 
 happened, indeed, that the Vicars of Aston and the Monks 
 of Tykeford were not always on the best of terms ; and per- 
 haps this was fortunate, at this time, for the men of Deritend 
 and Bordesley. But there still remained the Bishop of the 
 
 * It lias been hinted to me, that I may be misunderstood when reading, as I 
 have uniformly done in "Traditions of The Old Crown House," Leland's 
 phrase "a pretty street or ever I entered" (as it is found in Hearne's printed 
 edition of his Itinerary) with the particle " as " instead of "or." It can only 
 be a narrow and uninformed pedantry that can misunderstand this reading. 
 Explanation seemed to me unnecessary. In well-known instances, the phrase 
 " or ever " is occasionally used to express, solemnly, a lapse of time (e. g. Eccle- 
 siastes, xii. 6) ; that is, simply instead of " ere ever." But Leland is speaking 
 oi place, not time. He could not be so ignorant as not to know that Deritend 
 was part of Birmingham. Undoubtedly he here used " or ever" (if he wrote it 
 " or ") in the sense of " as ever ;" a sense in which the phrase is still colloquially 
 used in many parts of England. 
 
THE FINAL "AGREEMENT." 53 
 
 diocese; and at this time Robert Strettcn, whcm I take 
 to have been a Birmingham man,* was Bishop of Coventry 
 and Lichfield. It is not easy to judge how far he would be 
 disposed to take part with the Vicar, or how far his sym- 
 pathies would lie with the townsmen. He probably cared 
 little, however, for the Monks of Tykeford.f 
 
 The negotiations seem to have been tedious ; but men 
 who are in earnest, and who are in the right, will generally 
 carry the day if they quietly but firmly persevere. So it 
 happened with our good fathers who had built themselves 
 this new Church in Deritend. They at length succeeded 
 in getting all they wanted. They did not object to let the 
 Vicar's dignity be saved by the insertion of a preamble of 
 specious reasons. They did not cut down the Vicar's in- 
 come ; — reserving to themselves, in return, the right of mar- 
 riage and burial in Aston Church. But they secured to 
 themselves and their children, for ever, the right of having 
 divine service celebrated in the Church ivliich they had them- 
 selves aJready built, and by a ChaijJain of their own appoint- 
 ment, absolutely independent of the Vicar of Aston. | 
 
 In the year 1381, a formal Agreement in writing was en- 
 tered into: to which the parties were, the Monks of Tykeford; 
 the Vicar of Aston himself; the Patron of Aston Church; 
 the Lord of the Manor of Birmingham^ ; thirteen good men 
 
 * See before, p. 41. 
 
 t The Monks of Tykeford enjoyed some special favour. I have found a 
 Papal Bull, promulgated and confirmed on their behalf, upon the Patent Eolls. 
 Cases concerning them occur in the old Year Books. They were a settlement 
 in England in connection with a greater monastery at Tours ; which the old 
 records that tell of them call by the one shortened word " Marmonstre." 
 
 X It will be seen, by the document that follows, that the Chaplain of Deritend 
 has never been bound even to make the personal submission to the Vicar of 
 Aston, wliich the incumbent of Pidiugton was bound to make to the Vicar of 
 Ambrosden (" ohedientiam debit am faciet") according to the terms of the original 
 document in that case ; and on which personal submission the good Bishop Ken- 
 nett insisted so strongly. See " Parochial Antiquities," pp. 583, 599, 001. 
 
 § The Lord of the Manor was party to this remarkable document, because of 
 
 E 
 
54 THE MEN OF DEllITEND, 
 
 and true of the inhabitants of Deritend and Bordesley ; and 
 the Bishop of the diocese. The original of this venerable 
 document, unique in its date and kind among the records of 
 Eno-lish Church foundations, lies before me as I write *: and 
 
 AGEEEMENT TOFCHING THE CHOICE OF A CHAPLAIN 
 
 TO OFEICIATE IN THE NEWLY-BUILT CHAPEL OF 
 
 DEEITEND, a.d. 1381. 
 
 Hec est composico '\ ordinaco facta inr Priorem T: mo- 
 nachos Priorat} bte Marie de Tykeford jux^ Nupertepaynell 
 Lincoln dioc^ ecctiam pochialem de Aston jux^ Birmynch'^m 
 Coventr T: Lich dioc^ in ppos usus optinentes / monachos 
 majoris mon Turonefi ad Eomana ecctiam nullo medio pti- 
 nentf subject^ jur til T: suporietate AfebtiT: Con^''^ dci majoris 
 
 his responsibility to the tenants of the Manor of Birminu;ham in Deritend. This 
 responsibihty, too often lost sight of by modern political writers on the feudal 
 system, is thus expressed by Glanville, who wrote in the time of Henry the Se- 
 cond : — " Miitua quidem debet esse dominii et homagii fidelitatis connexio ; ita 
 quod quantum homo debet domino ex homaqio, tantum ilU debet dominus ex 
 dominio." (Lib. ix. cap. 4.) The Lord was thus bound to uphold all the rights of 
 the tenants within his Manor. His seal was a strong assurance in such a re- 
 markable case as the present. 
 
 * It gives a striking illustration of the superficialness of the higher sort of 
 what is called " education" in our day, to find that, on 26th August, 1863, Sir 
 William Armstrong, President of the British Association for the Advancement of 
 Science, made, in his "inaugural address," the following statement : — "While so 
 much facility is given to mental communication by new measures and new inven- 
 tions, the fundamental art of expressing thought by written symbols, remains as 
 imperfect now as it has been for centuries past. It seems strange that, while we 
 actually possess a system of shorthand by which words can be recorded as ra- 
 pidly as they can be spoken, we should persist in writing a slow and laborious 
 longhand. It is intelligible that grown up persons who have acquired the pre- 
 sent conventional art of vrriting, should be reluctant to incur the labour of mas- 
 tering a better sj^-stem ; but there can be no reason why the rising generation 
 should not be instructed in a method of writing more in accordance with the ac- 
 tivity of mind which now prevails. Even without going so far as to adopt for 
 ordinary use a complete system of stenography, which it is not easy to acquire, 
 we might greatly abridge the time and labour of writing, by the recognition of a 
 few simple signs to express the syllables which are of most frequent occurrence 
 our language. Our words are in a great measure made up of such syllables as 
 com. con, tion, ing, able, ain, ent, est, ance, etc. These we are now obliged to 
 
AND THE MONKS OF TYKEFORD. 55 
 
 it is a document of so much historical interest that, while I 
 give a facsimile of it at the end of tliis work, I also put in 
 type here the exact terms of it, together with an English 
 translation. 
 
 TEANSLATION. 
 
 This is an Agreement and Ordinance made between the 
 Prior and Monks of the Priory of the blessed Mary 
 OF Tykeford nigh Newport-Pagnell in the Diocese of Lincoln, 
 appropriators of the Parish Church of Aston nigh Birming- 
 ham in the Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield (who are subject 
 Monks of Marmonstre, which belongs to the Poman Church 
 with none between ; the rights however and superiority per- 
 taining in this behalf to the Abbot and Convent of the said 
 
 write out over and over again, as if time and labour expended in what may be 
 termed visual speech, were of no importance." 
 
 Not only did no member of the British Association for the Advancement of 
 Science correct a statement so marked, but it was immediately followed up, in 
 the " Times" Newspaper, by several letters in the same style, under the head 
 " Shorthand and Longhand ;" until, in a note inserted in that Paper on 11th Sept., 
 I pointed out that the "longhand" is modern, and that the use of signs to ex- 
 press syllables was, in fact, the old practice. The document that is given above 
 affords an example of the system of short writing that was formerly in use. But 
 it was used in printed books as well as in writing. 
 
 Two hundred years ago, no English gentleman could have fallen into the strange 
 mistake that was thus common to Sir W. Armstrong and his hearers in 1863. 
 Greek and Latin were not then thought studies that could, alone, make any man 
 a " scholar," or any man's education complete. " Education " is nothing better 
 than a mischievous sham, if it does not teach Englishmen to understand the na- 
 ture and the worth of the records of their own country — the stamped remains of 
 the past life which we are continuing — at least as carefully as it teaches the relics 
 of Greece and Eome. 
 
 It ought to be stated that, of the document that now follows, two translations 
 have been made before, and copies of both are (by the kindness of Mr. J. AV. 
 Whateley and of Mr. William Hodgetts) in my possession. One seems to havj 
 been made in 1821, when a local Act of Parliament was being sought ; the other 
 (perhaps only a varied copy of the former) was inserted in a " Case," stated for 
 the opinion of Dr. Jenner, in 1828, after the death of Mr. Darwall, who had then 
 lately died, having long been Chaplain of Deritend. Neither of these translations 
 seeming to me rightly to represent the original, I venture to give here a fresh 
 one, together with the opportunity, now given for the first time, of a comparison 
 with the original. 
 
56 THE MEN OF DERITEND, 
 
 moil qui nunc sunt vel imposrum erunt in hac pte compe- 
 tentib3 exceptf 1 in omib} semp salvis / et cliim Eicin 
 Shobenhale ppetuu vicariu ejusclfh ecciie cle Aston / ac dmn 
 Johem Buttort militem p)dci Priorat} de Tykeford fundatorem 
 ex pte una / et drim Joliem de Birmynch^m militem dilm de 
 villa sive hamelett vocat Dury3ateliende jux'' pJdict villa de 
 Birmynch^m situat / ac Galfridii Boteler / Robtum Grene / 
 Jotiem Smyth / A¥illin Jeffe / Thoma Holdon / Willin Coup / 
 Willfn Dod / Ad^'m Bene / Riciii Bene / Simone Huwet / Ricni 
 de Broke / Robtum fflaumvile / T; Thoma Chattok / de p)dictf 
 vitl sive hamelettf de Dury3atehende T; Bordesley / ac ejusdin 
 ecctie de Aston poch / n'^non ceros oiiies T: singtos pochnos 
 in dictf vitt sive hamelettf de Dury3atehende T: Bordesley 
 intiitantf ex pte alia / de consensu T: assensu veil pris diii 
 Robti dei gra Coventr '\ Lych Epi ejusdm ecctie de Aston 
 diocesani /. In pJmis qd pjdci pochi in dictf vitl sive hame- 
 lettf de Dury3atehende '\ Bordesley inhitantf heredes T; eo^ 
 successores ppr fluvio^ nundacones T: alia^ via^ discrimina 
 inr pJdcam ecctiam pochialem de Aston T: dictf vitl sive 
 hamelettf de Dury3atehende T: Bordesley longe distantes 
 sepi3 T: maxie yemali tempe imminencia T: contingencia T: ne 
 infantes ipas villas sive hamelettf de Dury3atehende T: 
 Bordesley inliitantf absq, solempnitate Baptismatf pire con- 
 tingat imppetuii llebunt T: inveniant sumptib3 eo^ ppis unu 
 Capllm ydoneu Deo "I pochis vitl sive hamelett de Dury3ate- 
 hende T: Bordesley pJdictf inhitantf divina officia ministratur 
 T: defunctur in q^'d^m Capella in honore Sci Johis Baptiste ibm 
 infra dmniu de Dury3atehende p)dict de novo constructa 
 contie et ppetue celebratur / . Itin inhitantes pJdci heant unu 
 
AND THE JIONKS OF TYKEFORD. 57 
 
 Marmonstre which now are or liereafter shall be, being re- 
 served and in all things always saved ) ; and Sir Richard 
 Shobenhale, perpetual Vicar of the same Church of Aston ; 
 and Sir John Buttort, Knight, founder of the aforesaid Priory 
 of Tykeford ; of the one part : And Sir John of Birmingham, 
 Knight, Lord of the town or hamlet called Deritend standing 
 nigh the aforesaid town of Birmingham ; and Geoffry 
 BuTELER, Robert o' the Grene, John Smy^th, William 
 Jeffe, Thomas Holdon, William Couper, William Dod, 
 Adam Bene, Richard Bene, Simon Huwet, Richard of 
 Broke, Robert Flaumvile, and Thomas Chattok, of the 
 aforesaid towns or hamlets of Deritend and Bordesley, and 
 parishioners of the same church of Aston, and also all and 
 every other the parishioners dwelling in the said towns or 
 hamlets of Deritend and Bordesley, of the other part: With the 
 consent and assent of the venerable father Sir Robert, by the 
 grace of God Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, diocesan 
 of the same church of Aston Firstly^ that the aforesaid 
 parishioners dwelling in the said towns or hamlets of Deri- 
 tend and Bordesley, their heirs and successors, — because of 
 the floodings of the streams, and the obstructions often, and 
 especially in winter time, threatening and happening in the 
 other ways between the aforesaid Parish church of Aston 
 and the said far off towns or hamlets of Deritend and 
 Bordesley, — and lest it should befall that the infants dwell- 
 ing in the said towns or hamlets of Deritend and Bordesley 
 for want of the rite of Baptism might perish for ever, — shall 
 have and may appoint, at their oavu charges, one Chap- 
 lain fit to administer and discharge, before God and the pa- 
 rishioners dwelling in the aforesaid towns or hamlets of 
 Deritend and Bordesley, divine services; which are always 
 and for ever henceforth to be celebrated in a certain Chapel 
 in honor of Saint John the Baptist there lately built within 
 the Lordship of Deritend aforesaid. Moreover, the inhabi- 
 
58 THE MEN OF DERITEND, 
 
 Baptis?iu in eaclni Capella ad Baptizand omes et singtos 
 pocfeno^ pueros dicta^ villa^ sive hameletta^ de Dury3ate- 
 hande 1 Bordesley infiitantf ac Purificacones matm eo^dni 
 pueo^ p ipm Capttm qui in dca Capella p tempe fuiit cele- 
 bratur / ac ecia p)dci pochi ofnes et singti dicta^ vitt sive 
 hamelettf de Dury3atehende 1 Bordesley infra pochiam de 
 Aston p)dict inhitantf visitabunt dcam ecctiam sua pochialem 
 de Aston in festf Pasche Natal dni Ofiii Sco^ Dedicaconis 
 ejusdm ecctie de Aston Sco^ Petri T: Pauli px post fin nati- 
 vitatf Sci Joliis Bap tie 1 Purificaconis bte Marie V Jginis ibm 
 deo ac dee ecctie de Aston tanq.,^ matrici T: pocli ecctie eo^ 
 reddendo 1 solvendo oiniodas decimas majores % minores ac 
 oblacones sicut ab antiquo tempe fecerunt eidfri ecctie ut 
 tenenf / Itiii si p)dci pocfti de Dury3atehende ^ Bordesley 
 essent infirmi vel aliquis eo^ infirmus qd no possunt laborar 
 vel in articto mortf qd pjdict vicar qui p tempe fuiit aut 
 ejus Captlus pocft non possunt bono tempe T: optuno venir 
 tales pochos sic infirmos visitandi T: sacra ministrandi tunc 
 p)fat3 Captls dee Capelle confessiones pJdco^ taliu pocfeno^ 
 audiat T: eos absolvat sacramenta '\ sacramentalia si necesse 
 fujit eis in forma jurf ministret sic qd pJdci pochi de Dury- 
 3atehende T: Bordesley dco vicario de Aston qui p tempe fuJ it 
 vel Captlo suo pochiali semel in anno confiteanf ut de jure 
 tenenf / Sic q^ de omib3 T: singtis supius noiatf T: expjssatf 
 nullii jOjudiciu eidin matric ecctie de Aston nee pjfatf Priori 
 T; monachis aut eo^ successorib3 vel pJdict dno Rico vicar 
 aut successorib3 suis in futur genlef / In quo^ oini T: singto^ 
 fidem T: testiom ptes pJdict sigilla sua alrnatim p)sentib3 
 
AND THE MOKKS OF TYKEFOHD. 59 
 
 tants aforesaid may have a Font in the same Chapel, for 
 baptizing all and every the children of the parishioners of 
 the said towns or hamlets of Deritend and Bordesley dwelling 
 there ; and Churchings of the mothers of the same children 
 shall be solemnized by the Chaplain of the said Chapel for 
 the time being. And also all and every the aforesaid parish- 
 ioners of the said towns or hamlets of Deritend and Bordesley 
 dwelling within the parish of Aston aforesaid, shall visit their 
 said parish church of Aston on the feasts of Easter, Christ- 
 mas, All Saints, the Dedication of the same church of Aston, 
 Saints Peter and Paul next after the feast of the Nativity of 
 Saint John the Baptist, and the Purification of the blessed 
 Virgin Mary ; there rendering and paying to God and to the 
 said Church of Aston, as to their mother and parochial 
 church, all kind of tythes, greater and lesser, and oblations 
 like as from old time they have done to the same church, as 
 they are bound to do. Moreover, if the aforesaid parishioners 
 of Deritend and Bordesley should be so ailing, or any of them 
 so ailing, that they cannot work, or so near the approach of 
 death that the aforesaid vicar for the time being or his paro- 
 chial chaplain cannot come in good and seasonable time to 
 visit such parishioners thus ailing, and to administer the sacra- 
 ments, then the aforesaid Chaplain of the said Chapel may 
 hear the confessions of such said parishioners, and may ab- 
 solve them, [and] may, if necessary, administer sacraments and 
 sacramentals to them in due form ; the aforesaid parishioners 
 of Deritend and Bordesley confessing to the said vicar of 
 Aston for the time being, or to his parochial chaplain, once 
 in the year, as of right they are bound to do. So that from 
 all and every the things above named and set down, no pre- 
 judice may hereafter arise to the said mother church of Aston, 
 or to the aforesaid Prior and INIonks or their successors, or to 
 the aforesaid Sir Eichard the Vicar or his successors. In faith 
 and testimony of all and every which things, the parties afore- 
 
60 "given at deeitend, a.d. 1381." 
 
 apposuerunt / Dat apucl Dury3atehende pJdict xiij"^'" Ktn 
 Junij Anno dni mitimo ccc™° octogesimo primo / Et nos Rofet} 
 afidcus dei gra Coventr T: Lich Epus loci diocesan} p)dce 
 composicoi consensum nrm pJbentes T: assensum sigillum nrm 
 pjsentib} apponi fecim} in robnr T: firmitate pjmisso^ / Dat 
 apud Haywode iiij*° Kin Junij Anno diii sup'^dco / et nri Cons 
 vicesimo pmo. 
 
