After the Norman invasion of 1066 it took a number of years to complete the conquest of the country.  It was not till 1086 that the “Domesday” Book was compiled—written evidence of a settlement of the land question which, it was fondly hoped (and expressed in the name), would last till “Domesday”!

The Domesday Book was a great national land register in which was entered a record of every acre of land in England, its condition, its ownership, and annual value at that time.  For on land ownership alone then depended not only the amount of the national revenue, but the strength of the national defences.  Willenhall, wrongly written by the Domesday scribes as Winehala, is returned as being in the Hundred of Offlow, and having an area of 2,168 acres.

Of this acreage 3 hides belonged to the old domains of the Crown, like Bilston and Wednesbury (having formerly formed part of the dominions of the Saxon kings), while but two hides of Willenhall land belonged to Wolverhampton church.  It is believed that the King’s manorial portion took with it Bentley, with its 1,650 acres.

Anyway, Willenhall having belonged originally to the ancient Mercian kings, and having been held in succession by all the Saxon kings of England to Edward the Confessor and Harold II., naturally passed as a royal manor, or rather, a portion thereof, into the hands of the Conqueror, being set down among the Crown lands as of “ancient demesne.”

Since the eleventh century the boundaries of the Hundreds of Offlow and Cuddlestone have been altered.  As to the Arley estate, that was lost to the canons ere another century had elapsed—by 1172 had escheated to the Crown.

The present-day acreage of Wolverhampton parish is no less than 17,449; made up of 3,396 acres in Wolverhampton proper, 1,845 in Bilston, and 1,650 in Bentley, a total of 6,891 acres in Seisdon Hundred; thus leaving 10,608 acres to constitute Hilton (two manors, since united into one) Hatherton, Kinvaston, Featherstone, and Hocintune.  The last-named was a manor which, at that time, probably lay between Hilton and Hatherton, within Wolverhampton; the name is obsolete.

These ten estates, comprising Wolverhampton, Willenhall (part of), Arley (part of), Bushbury (part of), Hilton (part of), Pelsall, Wednesfield, Cote (near Penn), Haswic (near Newcastle), and Hocintune (now obsolete), were in 1086 held by the Canons of Wolverhampton under Sampson, the highly favoured royal Chaplain, to whom the Conqueror had presented this fief.  For the purposes of comparison it may be mentioned that there were then eighteen holdings in Staffordshire, occupying 567 hides, and valued at about £516.  Sampson’s fief extended to 26½ hides of this, and was estimated as being worth £8 2s. a year.

This Sampson, who has been incorrectly styled the first Dean of Wolverhampton, was a Canon of Bayeux, and though a king’s chaplain, was not ordained a priest till nine years after the Conqueror’s death, when Rufus made him Bishop of Worcester.  Bishop Sampson subsequently gave the Church of Wolverhampton to his Cathedral Monastery of Worcester.  He also held the neighbouring estates at Bilbrook and Tettenhall as the superior of the priests of Tettenhall College.

A bordar, or boor, was a squatter living in a hut or cottage on the borders of a manor, having attached a little patch of land, the rent of which was paid to the lord of the manor in the shape of poultry, eggs, and small produce.  A villein, or serf, was to all intents and purposes a slave, at the absolute disposal of the lord, except that he could not be detached from the soil on which he was born.  While the bordar, or cottager, was resident in the manor more or less on sufferance, the villein was there of right, and was in that sense the superior of the bordar.  The villein certainly might not go away from Willenhall, nor get married, nor buy and sell oxen, nor grind corn, without the express permission of the lord of the manor; yet he was not so badly off as all this would make it appear to our modern ideas.  People seldom travelled in those days, money was little used, life was exceedingly primitive, and wants were very few and very simple.

Staffordshire at that time was in a chronic state of poverty, an insurrection in the county having been suppressed in 1069 with the Conqueror’s customary severity, thousands of the wretched hinds having been slaughtered, the county desolated and the Midlands depopulated.

Bilston was but a cluster of mud huts inhabited by swineherds; and it is probable Willenhall was a similar little centre of boor life in the next woodland clearing a little further along the purling brooklet, and near its junction with Beorgitha’s Stream, as the Tame was then called.  The entire population of the county was purely agrarian, the villeins and boors altogether numbering about 2,800; or on an average of one labourer to each 167 acres of land registered in Domesday Book.  The subsequent history of the two parts of Willenhall will have to be traced separately.

“Each of the other portionaries (continues Erdeswick) have a several leet; whereof

“And the sacrist to attend them in capitulo, £40”—by no means a poor salary in those days for such duties as the secretarial and managerial work to a Chapter.

