Mr. Reynolds was generally pleased with meeting his men, and would readily enter into their whims, and turn such interviews to account. By such means he often obtained from them a knowledge of their wants, and received hints and suggestions that aided him in carrying out improvements in the works. The same disruption of social ties did not then exist as now; that mutual relation that beautified the olden time, and gave men and master an interest in each others welfare existed. A master, then, was more like the chief of a tribe, the father of a family; he had generally sprung from the ranks, he felt himself to be of the same flesh and blood, removed only a little by circumstances, and bound by a community of interest. Money-making had not then been reduced to a science, nor men to machines. With some degree of pride the men laid their stony treasures at the master’s feet. There were amongst them what the colliers call millers’ thumbs, horses’ hoofs, snails’ houses, “shining scales,” “crucked screws,” “things-like-leaves, and rotten wood.” “You should have heard,” said an old sage, “Mr. Reynolds give a description of them, and have seen the effect upon his audience. If I remember rightly, millers’ thumbs were orthoceratites, shells—as the name implies—like horns, but not pointed, and having several air-chambers. Horses’ hoofs, were portions of others, coiled, and spiral—that could float on the water, sink to the bottom, or rise to the surface, by a peculiar mechanical apparatus—like the forcing pump of a steam engine. The shining scales, were scales of fish coated with armour, hard as flint, and furnished with carvers to cut up the smaller fry on which they fed.” He showed that the nodules of ironstone contained exact impressions of leaves and fruits that grew beneath the golden beams of a tropical sun; that the bits called rotten wood were really wood, showing the beautiful anatomy of the tree, that it had been water-worn by being carried down the dancing stream into the soft and yielding mud in which it ultimately sank and was preserved. Coal, he explained, was nothing more than the vegetation of former periods, which accumulated where it grew, or was swept down by rains or streams into beds where it was hermetically sealed, fermented, and converted into mineral fuel for future use. “Lord, sir,” said our informant, “you should have seen how they all stared. Flukey F’lyd, one of the butties of Whimsey pit, said he little thought they were working in the gutters, or grubbing in the mud-banks of slimy lakes of a former world; he had seen stems of trees and trunks in the roof, but he thought they had got there at the Flood, and turned to stone. Gambler Baugh, of the Sulphur pit, said he thought the coal had been put there at the creation, and was intended to be used to burn up the world at the last day; and that he sometimes considered it a wrong thing to get it, believing they ought to use wood, and concluded by inviting the Governor to ‘wet,’ as he said, ‘the other eye, by taking another tot.’ The company drank his health, his long life and happiness, and exclaimed—’who’d have thought it.’” “Aye, who would have thought it,” continued Mr. Reynolds, warming with his subject, “when the first iron mine was tapped that in the slime and mud of those early times, now hardened into stone lay coiled up a thousand conveniences of mankind; that in that ore lay concealed the steam-engines, the tramways, the popular and universal metal that in peace and war should keep pace with and contribute to the highest triumphs of the world.” Upon such occasions questions of improvement, invention, adaptation, &c., &c., would often be freely discussed, and we have it upon the authority of some of the old workmen that many of the achievements in engineering we applaud in the present day, were the result of such suggestions in part.
Nothing, in fact, was known about iron ore, iron making and machinery, but what he knew or else took steps to acquaint himself with, if he had the opportunity. We have a number of large foolscap MS. volumes of experiments and extracts neatly copied, with pen and ink drawings of machines, parts of machines, &c.; shewing that whilst Smeaton and Watt were engaged in perfecting the construction of the steam engine, Mr. Reynolds was endeavouring to apply it to purposes similar to those to which it is now applied as a locomotive. Thus he constructed a locomotive with a waggon attached, the cylinder and boiler of which are still preserved. An accident, we believe a fatal one, which happened to one of the men upon starting the engine led Mr. Reynolds to abandon the machine; but he by no means lost faith in the invention. On the contrary, he was wont to say to his nephew, the late William Anstice, father of the present Mr. Reynolds Anstice, “I may never live to see the time, but thee may, William, when towns will be lighted by gas instead of oil and candles, when vessels will be driven without sails, and when carriages will travel without horses.”
This was before Trevithic invented a machine which travelled at a slow rate with heavy loads on a railway at Merthyr. It was prior to 1787, when Symington exhibited his model steam carriage in Edinburgh, and to the time when Darwin, (1793), with equal poetry and prophecy, wrote—
“Soon shall thy arm, unconquered steam afar
Drag the slow barge, or drive the rapid car.”
Mr. Reynolds indeed contemplated, it is believed, a subterranean tram road from the banks of the Severn right up into the heart of the iron districts of Ketley and Donnington Wood, upon which his engine was to travel, but the prejudice against the scheme was so great, and the jury empanelled to inquire into the nature of the accident inflicted such an enormous fine to be enforced every time the engine was used, that it was abandoned. There are also a pair of partially rotatory brass cylinders in existence which Mr. Reynolds intended as models for a boat on the Severn. This was before Shropshire generally, and the iron districts more particularly, had begun to participate in the advantages of still-water communication. With the superior advantages of railways, it is difficult to appreciate the full benefit of such communication for manufacturing and agricultural purposes at that time in inland counties like our own. Mr. Reynolds however, with full faith in the future development of the powers of steam by means of improved machinery, took great pains to extend and perfect canal navigation, and his name is associated with every important work of improvement in the district during the latter end of the last and the beginning of the present centuries, and especially with a very ingenious contrivance by means of which the inequalities of surface were overcome, and the old-fashioned locks were dispensed with.