 The terms of this remarkable document, show that the men 
 of Deritend and Bordesley had taken up a thoroughly inde- 
 pendent attitude, and that neither the Monks of Tykeford, 
 nor the Vicar of Aston, nor the Bishop of the Diocese, 
 thought it safe to resist their determination to have ser- 
 vices and a chaplain of their own, entirely independent of 
 the Parish Church of Aston. There is a striking contrast 
 between the whole form and tone of this document and 
 those of the one, of fifty years later date, which was printed 
 in 1695 by Bishop Kennett.* 
 
 There can be no doubt, morally speaking, that the business 
 of the important document thus "given at Deritend on the 
 20th day of May, a.d. 1381," was transacted in The Old 
 
 * The document touching Pidington (see the notes before, pp. 48, 53,) is in the 
 form of a Decree issued by the Bishop, instead of being, as this is, a "compo- 
 sicio " between equal parties. That decree not only bound the chapel-priest (he 
 is not honoured by the title " Chaplain," as in this case) to make personal submis- 
 sion to the Vicar, but bound the inhabitants to pay a sum of money and a quantity 
 of corn every year as a tribute to the same Vicar, without any equivalent whatever. 
 This is hardly the place to follow out this and similar comparisons. The refer- 
 ence to Kennett having been already given, it will be enough now to refer, in 
 addition, to the Act of 7 Anne, c. 34, by which the Parish of St. Philip was erected 
 in Birmingham, in 1708 ; and by which Act the new Parish is bound to pay to the 
 Kector of old St. Martin's £15 a year, and to the Parish Clerk £7 a year, besides 
 other liabilities. These facts are stated to show the questions that have always 
 arisen when Parishes have been divided. Our Deritend fathers in 1381 seemed 
 better able to grapple with all parts of the case, than men have usually been 
 found able to do in more modern times. 
 
ROBERT O' THE GRENE. Gl 
 
 said have put their seals one after the other to these presents. 
 Given at Deritend aforesaid, on the 20th day of May in the 
 year of our Lord 1381. And we Robert abovenamcd, by the 
 grace of God Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, diocesan of 
 the place, giving our consent and assent to the aforesaid 
 agreement, have caused our seal to be put to these presents 
 in assurance and confirmation of the premisses. Given at 
 Haywode on the 29tli day of May in the year of our Lord 
 aforesaid, and of our consecration the twenty-first. 
 
 Crown House. From the " Gallorye Chamber " of that 
 House, the new Chapel was, as its less picturesque successor 
 still is, the most conspicuous object. 
 
 Four seals remain attached to the original document, as 
 will be seen on the facsimile. Of these, the one nearest the 
 left hand is the seal of the Monks of Tykeford ; the next 
 towards the right is that of the Bishop of Coventry and 
 Lichfield ; the next is that of Sir John Birmingham. The 
 seal nearest the right hand is the seal representing all 
 the inhabitants of Deritend and Bordesley, but it is the per- 
 sonal seal of Robert o' the Grene. This I am able to prove 
 by comparing it with the seals attached to the ancient pri- 
 vate Deeds that have come down to me together with The 
 Old Crown House. I may therefore say, without presump- 
 tion, that Robert o' the Grene thus stands before us, acknow- 
 ledged by all the freeholders and inhabitants of Deritend 
 and Bordesley of his own time, as well as 
 by the Bishop of the Diocese and the Lord 
 of the Manor of Birmingham, to be the man 
 whose seal is to be accepted as a true and 
 sufficient attestation to a record made in the 
 name and on the behalf of all the inhabi- 
 tants of Deritend and Bordesley. Such having been tlie case, 
 it will be an interesting memorial- of Old Birmingham to 
 
62 A SEAL CUT OFF. 
 
 give here an outline of this seal of Eobert o' the Grene. His 
 name will come before ns more than once again. 
 
 It will be seen that an empty space is left between the seal 
 of the Monks of Tykeford and that of the Bishop. When 
 the document was executed, this space was unquestionably 
 filled with the seal of the Vicar of Aston. The place for 
 holding the strip of parchment on which the seal was put, and 
 which passed through the fold in the parchment of the docu- 
 ment itself, is plainly seen in the facsimile. It is certain 
 that this seal A¥as once in its place ; and it is equally certain 
 that it has been removed, not accidentally but designedly. 
 It is physically impossible, from the way in which one end 
 of the doubled strip whereon the seals are put is always split, 
 and the other end passed through it before the sealing, that, 
 even if the seal were ever so much broken, the double strip 
 itself could have dropped out by accident. The inference is, 
 that either Sir Richard Shobenhale himself or some successor 
 of his, stirred to wrath by the attachment of Birmingham to 
 the teachings of John Wyclif, — or, shall it be said, vexed at 
 the seeming assent to the curtailment of his authority Avhich 
 the hanging of the Vicar's seal to this document gave per- 
 petual record of, — found an opportunity, on some occasion 
 when the document was produced in his sight, to cut away 
 this seal. That the thing was done is certain ; but the ex- 
 ploit was a very vain one ; for Deritend Chapel has flourished 
 ever since, not, it must be remembered (as has been some- 
 times loosely but quite incorrectly said), as a" Chapel of Ease '' 
 to Aston Church, but as an entirely independent Chapel and 
 incumhency ; whose incumbent, moreover, has always had, 
 and still enjoys, the official title, not of " Curate," but, 
 what is very rare in ecclesiastical foundations of this class in 
 England, of " Chaplain." 
 
 Special attention must be called to the fact, that Deritend 
 Chapel was not built, nor was any Chaplain ever appointed 
 
BLUNDERS IN NxVMES. G3 
 
 to it, to say masses for the souls of those who were dead, 
 as was the case with the before-named Free Chapel, and 
 with the two Chauntries in old St. Martin's Church. The 
 spirit of Piers Plowman and of John Wyclif being that which 
 moved the founders of tliis Chapel, the character and func- 
 tions of the Chaplain are pat in the simple but emphatic 
 words, that he was to be one "fit to administer divine services 
 before God and the inhabitants of Deritend and Bordesley." 
 John Wyclif himself might have dictated those words. It 
 is not improbable that he did so. 
 
 Something must be added as to the ]\Ien of Deritend and 
 Bordesley whose Names are thus honorably recorded. It will 
 be seen that the greater part of them are now set down as 
 having settled surnames of continuance, and not merely with 
 descriptive surnames. In some instances, these are incor- 
 rectly given here; which is not to be wondered at, consi- 
 dering the number of distinct parties that had a hand in the 
 document, and tliat the inhabitants of Deritend and Bordes- 
 ley were anxious about the thing to be done, and were too 
 wise to stop to trouble themselves about the spelling of 
 names, well assured that, " where the persons appeared the 
 same," no one " would fall out about misnomer."* 
 
 Bohert o the Grenes name is here written as if he had 
 dropped the descriptive particles and taken the modern 
 surname. This was not the case. He was a thorough Eng- 
 lishman, and he and his family clung to a name which, while 
 in itself descriptive only, was, from its bearer's position, ac- 
 tivity, and influence, more distinctive, and felt to be more 
 genial, than any shortening of it would be. I am able to 
 affirm that none of his family would ever allow the name to 
 be travestied in Latin, as was so commonly done in case of 
 other names. f I have many private deeds in which his name 
 
 * See before, p. 16, in the extract from Fuller. 
 
 t Persons bearing this name elsewhere in En<;land, are found recorded in the 
 
64 DERITEND MEN OF 1381. 
 
 is repeated, for it occurs again and again through nearly- 
 one hundred and twenty years after this time ; and, in eA^ery 
 one of these, without exception, though all are in Latin, the 
 name is spelled ^'- Bohert o the Grene.''' 
 
 Eichard of Broke is also here incorrectly written. We 
 have had the name before,* as " atte broke." It is a mis- 
 translation into Latin of the very common English particle. 
 
 The names Flaumvile and Conner are instances of names 
 out of w'hich others have grown, through the common use of 
 contractions in writing. Flaumvile would be often written 
 " Flavile," and Couper is, in this document itself, written 
 " Coup." Hence have sprung the names Flavell and Cope^ 
 both of which are common Birmingham surnames. 
 
 For the rest, Boteler lives in the shapes Botteley and But- 
 ler ; Smyth has exchanged the " y" for "i," except in a few 
 cases of mere affectation; Jeffe lives as Jeffs; Holdon has 
 become hardly disguised at all, as Holden ; Bod lives in the 
 shapes of Bodd and Bodson ; Bene seems to have undergone 
 the slight change of becoming Benet ; Huwet remains, with 
 the spelling Hewitt ; Chattok has undergone even less change. 
 
 The Chaplain who was " had and appointed at their own 
 charges," must have been supported, during the first year and 
 a half, either out of a rate made among themselves by the 
 
 LICENCE IN MORTMAIN, FOE THE ENDOWMENT OF THE 
 CHAPLAIN OF DERITEND CHAPEL, a.d. 1383. 
 
 Ricardus Dei gracia Eex Anglie T: ffrancie T: Dominus 
 Hibnie. Omnib} ad quos pJsentes tre pveniint Salutem. Sciatis 
 
 Latin shape of " de la grene." The name liappens, by an odd coincidence, to 
 be found in that shape in records relating to " Little Birmingham," in Norfolk. 
 See before, p. IS. 
 
 * Page 29. 
 
 t P. 26. In cases where several persons joined to make an endowment, it was 
 of course less necessary to delay for the inquirj'^, as the presumption was strong 
 against any "loss and prejudice " through the individual gifts. 
 
EXDOAVING A CIIArLAIX. G5 
 
 inhabitants of Deritend and Bordesley, or out of the insen- 
 sibly arising- but practically always large produce of the Of- 
 fertory. But, having achieved the important ends of build- 
 ing their ov^'U Church and getting their own Chaplain, it 
 seemed to some among them that it would be wise to provide 
 an endowment for the permanent support of the Chaplain. So 
 six of them joined together to make up an endowment which 
 should produce at least ten marks a year, a handsome endow- 
 ment for that time. Desiring to settle this endowment with- 
 out delay, the Letters Patent containing the Licence in Mort- 
 main were obtained at once, with the clause mentioned beforef 
 as being rare ; the disinterestedness of the endowers being 
 further marked by the fact that, in order to obtain this early, 
 though only conditional. Licence, they went to the enormous 
 cost, as it then was, of paying thirty-five marks as a fine, to 
 cover any hypothetical loss of services due from the land 
 granted by them in mortmain for this endowment.* 
 
 To complete the record of the facts as to the foundation 
 and endowment of Deritend Chapel, I now put in type the 
 exact terms of this Licence in Mortmain, together with an 
 English translation of it, as was done in the case of the 
 Agreement. A facsimile of the original Letters Patent is 
 also given at the end of this volume. 
 
 TEANSLATION. 
 EiCHAED by the grace of God King of England and France 
 and Lord of Ireland. To all to whom the present letters may 
 have come. Greeting. Know ye, that of our special grace w^e 
 
 * On the Fine lloU of 6 Eieliard II. I have found the following, m hicli I here 
 print in full, without the contractions : — " Wcirr. Willielnius Geffou et alii daut 
 triginta et quinque marcas, solutas in hanaperio, pro licencia concedendi eis quod 
 ipsi certa terras et tenementa et redditus cum pertinentibus infra parochiam de 
 Aston in comitatu Warr., que de Eege non teneiitur in capite, dare possint et 
 assignare cuidam capellauo in quadam capella fundata et ordinata in hameletto 
 de Duriyatehende infra parochiam prediclam celebraturo, habeuda ad mauum 
 mortuam. Teste Eege apud Westmonasterium. xx die Februnrii." 
 
66 LICENCE IN MORTMAIN 
 
 qd de gra lira spali concessimus 1 licenciam declimus p nob 
 
 T: heredib} nris quantum in nol3 est Witto GefFon Thome 
 
 Holdon Eobto of the Grene Rico Bene Thome de Behie T: 
 
 Johi Smyth qd ipi terras teh T: redditus cum ptih infra po- 
 
 chiam de Aston in Com War? ad valorem decem marca^ p 
 
 annu juxta veru valorc eo^dc que de nobis non tenenf in 
 
 capite dare possint 1 assignare cuidam Capellano divina quo- 
 
 libet die in quadam Capella fundata T: ordinata in honore sci 
 
 Johis Baptiste in hameletto de Duriyatehende infra pochiam 
 
 pjdcam celebraturo. Hend T: tenend eidem Capellano T: sue' 
 
 cessorib} suis Capellanis divina singulis dieb} in Capella pjdca 
 
 celebraturis imppetuum. Et eidem Capellano qd ipe rras ten 
 
 T: redditus pJdca cum ptiri a pJfatis AVillo Thoma Robto Rico 
 
 Thoma T: Johe recipe possit T: tenere sibi T; successorib3 suis 
 
 Capellanis divina singulis dieb} in capella pJdca celebraturis 
 
 ut pjdcm est imppetuu tenore pJsencium similir licenciam 
 
 dedimus spalem. statuto de tris T: teil ad manu mortuam non 
 
 ponendis edito non obstante. Salvis semp capitalib} dnis 
 
 feodi serviciis inde debitis 1 consuetis. Dumtamen p inqui- 
 
 sicoes inde in forma debita capiend T: in cancellaria nra vel 
 
 heredum nro^ rite retornand comptum sit qd id fieri porit 
 
 absqn, dampno sen pjjudicio nri T: heredum nro^ ac alio^ 
 
 quo^cunqy In cujus rei testimonium has Iras ilras fieri feci- 
 
 mus patentes. Teste me ipo apud Westm vicesimo die fi"e- 
 
 bruarij. Anno regni nri sexto. 
 