As to the three hides of Willenhall in the King’s Manor of Stow Heath, here is its later history as recorded by Dr. Vernon, a historiographer who made some additions to Sampson Erdeswick’s history:—

As to the adjoining hamlet, it may be mentioned that Domesday Book formally recorded the canons of Wolverhampton to possess “five hides of Wednesfelde; the arable land is three carucates; that there are six villeins, and six bordars, who have six carucates; and that there is a wood in which cattle are pastured, half a mile long and three furlongs broad.”

Such was life in Willenhall and Wednesfield at the Norman period, both places being then overshadowed in more senses than one by the severely protected royal preserves of Cannock Forest.  We may picture the few hinds constituting the scanty population, tenanting cottages which were mere hovels, and most of them like Gurth—the swineherd of Scott’s “Ivanhoe”—wearing round their necks the iron collars, which were the badge of Saxon serfdom, and like him driving their herds into the woods each morning, and returning at nightfall with their charges grunting and gorged with beech-mast and acorns.

         While to their lowly dome
The full-fed swine return’d with evening home;
Compell’d reluctant, to the several sties,
With din obstreperous, and ungrateful cries.

The trade and callings of an English serf were as limited as his other opportunities in life; and others beside the swineherd found it in the adjacent woodlands.  For there were certainly woodcutters and charcoal burners; and if the local iron ore were exploited, who shall say there were not then Willenhall smiths who fashioned bolts and bars, even if they had not arrived at the intricacies of locks and keys?

Here we are but emerging from the twilight of history.

In the earlier centuries of our national existence, the history of a parish follows that of its church, the ecclesiastical fold into which its inhabitants were regularly gathered, not only for every religious purpose, but for every other object of communal interest or of a public nature.

But, as previously explained, Willenhall was not a parish; it was but one member of that wide parochial area ruled from the mother church of Wolverhampton, several miles distant.

Yet at an early period Willenhall seems to have boasted a chapel-of-ease, for the Calendar of Patent Rolls, under date 1297, contains an allusion to “Thomas de Trollesbury, parson of the church of Willenhale.”  Dr. Oliver, in his history of the town, says that Wolverhampton church was rebuilt about 1342, and he evidently attributes the erection of Willenhall chapel to the same date, as being the outcome of the same devout spirit of church building.  But this is nearly half a century later than the allusion just quoted from the Patent Rolls, and Dr. Oliver’s reference may possibly be to the founding of a chantry chapel by the Gerveyse family, who set up one of these mass-houses in Willenhall about a dozen years after one had been established at Pelsall.

Let it not be imagined that this new church was either a large or a magnificent structure.  In all probability it was a diminutive chapel constructed of timber which had been cut in the adjacent forest; some of its wall spaces, perhaps, were only of timber framed wattle and dab; and at most any building material of a more durable nature entering into its construction would be but a plinth of stone masonry, and dwarfed at that.

While a chapel-of-ease was provided for the general good of the whole community, a chantry chapel was intended for the special glory and exclusive benefit of some local landed family.  And here is the first record we have of the Willenhall Chantry; it is extracted from the Patent Rolls of Edward III., under date 14th February, 1328:—

“Licence for the alienation in mortmain by Richard Gerveyse, of Wolvernehampton, of a messuage, land, and a moiety of a mill in Willenhale, co. Stafford, to a Chaplain to celebrate Divine service daily in the Chapel of Willenhale for the souls of the said Richard and Felicia, his wife, the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, children and ancestors, and others.”  A fine of 40s. was paid to the King (at Stafford) for this licence to devote landed estate to the said purposes of church endowment.

A chantry (or chauntry, a name derived from cantaria), was a chapel, little church, or some particular altar in a church, endowed with lands and other revenues, for the maintenance of a priest, or priests, daily to chant a mass and offer prayers for the souls of the donors, and such others as the founders of the chantry may have named.  In this particular instance, as we have seen, the eternal welfare of the Gerveyses is sought to be assured, and the chantry here was doubtless at the altar of the new chapel-of-ease—we cannot expect there were two separate ecclesiastical buildings in so small a place as Willenhall.

The method of procedure in setting up these foundations was first to obtain a patent from the Crown for the founding and endowing of them; and then to obtain the Bishop’s licence for the regular daily performance of Divine service by the appointed chantry priest, to whose stipend and support the endowment mainly went.