Mr. Reynolds commenced his canal for the conveyance of minerals from Oakengates and Ketley in 1788; and shortly after its completion an Act of Parliament was obtained for one from Donnington Wood which, forming a junction therewith, was to proceed along the high ground above Coalbrookdale, on one hand, and Madeley and Coalport on the other. The difference of level was 73 feet in one case and 207 feet in the other. Telford, speaking of the difficulties to be encountered from the nature of the country, says:
“The inequality of the ground and the want of sufficient water seemed insuperable, and might probably have been so for ages to come had not Mr. William Reynolds, of Ketley, whose character is too well known to need any eulogium, discovered the means of overcoming them. Having occasion to improve the method of conveying ironstone and coals from the neighbourhood of Oakengates to the ironworks at Ketley, these materials lying generally about the distance of a mile and a half from the ironworks, and 73 feet above their level, he made a navigable canal, and instead of descending in the usual way by locks, contrived to bring the canal forward to an abrupt part of the bank, the skirts of which terminated on a level with the ironworks. At the top of this bank he built a small lock, and from the bottom of the lock, and down the face of the bank, he constructed an inclined plane, with a double iron railway. He then erected an upright frame of timber, in which was fixed a large wooden barrel. Round the latter a rope was passed that led to a moveable frame, the frame being of a sufficient size to receive a canal boat, resting and preserved in nearly a horizontal position, by having two large wheels before and two small ones behind—varying as much in the diameters as the inclined plane varied from a horizontal plane. This frame being placed in the lock, the loaded boat was brought to rest upon it. The lock gates were shut, the water was drawn from the lock into a side-pond, the boat settled upon a horizontal wooden frame, and—as the bottom of the lock was formed with nearly the same declivity as the inclined plane—upon the lower gates being opened, the frame with the boat passed down the iron railway into the lower canal, which had been formed on a level with the Ketley ironworks, being a fall of 73 feet. A double railway having been laid upon the inclined plane, the loaded boat in passing down brought up another boat containing a load nearly equal to one-third part of that which passed down. The velocity of the boats was regulated by a break acting upon a large wheel, placed upon the axis on which the ropes connected with the carriages were coiled.”
This contrivance has been in use up to the present time. During Mr. Reynolds’s life a representation of it figured upon copper tokens, one of the first iron bridge being upon the opposite or obverse side.
Another of these contrivances is still in use near the Hay, in the parish of Madeley, called the Coalport Incline. This is 207 feet in length, and the gradient is much greater, being about one in three. So great indeed that on the chain snapping we have known a canal boat with five tons of iron pigs on board gain such velocity that on coming in contact with the water in the lower canal it has broken away from the iron chains which held it to the carriage, bounded into the air, clearing two other boats moored on the side, together with the embankment, and alighted in the Severn, close to the ferry-boat, into which it pitched some of the iron-pigs it contained. At the foot of this incline Mr. Reynolds drove a level to the shaft of the Blissers Hill pits, to bring down the coals to the lower canal for loading into barges on the Severn. This was the famous Tar Tunnel from which petroleum was formerly exported in large quantities to all parts of Europe.
William Reynolds removed from Ketley to a large house formerly occupied by Lord Dundonald, at the Tuckies, where he continued to superintend the ironworks he had leased at Madeley Wood, familiarly known as Bedlam Furnaces, and was succeeded by his brother, Mr. Joseph Reynolds, who continued to carry on the Ketley Works till the recurrence of one of those fearful revulsions that have marked the history of the trade. For a quarter of a century we had been carrying on wars, levying troops, and interfering with everybody’s business but that which properly belonged to ourselves. We had obtained our object of ambition by bribery, strategy, and force of arms combined. We had restored the ancient families of France, reduced that country to its ancient limits, and annihilated its commerce. With glorious victory came fearful collapse, and the country awoke to find that a fallacy which it had been taught to regard as truth—that war brings commercial advantages that compensate for fearful waste and lavish expenditure. To add to the calamity, a succession of bad harvests was experienced, and the reduction of the army served to swell the poor’s-rates upon which working men and their families had been thrown for a bare support. Iron from £18 had gone down to £7 per ton, carriage paid from Ketley to Stourport. Mr. Reynolds believed the trade would never again rally, and resolved to blow out the furnaces at Ketley. This was in 1817. In 1818, at an immense sacrifice of property, consisting of the usual apparatus for making and manufacturing iron, he sold off at an immense loss, and removed to Bristol. Language cannot paint the deep distress which accompanied and followed this step. Men, with wives and families dependent upon them, saw their only ground of hope taken from them. Starving by thousands, and yoked like horses, they might be seen drawing materials for the repair of the roads, or conveying coal into Staffordshire. One third of the Shropshire banks failed. Disturbances were frequent; mobs of men collected in bodies and went about taking food where they could find it, and the militia had often to be called out to quell disturbances. Not only ironmasters, but manufacturers generally were reduced to despair. The parish authorities of Wellington advertised in the public journals for persons to come forward and take the Ketley works; and a company, consisting of the Messrs. Montford, Shakeshaft, Ogle, Williams, Hombersley, and others, was formed.
From what we have written, it will be seen that Mr. William Reynolds was on familiar terms with his men. In severe weather and distressed times, he made soup to give away three times a week, and he generally kept “open-house” for his workmen and friends; of the latter he had a large circle. He did not like idleness or indiscriminate almsgiving. A number of men thrown out of employ came to him in a body for relief during a deep snow. He set them to clear an entire field, and to make him a snow-stack; which they did of large proportions, receiving daily wages for the same. He allowed a house and garden rent-free to “Sniggy Oakes,” as he was called—heaven knows what his right name was, for in that day it was seldom known in the mining districts—on condition that the said Sniggy ferry’d him and his family across the river when they required it. One evening Sniggy, knowing he was out on the other side, went to bed instead of sitting up, which he found a deal more comfortable on a cold wet night, and Mr. Reynolds, after calling him first one name and then another, ringing the changes upon every alias, and changing it for “boat! boat!” “ferry! ferry!” had to go round by the bridge. Coming opposite the cottage where Sniggy was snug in bed, he smashed every window, shouting “boat” at every blow of his huge stick. Sniggy roared with fright, and promised better things another time. “On another occasion,” says our informant, “while having a balcony put up in front of the Tuckies, he gave strict injunctions that the martins’ nests should not by any means be disturbed, threatening to shoot the man who violated his instruction. They all obeyed him but one man, and he—.” “What, you don’t mean to say he was going to carry out his threat?” said we. “But he was,” it was replied, “and did.” “What shoot him?” “Yes; shot him, sir—shot him with a pop-gun!” Being a Quaker, many anecdotes are told of him not paying church-rates, and what are called Easter offerings, showing a rich vein of genuine humour running through a warm and generous nature. Old people too tell with much glee of a grand illumination they remember to celebrate one of those interludes of war, termed “a peace rejoicing,” when the bridge across the river, and a large revolving wheel, were lighted up with lamps, and the manufactory, in which—together with Messrs. Horton and Rose—he was a shareholder, was illuminated.
“He is a wise son who knows his own father,” it is said, but it is sometimes more difficult to trace the paternity of an anecdote, and we tell the following as it was told to us.