 Newenham. 
 
 p fere de private sig 1 p triginta % quinq^ marcis solut in hanapio. ' 
 
FOll ENDOWING THE CHAPLAIN. 67 
 
 have granted and given licence, for ourselves and our heirs, 
 so far as in us is, to William Gefeon, Thomas Holdon, 
 EoBEET o' the Grene, Richard Bene, Thomas of Belne, 
 and John S.aiyth, that they may give and assign lands tene- 
 ments and rents, with the appurtenances, within the Parish 
 of Aston in the County of Warwick, to the value of ten marcs 
 a year [£6 13s. 4^/.], according to the true value thereof, 
 which are not held from us in chief, to a certain Chaplain 
 who shall celebrate divine service each day in a certain chapel 
 founded and appointed in honor of Saint John the Baptist 
 in the hamlet of Deritend within the parish aforesaid. To 
 have and to hold to the same Chaplain and his successors, 
 Chaplains, who shall celebrate divine service every day in 
 the aforesaid Chapel, for ever. And we have likewise given 
 special licence to the same Chaplain, that he may receive 
 and hold the lands tenements and rents aforesaid, with the 
 appurtenances, from the before-named William, Thomas, 
 Robert, Richard, Thomas, and John, for himself and his suc- 
 cessors. Chaplains, who shall celebrate divine service every 
 day in the Chapel aforesaid, as is aforesaid, for ever, according 
 to these presents ; the Statute passed concerning not putting 
 lands and tenements into mortmain notwithstanding. Saving 
 ahvays to the chief lords of the fee the services thence due 
 and accustomed. Provided that, by inquiries thereupon in 
 due form to be made, and into our Chancery or that of our 
 heirs rightly returned, it may have been found that this can 
 be done without loss or prejudice to us or our heirs or any 
 others whomsoever. In testimony Avhereof we have caused 
 these our letters to be made Patent. Witness myself at 
 Westminster, on the 20th day of February, in the sixth year 
 of our reign. 
 
 Newenham. 
 
 By writ of privy seal^ and for thirty and five marcs paid into the 
 hanaper. 
 
68 DAILY SERVICES IN CHURCH. 
 
 To these letters patent, the Great Seal of England is at- 
 tached, by a bright red and green silken cord, in the nsual 
 manner. The memorandum as to the payment of the thirty- 
 five marcs, is written in a different hand and with a different 
 ink from what were used in the body of the letters patent. 
 It was evidently added afterwards.* 
 
 It will not escape notice, that it is thrice repeated, in these 
 letters patent, that the Chaplain is to perform service in the 
 Chapel every day. This is not specified in the "Agreement " 
 of 1381 ; but it was clearly the intention of the endowers to 
 ensure that the Church which they and their neighbours had 
 built should be every day open, so that any neighbour might 
 be able, at any time, to find there fit opportunity for the 
 sacrifice of thanksgiving and prayer. 
 
 Four of these endowers were certainly the same as four of 
 
 * The Eey. John Darwall, for many years Chaplain of Derltend, was a very 
 careful and conscientious man. Afc the end of the Eegister Book of Deritend, he 
 made a copy, on vellum, of both the Agreement and the Letters Patent above 
 gi^ren, — oddly enough, however, transposing their order. This book is now in 
 the hands of the Eev. W. Bramwell Smith, as Chaplain of Deritend ; through 
 •whose courtesy I have made a literatim copy of Mr. Darwall's transcripts therein. 
 I find, upon comparison of these transcripts with the originals, that there are 
 som?, and rather curious, inaccuracies in the transcripts ; but it does not seem 
 necessary to point these out. The facsimiles given in this volume are of course 
 without appeal. 
 
 In the same Eegister Book, Mr. Darwall entered a Memorandum, under the 
 date of 16th May, L821, which still remains there, carefully attested by two 
 ■witnesses, and recording that both the original documents were, on that day, put 
 into the hands of Mr. J. W. Whateley for an official and very proper purpose, 
 ■which is stated in the Memorandum. It seems strange that Mr. Darwall, who lived 
 some years longer, should have let documents as to ■n hich he took such careful 
 and proper precautions, remain uninquired after. Mr. Whateley fulfilled his 
 duties ; and, when they had been fulfilled, he did not retain the documents. 
 Nevertheless, but for my own persistent search, these documents would unques- 
 tionably have been lost to history and to the town. Even the BailiiFof the Deri- 
 tend Chapel Estates slated in writing, in October, 1863, that he " never heard " 
 of these documents, and, ■w'hen further pressed, that he could " find no trace of 
 them " ! ! I forbear to touch upon the circumstances under which documents so 
 remarkable have remained so long out of their right custody. For myself, I at 
 least have done my duty in bringing the full knowledge of the documents them- 
 selves to all who care for what illustrates important historical events. 
 
WHO WERE THE ENDOWERS. 69 
 
 the men who took part in the Agreement of 1381 ; namely, 
 Thomas HoMon, Robert o' tlie Grene, Richard Bene, and John 
 Smyth. But I am much disposed to think, also, that the 
 William " Geffon " of the former is the same as the William 
 " '^^ff^ " ^^ ^^^^ latter. Thomas of Belne is new, unless this 
 is, as I suspect it to be, a mere corrupt spelling (the sound 
 remaining the same) of " BeneT It is certain that there was 
 much carelessness in these matters.* On the cn-iginal Let- 
 ters Patent, now before me, the name of Richard Bene was at 
 first written "Bever." This was so preposterous a blunder, in 
 sound as well as in spelling, that when the Letters Patent 
 reached Birmingham, an erasure was made on the place, and 
 " Bene " was written instead ; but the name remains " Bever " 
 on the copy of the Licence that stands upon the Patent Polls 
 now in the Record Office.f " Belne " would sound too much 
 
 * A curious illustration of the uncertainty with which names were formerly 
 spelled, is found in letters patent of 162 years later date than the letters patent 
 now named, and which concerned a person whose power and influence make it 
 strange that there should be found such uncertainty. The Manor of Birming- 
 ham was granted to John Dudley, Viscount Lisle, on 21st December, 1545. He 
 was the grandson of the Lord of Lisle named in " Traditions of the Old Crown 
 House," p. 51. A facsimile of a Deed touching The Old Crown House, to which 
 the last-named Lord of Lisle and the famous Bishop Alcok were parties, is given 
 in that volume. It might be supposed that the scribes would have known how 
 to spell the name of a minister of Henry the Eighth, or at any rate that they 
 would have kept to one spelling of it. Not so, however. I find that, in the grant 
 itself, the name is spelled in the very different shapes of I/ysle and Lisley, spell- 
 ings that are the source of very different modern surnames, and that are quite as 
 different as Jeffe is from Geffon, or Bene from Belne. Further on (p. 78) we find 
 Geffen (not Geffon) ; which brings us nearly back to Jeffe. 
 
 t See before, p. 23. I took the name from the Patent Roll, when giving it in 
 "Traditions of the Old Crown House," p. 46. I may mention here another in- 
 stance of erasure that I have observed in a highly interesting document. In the 
 oldest Charter of the City of London, granted by William I. (and quoted before, 
 p. 24, note), the title of the Chief Officer of the City is written upon an erasure. 
 There can be no mistake about the fact, though the late Town Clerk of London, 
 when I once pointed out the fact to him, said that of course he could not officially 
 acknowledge it. This erasure is curious. The title, as it stands, is " portlrefan " 
 (port-reeve). The common English title of the chief officer of places was then 
 "prafast" {profast, profost, provost); and in all probability the scribe wrote 
 this word first, by very uatui-al mistake. 
 
 F 
 
70 " DUKY3ATEHENDE." 
 
 like " Bene " to attract attention when the Licence was read 
 over to those whom it concerned. It is far less of a variation 
 than is found in the instances given by Fuller.* The in- 
 terpolated particle "of" ("de" in the Latin), would not be 
 thought of any importance. 
 
 As the place Newenham is in Warwickshire, it will not 
 be uninteresting to add, that the Thomas of Newenham whose 
 surname attests these Letters Patent, is named in the Close 
 Roll of the first year of Eichard II., as one among three 
 who were Keepers of the Great Seal of England at the time 
 of the death of Edward III. A curious account is there 
 given of what was done with the old Great Seal, and of the 
 delivery to the Chancellor of a new Great Seal, — namely, 
 the one of which the impression remains still attached to 
 these very Letters Patent, f 
 
 The amount of the fine paid for the speedy issue of this 
 Licence, gives proof of the wealth, as well as of the 
 public spirit, of those who thus endowed Deritend Chapel 
 in 1383. 
 
 It will be observed that, in these two documents, Deritend 
 is spelled " Dury3atehende " and " Duriyatehende." The 
 correct spelling has been given and explained in the " Tra- 
 ditions of the Old Crown House." The sound of " Der-yat- 
 end " is the same as that of the spellings found in these two 
 documents. It is a curious coincidence, worth notice, that 
 the syllable " Dur " should have crept in here ; inasmuch as 
 " dur " is Welsh for " water," and often appears in the names 
 of English rivers ; and so it might, on a superficial glance, 
 be thought that " Dury3atehende " expressed something of 
 the position of the place on the river. But " Rea " is, be- 
 
 * Before, p. 17. 
 
 t " Qui quidem cancellarius," the record tells us, " eodem die, in capella sua, 
 apud hospitium suum in vico de Flete Stret, Londini, dictam bursam aperuit, et 
 dictum sigillum extraxit, et diversas literas patentes de diversis officiariis regni 
 ibidem fecit consignari." 
 
THE DEER-GATE-END. 71 
 
 yond a question, the old name of this river, and not " Diir." 
 " Ilea " is a Gaelic word, expressing running water, and is 
 also found as the name (sometimes a little disguised) of many 
 rivers in England. As for " Deritend " — " Der-yat-end " — 
 it remains the End nigh the " Deer-Gate."* 
 
 There are some circumstances connected with the later his- 
 tory of Deritend Chapel that may be instructively glanced at. 
 
 The fraud upon Parliament, under cover of which Gilds 
 and other Bodies were robbed of their property, under false 
 pretences, and in the much desecrated name of religion, 
 at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI., in order to feed 
 the rapacity of hungry courtiers, has been already described.! 
 The endowments wdiich maintained the Chaplain as well as 
 the Gild of Deritend, w^ere thus unrighteously confiscated, 
 under the pretence (which it has been here shown was wholly 
 untrue) that this w^as a Chauntry ; although, inconsistently 
 enough, this Chapel, more happy than the " Free Chapel of 
 Birmingham," as will presently be seen, was left standing, and 
 the services were continued here. The legalized plunder from 
 which the wdiole town suffered so much, w^ould be particu- 
 larly felt in the case of this Chapel. Robbed of long-enjoyed 
 sources of income, both Chaplain and Chapel became wholly 
 a charge upon the inhabitants. It is no marvel, then, that 
 
 * This interpretation, stated in " Traditions of the Old Crown House," p. 45, 
 has since received very unexpected confirmation. Mr. William Hodgetts informs 
 me that he himself remembers the existence of a deer-park here, and has seen 
 deer feeding in it, and that a large part of the wall of this park stood, at the time 
 he speaks of, on the North side of Bradford Street. He specifically informs me 
 that a " portion of the wall now forms a portion of the yard attached to the police 
 station in Alcester Street and Bradford Street ; and withia my recollection, there 
 were considerable extents of boundaries both in Bradford and Warwick Streets ; 
 and from the back yards of the houses, which no doubt had been built on portions 
 of the park, the deer were frequently fed from the hands of the tenants." The 
 conclusion at which I arrived from a comparison of ancient records, receives a 
 curious confirmation in these recollections of one of the oldest, but most observant, 
 of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. The park no doubt reached, originally, 
 to the limit prescribed by the Statute of Winchester. See before, p. 49. 
 
 t " Traditions of the Old Crown House," pp. 36-42. 
 
 F 2 
 
72 ENDOWMENT OF 1677. 
 
 decay gradually fastened on the old Chapel of 1375. I find 
 that, exactly three hundred years after the Chapel was built 
 (namely, in 1675), the Vicar General of Lichfield gave notice 
 that repairs were needed. This seems to have stirred up a 
 worthy man to imitate the example of those who had endowed 
 the Chapel three hundred years earlier. On 21st August, 
 1677, Humphrey Lowe gave a messuage and lands at Eowley 
 Regis to Trustees, to maintain the Chaplain and to repair the 
 Chapel; an endowment which is still enjoyed and applied 
 for those purposes by the successors of those Trustees.* 
 Other endowments followed ; but the helping hand came too 
 late to save the old Chapel, round which clustered so many 
 memories well worthy to be cherished with pride. Decay 
 was thought, perhaps over hastily, to have gone too far for 
 reparation to avail. And so, sixty years after the issue of 
 the before-named notice for repair by the Vicar General of 
 Lichfield, the original Chapel of Wyclif s time, of which the 
 outw^ard look has happily been preserved and is given at the 
 front of this volume, was pulled down, and the now-standing 
 Chapel was built in its stead. 
 
 And upon this occasion there took place a very note- 
 worthy transaction, which stands out the more marked by 
 contrast with the transaction of 1381. 
 
 Notwithstanding the formal adoption of the Reformation 
 in and after Edward the Sixth's time, the cultivation of super- 
 stition seems so natural to some men that all sorts of arti- 
 ficial devices were gradually again invented by ecclesiastical 
 officials, and some of them were carried to lengths never 
 reached in Romish times, in order to impose shackles upon 
 
 * The words in which, the original Deeds of this and other gifts describe the 
 Chaplain, are the same, in spirit, as those of the Agreement of 1381. He is to be 
 " a man of honest and sober conversation, fitly qualified for the constant preach- 
 ing of God's holy word, and performance of such offices and services as ought, 
 by a faithful minister of God's word, according to the B-eformed Protestant reli- 
 giouj to be performed." See before, pp. 57, 63. 
 
"faculties" over-riding the law. 73 
 
 religious and clerical thought and action, and to interfere 
 with the simplicity of Protestant worship. In 1375, the 
 inhabitants of Deritend and Bordesley built a new Church 
 because they chose to do so. In 1735, all sorts of mystifica- 
 tions about pretended '•^Faculties" were used, to throw dust 
 in their eyes as to what they could do and what they might 
 be allowed to do, in the way of repairing and rebuilding; 
 and even as to setting up again the font, pulpit, and com- 
 munion table, that had been used there by them and their 
 fathers for more than three hundred and fifty years ! — as if a 
 " Faculty," put forth by a Bishop or his Vicar-General, could 
 really have, in itself, any power whatever, by the Law of 
 England, to make anything lawful or unlawful. In this case, 
 however, these ingenious contrivances for converting super- 
 stition into a means of raising fees for officials (for that is 
 the only real meaning or use of " Faculties "), did worse than 
 raise mystifications.* 
 
 In the old Chapel all the seats were, of course, free and 
 common to all the inhabitants of Deritend and Bordesley. 
 For such is the Common Law^ and the ancient practice of 
 
 * " I call that a simple Licence or Faculty which, does not in reality suspend 
 or toll the obligation of a Law, but gives an operation thereunto, in order to 
 render it effectual according to a certain mode or method prescrihed hy Lato, 
 ... It ought to be accommodated to the intention of the Law." Ayliff'e's 
 Parergon, p. 221. This sound authority, whose work was published in 1726, and 
 whose weight no one will venture to question, wrote too soon for it to be possible 
 that the favorers of the ecclesiastical encroachments that have grown up in recent 
 times, should find much comfort in his pages. The words now quoted are suffi- 
 cient to stigmatize the "Faculties" that are mentioned in the text. The at- 
 tempt made was, to override the actual Law, and to impose a new one that is 
 wholly repugnant to the spirit and the practice of the actual Law. And the 
 great law-upsetter and law-maker was the Vicar-General of a Diocese ! 
 
 There is not a clergyman in England who has not known the weight of the 
 fees extracted from him at different times. They have as much lawfulness as 
 these "Faculties," — and no more. At the end of Aylifle, and also between 
 pp. 134 and 135 of every complete edition of Sparrow's Canons, will be found a 
 table of fees ; which those who have any curiosity to see what modern eccle- 
 siastical extortion can do, in the face of plain Law, will usefully examine. 
 