In connection with the endowments of the Willenhall chantry, it is on record that at an Inquisition taken in 1397, it was testified on oath that Roger Levison at that time held on lease from Thomas Browning, chaplain of this chantry, 12 acres of land in Wednesfield, and 100s. of rent in Willenhall, for which he had to perform suit and service (of the usual nature in feudal tenures) at the Deanery Court of Wolverhampton.

In 1409 the advowson of the chapel of Willenhall, together with certain valuable properties of rents and tenements in Wolverhampton, were granted by Richard Hethe and William Prestewode, chaplain, to William Bysshebury and his wife Joan, and settled on them for the term of their lives, with remainder to John Hampton, of Stourton, and his heirs for ever.

Fourteen years later William Bysshebury (his wife Joan being then deceased) was sued by certain plaintiffs, on behalf of the said John Hampton, for wasting these Wolverhampton properties, of which he had the reversion.  The plaintiffs included Roger Aston, knight, William Leveson, William Everdon, Thomas Arblaster, and others; while the waste and destruction complained of comprised the digging and selling of clay, marl, and stones; the permitting of seven halls, two chambers, two kitchens, two granges, a dovecot, and a mill to remain unroofed till the principal timbers had rotted; and also with cutting down and selling a number of oaks, ashes, pear, and apple trees, the total damage in respect of all this waste being estimated at a very considerable figure.

The advowson was, of course, the right of presentation to the benefice of Willenhall; and the Hamptons of Stourton Castle, to whom it passed at this time, seem to have been a family which originated at Wolverhampton—and perhaps derived their name from the town.

In the reign of Edward IV. local ecclesiastical matters became further complicated by the collegiate church of Wolverhampton being permanently united with the Deanery of Windsor, the two deaneries being always subsequently held together.  It appears that King Edward, desirous of doing his Chaplain a favour, annexed the “Free Royal Church of Wolverhampton” to the said Deanery of Windsor, which royal act was soon afterwards confirmed by Parliament (1480).

The Chantry of Willenhall, in common with all others, disappeared at the Reformation (this one probably in 1545), when prayers for the dead were no longer tolerated.  But it is interesting to observe that under the new Protestant régime attendance at church every Sunday was still regarded as a duty no good citizen and loyal subject could be excused.

Attendance at church was compulsory in the early days of the Anglican establishment.  By statute (i, Elizabeth c. i., 23 Elizabeth c. i., and 3, James i. c. 4) every person was to repair to his parish church every Sunday on pain of forfeiting 1s. for every offence; and being present at any form of prayer contrary to the Book of Common Prayer was punished with six months’ imprisonment.  Persons above sixteen years of age who absented themselves from church above a month had to pay a forfeit of £20 a month.

Protestant dissenters who did not deny the doctrine of the Trinity were (it is interesting to note) exempted from these penalties in 1689; and the Roman Catholics were similarly emancipated by law in 1792.  This by the way.

Having brought the ecclesiastical history of Willenhall up to the enlightened days of Queen Elizabeth, to preserve some sort of chronological arrangement, we leave that section awhile in order to deal with the social life of the place, so far as this may be gleaned from a number of fragmentary sources and isolated references.

The result of these gleanings is naturally very scrappy an disconnected—like the modern periodicals afflicted with the prevalent “snippetitis.”  Such as they are, however, the local reader may be willing to accept them as being of some little interest.

In the year 1172 the Pipe Rolls, which come next to the Domesday Book among our most ancient national records, and contain a full account of the Crown revenues, return Willenhall, among five other Staffordshire estates, bringing in the sum of £19 7s. 8d. per annum to Henry II.  This would represent nowadays a sum twenty times that amount.  These estates were Bilston and Rowley Regis, being ancient demesnes of the Crown, and the manors of Leek, Wolstanton, and Penkhull (in the north of the county), which had escheated at the Conquest from the Earl of Mercia.  Rowley probably brought in but a few pence at that time, when it formed a part of Clent.

In the same reign (Henry II.) the Canons of Wolverhampton are recorded as holding two hides of land in “Winenhale”—certainly not more than 400 acres in a fertile locality like this.

During the reign of Edward III., his son and heir, the renowned Black Prince, hero of Crecy and Poictiers, claimed (after the manner of those times) the custody and guardianship of Matilda, daughter and heiress of his old comrade in arms, John de Willenhale.  The heiress of Willenhall was therefore at this time a royal ward.  The earliest holder of this manor who is known by his territorial title seems to be Roger de Wylnale, who (according to Lawley’s “History of Bilston,” p. 132) was flourishing about the year 1109.

The nobles, whenever the weakness of a king emboldened them, fortified their castles, and increased the number of their retainers, whom they reduced to a condition of complete vassalage; and each baron strove to make himself a figure in the great national convulsions which, from time to time, broke out under the malign influences of the feudalism that dominated the whole land and blighted its every hope of progress.