“Mr. Reynolds was kind and generous to a fault, but he did not like to be tricked. Returning late from a party on horseback, he was requested to pay again at a turnpike gate. Old Roberts, who having been in the army, looked with contempt upon all but a red uniform, and hated Quakers’ plain suits in particular, the more so as the wearers were known to be averse to war, now found himself, as he imagined, in a position to ‘take the small change,’ out of the Quaker. Mr. Reynolds disputed the charge, knowing from the time he left his friend’s house that he must be in the right; but, as the other insisted upon being paid, he paid him. When the latter had opened the gate, Mr. Reynolds remarked, ‘Well, friend, having paid, I suppose I am at liberty to pass through as often as I like?’ ‘Certainly, sir,’ said the old robber—as the juveniles would persist in calling the old man, adding an additional ‘b’ to his name, and clipping it of the two terminating letters. Mr. Reynolds had not travelled far on the home-side of the gate—sufficiently far however to allow the other to get into bed, before he returned, and called up the gatekeeper; having occasion, as he said, to go back. By the time he had again got into bed back came his tormentor at an easy jog-trot pace; and as he again passed through the gate he begged to be accommodated with a light. ‘Thou art sure it is past twelve o’clock, friend?’ said Mr. Reynolds. ‘Quite sure,’ said the other, adding ‘I thought I had done with you for to-night.’ ‘Thou art mistaken,’ said Mr. Reynolds, ‘it is a fine night, and I intend to make the most of it.’ In about ten minutes time the hated sound of ‘Gate, gate,’ brought old Roberts to his post, muttering curses between his teeth. ‘Thou art quite sure it is past twelve, art thou?’ was the question asked, and asked again, till at last the gatekeeper begged of his tormentor to take back the toll. ‘It cured him, though,’ said our informant, ‘and made him civil; but they called him ‘Past Twelve’ for the rest of his days.’”
When Mr. Reynolds removed from Ketley to Madeley Wood, he also removed from the former to the latter place some very primitive steam engines, from the fact that they were constructed by a man named Adam Hyslop, and differed from the ordinary condensing engines of Boulton and Watt in having a cylinder at each end of the beam: one a steam cylinder and condensing box; the other a condensing cylinder only, into which the steam, having done duty in the steam cylinder is conveyed. They were invented prior to Boulton and Watt’s final improvements. Three of these singular looking engines are still used in the field, and work most economically, with five pounds of steam to the square inch.
Of the early history of the Madeley Wood Works, we have been able to glean little satisfactory, beyond the fact that Richard Reynolds, who bought the manor in 1781 or 1782, granted a lease in June 1794 of the Bedlam or Madeley Wood furnaces to his son William, and Richard Rathbone, who very shortly after gave up his interest to William Reynolds, who afterwards carried them on himself. The site was a good one at that time, being at the base of the outcrop of the lowest seams of coal and ironstone, which could thus be obtained by levels driven into the hills, or by shallow shafts, from either of which they were let down inclined planes to the furnaces, close by which flowed the Severn, to take away either coal or iron.
It was on the side of this hill on which the Madeley Wood works were situated, at a place called the Brockholes (broc, or badger-holes), that in 1332 Walter de Caldbrook obtained a license from the prior of Wenlock to dig for coal. Speaking of coal found in this or similar situations in Shropshire, we find, too, that quaint old writer, Thomas Fuller, two centuries ago, as quoted by W. O. Foster Esq., at the meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute at Coalbrookdale, in 1871, giving his opinion thus:—
“One may see a three-fold difference in our English coal—(1) the sea coal brought from Newcastle; (2) the land coal at Mendip, Bedworth, &c., and carried into other counties; (3) what one may call river and fresh water coal, digged out in this county at such a distance from Severn that they are easily ported by boat into other shires. Oh, if this coal could be so charmed as to make iron melt out of the stone, as it maketh it in smiths’ forges to be wrought in the bars. But Rome was not built all in one day; and a new world of experiments is left to the discovery of posterity.”
It seems probable, therefore, that for five hundred years coal has been gotten out of the sides of these hills at Madeley Wood, either for use in local forges or for export by the river Severn, or both; and the more so that old levels are numerous along their side where coal crops out, and that wooden shovels, wooden rails, and other primitive implements have been found in them.
Some of the shafts sunk by Mr. Reynolds came down upon old workings for smiths, or furnace coal, as at the Lodge Pit, as shown by the section.
This shaft, after passing through five yards of sand, six of brick and tile clays, thirteen of rough rock, and thirteen of other measures, came upon the Penneystone, the Sulphur coal, the Vigor coal, the Two-foot coal, the Ganey coal, the Best coal, and the Middle coal, which, like the Penney measure, were all entire; but instead of the Clod coal they found Clod-coal gob (the refuse thrown into the space from which the coal had been removed).
William Reynolds, the proprietor of these works, died at the Tuckies House, in 1803, and was followed to his grave in the burial-ground adjoining the Quaker’s chapel, in the Dale, by a very large concourse of friends and old neighbours. His son, Joseph Reynolds, and Mr. William Anstice succeeded to the works, the latter being the managing partner; and in consequence of the mines being exhausted on the Madeley Wood side of the field, new shafts were sunk to the east, the first of importance being the Hill’s Lane pits. The Halesfield, and then the Kemberton, followed; and the mines having been thus proved on that side, the idea first suggested by William Reynolds, of removing the works to that side, was acted upon by Mr. William Anstice, who built his first furnace at Blisser’s Hill in 1832. A second was built in 1840, and a third in 1844. Of these and other works we propose to speak in connection with events of a later period.
We have no means at command for giving anything like such a consecutive account of Madeley as would show its growth and progress from the feudal times, when first noticed in the Domesday Survey, to the present time; and the facts that we have to offer on this head must necessarily appear disjointed and isolated.
The next notice we find succeeding that in Domesday is one in 1291, when it was taxed to the Ninth, twelve merks, but whether of gold or silver we cannot say, probably the latter, as one merk of gold was equal to five of silver—to £3 16s. 8d.
Land was being gradually won from the forests, but it was as yet of small value. Thus we read, under date of March 28th, 1322, of a man named Bercar and his wife, who, for the payment (or fine) of three shillings, bought small parcels of new land in the fields of Madeley and of Caldbrook (Coalbrookdale), of William, the bailiff, to hold for their lives.
In the year 1341 the parish was assessed at £2 16s. 0d., but the reason assigned for the low assessment was that there had been great storms, want of sheep-stock, and a surrender of the land held by tenants. In 1379 a valuation of the manor is thus mentioned:—“Capital messuage, nothing (this would be the Court, or manor-house); water-mill (the old manor or Court mill), ten shillings; fisheries of two vivaries, three shillings; three caracutes of land (or as much as three teams of oxen could plough in the year), as averaging £1 18s.” Three acres of meadow is set down as worth, when carried, three shillings. The verbiage of the park was valued at three shillings and fourpence. The assized rents of free tenements amounted to £6 16s. 2d., and the pleas and perquisites of the Court (held by the prior at the Court-house) at two shillings. In 1390 the rents of Madeley, including a ferm of coals, and the pleas and fines of the Court, were said to yield £22 18s. 0d. This ferm of coals was probably that granted by the prior in 1322 to Walter de Caldbrook for six shillings.