/4 A CONGEEGATION IN CHURCH. 
 
 England as to the seats in every Parish Church ; and Deri- 
 tend Chapel is a Parish Church so far as Deritend and Bordes- 
 ley are concerned. " The Church is in common for every 
 one : wherefore, it is not in reason that one should have his 
 seat and that two should stand ; for no place is more for one 
 than for another."* " The body of the Church is common 
 to all the inhabitants."t "And indeed, before the age of 
 our Reformation, no Seats were allowed, nor any different 
 apartment in a Church assigned, to distinct inhabitants ; but 
 the whole Nave or Body of the Church was common ; and 
 the whole Assembly, in the more becoming postures of kneel- 
 ing or standing, were promiscuous and intermixt."j "If we 
 look into all our churches, we shall see thousands or hundreds 
 of people jointly resorting to God's public ordinances, wor- 
 ship, sacraments, celebrated in them ; yet varying from each 
 other in their dignities, sexes, ages, callings, conditions, 
 estates, vestments, attires, fashions, features; yea private 
 opinions, voices, corporal gestures ; some of them sitting in 
 seats, others in galleries, others on forms; others standing in 
 allies [aisles] ; here men and women, there old men, young 
 men and women, sitting or standing apart from each other ; 
 some praying standing, while others kneel; others praying, 
 reading, singing, with an audible voice, though differing in 
 tones or tunes from each other, like pipes in an organ, or 
 strings in a lute ; yet all making sweet melody and harmony 
 in God's ears, and but one congregation." § 
 
 But " Richard Rider, Esquire, Batchelor of Laws, Vicar- 
 General of the Diocese," knew much better than all this. 
 He would by no means have approved the noble answer given 
 by the Barons of England in the old time, when the eccle- 
 
 * Year Books, 8 Henry YII. 
 
 t Lord Coke's Eeports : Vol. 12, p. 105. (Corven's Case.) 
 X Kennett's Parochial Antiquities, p. 596 : ed. 1695. 
 
 § Apology for tender consciences conforming to Public Liturgy, etc.; by 
 William Prynue (a.d. 1662) 
 
OLD FREE SITTINGS, NEWLY FRINGED. tO 
 
 siastics of that day wished to persuade them to agree to mis- 
 chievous encroachments upon the free Law of England, — • 
 though that attempt was, at any rate, made in open Parlia- 
 ment.* On the 26th day of June, 1739, he issued a "Fa- 
 culty " to set aside the Law of England, and to impose 
 " Charges upon the People," at the mere will and pleasure, 
 and by the sole authority, of him, Eichard Eider. He put 
 forth his edict that pew rents should thenceforth be de- 
 manded and enforced for some of the seats in Deritend Cha- 
 pel. But it is very instructive to observe, that even this 
 trader in " Faculties " (a trade not unlike the older trade in 
 " Indulgences ") had some twinges of conscience. The new 
 chapel covered all the ground covered by the old Chapel, 
 and some more besides. So this precious " Faculty " de- 
 clares that where, in the old Chapel, the inhabitants of De- 
 ritend and Bordesley had sat free, there, in the new Chapel, 
 they should continue to sit free as aforetime ; but that rents 
 should be demanded, and the payment of them be enforced, 
 for certain enumerated lists of seats that lie beyond the 
 magic margin of the ground thus hallowed by the free 
 spirit of the older time.f 
 
 I know not of a more thorough or more striking example 
 able to be produced, of the contrast between the real freedom of 
 our older institutions, and the hollow pretentiousness of much 
 that is vaunted in modern times as " progress." No comment 
 is needed. It is enough to quote the apt remark made by 
 Lord Tenterden in the case of some other less mischievous 
 
 * "Etomnes Comifces et Barones una voce responderunt, quod nolunt leges 
 Angli* mutare, qu(B hucusque usitatce sunt et approhatce." Statute of Merton. 
 See Lord Coke's Second Institute, pp. 96-99. 
 
 t As representative of founders of the original Chapel of Wyclif's time, my 
 own right and that of my ancestors to seats within this magic margin has, of 
 course, been always undisputed. I find indeed the particulars entered, with 
 minute care, in old memoranda. I call attention, therefore, to the subject now, 
 not as having any personal interest in it here, but as involving a matter of vital 
 public principle, on the maintenance of which the very existence of a Church of 
 the People, beloved and respected, must depend. 
 
76 ABORTIVE ATTEMPT OF 13S2. 
 
 Faculties, which were pleaded before him in his judicial ca- 
 pacity. " It is clear,'''' said that eminent Lord Chief Justice, 
 " that these Faculties have no validity in Law''^ The mis- 
 fortune is, that they succeed in deceiving many people into 
 a belief in their validity. 
 
 Passing now from transactions that reflect so much honour 
 on our Birmingham fathers of Wyclif s time, and the direct 
 benefit of which is still being reaped by their successors 
 after the lapse of nearly five hundred years, some trans- 
 actions of a few years later must next be glanced at, from 
 which also the town still reaps, in part, though not in the 
 same direct manner, a present benefit. 
 
 It seems that what was doing in Deritend, roused some 
 other men in the Borough to wish for the presence of the 
 new religious life in the upper town, instead of, or at least 
 in addition to, the daily routine that was perfunctorily gone 
 through in old St. Martin's Church. To meet this wish, 
 a Licence in Mortmain was, on 25th October, a.d. 1382, 
 obtained by Thomas of Sheldon, John Colleshull, John 
 GoLDSMYTH, and William atte Slowe \_sic'], to enable the 
 endowment by them of two Chaplains who should celebrate 
 divine service daily [divina singulis diebus'], "in honour of 
 God, our Lady his mother. Holy Cross, Saint Thomas the 
 Martyr, and Saint Catherine, in the Church of St. Martin of 
 Birmingham." But these good intentions never really took 
 eff'ect. They were let sink down to form part of the great 
 tessellated pavement that lines the floor of a place very diff'e- 
 rent from our good old St. Martin's. Ten years later, how- 
 ever, the matter was taken in hand by the town itself, in 
 its Corporate capacity; and on the 10th July, 1392, a Writ 
 ad quod damnum was, upon the motion of the Bailiff's and 
 Commonalty,! issued to Thomas Ralegh, then Escheator of 
 
 * Golding V. Fenn, Barnewall and Cresswell's Eeports, vol. 7, p. 781. 
 
 t " CommunUas " — for which the correct English equivalent is " Commonalty " 
 
GILD OF TPIE HOLY CROSS, 1392. 77 
 
 the County. This writ, from which I now copy, recites the 
 Licence of 1382, as having been granted to " Thojias Shel- 
 don, since dead, John Colleshull, John Goldsmyth, and 
 William atte Slowe [sic], Burgesses of the Town of Ber- 
 myngeham ; " and that " now the Bailiffs and Commonalty of 
 the said town of Bermyngeham have prayed us that, in ex- 
 change for the said Licence, which never took effect, as they 
 say, we would grant to them Licence that they themselves, 
 in honor of the Holy Cross,* may make and found a Gild 
 and perpetual Fraternity among themselves in that town, of 
 bretheren and sustern,f as well men and women of the said 
 town of Bermingeham as men and women of other towns and 
 of the country who are well disposed towards it, and may make 
 and appoint a Master and Wardens of the said Gild and Fra- 
 ternity, who shall have rule and governance of the same J;" and 
 also that a Chauntry may be founded, and that " other works 
 of charity " \_alia opera caritatis] may be done,§ " according 
 to the appointment and pleasure of the said Bailiffs and 
 Commonalty;" and that John Colleshull, John Goldsmyth, 
 and William atte Slowe \sic\ may grant and assign, to the 
 Master and Wardens of the proposed Gild, eighteen mes- 
 suages, three tofts, six acres of land, and forty shillings of 
 rents, in Birmingham and Edgbaston. The Writ then directs 
 
 — is the corporate title and description of a place. A City or Borough is, in its 
 corporate capacity, a " comraunitas:" so is a County. This is the name found on 
 all ancient seals, and throughout the ancient Eolls of Parliament. As none but 
 " Coramunitates " sent Members to Parliament, the Representative House became 
 called the " House of the Commonalties " — shortened into " Commons." It is 
 essential to a true knowledge of English history, thoroughly to understand that 
 " communitas " expresses a corporate municipal existence, and that the English 
 equivalent of the Mord is " commonalty." It means a real thing, not any fanciful 
 theory. See the description of the " Mark," quoted in the note to p. 6. 
 
 * See " Traditions of The Old Crown House," p. S2, as to Gilds dedicated to 
 Saints. 
 
 t See " Traditions of The Old Crown House," pp. 31, 38. 
 
 J Compare extracts as to Gild of Exeter, in " Traditions of The Old Crown 
 House," p. 30. 
 
 § Tliese works included roads, bridges, etc. See "Traditions of The Old 
 Crown House," p. 38, 39. 
 
78 THE JURY, AND ITS FINDING. 
 
 that Inquiry shall be made, in the usual manner, whether all 
 this can be done without loss or injury to any one, or to the 
 Country.* 
 
 The Inquiry was accordingly made in Birmingham, on the 
 Saturday next after the feast of Saint Peter ad vincula (1st 
 August), 1392, by a Jury consisting of the following persons : 
 — Richard Sheryngton ; — Robert o' the Grene [sic] ; — 
 Thomas of Wyrley; — John of Wyrley ; — John Spycer ;— =" 
 David Verdon ; — Richard Boteller ; — John Phelipp ; — 
 William Geffen; — Lawrence Sturmy; — John Barber; — • 
 and, Thomas Phelipp. 
 
 The Jury found that the formation and endowment of the 
 proposed Gild would not be any injury to any one. They 
 went on to say, that sixteen of the messuages, the three tofts, 
 and the forty shillings of rents in Birmingham, were held, by 
 the intending donors, of the heirs of John of Birmingham, 
 Knight;! and that those heirs held of Isabella, Lady of 
 Dudley, who held of the King ; and that the two other mes- 
 suages were held of John Warde, who held of the heirs of 
 John of Birmingham, Knight, who held as before ; and that 
 the six acres of land in Edgbaston were held of Thomas of 
 Middelmore, who held of the heirs of John of Birming- 
 ham, who held of Hugh Burne, who held of the King ; and 
 that all the intending donors had other property (which is 
 enumerated), beyond what was proposed to be then granted 
 away ; and that thus the discharge of the services due from 
 each of those intending donors would be fully secured, and so 
 the Country would not be in any way charged or burdened 
 more than has been wont. 
 
 The Licence in Mortmain was accordingly granted, to the 
 Bailiffs and Commonalty of Birmingham, to establish the 
 
 * See before, p. 25. 
 
 t The same who joined in the Agreement for tlie settlement of matters as to 
 Deri tend Cliapel. 
 
OFFICIAL BLUNDERS. 79 
 
 Gild of the Holy Cross.* The Borough paid £50 for it to 
 the Crown. Thus that Gild became founded, seventeen years 
 after Deritend Chapel had been built. The Hall of the Gild 
 was built in New Street, where the Free School now stands. 
 
 None of the names mentioned in the course of these pro- 
 ceedings seems to need special remark beyond what has been 
 already made : but it will be observed, that fresh names come 
 up on every fresh transaction ; thus again showdng the num- 
 ber of substantial freeholders that formed part of the popu- 
 lation of Birmingham in those early times. 
 
 But this case gives a striking illustration of the astounding 
 blunders made in the Reports of the Commissioners of Henry 
 VIII. and Edward VI., which I have been obliged to remark 
 before.f On matters of historical fact, these Reports can 
 never be trusted, in the slightest degree, unless collaterally 
 confirmed; though they are of course valuable when they con- 
 tain admissions of states of things that tell in favour of the 
 endowments that they were appointed to condemn. J The 
 Commissioners of 37 Henry VIII. reported that this Gild of 
 the Holy Cross was founded " in the xvj^'^ yere of Kyng 
 Edward the seconde ;" the Commissioners of 1 Edward VI. 
 reported that it was founded " in the xvj*^' yere of King 
 Henrye the seconde." The true regnal year was, the six- 
 teenth of Richard the second. 
 
 A great affray took place in Birmingham not very long 
 after the foundation of the Gild of the Holy Cross. § What 
 particulars are recorded about this affray, are found on the 
 Rolls of Parliament. The proper place to enumerate the 
 Men and the Names concerned in it, seems therefore to be, 
 
 * The most important operative words are these : — " Licenciam dedimus, quan- 
 tum in nobis est, eisdem Ballivis et Communitati, quod ipsi, in honorcm sancte 
 Crucis, facere possiut et f'undare unam Gildam et Frateruitatem perpetuam." 
 
 t " Traditions of The Old Crown House," pp. 41, 42. 
 
 Of this, the passage quoted on pp. 38, 39, of " Traditions of The Old Crown 
 House " is one example. Some others will presently be cited. 
 
 ^ See " Traditions of The Old Crown House," p. 48. 
 
80 
 
 BEAUCHAMP V. BURDET. 
 
 between the statement of aiFairs as to which I have drawn 
 illustrations from the Patent and other Rolls and Records of 
 a public character, and the enumeration of some of the Men 
 and Names that are to be found in private Charters. 
 
 It was on Saturday in the third week before Easter, in the 
 year 1431, that this affray happened. The parties to it were 
 clearly marked, as the Beauchamp party and the Burdet 
 party. And it was upon Joan, the Lady of Bergevenny, 
 that all the blame was cast, and not upon those who waxed 
 warm in this affray on her behalf At the same time, it is 
 clear, from the names recorded, that it was an affray in which 
 many of the better class of the burgesses of Birmingham took 
 part. The following are immortalized as leaders of the two 
 hostile arrays. 
 
 THE BEAUCHAMP PARTY. 
 
 William Lee. 
 Heney Brokesby. 
 Henry Fylongley. 
 John Ryder. 
 Thomas Russell. 
 John Seggesley. 
 Meredith Walshman. 
 Thomas Fauconek. 
 Thomas Yerdeley. 
 John Loudham. 
 John op Wyrley. 
 Henry Cooke op Weoley. 
 Alexander Shepeld. 
 John Chewe. 
 John Morys. 
 
 " and many others " [ ^ muUi 
 alii] . 
 
 THE BUEDET PARTY. 
 
 Thomas Peynton. 
 
 Richard Arblastre. 
 
 John Cutte. 
 
 John Glover. 
 
 William Squyer. 
 
 John Cooke. 
 
 John Fraunceys. 
 
 William Stretton. 
 
 Hugh Roggeres. 
 
 John Penford. 
 
 Richard formerly servant of 
 
 Richard Walrond. 
 John Necheles. 
 John Lord. 
 "and others more ^^ \_^ ^lures 
 
 alios] . 
 
 Very few of these surnames are other than surnames of 
 continuance. But neither list can be read without its being 
 seen how many of them are merely taken from neighbouring 
 
NAMES FROM SERVICE. 81 
 
 places, though the particle " of" has, in most cases, now gone 
 out of use. There is one instance, the first yet met with, of 
 a double surname, — showing how thoroughly established 
 family surnames had now become. Henry Cooke of Weoley 
 is a step towards the modern use of " additions." A few 
 years before, he would have been called " Henry of AVeoley." 
 But the name " Cooke " had become a family surname, and 
 a further means of distinction was found necessary. On the 
 other hand, Meredith Walshnan is very plainly Meredith the 
 Welchman. 
 
 Thomas Peynton introduces us to the family now known as 
 Peyton. The latter name has, no doubt, like Flavell from 
 Flaumvile, grown out of an ordinary form of contraction, 
 Peynton having been often written " Peyton." 
 