The Franklins, the inferior grade of gentry, who, under the old Saxon system were called Thanes, were often compelled by force of environment to range themselves under the protecting banner of one or other of these petty kings.  And where authority was systematically set at defiance by the great and the powerful, inoffensive conduct and dutiful obedience to the laws of the land afforded no guarantee for the security of either life or property.

To these disturbing influences must be added the barbarous severity of the laws of the chase, the vindictive nature of which sometimes made the heavy feudal chains of the common people almost too grievous to be borne.  As Willenhall was on the confines of the Royal Forest of Cannock, the oppressive nature of the Forest Laws was not unfelt by the inhabitants of this secluded hamlet.

In 1306, when John de Swynnerton married the daughter and heiress of Philip de Montgomery, Seneschal of the Royal Forest of Cannock, and became Steward of the Forest in customary succession, Willenhall was officially returned, along with a number of surrounding places (Wednesfield, Wednesbury, Darlaston, Essington, Hilton, Newbrigge, Moseley, Bushbury, Pendeford, Coven, and a score more), as appurtenant to a third part of the said forest bailiwick.

The Swynnerton interest in Willenhall transpires again in 1364, when John de Swynnerton is found suing two Willenhall men for forcibly and feloniously removing some of his goods and chattels from that place.

Here is an episode characteristic of the period.  It is a Tuesday evening in the month of August, 1347, and about the hour of vespers.  The scene is laid in “the field of Wolverhampton, called Wyndefield, in a place called Le Ocstele, near Le More Love-ende.”  A body of men, all carrying arms, are seen to approach their victim, who is described as a clerk, and therefore presumably defenceless.  He is Roger Levessone, son of Richard Levessone.  His assailants are Robert le Clerk, of Sedgley, two Dudley men, a man from Bloxwich, and several others, all duly named in the records of the law courts.

What the cause of quarrel may have been these meagre records do not inform us, but on the evidence of a number of witnesses, among whom was Richard Colyns, of Willenhall, they freely used their spears and swords, inflicting wounds upon the throat and other parts of the body, till the unfortunate Roger was despatched.

In 1339, one Richard Adams, of Willenhall, was charged with slaying two men in that place, one a townsman named John Odyes, and a certain John de Bentley.  As he was acquitted, probably he did it in self-defence.  Encounters of this character were of frequent occurrence in those lawless times.

When the offences recorded are of a less serious nature than murder and slaughter, they are nearly always described as being accompanied by the violent use of lethal weapons—“vi et armis” is the old legal phrase.  Here are some examples of this kind of lawlessness:—

A similar prosecution was undertaken in 1395 by another member of this family, one Nicholas Hampton, against Thomas Marshall, of Willenhall, and for a similar outrage in that place.

A Willenhall man named John Wilson, in 1373, had to invoke the law upon a desperado who forcibly broke into his house and close at Homerwych (Hammerwich), and stole from thence timber, household utensils, clothing, corn, hay, and apparently everything he could lay his hands upon and carry away.

Twenty years later John Wilson (probably the same prosecutor) charged John Wilkes, of Darlaston, with stealing two of his oxen, though no violence is alleged on this occasion.

Two Willenhall men, William Colyns, and William Stokes, were, in 1399, arrested, and charged with cutting down trees and underwood at Bentley.  Force and violence were used on that occasion; and it must be remembered that timber was then in much greater demand for building purposes than now, while underwood was in constant requisition as fuel and for the repair of fences and shelters.

Sixteen years later (1415) John Pype and a number of other Bilston men were prosecuted by Sir Hugh Burnell, Knt., for breaking into his closes at Willenhall, trespassing on his land, and treading down his grass with their cattle, committing damage to a grievous extent, and all in undisguised defiance to the law.

Enough has been quoted to illustrate, by incidents common to the social life of so simple a community as that of Willenhall, the gradual decay of feudalism, and the steady growth of English liberty by the vindication of constitutional law.

From the same sources, namely from the records of the ancient Law Courts, as transcribed, translated, and published in the volumes of the Salt Society, we are enabled to gain a knowledge of the most prominent families in this locality during the Middle Ages.  There seem to have been lawsuits ever since there were landowners.

The principal family in Willenhall were the Levesons or Leusons, who are said to have been connected with this place and the neighbouring parishes of Wednesbury and Wolverhampton, almost from the time of the Norman Conquest, eking out a living from the soil, of which their tenure was at first a very precarious one.