In the sixteenth century the rental of the manor was returned at £39 18s. 8½d. At the same time—that is in 1534–5—the rectorial tithes are set down at £2, and the vicar’s income at £5 5s. In 1693 an assessment made for Madeley, by order of the justices of the peace, James Lewis, balf., George Weld, and Thos. Crompton, of 4s. 6d. in the £, from sixty-four persons, produced £149 1s. 4d. In this assessment the name of Sarah Wolfe occurs sixth on the list. In 1698 an assessment of 3s. 6d. in the £, by order of Richard Littlehales, balf., and Ralph Browne, from fifty-two persons, produced £112 5s. 0d. In this assessment the iron, coal, and lime works paid £55 14s. 0d. of the above sum. In 1704 an assessment of 4s. 6d. in the £, from forty-six persons, paid £149 to which the iron, coal, and lime works contributed £84. The sum paid in on the 27th of March of the same year for 1697, for window-tax, was £8 14s.; the tax for births, deaths, &c., for the same year, was £4 18s. 4d., for 1698, £4 1s. 7d., and for the following year, £3 5s. 6d. In the same year the land-tax produced £27 14s. 6d. In 1670 the window-tax was £8 6s. 0d. In 1671 the land-tax produced £55 0s. 0d. In 1672 the window-tax was £8 0s. 2d. In 1704 the sum realized for windows had risen to £10 17s. 6d., and that for births, deaths, and marriages to £5 12s. 0d. In 1676 the land-tax paid £36 19s. 4d., for the first quarter, 24th July; for the second quarter, 23rd October, the same; and for the third quarter (paid March 27, 1675), the same; the sum for the fourth quarter was also the same. In 1675 two sums, £31 9s. 8d., and £63 8s. 6d., were paid in for land-tax, and £16 2s. 2d. the following March. On the 4th of May, 1706, “John Boden paid in full of ye last year’s land-tax, £36 17s. 0d.” The fourth quarterly payment of the poll for Madeley, made April 15, 1695, was £14 14s. 6d.
We pass over payments for intervening years, and come to 1709. In July of that year the first and second quarterly payments of the land-tax were each £36 19s. 4d.; for the third quarter, £37 8s. 4d., and for the last quarter, £36 10s. 4d. The first and second quarterly payments in full amounted to £73 18s. 8d. In 1702 a survey of the lordship of Madeley showed there were twenty-seven tenants, holding 2073 acres; that the yearly value was £1021 10s. 0d.; also that there were upon the land 3369 trees, and sixteen loads of wood, the value of which by purchase was set down at £17,366 9s. 4d. In 1725 a case was prepared by the vicar and churchwardens, after a vestry-meeting had been held, for the opinion of counsel on the question of the right of the vicar to receive tithe of wood cut down by the lay impropriator. The case set forth that “the vicars of the other twenty-two parishes in the franchise of the priory enjoyed tithes of wood as small tithes, excepting in a few instances, and that the vicar of Madeley has from time to time received the tithes of hay, clover, &c., which are usually esteemed great tithes. But hitherto no tithes of wood have been paid at Madeley within memory of living witnesses, except that about thirty years since the late vicar received one shilling as a composition from the tenant of the impropriator.”
Counsel (Thos. Browne, of the Inner Temple), in reply, says Madeley was appropriated to the priory of Wenlock at the same time as Stoke St. Milburgh—22nd March, 1343—and yet the vicar of Stoke receives tithe-wood, and thinks that the smoke-penny to the vicar is strong evidence in favour of his being entitled to the tithe of wood so used, because that payment comes in lieu of such wood; but it must be admitted that the impropriator is entitled to all the tithes of a vicar, unless such vicar shows usage or endowment to support the demand as to such great tithe.
The counsel’s opinion seems to have left the question pretty much in the same state as before, and that the vicar and churchwardens did not establish their claim is shown by subsequent assessments and by the report of the Tithe Commissioners (1848), who said all woodlands are by prescription or other lawful means exempt from tithe.
The appropriation of the rent-charge in lieu of tithes in the parish took effect in 1847, and it may be interesting to add that after various meetings and inquiries it was found that by prescription or other lawful means all the woodlands, containing in estimated statute measure 200 acres, well known by metes and bounds, were absolutely free from tithes; also all gardens annexed to houses.
It was also found that 267 acres of the Court Farm were covered from render of small tithes in kind by prescriptive or customary payments in lieu thereof to the vicar, and 233 acres of the Windmill Farm by payment of 5s. 3½d.; the Broad Meadow, containing twenty-two acres, by payment of ninepence; the Hales, seventeen acres, by payment of fivepence; the Bough Park, twenty acres, and Rushton Farm (Park House), twenty-six acres, by payment of 10½d.; part of Court Farm (J. and F. Yates, proprietors), and six other acres, by payment of twopence. The quantity subject to tithes amounted to 2800 acres, 2000 being arable, and 800 as meadow or pasture.
Finding also that the average value of tithes for the seven years preceding Christmas, 1835, did not represent the sum which ought to be the basis for a permanent commutation, the Tithe Commissioner awarded as follows: to Sir Joseph H. Hawley, impropriator, of Leybourn Grange, Kent, £115 10s., by way of rent-charge; and £226 to the vicar for the time being, instead of all the remaining unmerged tithes of hay and small tithes, arising from the lands of the said parish. The valuation was by William Wyley, upon wheat, barley, and oats, as under:—
Wheat |
7s. 0¼d. |
32,427,300. |
Barley |
3s. 11½d. |
57,517,590. |
Oats |
2s. 9d. |
82,787,879. |
The great-tithes have since been purchased from Sir Joseph Hawley for Ironbridge church, now a rectory.
The system of farming and the state of the laws regarding the importation of grain were such down to the period we refer to that the country was at the mercy of the viscisitude of the seasons, and if these were adverse nothing less than a partial or a general famine was the result, and it sometimes happened that the use of an extra ounce or two of bread was grudged if not considered sinful. Thus, an old writer commenting upon the scarcity of grain in the above year, censured the use of tea on the ground that it led to the use of bread and butter. He says:—
“I find, July 29th, that ‘in the parish of Madeley, Salop, there are 924 families; and since the use of Tea is becoming so prevalent, on a moderate calculation each family consumes three and a half pounds of flour each week more than formerly, by instituting a fourth meal each day. In days of yore, Breakfast, Dinner and Supper were esteemed sufficient, but now it must be Breakfast, Dinner, Tea and Supper, which wastes both Meal and Time, and makes a difference each week in the parish of Madeley of 3234 lbs. of flour.’”