 The name of Bichard formerly servant of Richard TVal- 
 rond, gives an example of a source of surnames of which no 
 instance happens to have arisen here before, but which is 
 by no means uncommon. It was in truth, however, the same 
 thing as taking a surname from an office held, of which an 
 example has been seen in the case of Peter Dapifer.* 
 Retainers were often proud to take for a surname the name 
 of him whom they served ; and this the rather that, in 
 England, though they thus served another, they remained 
 themselves free ; a condition of things upon which Lord 
 Bacon specially remarks, in his Essay " On the true greatness 
 of Kingdoms and Estates," as being " almost peculiar to 
 England." 
 
 I have already stated that a rich mine, whence to bring 
 forth to light again the Men and the Names of bygone times, 
 is to be found in the older class of Deeds, or " Charters " as 
 they are called.f Having brought to light many of the Men 
 and the Names of old Birmingham who lived through an 
 early century and a half of what people call the " Middle 
 * See before, pp. 18, 32. t See before, p. 11. 
 
82 CHARTERS, FROM A.D. 1401 
 
 Ages," by the use of documents of a public character, I will 
 now illustrate an equal length of time by the use of private 
 Charters. Being in possession of a series of such Charters 
 and other private documents relating to Birmingham, from 
 the year 1401 down to the present time, I could give some- 
 thing like a traditional Directory of the freeholders. But I 
 Avill now only make from these a few selections, enough to 
 illustrate (1) the transmission of names in the town from ge- 
 neration to generation, and (2) the rise, from time to time, of 
 fresh names which still are or lately were well known here. 
 
 The names found in the Charters selected for illustration 
 here, bring up several points in the history of surnames that 
 deserve attention : for example, the manner in which sons 
 were described during the lifetime of their fathers; the 
 growth of the use of further means for distinguishment, 
 when any settled surname had become common ; the use of 
 an " alias " to bring in a second surname, in order to secure 
 (not, as now, to prevent) identification ; the gradual intro- 
 duction of " additions," that is, of the statement of the occu- 
 pation of a man, over and above his surname, and not, as of 
 old, to constitute the surname ; and, the changing forms of 
 older names. 
 
 The earlier Charters which I shall use, will make some 
 men and names re-appear that have already become familiar. 
 I quote these in order that the living series of old Birmingham 
 men and names may be kept continuous, from the earliest 
 time that I have touched upon down to the time where I 
 
 shall cease. 
 
 CHARTEE OF 1401. 
 William Gest. Thomas son of Egbert o' the 
 
 KiCHARD OP MaDELEY. GrENE. 
 
 Egbert g' the Grene. Walter Bromwych. 
 
 Eoger Smyth. Philip Shynglak. 
 
 Ealph Gamull. John Shynglar. 
 John son of Thomas Holdgn. 
 
TO A.D. 1426. 83 
 
 CHAETEE OF 1404. 
 
 ElCHAKD OF MaDELEY. JoHN CoUPER. 
 
 Robert o^ the Grene. Walter Bromwych. 
 
 William Gest and Joan liis wife. John Holdon. 
 Thomas Holdon. Thomas o' the Grene. 
 
 CHAETEE OF 1419. 
 William Porter. John Couper Smyth. 
 
 John Smyth so7i of Roger Smyth. Ralph Gamull. 
 John Acton. John Couper Couper. 
 
 Thomas Lokyer. William Pach [the modern 
 
 Roger Smyth. ''Patch/' and perhaps "Page"] . 
 
 In the last case a surname has, on the marriage of a 
 daughter, become prefixed to the children's true surname ; 
 and then, to prevent mistake, two cousins get each three 
 names ; — John Cotcper Smyth, and John Couper Couper. This 
 is not common at this early time. 
 
 CHAETEE OF 1421. 
 
 Thomas Mychell. Roger Smyth, 
 
 William Smyth son of Roger John Couper Smyth. 
 
 Smyth. John Holdon. 
 
 Warin of Madley son of Rich- John Seggesley. 
 
 ARD OF Madley. John son of Roger Smyth. 
 
 Thomas son of William Gest John Acton. 
 
 alias William Tolymoly. William Gest. 
 
 CHAETEE OF 1426. 
 
 William Rydware^ ilfas^er of the Thomas Layforde. 
 
 Gild of the Holy Cross. Thomas Bernabroke. 
 
 William Porter and Agnes his John Goldesmyth. 
 
 wife. John Phelyps Chalonnere. 
 
 William Waterball. John atte Mersh [sic]. 
 John Mersh. 
 
 In the name written John Phelyps Chalonnere, it would 
 seem that the true name was John Phelyps (a name we have 
 had before), and that "Chalonnere" was his occupation. It 
 
84 CPIARTERS, FROM A.D. 1476 
 
 is not clear what a " chalonnere " meant. Probably it had 
 something to do with being master of a ship or boat.* It 
 may be thought unlikely that this should be so in a midland 
 county ; but it is remarkable that Warwick itself found boat- 
 swains for the king, by ancient custom, as we learn from 
 the Domesday Bookf ; and an instance of another Warwick- 
 shire master of a ship will presently be named. 
 
 The next group of Charters that shall be taken, gives two 
 names met with a century earlier, changed into their more 
 modern forms ;j while most of the fresh names that now 
 arise, have forms familiar to this day. 
 
 CHAETEE OF 1476. 
 Thomas Gestb. Richard Ball. 
 
 Richard Andrewes. John Flavell. 
 
 Robert Swypte. William Benet. 
 
 Richard Smyth. Roger Pepewall. 
 
 CHAETEE OF 1494. 
 Humfrey Bawdryk. Humpry Shapley. 
 
 Henry Shylton. William Benett. 
 
 Sir William Berkeley. Thomas Yyterre [the modern 
 
 Thomas Redhill. ''Fitter"]. 
 
 John Lenche. 
 
 Four years after the date of the last-named Charter, there 
 began a suit at Law between some Birmingham men, which, 
 bringing before us two names found in that Charter, intro- 
 duces us also to two of the practising Attorneys of the time. 
 Indeed, all the names mentioned in it have either been already 
 met with or will presently be so. All are genuine Birming- 
 ham names. 
 
 I find by the original contemporary Eoll of the Court of 
 Common Pleas, that, in Easter term a.b. 1500, Bichaed 
 
 * Ducange, II., p. 322 (ed. 1842). But see Chaucer's Eeves Tale, I. 4138. 
 t See the passage quoted in Parliamentary Hemembrancer, vol. v. p. 190. 
 J See before, p. 64, 
 
TO A.D. 1517. 85 
 
 Fenton, who was a Priest, brought an action of trespass 
 against John Sheldon [the same name as Shylfon, Shilfon, 
 Shelf on, etc.] and Humfrey Bawdrick [the "Bawdryk" of 
 the last-qnoted Charter]. Eichard Fenton appeared " by 
 John Boteler, his attorney," and stated his grievance. John 
 Sheldon and Humfrey Bawdrick answered " by Humfrey 
 Symondes, their attorney.'' In point of fact, it was a dis- 
 pute about the ownership of certain property in the town, 
 consistins^ of several Houses, but known bv the common 
 name of "The New- wine-cellar" [imimi solarium vocatum 
 le Newe-ivyne-seler cum perfinentihus in Byrmynghain pre- 
 dictam, continens in se diversas domos.^ 
 
 It must always be remembered, in looking at both the 
 foregoing and the following examples, that it is the sound 
 of a name that is the test of identity, and not the spelling. 
 Very often, many different spellings of the same name are 
 found in the same document.* 
 
 CHAETEE OF 1517. 
 Henry Shylton. Baldwin Broke, Master of the 
 
 John Rogers. Gild of St. John the Baptist 
 
 Thomas Hasturley. of Derytende. 
 
 Richard Rossell. Ralph Forest. 
 
 Simon Rydere. "William Simondes. 
 
 In the Lease of 1518 from Edward Birmingham to John 
 Rogers, of which I have published a facsimile,! there are 
 found the names of " Roger Foxall, hy beyly off Brymy- 
 cham for y yere ; William Niccols odyrwise cald Herch, 
 constable off the same ; Rychard Swyft off the same." In 
 the Charter of sale of the same property, in 1524, there 
 are found the names of John Locok, Master of the Gild 
 
 * See the examples o^ Lysle, Lislcy; and Prety, Praty, Pretie ; pp. 69, 89. 
 
 t At the end of "Traditions of The Old Crown House." The name " Eogers' 
 has already been found, under the disguise of " Eoggeres," among those who 
 took part in the affray of 1431. See before, p. 80. 
 
 G 
 
86 CHAETERS, FROM A.D. 1529 
 
 of the Invention of the Holy Cross ; Hujmfrey Symondes ; 
 and William Symondes. A few years later bring other 
 fresh names before us. 
 
 CHAETER OF 1529. 
 
 John Eogees. John Geeve. 
 
 Thomas Hastueley. William Hawkes. 
 
 Thomas Geeves at the Hoee- Maueice Btddtll. 
 
 STOK. Heney Osbuene. 
 
 Ralph Foeest Richaed Russell. 
 
 Ralph Beoee. Thomas Byhull. 
 
 The name of Thomas Greves, with the descriptive addition 
 " at the Horestok," recalls those early names of " atte wood," 
 " atte holte," " atte gate," " atte chapel," etc., which had 
 now long since ceased to appear in this form. But it was 
 found necessary, for the same purpose of personal distinc- 
 tion as begat those older names, to bring in again a form 
 very much the same. 
 
 The name of William Hawkes deserves notice, as an 
 example of the same Christian and Sur-name handed down, 
 from generation to generation, through several centuries, 
 and then expiring. It is not yet a matter of years, it is 
 barely a few months, since the death of Mr. William 
 Hawkes, the lineal descendant of this ancient freeholder, 
 and well known as the principal in the works of the Eagle 
 Foundry in Broad Street. And from the first William 
 Hawkes to the last, the name has remained a constant com- 
 bination.* 
 
 Hawkes, Hawkesford, and Hawkesley, are all Warwickshire 
 names.f An earlier Hawkes showed a sort of enterprise that 
 
 * My father bore the name of " William Hawkes " for Christian names, de- 
 rived from the same stock, and in the same lineal degree, as the late Mr. 
 William Hawkes. 
 
 t Hawkes and Hawkesford intermarried, both sides being freeholders in 
 Birmingham. (See " Traditions of The Old Crown House," p. 54.) 
 
TO A.D. 1557. 87 
 
 I think none of the family have since shown in the same 
 manner. John Hawkes was Master of a ship called " The 
 Trinity." Early in 1.S83, he brought over in that ship one 
 EiCHARD Walssh, a priest, from Ireland to England. This 
 was a bolder undertaking then than it would be now. It 
 was a direct breach of the Law ; and John Hawives had to 
 obtain a formal pardon from the Crown for the offence, in 
 order to save his ship from forfeiture. The pardon, which 
 he succeeded in obtaining, remains still duly recorded on 
 the Patent Rolls. 
 
 A charter of a few years later brings up some fresh facts 
 of interest. 
 
 CHAKTER OF 1551. 
 EicHARD Smalbroke. John Betwiche. 
 
 William Paynton. Morris Blocksiche. 
 
 John Fetherston. John Newhay.* 
 
 Thomas Fetherston. Pichaed Donne. 
 
 William Walker, Tanner. 
 
 Here we find the occupation distinctly stated, in the case 
 of William Walker. In a Charter of six years later date, I 
 find Ralph Broke, Scythe-smitli ; Thomas Kendall, Miller; 
 and John Foxe, Cutler ; — the occupation now becoming often 
 thus stated. The same Charter records the names of Smal- 
 broke and Symons as Attorneys, apparently in partnership. 
 In another of the same year, occurs the name of Thomas 
 Marshe alias Mychell. 
 
 A curious illustration is given, in the Charter of 1551, 
 how, though many names have undergone very fantastic 
 changes in spelling, and even often in sound, some odd ones 
 have kept all their sound and nearly all their spelling un- 
 changed. Betwiclie has probably changed into the name 
 now known as Bettridge ; but Blocksiche has been preserved 
 
 * See before, p. 41. 
 
 G 2 
 
88 PLACES IN THE OLD TOWN. 
 
 wholly unchanged in sound, and with only a slight change 
 of spelling, as Blocksidge* 
 
 CHAKTEE OF 1586. 
 
 Thomas Fetherston, Furhearer. Eichakd Fokeeste son of Wil- 
 JoHN Dyckson alias Bayleys. liam Fokreste. 
 
 John Billingsley. Thomas Jesseppe. 
 
 George Welche. Richard Welche. 
 
 Richard Rotton. Edward Hayberd. 
 
 CHAETEE OF 1589. 
 Edward Rastell^ BraiDer. Thomas Allicocke. 
 
 John Shilton, Mercer. John Jones. 
 
 Thomas Apfeelde. Edward Rabone, 
 
 William Bothe Jun^. 
 
 The last of these Charters mentions names of places of 
 old importance in the town, but which have now become 
 forgotten. We are taken back to the buildings called " JFell- 
 yarde, " in the street called " Corne Cliejpinge alias Come Mar- 
 ket,'' and near to ''Mercers Streete'' and the " Easteyardey 
 
 The names thus found in the Charters selected for the 
 present illustrations, are all of them, with rare exceptions, 
 those of men who, besides being indwellers in the town, 
 were also freeholders there. I will now give the names of 
 some of those who happen to have been recorded, under ex- 
 traordinary circumstances, as tenants and indwellers, though 
 unquestionably several of them were freeholders also. Some 
 of the documents which I shall quote for this purpose, have 
 
 * This name is found in West's Directory of 1830. I think West's Directory 
 the safest of the modern ones for the present sort of comparison, as it was a 
 tolerably full one made before whatever changes have been brought about 
 by Eailway communication. A very interesting Directory is that of Pearson 
 and Eollason (a.d. 1780), for the loan of which, with several others, I am 
 indebted to the kindness of Mr. Samuel Timmins. I have taken the trouble, 
 in every case, to trace the old names through the modern Directories ; but it 
 would have seemed pedantic and tedious if I had encumbered these pages with 
 the results. 
 
LEASE TO JOHN PRETY, GENT. 89 
 
 a further special interest; inasmuch as they throw much 
 light both on the old divisions of the town of Birmingham, 
 and upon the old names of different places in it, whence 
 many modern stieets have, though it is not commonly sus- 
 pected, taken their names. 
 
 On the 11th October, 1532, Edward Birmingham granted 
 a remarkable Lease to John Prety,* of the Properties, and 
 for the Terms of years, and at the Eents, that follow : — 
 
 EDWAED BIRMINGHAM, Esquire, TO JOHN PRETY, Gen Isle]. 
 
 "Water Mill to grynde corne, callid Heth Mill . . . with the 
 water course T; all customes . . . wythin the lordeship of Bremy- 
 cham T: within the parisshe of Aston ; " and 
 
 Lands " callid the Conyngrt, wiche Roger Redill nowe occu- 
 pietli ; " 
 
 For ninety-nine years ; at the rent of £6. 1 '6s. ^d. a year. 
 
 " Medowe lying nygh to the said Mill, which is callyd the Lake 
 Medowe, inrevercion of one John Draper;" 
 
 For ninety-nine years; at the rent of £6. 13s, 4<d. 
 
 " The revercion of an other pasture the whiche one William Rus- 
 sell now holdeth, . . . callyd Dodwalls;" 
 
 For ninety-nine years ; at the rent of £1. 6.?. Qd. 
 
 " Th^ ADVOWSON of parsonage % BENEPTCE of the CHURCHE of 
 
 Sayncte Thomas the Martyr in Bremycham, called the parsonage of 
 the priory, ... to geve T: to assigne immedyately after the decasse 
 or resynacon of one Syr Edward Topte nowe being parson there ; " 
 
 During the terms of years before named ; no rent, but a fine of 
 £20. Os. Od. 
 
 This Lease is witnessed by Rauf Warlev, George Germayns of 
 Yardeley, John Smalbroke, John Geppries, and Symon Hegeyns. 
 
 The corn mill named in this Lease, is the mill whence 
 Heath Mill Lane takes its name. There was, besides this, 
 a malt mill belonging to Edward Birmingham, of which we 
 shall hear presently. Mills were generally a very profitable 
 
 * Spoiled also, in the same Lease, " Pratj/ " and " Pretie." 
 