Their pedigree, given by the county historian, Shaw (II. p. 169), shows the founder to be one Richard Leveson, settled in Willenhall in the reign of Edward I.  But we find that in the year before this king’s accession, namely, in 1271, Richard Levison paid a fine of 2s. 3d. in the Forest Court for being permitted to retain in cultivation an assart of half an acre, lying in Willenhall; that is, to be allowed to continue under the plough a piece of land on which he had grubbed up all the trees and bushes by the roots, to the detriment of the covert within the King’s Royal Forest of Cannock.

The founder of the family was succeeded by a son, and by a grandson, both of whom were also called “Richard Leveson, of Willenhall,” although the last one was sometimes designated as “of Wolverhampton,” to which town he was doubtless attracted by the greater profits to be made in the wool trade.

A Clement de Willenhale is mentioned in an Assize of the year 1338, but not improbably he was identical with the Clement Leveson mentioned in another lawsuit in 1356, a party to which was a member of the ancient local family of Harper—“John le Harpere,” as he is therein called.

Then there is mention in 1351 of the John de Willenhale, who is described as being in the wardship of the Prince of Wales.  But perhaps the best insight into the social state of Willenhall at this period will be obtained from a consideration of its inhabitants liable to pay a war tax which was levied by Edward III. in order to enable him to carry on a war of defence against Scotland.  For this popular military expedition, Parliament in 1327 granted the youthful king a Subsidy to the amount of one-twentieth leviable upon the value of nearly all kinds of property.  Assessors and collectors were appointed for every town and village, and they were sworn to make true returns of every man’s goods and chattels, both in the house and out of it.  The exceptions allowable were the goods of those whose total property did not amount to the full value of ten shillings; the tools of trade; and the implements of agriculture.  On the face of it, these exemptions seem fair and just to the lower orders; but we find the higher orders were also favoured, and unduly so; not so much perhaps in the matters of armour and cavalry horses, as in the non-liability of the robes and jewels of knights, gentlemen, and their wives, as well as of their silver and household plate.

Here is a copy of the Subsidy Roll of 1327 so far as it relates to

Wyllunhale.

It will be seen that this fragment is imperfect, as the various amounts set down will not add up to the “summa” or total given, notwithstanding that it has been audited—the abbreviation “Pb.” standing for probata, or proved.

But more interest will be found in a brief study of the names of Willenhall’s inhabitants, who were men of substance seven hundred years ago.

It will be observed that Simon is the only member of the Leveson family assessed, and that he pays the least sum, except that paid by the man Hugh, described as “the Gardener” (the amount paid by “John the Baker” has been obliterated from the roll).

The strange surname Odyes, appearing twice in this list, occurs in another record of the year 1422, and seems to belong to a gentle family, resident in Willenhall, and owning lands in Bentley.

From the Patent Rolls of November, 1334, may be gleaned the bare facts of what seems to have been an extraordinary assault at Willenhall, which was committed upon John, son of John de Bentley, by no less than thirty assailants.  Among those implicated may be noted the names of five members of the Leveson family, namely, Geoffrey, Moses, John, Simon, and Simon the younger; also the names of William, son of Robert atte Pirie, Andrew atte Mere, John le Harpere, Richard Coletes, Richard Colyns, and several others which have occurred before in these pages.  The Leveson family continue to make many appearances in the records of Willenhall litigation at this early period.  In 1347, Andrew, the son of Simon Levesone, of Willenhale, was sued for the treading down and consuming of the corn of Andrew in le Lone at Willenhale, with his cattle, and by force of arms, and for cutting down his trees, and beating and wounding his servant.

In the following year, Geoffrey Levesone, of Willenhale, brought a somewhat similar charge of trespass against John Oldejones, of Wodnesfeld.  In 1362, Roger Levesone, of Willenhale, was successful in a suit for recovering two acres of land at Wolverhampton.  About the same time Juliana Levesone, of Willenhall, married William Tomkys, a member of one of the leading families of Bilston.

In 1369, John de la Lone, of Wolverhampton, sued John Levesone, of Willenhale, for forcibly taking his fish, to the value of 100 shillings, “from his several fishery in Willenhale.”

Another exhibition of lawlessness is brought to our notice in 1429, when Richard Leveson is found suing Robert Dorlaston, weaver, Richard Colyns, lorymer, William Brugge, and William Bate, yeomen, all described as “of Wylenhale,” for violently and forcibly breaking into his close at Willenhall.

A similar case of forcible entry into the close and houses of James Leveson, at Willenhale, by one Roger Waters, a Willenhale lorymer, was an outrage which occupied the attention of the law courts in 1433.