In that same year, on the ninth of July, a meeting of numerous gentlemen, farmers, millers, and tradesmen was held at the Tontine, on “the alarming occasion of the scarcity of corn and dearness of all kinds of other provisions,” and a committee was appointed for the immediate collection of contributions and the purchase of such grain as could be procured, to be distributed to the necessitous at a reduction of one fourth, or nine shillings for twelve. The wants of the poor were described as being beyond what they had at any former time experienced, and according to the best accounts that could be collected the quantity of grain of all sorts in the country was very far short of the consumption before harvest. Many families in Madeley were short of bread, and the colliers were only prevented rising by assurances that gentlemen of property were disposed to contribute liberally to their relief as well as to adopt measures for obtaining from distant parts, such aid as could be procured. The committee directed 2,000 bushels of Indian corn to be sent for from Liverpool, to meet immediate requirements, but such were the murmurs of the poor according to a letter from Richard Reynolds to Mr. Smitheman, that it was impossible to say what would be the consequences, and the writer adds:—
“I should not be surprised if they applied in a body at those houses where they expected to find provisions, or from which they thought they ought to be relieved. They already begin to make distinctions between those whom they consider as their benefactors, and those whom (as George Forester expresses it in the annexed letter) are at war with their landlords; and I fear those whom they consider as deserting them in their distress, would not only incur their disapprobation, but might be the next to suffer from their resentment. I therefore the more readily attempt to fulfil my appointment by recommending thee in the most earnest manner to send by the return of the post to Richard Dearman at this place, who is appointed treasurer on the present occasion, a bill for such a sum as thou shalt think proper to contribute, and at the same time to write to thy servant at the West Coppice to give notice to thy tenants, (as G. Forester has to his) and especially to William Parton of Little Wenlock, that it is thy desire that he and they should conform to the general practice and deliver immediately all his wheat to the committee, at twelve shillings per bushel, for the use of the poor. And if there is any wheat, barley, beans, or peas, at the West Coppice, or elsewhere in thy possession or power, I recommend thee to order it to be sent without delay to the Committee; and then if the colliers, &c., should go in a body, or send, as I think more likely a deputation to thy house, thy having so done, and thy servant shewing them thy order for so doing, as well as thy contributing liberally as above proposed, will be the most likely means to prevent the commencement of mischief, the end of which, if once began, it is impossible to ascertain.”
The letter goes on to state that the following sums had been subscribed: George Forester, £105. Cecil Forester, £105. J. H. Browne, £105. the Coalbrookdale Company, £105. and John Wilkinson, £50. In addition to this the writer, Richard Reynolds, and J. H. Browne had consented to advance £700. each to be repaid out of the corn sold at the reduced price.
Mr. Reynolds concludes by saying, “such is the urgency of the temper of the people, that there is not a day to lose if we are desirous to preserve the poor from outrage, and most likely the country from plunder, if not from blood.”
Periods of distress and panic arising from scarcity were not unfrequent when wages were stationary, or comparatively so. Great changes had taken place during the periods previously described. First, during feudal times, here and elsewhere the great body of peasantry was composed of persons who rented small farms, seldom exceeding twenty or thirty acres, and who paid their rent either in kind or in agricultural labour and services performed on the demesne of the landlord: secondly, of cottagers, each of whom had a small croft or parcel of land attached to his dwelling, and the privilege of turning out a cow, or pigs, or a few sheep, into the woods, commons, and wastes of the manor. During this period, the population derived its subsistence immediately from the land;—the landowner from the produce of his demesne, cultivated partly by his domestic slaves, but principally by the labour of the tenants and cottiers attached to the manor; the tenants from the produce of their little farms; and the cottiers from that of their cows and crofts, except while working upon the demesne, when they were generally fed by the landlord. The mechanics of the village, not having time to cultivate a sufficient quantity of land, received a fixed allowance of agricultural produce from each tenant.
Under the above system, not only the little farmer, but also the humblest cottager, drew a very considerable portion of his subsistence directly from the land. His cow furnished him with what is invaluable to a labourer,—a store of milk in the summer months; his pig, fattened upon the common and with the refuse vegetables of his garden, supplied him with bacon for his winter consumption—and there were poultry besides.
Gradually the labourer and small cultivator lost the use they had made of the road-side and other waste which were assigned under inclosure acts, not to the occupier, but the owner of the cottage; few cottages were in the occupation of their owners; they generally, indeed we may say universally, belonged to the proprietors of the neighbouring farms, and the allotments granted in lieu of the extinguished common rights were generally added to the large farms, and seldom attached to the cottages. The cottages which were occupied by their owners had of course allotments attached to them; but these by degrees passed by sale into the hands of some large proprietor in the neighbourhood, De facto, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, the allotment has been detached from the cottage, and thrown into the occupation of some adjoining farmer.
That such a charge should have been attended with important consequences, can excite no surprise, a complete severance was effected between the peasantry and the soil; the little farmers and cottiers were converted into day-labourers, depending entirely upon daily earnings which may, and frequently did, in point of fact, fail them. They had no land upon the produce of which to fall as a reserve when the demand for labour happened to be slack. This revolution became unquestionably the cause of the heavy and increasing burdens upon parishes in the form of poor-rates, and jail rates.
It has been well said that from the moment when any man begins to think that
‘The world is not his friend, nor the world’s law,’
the world and the world’s law are likely to have that man for their enemy; and if he does not commence direct hostilities against them, he abandons himself to despair, and becomes a useless if not a hurtful member of the community.