90 THE "FREE CHAPEL. 
 
 part of manorial property, and sometimes a very harsh use 
 was made by Lords of Manors of their ownership of mills. 
 But Edward Birmingham was clearly an enlightened man. 
 For he had already, on the 10th May, 1525, made an agree- 
 ment with Thomas Holte, Lord of Aston,'' that the farmers 
 and millers of the mills of Aston might " feche cary and re- 
 cary al maner griste and corne of al maner greyn " for any 
 tenants that pleased to employ them in Birmingham, and 
 that the farmers and millers of the mills of Birmingham 
 might do the same for the tenants of Aston. There is 
 a liberality and enlightenment about this arrangement that 
 must be rather startling to those who live in the faith that 
 sound Political Economy is a modern discovery. 
 
 But the " parsonage and benefice of the church of St. 
 Thomas the Martyr " : — -what was that, and where is it 
 now"? In the year 1532, it was a regular Church within the 
 town, the advowson of which belonged to the Lords of Bir- 
 mingham. This Church is what is elsewhere called the 
 " Free Chapel." The Priory of Birmingham was dedicated 
 to St. Thomas the Apostle : this " Free Cliapel " or Church 
 was dedicated to St. Thomas the Martyr. It was an altar in 
 this Church which became the subject of an endowment in 
 1350.t It was a Church much resorted to; for the Commis- 
 sioners of Henry VIII. have themselves put it upon record 
 that, in 1545, long after the date of this Lease, " the inhabi- 
 tans of the same [town] dothe muche resorte to the same 
 chapell for dyvyne servyce." But now, the very place thereof 
 knoweth it no more. Not one stone stands upon another of 
 a Church that was formerly one of great resort ; which was 
 regularly endowed; which was a recognized benefice, and 
 
 * The Lordship of Aston did not include all Aston Parish. On the other 
 hand, the Lordship of Birmingham reached, as has been seen, far beyond Bir- 
 mingham Parish, into Aston and Edgbaston. 
 
 t See before, p. 39, etc. 
 
THE BELLS OF ST. MARTIN'S TOWER. 91 
 
 had a regular parson ; and the nomination to the parsonage 
 of which was an advowson forming part of the property of 
 the Lord of the Manor. 
 
 The good men of Deritend, the early but sincere Reformers 
 of 1375, founded a Church for themselves which, though 
 it was plundered, was yet saved through all the turmoil 
 of Henry VIII. and Edward VI, ; and which still remains a 
 place where men gather together to worship God. The Lord 
 of Birmingham endowed a church in 1350, which, under the 
 false cloak of zeal for a new Reformation, hungry courtiers 
 not only plundered but utterly wiped out of existence in 
 1547. The advowson of the "law-worth men" remains : the 
 advowson of the " lord " has altogether gone.* 
 
 It is a curious coincidence that, while other hungry men 
 got other parts of the plunder of Birmingham, the two who 
 appropriated the property of the Gild of Deritend, were the 
 same who appropriated this " Free Chapel " and all that 
 belonged to it.f 
 
 While speaking of the Churches of Birmingham, I may 
 mention that Birmingham men had a musical taste three 
 hundred years ago. It is particularly recorded that, in the 
 year 1552, there were, in old St. Martin's tower, "iiij Belles, 
 with a clock and a chyme ;" which is a combination not often 
 found. 
 
 I now proceed to state who were the tenants of Edward 
 Birmingham at the time when his estate was confiscated ;J 
 and also who were the tenants of the Gilds of Deritend and 
 of the Holy Cross, and of the Free Chapel and the two 
 Chauntries, at the time when the word went forth for a ge- 
 neral plunder, in the outraged name of religion, and by the 
 means of a gross fraud practised upon Parliament. § 
 
 * See the Note J to p. 24, and the Note § to p. 53. 
 t See " Traditions of The Old Crown House, " p. 42. 
 X Sec " Traditions of The Old Crown House," pp. 51-53. 
 § See "Traditions of The Old Crown House," pp. 36, 37. 
 
92 THE "borough" and "foreign." 
 
 To understand some of the places named in the follomng 
 statements, it must be now said (the facts having become 
 strangely forgotten in modern times) that Birmingham con- 
 sisted of the " Borough of Birmingham " and " Birmingham 
 Foreign," a very usual mode of distinguishment in ancient 
 places. Deritend was always a part of the town of so much 
 importance that the whole is usually spoken of as the " Bo- 
 rough of Birmingham and Deritend," though the separate 
 parts are also often named. 
 
 TENANTS AND TENANCIES OF THE LOED OF THE MANOE OF 
 BIEMINGHAM, a.d. 1536-1545* 
 
 Many freeholders, whose names are not given, but who paid 
 "rents of assize" [i. e. quit-rents] for their freeholds. The following 
 ancient rents, in kind, are specified : — 
 
 William Lenche, heir of William Goldesmythe, one pound of 
 pepper. 
 
 The Master of the Gild of the Holy Cross, hvo ijounds of pepper. 
 
 John Sheldon, one piound of cumin, one hoio, and six harhed holts 
 {catapidta harhata-f). 
 
 Lands and houses in Birmingham Foreign, held by, — 
 
 Thomas Waryng, land near Shawmore, formerly held by John 
 
 * I have carefully gone over and compared several sets of Eobert Whytworth's 
 accounts, and compared them also with the Grant made to John Dudley on 21st 
 Dec. 1545. Yarious readings found by these comparisons, which seemed likely to 
 throw any light on modern names of places, I have inserted between brackets. 
 The statement of names and tenancies is thus complete down to 1545. The other 
 accounts are all of 1547, compared with other documents. So that all these 
 lists give pictures of strictly contemporaneous facts. I have in no case trusted to 
 a single document, without further comparison. 
 
 + " £oU, Pilum vel telum catapulticum." {Junius.) And see after, p. 95. 
 
 It was said nearly thirty j^ears ago, by one of the most distinguished of English 
 Antiquaries, that actual rents reserved in hind were even then hardly known 
 'in England. If this be true, it is worth recording that, within my own memory, 
 two pieces of land in the possession of my father's family were held by ancient 
 rents reserved partly in kind ; the rent of the one being so much money, and a 
 goose, the rent of the other being so much money, and a pot of apples. It is no 
 longer ago than 1842 that Mr. Brooke Smith and myself, as the representatives of 
 those interested, were parties to the sale of one of the lands held, up to the last, 
 on one of these ancient tenures in hind. 
 
ANCIENT HOMESTEADS. 93 
 
 Sterkey ; and a pasture called Slyng, opposite tlie park of Birming- 
 ham. 
 
 John Garnett^ a croft called Hilfeld [Hilcropt] . 
 
 John Ellyott, a croft called Steledenys [Steledeanes], in Somer 
 Lane [Somer-lond], formerly held by Hugh Flete. 
 
 John Bonde, a pasture or wood called Worston^ and another pas- 
 ture called Wyatfeld. 
 
 Richard Furnyvall and Roger Foxoll [Foxhole], a pasture called 
 
 HUNT-CROFTE [HuNCROFTE] . 
 
 Robert Myddelmore, lands called Lady crofte, Goldhelme, and 
 HuNGRE Hill. 
 
 John Fetherston, a crofte called Lordes-pelds, in Bordesley. 
 
 Robert Whytworth [who was bailiff of the manor : no doubt be- 
 cause he was the largest tenant] , a pasture called Wheat-pelds ; a 
 meadow called Malte-myl-medowe ; a pasture called Holme Parke ; 
 another meadow called The Launds, near to the Holme Parke ; a 
 pasture called Crab-tre-crofte [Crabcropte] ; land opposite the 
 moat of the manor house, called Calp-crofte [Calcrofte] ; and, a 
 Mill called The Malte-myll. 
 
 John Wylleys [Willies], a meadow called Mydel-myl-medowe. 
 
 Roger Foxoll, a meadow called But Medowe [Butte Medowe],* 
 and a pasture called Heth-peld [HethePeild] in Dyretend. 
 
 John Prattye, a corn mill called The Hethe Myll [as before 
 stated from the Lease to John " Prety ^'] . 
 
 William Rastall, a house in Eggebaston Street, formerly held by 
 Robert Smyth. 
 
 Humprey Swanne, a house in Eggebaston Street. 
 
 [John Rawlyns, a house in Egbaston Street.] 
 
 William Russell, pastures called The Dudwall [included in the 
 Lease to John Prety] . 
 
 John Shilton, nine pastures and meadows adjoining, called The 
 Hay-barnes [Heyberns] ; and eight meadows and pastures adjoining-, 
 called Greate Russells and Lytell Russells. 
 
 Thomas Cowper, five crofts called Patchetts Lands. 
 
 Richard Russell, lands called Colbornb-felds. 
 
 William Lynche, a pasture called Mychbl-he3e [Michelhay] in 
 Eggebaston. 
 
 * This points clearly to the old practice of shooting, which no place neglected. 
 See hereon, " The Parish," pp. 249, 497, 518, 519, 520. 
 
94 ROTTON park: kylcuppe. 
 
 John Peaty^ as farmer of the office of Keeper of the Park called 
 EoTTON [Roten] Parke^ with all the profits thereof, and the ^Svyndefal 
 wood and lopwood/^ building timber excepted, in reversion of one 
 Thomas Gylbeet then Keeper of the Park.* 
 
 John Deapee, a meadow called Lake-medowe^ with the moor there 
 [see the Lease to John Prety] . 
 
 [Two houses in Egbaston Street, called The Washyng Stole, and 
 The Payntees Howse.] 
 
 Maeia EYDDELL^t relict of RoGEE Ryddell, three pastures called 
 Byechells [Byeche-hill], and two meadows called Geeate Buck- 
 stalls and Lytell Buckstalls, and a pasture called The Conyngee 
 [included in the Lease to John Prety] .J 
 
 The Borough of Birmingham, held by, — 
 
 Thomas Holte, sls, farmer of the rents and profits of '' all that part 
 or portion of the Manor of Byrmyngehame called The Boeough oe 
 
 * This mention of Eotton Park deserves some notice. It is well known that 
 a family of the name of Eotton has long dwelt in Birmingham. IS'ot meeting 
 with the name in the older records of the town, I infer that this old manorial park 
 gave the family its name, not the family its name to the park. But the family 
 became freeholders of high respectability, many of them dwelling in Bordesley. 
 Of this I have proofs among my private documents (one has been already cited 
 uuder the year 1586). But the fact is very strikingly illustrated by the history of an 
 old Bordesley Charity founded by Eichaed Kylcuppe, who, on 19th September, 
 1611, devised to Eobert Shilton and John Foxe certain land at Sparkbrook, upon 
 trusts which he was curiously but wdsely careful to order should be always re- 
 cited on every change of trustees. The controllers of the trust were required to 
 be, all of them, " yeomen, freeliolders, and inhabitants, of Bordesley." In 1612, 
 out of the eight only persons that fulfilled these conditions, four were " Ambrose 
 Eotton, Eichard Eotton, Thomas Eotton, and John Eotton." It is remarkable, 
 and very instructive, that this Charity altogether escaped the notice of the roving 
 Charity Commissioners who were sent out, some years ago, to find out the naked- 
 ness of the land. But its course has nevertheless been remarkably regular. 
 Somewhat familiar with this sort of subject, I confess to surprise at the com- 
 pleteness of the manner in which the donor's intentions have been observed. 
 The proceeds of the charity are still annually distributed in accordance with 
 those intentions. I am indebted to the courtesy of Mr. John Webb for the op- 
 portunity of examining the whole series of documents, from the indenture of 
 1612 to the cards for distribution of the Charity at Christmas last. 
 
 t Confusion must be avoided between the odd spellings of the three very diffe- 
 rent names, Redhill (here Ryddell: and Reddell in a.d. 1830); Byddyll (the modern 
 Biddle) ; and Byliull (which has, I think, sunk into the modern "Bill ")• 
 
 J All these places are near Bradford Street; and the nauie Buckstalls is strongly 
 significant of the time when there was a large park there. See before, pp. 49, 71. 
 
TENANTS OF THE OLDEST GILD. 95 
 
 Byrmyngkhame and Dyretende ;'' except one house and garden in 
 Deritend [now part of The Old Crown House estate] , and two houses 
 and gardens in Eggebaston Street^ and one close held by Humfrey 
 SwANNE ; and except the services of the " hrode arroives " and " brode 
 arrowliedds," and of j>ejipe?-, within the said Borough and Dyretend ; 
 and except the goods of felons beyond forty shillings. 
 
 Thomas Holte had been made Steward of the manor of 
 Birmingham by Edward Birmingham ; and Robert Whyt- 
 WOKTH was his Bailiff. So no doubt they now made a very 
 good thing out of it between them. 
 
 Edward Birmingham himself survived the great wrong he 
 had suffered but a short time. After his death, the annuity 
 of £20, reserved to him by the Act confiscating the manor,* 
 was doubled, in favour of his widow, by Letters Patent of 1st 
 February 1539. She did not remain his widow long; but 
 nevertheless received the doubled annuity for many years, as 
 
 ELIZiVBETH LUDFOllD. 
 
 The particulars as to tenancies are not recorded as fully 
 in all other cases as they are in the case of the manorial 
 property. I give the tenants' names, with some particulars 
 of their tenancies. 
 
 TENANTS AND TENANCIES OF THE GILD OF ST. JOHN THE 
 BAPTIST OF DEEITEND, a.d. 1547. 
 
 Ealph Forest^ land in Deritend. 
 Ealph Brooke^ land there. 
 Thomas Cottrell, a house there. 
 William Forest, a house there. 
 William Burton, a house there. 
 Seth Walthew, a house there. 
 William Swexson, a house there. 
 Thomas Syre, a house there. 
 John Lepper, a house there. 
 John Bloxwiche, a house there. 
 
 * See " Traditions of The Old Crown House," p. 53. 
 
96 TENANTS OF THE "FREE CHAPEL," 
 
 Thomas Maeshall^ a house in Biemingham called The Lion. 
 HuMPEEY CoTTERELL^ a liouse there. 
 Thomas Walter^ a liouse in Aston. 
 Nicholas Coke op Aston^, land there. 
 • John Newey^ a house in Newey in the Parish of Aston.* 
 Baldwin Broke^ three closes of land and a meadow in Bordesley. 
 John Fetheeston^ several pieces of land there. 
 James Mershe^ a piece of land there. 
 Roger More, a house and meadow there. 
 Alice Michell^ a house and close of land there. 
 Richard Newey, a piece of land there. 
 Marion Beokehuest^ a close of land in Moseley. 
 The Waedens op the ChapeLj a meadow there. 
 Hugh Collins [Colyb] , land in Saltley. 
 
 GoLDiNGALE^ a house in Castle Bromwich. 
 
 John Milwarde^ a house and lands in Handswoeth. 
 Richard Fletcher, a meadow in Eedington. 
 
 TENANTS AND TENANCIES OF THE FEEE CHAPEL OF 
 BIEMINGHAM, a.d. 1547. 
 
 The heirs of Thomas Holte, a meadow in Dudeston. 
 
 John Yeysey, a meadow called Shawe-medowe ; a close called 
 Brome-close ; and another close called The Chappell Orchaede. 
 
 Richard Weley, a close and meadow at the Horne Broke. 
 
 Roger Clowse, two closes called The Beome-closes_, and a meadow 
 in Wallmee Lane. 
 
 HuMPEEY Colchestee, a close called The Chappell Conigee. 
 
 William Bodgye, a close called the Hoese-close. 
 
 Thomas Maeshall, a pasture called The Roundhills. 
 
 William Mychell, lands in Biemingham. 
 
 John Payntee, a house near the burying-ground. 
 
 Maeia Veenon, a house and croft in Moee Street.f 
 
 Heney Yenton, a garden in New Street. 
 
 Robert Collins_, certain lands " viz. v. fold." 
 
 John Geyppythe, a house in the Chappell Street. 
 