Three years later (1436) another law case shows the same James Levesson suing John Pippard, chaplain, for a messuage and 20 acres of land in Wolverhampton, which he asserted had descended to him from Richard Levesson, of Willenhall, who held it in the time of Edward I., in a direct line, namely, from Richard to his son Geoffrey, from Geoffrey to his son Roger, and from Roger to his son Nicholas, who was plaintiff’s father.

By this time the Leveson family seems to have been not only firmly established in and around Willenhall, Wednesfield, and Wolverhampton, but to have been very numerous as well.  Originally yeomen of the first-named place, cultivating their lands within the precincts of the Royal Forest of Cannock, they gradually grew and prospered, one branch taking advantage of the greater commercial opportunities offered by the last-named town, and settling there as merchants and wool-staplers.

Woolstapling was a prosperous trade in Wolverhampton as early as 1354; and in its ancient market place the Levesons of the younger branch were to be found bartering wool and steadily accumulating riches until they were able to marry into the most exclusive of the county families.

Among the Bailiffs of the Staple—which, in the case of Wolverhampton were wool and woolfel—we find the names of William Leveson in 1485, and Walter Leveson in 1491.

An Inquisition Post Mortem (one of those feudal inquiries into the extent of a man’s landed possessions which passed to his heirs) was held on the death of Henry Beaumont, lord of the Manor of Wednesbury, at Willenhall, on 28th June, 1472.  Among those sworn of the jury on that occasion were James Leveson Esq., Richard Leveson, Esq., Cornelius Wyrley, Esq., Robert Leveson, Ralph Busshbury, Esq., and William Mollesley, all local magnates.

It has not been possible to identify all the members of this extensive family.  There were two distinct branches of the Levesons or Luesons.  The elder line were of Prestwood and Lilleshall, and produced Sir Richard Leveson, of Trentham; the younger branch, descended from William, the son of Richard Leveson, of Willenhall, produced the Sir Thomas Leveson who was the Royalist governor of Dudley Castle during the great Civil War (1643).

The elder line were “of Prestwood” because Nicholas Leveson, in the time of Henry VI. married Maud, heiress of John de Prestwood.  The Lilleshall and other properties were fat church lands, purchased by the wealthy Levesons at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.  It was a Richard Leveson of the Prestwood branch who acquired the Haling Estate in Kent by marriage with a Lord Mayor’s daughter, and died in 1539 after being himself Lord Mayor of London.

Essex was fretting in Cadiz Bay
   With the galleons fair in sight;
Howard at last must give him his way,
   And the word was passed to fight.
Never was schoolboy gayer than he,
   Since holidays first began:
He tossed his bonnet to wind and sea,
   And under the guns he ran.

Admiral Leveson’s effigy in Wolverhampton Church stamps him as one of the heroes of old romance—his career was indeed remarkable, as may be read in the work alluded to.

The present-day representatives of the family are the Leveson-Gowers, the head of whom is the Duke of Sutherland.  The Gowers were an Anglo-Saxon family seated in Yorkshire, and the union of the two occurred about the time of Charles I., when Sir Thomas Gower, then Sheriff of Yorkshire, married Frances, daughter and co-heir of Sir John Leveson, of Haling and Lilleshall.

At the time Richard Leveson was sailing the seas with Essex and Drake, there was a John Leveson living in Willenhall as lord of the manor, the site of his residence being still marked by the position of Levison Street and Moat Street.

In Wolverhampton “Turton’s Old Hall” was originally known as Leveson’s Hall; this massive old mansion, surrounded by its once deep and wide moat, is believed to have been erected by John Leveson, a wool merchant, who was High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1561.

Truly the local record of the Levesons is a long and notable one; and it is interesting to note that John Leveson, son of Thomas, who had been Sheriff of the county, and died in 1595, is the last in Shaw’s pedigree to be described as “of Willenhale,” although in a succeeding chapter we shall find members of this family still seated on their native soil, Willenhall, as late as the years of the Jacobite Rebellions, 1715 and 1745.

Now to resume the ecclesiastical history of the place.  Willenhall was affected by the Reformation from two directions; first, through the mother church of Wolverhampton, of which collegiate establishment it formed a portion; secondly, through its own chapel and the endowed chantry established therein.

The great ecclesiastical upheaval of the sixteenth century had its precursor in the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII.  The rumble of the coming storm warned the secular or non-monastic foundations that it would be prudent to set their houses in order if they were to safeguard their revenues; for every one of the smaller monasteries, with an income of less than £200 per annum, had been forfeited to the Crown (1529).