If we go back to the time of the great plague, about the middle of the reign of Edward III., which gave occasion to the first attempt to regulate wages by law, corn rose from 5s. 4d., the average the first twenty-five years to 11s. 9d., the average of the twenty-five years following. In this reign the pound of silver was coined into 25s., and at the end of the reign of Henry IV., into 30s. In 1444, other statutes regulating wages were passed probably owing to the high price of corn, which had risen on an average of the ten preceding years to 10s. 8d., without any further alterations in the coin; and for this reason there seems no adequate cause but a succession of scanty crops; as a continuance of low prices afterwards prevailed for sixty years. The average price of wheat from 1444 to the end of the reign of Henry VII. (1509) returned to 6s., while the pound of silver was coined into £1 17s. 6d. instead of £1 2s. 6d., as at the passing of the first statute of labourers in 1350, thus indicating a continuance of favourable seasons, and probably, an improved system of agriculture. The rise in the price of corn during the next century was owing probably to other causes. From 1646 to 1665 the price of the quarter of wheat was £2 10s. 0d. During the wars of the Roses, and subsequently it was cheap; but during the civil wars under Charles I., and for some time subsequently it was dear. The harvests of 1794 and 1795 were deficient, but the rise in the price of grain, occasioned by the deficiency of these two years, which is supposed to have been about one eighth, threw into the hands of the agricultural interest, in 1795 and 1796, when prices were at the highest, from 24 to 28 millions for the two years, the farmers with a deficiency of one eighth, having sold their crops for nearly a third more than the usual price before labour had risen.
Mr. Reynolds saw the evils we have been describing, and when he purchased the manor of Madeley from Mr. Smitheman he made it a point to encourage small allotments and leases of copyholds.
We have previously given the names of some of the early rectors of the church, when the whole mind of the people here, as elsewhere, by education, if not conviction, was Roman Catholic. There was undoubtedly a pleasant kind of poetry about the older system of religion, which no man, from the peasant to the peer, thought of questioning, but which, from the cradle to the grave, governed and regulated, as far as its influences went, the thoughts and actions of all men. They were the high days of ecclesiastical power, when the Church could smite with excommunication and civil disability obnoxious families or individuals, and when monarchs could be cut off from the allegiance of their subjects, and made to appear as lepers among their brethren.
We know little of the moral or social condition of the inhabitants, or how far they were influenced by the rude discipline to which they were subject. Delusion, we know, by the traces it has left, then and for a long time after among the uneducated classes, formed the basis often of belief. It was a time when man, equally deceived by the imperfections of his senses and the illusions of self-love, long considered himself to be the centre of the movements of the stars, and his vanity was punished by the terrors to which they gave rise. It may not have had a corrupting tendency, and may even have been a beneficial fallacy, for it must have tended much to the accomplishment of any undertaking to believe that it was within the range of possibility. We can now view the planets as they circle, without supposing that they are impelled by intelligences who exercise either a benign or a hostile influence over our action. Ages of labour have removed the veil which concealed the true nature of the planets, and man now finds himself on the surface of one which he has reason to suppose is so small as to be scarcely perceptible in that great solar system which formerly appeared so mysterious. Then it was not so: astrologers and conjurors were looked up to as wielding even more terrific powers than the priest, and horoscopes, nativities, and the most ordinary events were traced to influences of the planets. Dust and cobwebs now cover the tombs of the authors of works on astrology; the staff on which they leaned is broken; their brazen instruments are green and cankered.
In an old book on this subject, disinterred among certain other contents of an old chest in the vestry of the church, entitled “Astrological Predictions for 1652,” we find, as was not unusual, awful prognostications concerning Church and State, and threatenings of troubles, violent distempers, and great slaughters. There appears to have been a court of astrologers, for we find a notice in a foot-note of “a learned sermon composed for the Society of Astrologers.” Predictions and assertions of interference with men’s actions and the most ordinary course of events not being read to advantage except in the language of their authors, we purpose giving an extract or two. Like relics, which seem to lose their venerable sanctity when removed from an old tomb to a museum, extracts in modern type lose the charm the well-thumbed old yellow work has as it is lifted from the old church chest, mellow and mouldy. It appears from the numerous notes and memorandums on the blank leaves to have been used by the clergyman as a sort of pocket-book, and some of the notes appear to be intended attestations of the predictions so earnestly given. Here are some of the predictions bearing chiefly upon passing events of the times, or such as were likely to arise:—
“England is subject to that Sign of the Zodiac, viz. Aries, wherein Mars at present is placed, & therefore we English, & in Engla. must expect some, or many of those misfortuns which he generally signifieth, and which even now we repeated: but the same sign pointeth out also many Cities & places in the upper Germany, so also in Austria and its Territories, the Eastern and Southeast parts of France and the Cities and Townes therein scituated, also the North East or more Easterly parts of Denmark, that or those parts of the Polonian Countries or Provinces which are bordering or adjacent unto the unruly Cossacks, and those Cities and Towns in the upper Silesia, which lye neer unto the Borders or Confines of the Turks Dominions, the Dukedom of Burgundy; the Swedish Nation and Souldiery are also more or lesse, and many of their Towns subject unto the Sign Aries, and therefore in all or most of these Countries by us nominated, there will be some violent distempers in the people, some slaughter of men, and casually by one accident or other much damage in many of their principal Cities or Sea-towns by Fire, War, inroads of Pyrates or souldiers, &c.”
“When Venus shall be Lady of the yeare and unfortunate, as now she is in the seventh house; Women will more than ordinary scold with their Husbands, and run twatling and scolding out of their houses: many Men will depart, or run, separate or divorce themselves from their Wives. This unnaturall Deportment of Women unto their Husbands and Men unto their Wives, is increased by the nearnesse of Venus unto Mars, and his positure in the seventh House, which signifieth Women, their loves and affections either unto their Husbands or others. In that House he is ‘Damnofus & malus, quia significat inimicitias & discordias magnas, & accident hominibus furta interfectiones & contentiones multæ & rixæ in illo anno maximeq in gent illius Climatis.’ Mars is very unfortunately placed in the seventh house, signifying there will be many controversies, Law-suits, Duels, much enmity, many Thefts by Sea & Land, much robbing of Houses; and these shall most apparantly manifest themselves in the Country, City or Towne subject unto the sign he is in, of which we have formerly treated.”
The eclipse of the sun, 29th March, 1652, 9-56 a.m., is announced with hieroglyphic figures, followed by these remarks:—
“We intended to write a particular Treatise concerning the effects of this Eclips, which is the greatest this Age hath beheld, and in that Booke to have delivered unto Posterity a Method whereby they might have judged what manner of Effects should have been signified by any Defect of either of the two Luminaries; but our time at this present being otherwise taken up, we are confined to a narrow scantling of Paper: we hope some well-wishers unto Astrology will perfect what we intended on that Subject, being desirous to see the Labours of other Men abroad, the whole burthen hereof being too heavy for one Anglicus.”