 * See before, p. 41. 
 
 t Moor Street was usually called "Molle" Street at this time. Seethe 
 list of the tenants of the Gild of the Holy Cross. 
 
CHAUNTRIES, AND SECOND GILD. 
 
 97 
 
 John Cockes, a house there, 
 Henry Biddell, certain lands. 
 William Colemore, quit rents. 
 
 TENANTS OF THE FIRST CHAUNTIIY, a.d. 1547 * 
 
 John Paynter. Maria Vernon. 
 
 William Peynton. Ealph Sergeant. 
 
 Egbert Butler. Ealph Eussell. 
 
 Thomas Hawkes. Elen Flavell. 
 
 EicHARD Butler. Thomas Marshall. 
 
 Egbert Michell. Henry Foxhall. 
 
 Egger Michell. Eichard Brandwood. 
 
 ElCHARD BrOKHURST. 
 
 TENANTS OF THE SECOND CHAUNTRY, a.d. 1547. 
 John Aleyne. Egbert Colmgre. 
 
 John Veysey. John Bygg. 
 
 William Hgrwell. 
 
 TENANTS AND TENANCIES OF THE GILD OF THE 
 HOLY CROSS, A.D. 1547.t 
 
 Egbert Porter^ house in Egebaston Street. 
 
 William King^ house in Well Street. 
 
 Eichard Swyft, house in Engltshb Street. 
 
 Thomas Cowper^ house at the Highe Crosse called The Mayden 
 hede. 
 
 Heirs of Nicholas Baylie, house in the Bull ring, and another 
 in Newe Street. 
 
 Egbert Eastell, croft in Godes Cart Lane. 
 
 Edward Taylor, house in Deryatknd, next the house of Thomas 
 Greves. 
 
 The Incumbent of the Free Chapel, [land called] Shawmore. 
 
 William Philippes, a garden near Molle Strete Barres; a 
 house at Molle Strete Ende j and a garden in Parke Street, near 
 a barn of the Gild. 
 
 William Lane, a house near The Peacocke. 
 
 * There are not such particulars given of the tenancies of tlie Cliauntries as I 
 have found in other cases. 
 
 t The separate tenancies were much smaller, in general, in this case than in 
 any of the others. Hence the great number of tlie tenants. 
 
98 OLD STREETS, AND 
 
 The heirs of Rastell^ a house in the Englishe Markett. 
 William Paynton, a house near Molle Steete Barkes. 
 HuMPEEY Jorben^ a house called Whyte Harte. 
 John Bonde, a house in Deryatend, near Heath Myll. 
 John Shylton, a house in Molle Street called Tenter Crofte ; 
 and a house in Dygbathe, lately of Thomas Walton. 
 EoBERT Myddelmore, a house in Egebaston Street. 
 
 Lands and houses in Dalend, held by, — 
 
 Henry Russell. John Shylton. 
 
 Roger Clowse. William Solemore [? mistake 
 John Nicholls (at Dale End for Golemore]. 
 
 Barres). Agnes Walton. 
 
 John Elyat (The Dale Hall). Christian Harryson. 
 
 Lands and houses in Chappell [now Bull] Street,* held by, — 
 
 John Yessete (lands called The John Elyatt. 
 FoLDEs). John Massye. 
 
 Lands and houses in Englishe Markett, held by, — 
 
 Richard Smalbroke (house call- Robert Preston (near Molle- 
 
 ed The Well). strete). 
 
 Richard Alatt. Robert Colyns. 
 
 Thomas Sompnor. John Elyat. 
 John Vessey (near Redehill). 
 
 Lands and houses in Newe Street, held by, — 
 
 William Bodgye. William Sheldon (near Feck 
 
 William Elson. [afterwards Peck] Lane). 
 
 Thomas Hudson. 
 
 * It is to be regretted that so many of the oldest streets and places in Bir- 
 mingham have had their names changed. Several of the names given before, 
 p. 88, and in the present list, will be new to most readers. Some (but not all) 
 of these names will be found on comparing Westley's Plan (a.d. 1731) and Brad- 
 ford's Plan (a.d. 1751). 
 
 I must take this opportunity of acknowledging the liberal courtesy of Mr. 
 Westley E-ichards, who has furnished me with sets of new impressions printed 
 from the plates engraved by his ancestor more than 130 years ago. 
 
THEIR INDWELLERS. 99 
 
 Sho])s in High Street, held by, — 
 Thomas Yemont. Thomas Baker, 
 
 John Weley. William Peynton (in The Sham- 
 
 John Shylton. bles). 
 
 Lands and houses in the Molle [now Moor] Street, held by, — 
 
 William Peynton. Elizabeth Crassher. 
 
 EoGER Hawkes. John Smythe. 
 
 John Vessey. Hamon Hatton. 
 
 EicHARD Walker. Alice Skyllett. 
 
 Thomas Yemons. Henry Bagley. 
 
 John Shylton. Maria Vernon. 
 
 Thomas Marshall. 
 
 Lands, cottages, barns, and buildings in Egebaston Street, 
 
 held by, — 
 
 Eichard Smalbroke. Thomas Makworthe. 
 
 William Bodgye. William Corpson. 
 
 EoGER Davyes. Elizabeth Baker. 
 
 William Symondes. Henry Burcott. 
 
 Ellen Lokyer. John Shylton. 
 
 Lands and stables in Mercers [now Spiceal] Street, held by, — 
 
 John Shilton. Elizabeth Jackson. 
 
 Thomas Marshall. Henry Wylson. 
 
 Thomas Preston. near Walstwoodes house. 
 
 Lands and houses in Bull-ring, held by, — 
 
 John Shylton. Thomas Marshall. 
 
 Egbert Eastell (at The Pyn- Egbert Spurrier. 
 
 fold). William Peynton. 
 
 William Michell. 
 
 Lands and cottages in Well Street [top of Digbetii], held by, — 
 Joan Baylie. Thomas Priest. 
 
 Thomas Shorte. William Wyllington. 
 
 William Foxhall. Agnes Harper. 
 
 Barns and gardens in Parke Street, held by, — 
 Egbert Eastell. William Peynton (near Godes 
 
 Cart lane). 
 
100 THE GILD HALL, AND ITS OFFICERS. 
 
 House in Deryatend, held by Richard Clerkson. 
 
 Lands, ^pastures^ and houses, in the Foreign of Birmingham, 
 
 held by, — 
 
 John Shylton (Longe Croft, Richard Walker. 
 
 near Lake-medowe).* Henry Gest. 
 
 John Vessie. John Osborne. 
 
 Richard Smalbroke. Richard Ricroft. 
 
 Henry Byddell. Roger Cloves. 
 
 Henry Foxhall. 
 
 Four cottages between Mercers Street and Newe Street, 
 
 held by, — 
 
 Elizabeth Palmer. Thomas Groves (two cottages, 
 
 Cristofer Bayley. rent free) . 
 
 Besides this long list of names, I find that the Gild of the 
 Holy Cross, being musical, had an organist (pulsator organi), 
 William Bothe by name ; — the father, no doubt, of the Wil- 
 liam Bothe already named, who writes himself " Wm. Bothe, 
 Junr."-\ He had a handsome salary. They had also a clerk 
 of the Gild, whose name is unhappily not recorded in its 
 proper place. One Thomas Groves, no doubt he who lived 
 rent free in two of the Gild's cottages, was keeper of the 
 house and gardens of the Gild ; that house being known by 
 the names (used indifferently) of " The Town Hall, other- 
 wise called The Gild Hall."| There was also an officer call- 
 ed " The Belman "; but his name, like the Gild-clerk's, must 
 remain for the present unknown to fame, there being an un- 
 lucky blank left for this, as for some few other names, in 
 the old manuscript before me. 
 
 It has been already seen how great a number of indepen- 
 dent freeholders there certainly was in Birmingham as early 
 
 * The names of some of the other lands here, are given in the Grant to the 
 Free School, as Bynges, Rotten Fields, Walmores, and Seyncte Mary Wood. 
 t See before, p. 88. + See before, p. 79. 
 
BIRMINGHAM, PAST AND PRESENT. 101 
 
 as the middle of the fourteenth century.* The long lists of 
 indwellers just given, recall those who were lining and mov- 
 ing as heads of families in the town exactly two hundred 
 years later. And if the facts are marshalled, — by recollec- 
 tion, to those who know the place : by a glance at any map, 
 old or new, to those who do not, — it will be seen that ex- 
 actly the same parts and streets were the busiest three hun- 
 dred years ago that are so now. From Deritend, up Digbeth, 
 Well Street, Corn Cheping, Bull Ring, High Street, English 
 Market, Dale End and Bull [Chapel] Street : — on the right. 
 Park Street, Moor Street, Carrs [Godes Cart] Lane : — on the 
 left, Edgbaston Street, Spiceal [Mercers] Street, New Street. 
 Here is the busy Birmingham of to-day, found full of life and 
 activity, in the same parts, more than three hundred years 
 ago. Dot down, along each of these streets, and in the out- 
 lying parts, the houses and places that are named in even no 
 more than the nine foregoing pages ; and a populous town 
 rises at once before the eye. Let it be borne in mind, that 
 what has been thus named takes in no more than the private 
 estate of the Lord of the Manor (not his manorial jurisdic- 
 tion, nor even the freeholders paying quit rents), and the 
 estates of five corporate Bodies within the place ; and that 
 the properties of all the many private freeholders have to be 
 added to these. With these facts recalled, the Birmingham 
 of three hundred years ago, and of the ages before, will be 
 better understood than it has heretofore been. 
 
 While the physical facts now for the first time made 
 known, will remain henceforth ineff'aceable note-marks, they 
 cannot themselves be fully understood, nor give a true view 
 of the town's past life and steady growth, unless there be 
 reckoned together with them that which has been the leaven 
 of the whole, without which it would long since have been 
 lifeless and dead, instead of showing itself full of a growing 
 
 * See before, p. 36. 
 
 H 
 
102 BIEMINGHAM, PAST AND FUTURE. 
 
 and transmitted vigour ; namely, the spirit of the Institutions 
 that formed the atmosphere in which the men of Birming- 
 ham lived in past ages, and the habits of life under which, 
 animated by this spirit, they groAv up to be men.* That self- 
 interest and material self-gratification shall be the ends to 
 be aimed at, is what Governments that smother freedom and 
 cherish despotism seek to make the doctrine and the practice 
 of man's life. That every man owes a duty, and a full share 
 of his time in order to fulfil that duty, to his neighbours and 
 to his country, is the doctrine and the practice whence Eng- 
 land has drawn the living breath of freedom through past 
 ages ; and it is this doctrine and this practice, on the stead- 
 fast upholding of which the freedom, the prosperity, and the 
 true Progress, now and hereafter, of England, and of Bir- 
 mingham as a vital part of England, assuredly depend. 
 
 * See before, pp. 9, 10, 20, 24, etc. 
 
INDEX OF NAMES. 
 
 Acton, John, 83. 
 
 Affeelde, Thomas, 88. 
 
 Agate, 33. 
 
 ALatt, Eichard, 98. 
 
 Aleyne, John, 97. 
 
 Allicocke, Thomas, 88. 
 
 Andrewes, Richard, 84. 
 
 Arblastre, Richard, 80. 
 
 Attwood, 14, 15. 
 
 Ault, 32. 
 
 Aygnelet (Inkleys, Ingley, Ingall), 
 
 William, 28, 31, 32. 
 Aylet, 32. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bagley, Henry, 99. 
 
 Baker, Thomas, 99. 
 
 Baker, Elizabeth, 99. 
 
 Ball, Richard, 84. 
 
 Barber, John, 78. 
 
 Barre, Roger of little, 29, 32. 
 
 Barrow, 32. 
 
 Bawdryk (Bawdrick), Humfrey, 84, 
 
 85. 
 Bawe, Joan, 28, 31,32. 
 Bayley, Christofer, 100. 
 Bayleys, John Dyckson alias, 88. 
 Baylie, Nicholas, 97. 
 Baylie, Joan, 99. 
 Belne, Thomas of, 0,7, 69. 
 Bene (Bever), Richard, 57, 67, 69. 
 Bene, Adam, 57. 
 
 Benet, 64. 
 
 Benet (Benett), William, 84. 
 
 Bergevenny, Joan, Lady of, 80. 
 
 Bernabroke, Thomas, 83. 
 
 Berkeley, Sir William, 84. 
 
 Bettridge, 87. 
 
 Betwiche, John, 87. 
 
 Bidden, Henry, 97, 100. 
 
 Biddle (Byddyll), 94 note. 
 
 Bill, 94 note. 
 
 Billingsley, John, 88. 
 
 Birmingham, Edward, 89, 90, 91, 95. 
 
 Birmingham, Fulco of, 19, 40, 41, 42. 
 
 Birmingham, John, 19. 
 
 Birmingham, John the Deyseer of, 
 
 36, 37, 38. 
 Birmingham, Sir John of, 57, 61, 78. 
 Birmingham, Roger the Barber of, 
 
 18, 37. 
 Birmingham, Thomas, 19. 
 Birmingham, William of, 18, 19, 27, 
 
 28, 32. 
 Birmingham, Walter of, 17, 18. 
 Blocksiche, Morris, 87. 
 Blocksidge, 88. 
 Bloxwiche, John, 95. 
 Bodgye, William, 96, 98, 99. 
 Bonde, John, 93, 98. 
 Boteler (Botteley, Butler), Geoffry, 
 
 57, 64. 
 Boteler, John, 85. 
 Botdler, Richard, 78. 
 Botetourte, John, 41. 
 
104 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES. 
 
 Bothe, William, 100. 
 
 Bothe, William, Junr., 88, 100. 
 
 Brandwood, Hicliard, 97. 
 
 Brindejone, 19. 
 
 Broke (Brooke), Ealpli, 86, 87, 95. 
 
 Broke, Baldwin, 85, 96. 
 
 Broke, Peter atte, 29, 32. 
 
 Broke, Kichard of, 57, 64. 
 
 Brokekurst, Marion, 96. 
 
 Brokliurst, Eicliard, 97. 
 
 Brokesby, Henry, 80. 
 
 Brooke, Brooks, Broke, 16, 33. 
 
 Bromwycli, Walter, 82, 83. 
 
 Burcott, Henry, 99. 
 
 Burgeys, Jolin, 36, 37. 
 
 Burne, Hugh, 78. 
 
 Burton, William, 95. 
 
 Butler, Eobert, 97. 
 
 Butler, Eichard, 97. 
 
 Buttort, Sir John, 57. 
 
 Byddyll, Maurice, 86, 94 note. 
 
 Bygg, John, 97. 
 
 ByhuU, Thomas, 86, 94 note. 
 
 C. 
 
 Caldewell, Henry of, 40. 
 Carpenter, John the, 28, 32, 34. 
 Chalonnere, John Phelyps, 83. 
 Chapelle, Eichard atte, 40. 
 Chattok, Thomas, 57, 64. 
 Chewe, John, 80. 
 
 Cissor (Carver), Hamon, 28, 31, 32. 
 Clerkson, Eichard, 100. 
 Clodeshale, John of, 28, 32, 35. 
 Clodeshale, Walter of, 35. 
 Clodeshale, Eichard of, 35, 39. 
 Cloves, Eoger, 100. 
 Clowse, Eoger, 96, 98. 
 Cockes, John, 97. 
 Cofton, Geoffry of, 28, 32. 
 Coke (Cook), Sir Edward, 15. 
 Coke, Nicholas, of Aston, 96. 
 Colchester, Humfrey, 96. 
 Colemon, Henry, 36. 
 Colemon, WiUiam, 36, 37. 
 Colemore, William, 97, 98. 
 Coleyn, John, 40. 
 Collins (Colye), Hugh, 96. 
 Collins, Eobert, 96. 
 
 Colmore, Eobert, 97. 
 
 Colsull (Coleshill, Colleshull), John 
 
 of, 36, 37, 76, 77. 
 Colyns, Eobert, 98. 
 Cooke, Henry, 80 (see " Weoley"). 
 Cooke, John, 80. 
 Cope, 64. 
 