A new valuation of the College of Wolverhampton had but just been instituted in 1526, from which it will be necessary here to extract only that portion of the return relating to our subject.  It was to this effect:—

The visitation of the religious houses, undertaken as it was in a hostile spirit by Henry VIII., naturally alarmed the authorities of a church where it would appear that irregularities on the part of the prebendaries had long existed, and not an inconsiderable portion of the church property had been alienated, to say nothing of the sequestration of the church communion plate.  Now some hasty attempts were made at restitution, and more so to escape detection and censure.

Restoration in some sort seems to have been hastily attempted at Wolverhampton.  In 1529 Nicholas Leveson presented a new chalice of silver; and the high altar was restored at much expense to its former magnificence.  The Dean, however, fell into disgrace in the matter of denying the King’s supremacy, and was committed to the Tower of London in consequence.  In 1540 bells purchased by the inhabitants from Wenlock Abbey were hung in the church tower.  Four years later sixteen stalls, taken from the recently dissolved monastery at Lilleshall, were presented by Sir Walter Leveson to Wolverhampton Church.

All these precautions scarcely availed to avert the impending doom.  By an Act passed in the first year of the reign of Edward VI., the dissolution of Colleges and Chantries was effected.  But the Royal College of Windsor, of which Wolverhampton was a member, was especially exempted, and the Wolverhampton Chapter consequently felt secure from disturbance.

So sure of their position were they that the prebendaries actually proceeded to lease out their property.  Among the others, the prebendary of Willenhall granted his lands and tithes to John Leveson, Esq. (who held several other of the prebendal properties), for a reserved rent of £6 6s.

There is extant another valuation of these ecclesiastical revenues in the Primate’s Court.  The record is in Latin, but it may be Englished thus:—

The Prebendary of Willenhall is worth per annum:—

The valuation of Wolverhampton College which is to be regarded as that of the Reformation was made in 1551, and one item in which may be quoted from Oliver’s “History of Wolverhampton Church” (p. 63):—“And for £12 6s. 8d. for the farm of the Prebend of Willnall, with all messuages, tithes, lands, rents, services, and other profits to the said Prebend belonging, demised to John Horton, by Indenture under seal of the said College, dated 4th November, 33 Henry VIII., for the term of 21 years,” &c., &c.

Turning our attention to Willenhall itself, let us see how the Chapel here was affected.  The Chantry foundation of this Chapel, like all others, had to go.  Chantries being founded by the pious rich to have the souls of their dear departed prayed for, could not be tolerated by the Protestant reformers, and were all rigidly suppressed.  Here is the valuation formally taken in the reign of Henry VIII. (1526), as before mentioned:—

The Chantry, being regarded as one of the abhorred institutions of Romanism, thus came to an end under the reforming zeal of our Protestant legislators in the early years of the reign of Edward VI.

All the possessions of the Colleges of Wolverhampton and Tettenhall, with their Prebends, together with the Chantry lands of Willenhall, Bilston, and Kinver, when they passed from the Crown in 1552, fell into the hands of the notorious John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who contrived to grab no end of church property in this immediate locality.  When Northumberland came to the block shortly afterwards, there was a great redistribution of this property, that of Wolverhampton being once more annexed to the Royal Free Chapel of St. George at Windsor.

As recorded in the last chapter, the Willenhall Chantry, in common with all others throughout the country, was finally suppressed by Edward VI. and his Protestant ministers (1547).  It had been in existence upwards of 200 years, the name of its first Chantry Priest being given (1341) as “William in the Lone.”

The Prebendal lands also, as we have seen, were leased in the fourth year of this reign to John Leveson, for the sum of £6 6s. per annum.  All the other lands belonging to the Deanery of Wolverhampton then passed into the hands of the King, but did not long remain in the Crown, being conveyed, with much more ecclesiastical property hereabouts, to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.  On his attainder in the reign of Mary (1553), the Deanery lands reverted to the Crown, to be again restored to their original use by that most pious queen.

In 1547 the zeal of the Protestant reformers induced the Government of Edward VI. to send Commissioners round the country to make inquiry in every parish and every church as to the ecclesiastical appointments used in ritual, with orders to suppress all that made for “idolatrous Popish practices.”

The Commissioners for this locality were all men of high standing in the county, as will be seen from their names.  They were sworn to make—

A juste, treu, and parfett survey and inventorie of all goods, plate, juelles, vestements, belles, and other ornaments, of all churches, chappells, brotherhoddes, gyldes, fraternities, and compones within the Hundred of Offeley, in the Countie of Stafford; taken the seventh day of October, in the sixte yere of the Rayne of our Sovereyn Lord, King Edward the Sixte, by Thomas Gyffard and Thomas Fytzherbert, knyghts; and Walter Wrottesley, Esquier, by virtue of the King’s commissein to them, directed in that behalf, as hereafter particularly appereth.