The idlest tales were believed and credited as facts, and men more cunning than the common herd thrived by magical and cabalistic spells they were supposed to cast upon evil spirits. The clergy dealt in exorcisms, and in surplice and stole performed the rites of the Church. They condemned witchcraft, however, as heresy; and as early as the reign of Henry VIII. a statute was passed which enacted that any person, after the day therein named, devising, practising, or exercising “any invocations, or conjurations of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorceries, to the intent to get or find money or treasure, or to waste, consume, or destroy any person in his body, members, or goods, or to provoke any person to unlawful love, or for any other unlawful intent or purpose, or by occasion or colour of such things or any of them, or for despite of Christ, or lucre of money, dig up or pull down any cross, or crosses, or by such invocations or conjurations of spirits, witchcrafts, enchantments, or sorcery, or any of them, take upon them to tell or declare where goods stolen or lost shall be come—that then all and every person or persons offending as before is mentioned, shall be deemed, accepted, and adjudged a felon or felons, without benefit of clergy.” This act was carefully worded, inasmuch as it only extends to witchcraft or enchantment practised with a criminal or unlawful intent.
Men with very much less learning than the author quoted, lived by their wits, from their supposed knowledge of the stars, and from being able, as they professed, to consult the planets and to restore lost property. Men, and women too, would take long journeys to consult one who could “read the stars,” or “rule the planets.” From a conversation recorded by a close observer of men and manners in the beginning of the present century, for instance, we learn that one of these wise men who lived as far off as Oswestry was occasionally consulted by the inhabitants here. Of course it was easy with a little tact for the wife to worm out the main facts in one room whilst the husband listened and gathered them up for use in another. Tom Bowlegs having missed a five-pound note from his cupboard holds the following conversation with a friend, who tells him he cannot help thinking that the note has been mislaid, not stolen, and says:—
“The five-pound peaper is not stolen but lost, and thee’lt be sartin to find it.
No sich thing Yedart, replies Bowlegs; for I went to the wise-mons and he tow’d me all about it.
The wise-mon! what wise-mon?
Dick Spot that lives slip side Hodgistry the yed of aw the conjurors in Shropshire.
Aye, and what did he tell thee?
Well, thee shalt hear:
As a five-pound paper was a jell for a poor mon to lose, I determined to know all about it, so off I set for Dick Spot’s house. After knocking at the door it was opened by an owd woman, as ugly as the divil himself, with a face as black as the easter. At first seet I thought I was tean to, and was for bowting; but wishing to know all about the paper, I mustered aw my courage, and went in. Pray, said I, is the Wise-mon a-whoam. No, said she, but he will directly; sit down; I suppose you have lost something, and wants to know where it is. Yes, said I, you bin reet. What is it that you have lost? So I up and tow’d her, aw abowt it. Just as I had finished, in comes the wise-mon; and he (to my great surprise) said—follow me into this room; while I was scraping wi mi foot, dewking mi yed, and stroking my yarr down, amounting altogether to a nation fine beawe, he said—I was consulting the planets this morning and found that a £5 Shiffnal bank note had been stolen from under a sugar bason in your cupboard on Wednesday morning last, between the hours of nine and ten o’clock, by a tall mon, with a long visage marked by the small pox, gray eyes, and black beard. (Wonderful! said I, that is the very mon I suspect!) You will therefore, on your return home, make it known in his neighbourhood that if the bill is not returned in one week from this day, that he will lose one of his legs in a few weeks after. If this comes to his ears I have no doubt the bill will be returned immediately, but if he does not, he shall be marked as I have told you, and in that case the bill will be irrecoverable. I knew by the planets that you would be here at 12 o’clock to-day, and having overstaid my time at Hodgistry (here he wiped the sweat from his face). I ran all the way to be in time to meet you.”
The devil, or “divil,” seems to have been an important personage, often making bargains, in which he not unfrequently got worsted. There were too familiar imps or demons, according to John Heywood’s homely rhymes,—
“Such as we
Pugs and Hobgoblins call; their dwellings be
In corners of old houses least frequented,
Or beneath stacks of wood; and these convented
Make fearful noise in butteries and in dairies,
Robin Goodfellows some, some call them fairies.
In solitarie rooms these uproars keep,
And beat at doors to wake men from their sleep,
Seeming to force locks be they ne’re so strong
And keeping Christmasse gambols all night long.”
That merry wanderer, Puck, even as late as the present century, was common to our fields, where he seems to have had a partiality for simple countrymen, market-fresh, whom he led many a weary dance in fields out of which they could not find their way. He was occasionally domiciled in the kitchen, and was useful in sweeping up the hearth while housewives snored in bed. Farmhouses were favourite residences; but woe to the dairymaid who happened to offend them! Her milk was sure to turn sour. They haunted mines sometimes, and used the pick to help forward the midnight task, or became malignant and caused inundations of water, or let loose noxious vapours to destroy both mine and miners. On one occasion a miner named Bagley, who preferred being let down when all the rest had ascended the shaft, in order to have the assistance of an imp, was watched by another, who concealed himself for the purpose. But the imp, who was working whilst the man rested, discovered him and called upon his friend to bump him against the timber for his intrusion. On being caught a second time, the imp raised an alarm—“He peeps again, Bagley; bump him!” showing that the sprite or whatever he was could speak English. As a supposed proof of the truth of this, Bagley was called “Bump him, Bagley!” to his dying day.
An old inhabitant of Madeley who believed thoroughly in such things told us that he once looked through a hole into an old building on a moonlight night, and saw a score of spirits of this kind dancing right merrily! He also assured us that an old woman, whose name he gave us, but which we do not remember, was accounted a witch, and had the power to change herself into a hare; and that on one occasion she was hunted by the hounds, who ran her to her cottage, on the Brockton road, where she took the chimney, and was found sitting by the fire, her hands and feet bleeding from the run. [121]
If the clergy of those days believed in evil eyes, witchcraft, and ghosts, it was to be expected that the people would do so, too. They stood alone on a mental as on a religious eminence. The knell of ecclesiastical authority had not then been rung; civil incapacity and inferiority was the tacit proscription of all outside the pale of the Church; and what we glean of morals and manners under the rigid system of godly discipline then prevailing is not much in its favour.
Madeley, towards the latter end of the past and beginning of the present century was favoured above many neighbouring parishes in its clergy. It had men who led tranquil, holy lives, and some who proclaimed the conscience of the individual to be the only judge in matters of the soul,—men who were, it is true, ill-rewarded for their pains, but who lived beneficent lives, and rendered disinterested service.
Such were John William de la Fletcher and Melville Horne, the latter of whom went out as a missionary, and established the colony of Sierra Leone; and others who succeeded them. Let us speak first, however, of the former.