 Corbyn, William, 28, 31, 32. 
 Corbyn, John, 36. 
 Corbyn, Thomas, 36. 
 Corpson, William, 99. 
 Cottrell, Thomas, 95. 
 Cottrell, Humfrey, 96. 
 Couper, William, 57, 64. 
 Couper, John, 83. 
 Couper, John Couper, 83. 
 Coventry and Lichfield, Eobert 
 
 bishop of, 57, 61. 
 Cowper, Thomas, 93, 97. 
 Crassher, Elizabeth, 99. 
 Cutte, John, 80. 
 
 D. 
 
 Dale, 33. 
 
 Dale, Nicholas in the, 28, 29, 32. 
 
 Dapifer, Peter, 18, 81. 
 
 Davyes, Eoger, 99. 
 
 Daye, Clarice the, 28, 32, 34. 
 
 Deritend (Der-yat-end), 70, 71. 
 
 Dod, William, 57, 64. 
 
 Dodd, Dodson, 64. 
 
 Dodeston (Duddeston), William of, 
 
 28, 32. 
 Donne, Eichard, 87. 
 Draper, John, 89, 94. 
 Dudley, Isabella, Lady of, 78. 
 Dudley, John, Viscount Lisle, 69 
 
 note. 
 Dyckson alias Bayleys, John, 88. 
 
 E. 
 
 Ellyott, John, 93. 
 Elyat (Ely att), John, 98. 
 Elson, William, 98. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fauconer, Thomas, 80. 
 Fenton, Eichard, 85. 
 Fetherston, John, 87, 93, 96. 
 
INDEX OF NAMES. 
 
 105 
 
 Fetherston, Thomas, 87, 88. 
 Fitter {see " Vyterre "). 
 Flaumvile, Robert, 57, 04, 81. 
 Flavell, John, 84. 
 FlaveU, Elen, 97. 
 Fletcher, Richard, 96. 
 Flete, Hugh, 93. 
 Fokeram, Richard, 28, 31. 
 Forest, Ralph, 85, 86, 95. 
 Forest, William, 95. 
 Forreste, Richard son of William, 88. 
 Foxall (Foxhole, Foxoll), Roger, 
 
 85, 93. 
 
 Foxhall, Henry, 97, 100. 
 Foxhall, William, 99. 
 Foxe, John, 87, 94 note. 
 Fraunceys, John, 80. 
 Frewes, John, 36, 37. 
 Furnyvall, Richard, 93. 
 Fychelere, John the, 36, 37, 38. 
 Fylongley, Henry, 80. 
 
 G. 
 
 Gamull, Ralph, 82, 83. 
 
 Garnett, John, 93. 
 
 Gate, Roger atte, 28, 32, 33. 
 
 Gates, 33. 
 
 Geffon (Geffen), WiUiam, 65 note, 67, 
 
 69, 78. 
 Geffries, John, 89. 
 Germa3ms, George, of Yardeley, 89. 
 Gest, WiUiam, 82, 83. 
 Gest, Joan, 83. 
 Gest alias Tolymoly, Thomas son of 
 
 William, 83, 84. 
 Gest, Henry, 100. 
 Gilbert, John son of, 36, 39. 
 Gilberts, Gilbertson, Gibson, 39. 
 Glover, John, 80. 
 Goldingale, 96. 
 Goldesmyth, William, 92. 
 Goldsmyth, John, 76, 77, 83. 
 Grene, Robert o' the, 57, 61, 63, 64, 
 
 67, 69, 78, 82, 83. 
 Grene, Thomas son of Robert o' the, 
 
 82, 83. 
 Greve, John, 86. 
 Greves, Thomas, at the Horestok, 
 
 86, 97. 
 
 Groves, Thomas, 100. 
 Gryffythe, John, 96. 
 Gylbert, Thomas, 94. 
 
 H. 
 Harper, Agnes, 99. 
 Harryson, Christian, 98. 
 Hasturley, Thomas, 85, 86. 
 Hatton, Hamon, 99. 
 Hawkes, Hawkesford, Hawkesley,86. 
 Hawkes, John, 87. 
 Hawkes, Roger, 99. 
 Hawkes, Thomas, 97. 
 Hawkes, William, 86. 
 Hayberd, Edward, 88. 
 Herch, 85. 
 
 Hegeyns, Symon, 89. 
 Hey, 41. 
 Holden, 64. 
 Holdon, John, 83. 
 
 Holdon, Jolin son of Thomas, 82, 83. 
 Holdon, Thomas, 57, 64, 67, 69, 83. 
 Holte, 14, 15, 33. 
 Holte, Thomas, 90, 94, 95, 96. 
 Holte, John atte, 36, 37. 
 Horestok, Thomas Greves at the, 86. 
 Horwell, William, 97. 
 Hudson, Thomas, 98. 
 Huwet (Hewitt), Simon, 57, 64. 
 
 I. 
 
 Ingall, 32. 
 Ingley, 32. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jackson, Elizabeth, 99. 
 
 Jeffe, William, 57, 64, 69. 
 
 Jeffs, 64. 
 
 Jesseppe, Thomas, 88. 
 
 John, Thomas son of, 36, 39. 
 
 Johnson, 39. 
 
 Jones, John, 88. 
 
 Jorden, Humfrey, 98. 
 
 Jori (Jolly), William, 28, 31, 32. 
 
 Jori, Edith, 28. 
 
 Judden, Richard, 40. 
 
 K. 
 Keen, Keau, 34. 
 Kempe, John, 40. 
 Kendall, Thomas, 87. 
 
106 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES. 
 
 Xene, Alexander tlie, 28, 32. 
 King, William, 97. 
 Kokeyn, Ealph, 28, 31. 
 Kylcuppe, Eicliard, 94 note. 
 Xynges, William tlie, 36, 39. 
 
 Lane, William, 97. 
 
 Layforde, Thomas, 83. 
 
 Lee, William, 80. 
 
 Lenche, John, 84. 
 
 Lenche, William, 92, 93. 
 
 Lepper, John, 95. 
 
 Lisle, Lysle, Lisley, 69 note. 
 
 Lichfield, see Coventry. 
 
 Little wood, 15. 
 
 Locok, John, 86. 
 
 Lokyer, Thomas, 83. 
 
 Lokyer, Ellen, 99. 
 
 Lord, John, 80. 
 
 Loudham, John, 80. 
 
 Lowe, Humphrey, 72. 
 
 Ludford, Elizabeth, 95. 
 
 Lumbard, Eichard, 28, 31, 32. 
 
 Lynche, William, 93. 
 
 M. 
 
 Madeley, Eichard of, 82, 83. 
 Madley, Warin of, sou of Eichard of, 
 
 83. 
 Maidenhacche, Thomas of, 19, 26, 29, 
 
 32. 
 Makworthe, Thomas, 99. 
 Makynton, Eoger of, 28, 32. 
 Mareschal, Thomas, 36, 37. 
 Margery, William son of, 36, 39. 
 Marshall, Thomas, 96, 97, 99. 
 Marshe alias Mychell, Thomas, 87. 
 Massye, John, 98. 
 
 Mercer, Alexander the, 28, 32, 34, 40- 
 Mercer, William the, 40. 
 Mersh, John,, 83. 
 Mersh, John atte, 83. 
 Mershe, James, 96. 
 Mey, William the, 36, 37, 38. 
 Michel, John, 40. 
 Michel, Thomas, 40. 
 Michel], Alice, 96. 
 Michell, William, 96, 99. 
 
 Michell, Eobert, 97. 
 Michell, Eoger, 97. 
 Mychell, Thomas, 83, 87. 
 Middelmore, Thomas of, 78. 
 Milwarde, John, 96. 
 Mole, 34. 
 More, Eoger, 96. 
 Morys, Geoffry, 36. 
 Morys, Henry, 36, 37. 
 Morys, John, 80. 
 Moul, Eoger the, 28, 32, 34. 
 Murdak, John, 19. 
 Myddelmore, Eobert, 93, 98. 
 
 Nash, 33. 
 
 Nasshe, Eichard atte, 28, 32, 33 
 
 JSTecheles, John, 80. 
 
 Newenham, Thomas of, 67, 70. 
 
 Neuport, William of, 36, 37. 
 
 Neowehay, William of the, 40, 41, 
 
 ISTewhay, John, 87. 
 
 Newey, 41. 
 
 Newey, John, 96. 
 
 !N"ewey, Eichard, 96. 
 
 JSTiccols, WiUiam, 85. 
 
 Nicholls, John, 98. 
 
 Osborne, John, 100. 
 Osburne, Henry, 86. 
 
 Pach, William, 83. 
 
 Packewode, Adam of, 36, 37. 
 
 Page, Eobert, 36, 37. 
 
 Pakynton (Pakington) John of, 28, 
 
 32. 
 Palmer, Elizabeth, 100. 
 Parys, John, 36, 37. 
 Patch, Page, 83. 
 Paynter, John, 96, 97. 
 Paynton, William, 87, 98. 
 Penford, John, 80. 
 Pepewall, Eoger, 84. 
 Peynton (Peyton), Thomas, 80, 81. 
 Peyuton, William, 97, 98, 99. 
 Phelipp, Thomas, 78. 
 Phelyps, John, Chalonnere, 83. 
 
INDEX OF NAMES. 
 
 107 
 
 Philip (Phelipp), John, 40, 41, 78. 
 
 Philippes, "William, 97. 
 
 Porter, Agnes, 83. 
 
 Porter, John the, 36, 37. 
 
 Porter, William, 83. 
 
 Porter, Eobert, 97. 
 
 Preston, Robert, 98. 
 
 Preston, Thomas, 99. 
 
 Prety (Praty, Prattye, Prctie), John, 
 
 89, 93, 94. 
 Preust, Eoger, 28, 31, 32. 
 Priest, Thomas, 99. 
 
 E. 
 
 Eabone, Edward, 88. 
 
 Eagg, 34. 
 
 Eaggede, Cristiana the, 28, 32, 34. 
 
 Eaggede, John the, 40, 41. 
 
 Ealegh, Thomas, 77. 
 
 Eastall, William, 93. 
 
 Eastell, 98. 
 
 Eastell, Eobert, 97, 99. 
 
 Eastell, Edward, 88, 
 
 Eawlyns, John, 93. 
 
 Eea, 71. 
 
 Eedhill, Thomas, 84, 94 note. 
 
 Eedill, Eoger, 89. 
 
 Eicroft, Eichard, 100. 
 
 Eider, Eichard, 74, 75. (See " Eyd- 
 
 ware.") 
 Eogers, John, 85, 86. 
 
 Eoggeres, Hugh, 80. 
 
 Eokeby (Eugby), Simon of, 29, 32. 
 
 Eoper (Eubraspatha, Eospear, Eous- 
 pee, Eooper), 17. 
 
 Eotton, Eichard, 88, 94 note. 
 
 Eotton, Ambrose, 94 note. 
 
 Eotton, Thomas, 94 note. 
 
 Eotton, John, 94 note. 
 
 Eugby, Eanulph of, 19, 27. 
 
 Eussell, Eicliard, 85, 86, 93. 
 
 Eussell, Thomas, 80. 
 
 Eussell, William, 89, 93. 
 
 Eussell, Ealph, 97. 
 
 Eussell, Henry, 98. 
 
 Eustin (Euston, Euxton), 15. 
 
 Eyddell, Maria, 94, and note. 
 
 Eyddell, Eoger, 94. 
 
 Eyder, John, 80. 
 Eydere, Simon, 85. 
 Eydware, William, 83. 
 
 S. 
 
 Seggesley, John, 80, 83. 
 
 Sergeant, Ealph, 97. 
 
 Shapley, Humfrey, 84. 
 
 Shaw, 33. 
 
 Shawe, William of the, 29, 32, 33. 
 
 Shefeld, Alexander, 80. 
 
 Sheldon (Shylton, Shilton, Shelton), 
 
 John, 85, 88, 92, 93, 98, 99, 100. 
 Sheldon, Thomas of, 76, 77. 
 Sheldon, William, 98. 
 Shilton, Eobert, 94 note. 
 Shirynton (Sheryngton), Eichard of, 
 
 40, 78. 
 Shobenhale, Sir Eichard, 46, 57, 62. 
 Sliorte, Thomas, 99. 
 Shylton, Henry, 84, 85. 
 Shynglar, Philip, 82. 
 
 Shynglar, John, 82. 
 
 Simondes, William, 85. 
 
 Skyllett, Alice, 99. 
 
 Slowe, WUliam atte, 76, 77. 
 
 Smalbroke, 87. 
 
 Smalbroke, Eichard, 87, 98, 99, 100. 
 
 Smalbroke, John, 89. 
 
 Smallwood, 15. 
 
 Smyth, John, 57, 64, 67, 69, 99. 
 
 Smyth, Eoger, 82, 83. 
 
 Smyth, William son of Eoger, 83. 
 
 Smyth, John son of Eoger, 83. 
 
 Smyth, John Couper, 83. 
 
 Smyth, Eichard, 84. 
 
 Smyth, Eobert, 93. 
 
 Solemore, William, 98. 
 
 Somery, John of, 28, 32. 
 
 Sompnor, Thomas, 98. 
 
 Spenser, Eobert the, 40 
 
 Spenser, Eichard the, 40. 
 
 Spurrier, Eobert, 99. 
 
 Spycer, John, 78. 
 
 Squyer, William, 80. 
 
 Sterkey, John, 93. 
 
 Stretton, Thomas of, 40, 41. 
 
 Strettou, Eobert, 41, 53. 
 
 Stretton, William, 80. 
 
108 
 
 INDEX OF NAMES. 
 
 Sturmy, Laurence, 78. 
 Sutton, Joliii of, 42. 
 Swanne, Humfrey, 93, 95. 
 Swexson, William, 95. 
 Swyfte, Eicharde, 85, 97. 
 iSwyfte, Hobert, 81. 
 Symondes, Humfrey, 85, 86. 
 Symondes, William, 86, 99. (See 
 
 " Simondes.") 
 Symons, 87. 
 Syre, Thomas, 95. 
 
 Taylor, Edward, 97. 
 Tofte, Sir Edward, 89. 
 Tolymoly, William Gest alias, 83. 
 Tycito, William, 28, 31. 
 
 V. 
 
 Venton, Henry, 96. 
 
 Verdon, David, 78. 
 
 Vernon, Maria, 96, 97, 99. 
 
 Verite, William, 36. 
 
 Vessey (Vessie), John, 98, 99, 100. 
 
 Veysey, John, 96, 97, 98, 100. 
 
 Vyterre (Fitter), Thomas, 84. 
 
 W. 
 
 Walker, William, 87. 
 Walker, Eichard, 99, 100. 
 Walrond, Eichard servant of Eich- 
 ard, 80, 81 
 
 Walssh, Eichard, 87. 
 
 Walshraan (Welchman), Meredith, 
 
 80, 81. 
 Walter, Thomas, 96. 
 Walthevr, Seth, 95. 
 Walton, Thomas, 98. 
 Walton, Agnes, 98. 
 Warde, John, 78. 
 Warley, Eauf, 89. 
 Waryng, Thomas, 92. 
 Waterball, Wilham, 83. 
 Welche, G-eorge, 88. 
 Welche, Eichard, 88. 
 Weley, John, 99. 
 Weley, Eichard, 96. 
 Weoley, Henry Cooke of, 80, 81. 
 Whytworth, Eobert, 92 note, 93, 95. 
 Windsor, John of, 40. 
 Wombestrong, Ealph, 29, 31. 
 Wragge, 34. 
 
 Wylleys (Willies), John, 93. 
 Wyllington, WiUiam, 99. 
 Wylson, Henry, 99. 
 Wyrley, Thomas of, 78. 
 Wyrley, John of, 78, 80. 
 Wytton, Thomas of, 40. 
 
 Yates, 33. 
 
 Yemons (Yemont), Thomas, 100. 
 
 Yerdeley, Thomas, 80. 
 
 JOHN EDWAKD TATLOE, PEIIfTEE, 
 LITTLE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS 
 
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