The Return made for Willenhall Church by the Commissioners and their official “Surveyor,” or assessor, runs, verbatim:—

Wylnall.

Fyrste one challes of sylver with a paten parcell gilte weyinge by estimacon viij ounces; iij vestement one of whyte fustian another of blacke chamlett and the thyrd of bleu sarsynet; iij alter clothes; ij cruetts of ledde; a bucket of brasse; iij candelstyks of maslyn; a paxe of brass; a corporas with the case; ij towells; one cheste; a lampe of latynn; ij small bells.

Mem.—That all these parcells before rekened were delyvered unto Richard Forsett, Surveyor to the Kynge’s Majesti, as shall appare by his acquytance, except ij belles the whyche remayne still within the sayd chapell.

It is difficult to decide the nature of the “two small bells”; because, if they were the sanctus bells used at the most solemn parts in the performance of the Mass, one a hand-bell rung inside, and the other as a signal outside, they would have been abolished.  So, as they were left by the Reformers, they were probably small bells in the steeple or turret.

So much for the changes materialistic brought about at this great religious upheaval of the sixteenth century.  Now let us inquire into the more serious and essential changes which occurred in the religious life of the nation at that time.

From a little known Return made in 1586 we are enabled to gather the conditions of the Church of England, as it was found to exist, only 28 years after it had been by law established.

At the Reformation, after the annulling of all “Popish ordinations,” the state of the English clergy became very deplorable.  Some of the basest of the people were permitted to become parish priests, a circumstance that gave point to the arguments and contentions of the Puritans.

By 1586 the condition of the newly-formed Protestant Church of England had become so scandalous in respect of its priesthood that a national “Survey” was undertaken.  Of the remarkable facts disclosed by this Return we select from the summaries the following few which relate to this immediate locality:—

Wolverhampton.—A Collegiate Church; impropriate to the King’s Majestie or the Dean of Windsor; value of lands belonging to it is £600 per annum.  There be seven Prebends and a Sexton under them; seven stipendiaries; the allowance for four of them is ten nobles apiece; for the other three £6 apiece.  Six of the Prebends be held by Sir Gualter Levison; the other is held by another.  The rent reserved to the Dean of Windsor, £38.  People 4,000.  Many Popish; many Recusants.

Chappells 3:—

1.  Pelsall; curate’s stipend £4; no preacher.

2.  Willenhall; curate hath no stipend reserved; no preacher.

3.  Bilston; curate hath no stipend reserved; no preacher.

These curates, especially two of them, Mounsell and Cooper, be notorious and dissolute men.

Such was the lamentable state of the local clergy at that time, when the population of Wolverhampton, with all its outlying parts, is set down at 4,000 only.  A few words of explanation will perhaps be necessary to make the foregoing extract more intelligible to the general reader.

A “noble” was a coin of the value of 6s. 8d.; a “recusant” was one who disputed the authority and supremacy of the Crown in matters ecclesiastical, whether Papist or Puritan; while to “impropriate” church property was to place it in the hands of a layman.

Byshby.—Parsonage, impropriate; worth £40 per annum; vicarage worth £30; patron, Sir Edward Littleton; many Popish; many Recusants.  Incumbent a mere worldling; no preacher.

Tetnall.—A college dissolved; five prebends and a deane; impropriate to the King’s Majestie; worth 300 marks.  One prebend is held by Sir Richard Leveson; one by Mr. Gualter Wriotesley; two by Richard Cresswell.  Curate’s stipend, 20 marks; no preacher.

Codsall.—Prebend of Tetnall.  Curate-prebendary a loose liver; no preacher.

Wombourne.—Parsonage, impropriate, held by Hugh Wriotesley, Esquire; worth £40; vicarage worth £26; patron, Edward L. Dudley.

Pen.—Parsonage; impropriate to the vicars of Lichfield; worth £20; vicarage worth as much; patrons, the Vicars of Lichfield.  Vicar —; no preacher.

This selection of extracts will serve to enlighten the reader upon two important points in the history of the Church; the first is the amount of church revenue which had already found its way into the pockets of the laity; and the other is the lamentable necessity there was at that period to provide the English clergy with ready-made Homilies.  These Homilies were ordered (as the Prayer Book informs us, in the XXXV. Article), to be read “diligently and distinctly” in the churches by the Ministers.