No sketch of Madeley would be complete which did not include a copious notice of Mr. Fletcher. So many “Lives” of Mr. Fletcher have, however been written, and are so readily attainable, that we need not enter into those details appertaining to his parentage, birth, youth, education, etc., which belong properly to the biographer who writes a book; and we shall content ourselves therefore with a summary of such matters, in order the more fully to bring out those traits of character which distinguished him whilst vicar of this parish.
Jean Guilhaume de la Flechere, to give his proper Swiss name, was born at Nyon, fifteen miles from Geneva, in the year 1729. He received his education first in his native town, and then at Geneva, at which latter place he distinguished himself by his abilities, his thirst for knowledge, and intense application to study. His biographers relate boyish incidents and hairbreadth escapes, communicated by himself. His father before marriage was an officer in the French army, and afterwards in that of his own country, and young Fletcher on arriving at maturity resolved to enter the army too, but in consequence of some disappointments he came to London to learn the English language, and having done so he obtained a situation as tutor in the family of Mr. Hill, M.P. for Shrewsbury, who resided at Tern Hall, near Atcham. He was ordained 1757, and occasionally preached at Atcham, Wroxeter, and the Abbey church at Shrewsbury, and at St. Alkmunds.
Two years after he was ordained, he was in the habit of occasionally coming to preach at Madeley, and the year following, through the influence of Mr. Hill, he was appointed vicar, having chosen it in preference to a smaller parish with a larger income. Mr. Chambray, the then vicar, gladly accepting the living Mr. Fletcher declined, thereby making way for him. One of Mr. Fletcher’s pupils died, the other became M P. for Shrewsbury; afterwards he represented the county, and finally was made a peer, under the title of Baron Berwick of Attingham, the name the house now bears. He appears to have received his appointment to Madeley in March, 1759.
The Rev. Robert Cox, M.A., one of Mr. Fletcher’s biographers, says:—
“Previous to Mr. Fletcher’s presentation to the living, its inhabitants, with some honourable exceptions, were notorious for their ignorance and impiety. They openly profaned the sabbath, treated the most holy things with contempt, disregarded the restraints of decency, and ridiculed the very name of religion. It is to the reproach of England that such a description is but too frequently applicable to places where mines and manufactories have collected together a crowded population.”
A desire to be extensively useful soon induced Mr. Fletcher to undertake extra-parochial duties, but in every way, indignities were offered by those on whom by contrast his piety, temperance, humility, and example more strongly reflected. The clergy went into titters and cried “Enthusiast!” The half-gentry chalked up “Schismatic!” and the magistrates sought to set the world on a grin by ticketing him a “Jesuit!” Need we be surprised to hear that Mr. Fletcher was seized, as he tells us, with the spirit of Jonah—and tempted to quit his charge! It was a passing temptation, yet such was his tenderness of conscience that the shadow of a doubt—intruded rather than entertained—disquieted him.
About this time he had some doubts respecting a passage in the service for the baptism of infants, and also in that for the burial of the dead. He received much comfort however from his correspondence and interviews with John and Charles Wesley, whose preachers he welcomed into his parish.
In a letter dated May, 1767, we find him inviting Whitfield to his parish for the same purpose. In this letter, May 18th, 1767, he speaks of Capt. Scott having preached from his horse-block, which seems to mark the first introduction of Wesleyan Methodism into Madeley. The Roman Catholics too, gave him trouble, by opening a mission in Madeley, and drawing over to them two of his converts. This appears to have been in March 1769, for in a letter to his friend Mr. Ireland dated the 26th, he says:—
“The (Popish) Priest at Madeley is going to open his Mass-house, and I have declared war on that account last Sunday, and propose to strip the Whore of Babylon, and expose her nakedness to-morrow. All the Papists are in a great ferment, and they have held meetings to consult on the occasion.”
An odour now hangs and will hang about the name of Fletcher, and turning to his example for encouragement, amid the more sterile tracts of labour, the weary and desponding will get refreshed. As mountains pierce the clouds and bring down rains upon the parched and shrivelled plains, so men now and then tower high above their fellows, and privileged with a greater significance, sunned and bathed in a purer light, they become a medium of it to others. It was so with Fletcher. In his presence men of coarser mould and ruder habits, as well as those distinguished for their attainments, felt the force and purity of his life. It has taken the Church of which he was so distinguished a member nearly a whole century to come up to plans by which he extended the sphere of his usefulness: we mean those outdoor meetings, cottage-lectures, Scripture readings, catechisings, and similar means whereby in every corner of the parish he contrived to stir men up and to create among them a concern for their higher interests. These are his words:—
“Soon after coming to Madeley, I have frequently had a desire to exhort in Madeley Wood and Coalbrookdale, two villages of my parish, but I have not dared to run before I saw an open door. It now, I think, begins to open, as two small societies of twenty persons have formed themselves in those places.”
But for a large soul like Mr. Fletcher’s the parish even is too limited, and we find accordingly that he gathered a small society sixteen miles off, riding that distance in order to preach at five o’clock in the morning two or three times a-week. Of course a man could not do this without treading on someone’s toes. It was the way to get opposition, and he got it. The churchwardens, clergy, archdeacon, bishop, and magistrates were dead against him. Magistrates threatened him and the whole of his flock with imprisonment; and the bishop preached against him before his brethren at the general visitation. He writes to Charles Wesley—“A young clergyman who lives at Madeley Wood, where he has great influence, has openly declared war against me by pasting on the church-door a paper, in which he charges me with rebellion, schism, and being a disturber of the public peace. He puts himself at the head of the gentlemen of the parish (as they term themselves), and supported by the recorder of Wenlock he is determined to put in force the Conventicle Act against me. A few weeks ago the widow who lives in the Rock Church and a young man who read and prayed in my absence were taken up.” He tells us he appeared at Wenlock and bearded the justices, who denounced him as a Jesuit!
Times have changed, and what was deemed in Mr Fletcher an indiscretion and even a crime, is now universally applauded. If persecution to Mr. Fletcher arose from those who by influence and position should have seconded his plans, we need scarcely feel surprised to find that, setting himself against the commoner and coarser vices of the times, he was opposed by those who thrived thereby. In a letter to Mr. Charles Wesley he says—“You cannot well imagine how much the animosity of my parishioners is heightened, and with what boldness it discovers itself against me, because I preach against drunkenness, shows, and bull-baiting. The publicans and the maltmen will not forgive me: they think that to preach against drunkenness and to cut their purse is the same thing.”
It is difficult to imagine a man of education, taste, and refined feeling in the midst of elements more discordant, or so totally out of character with what he had been used to. Unvisited by those influences that from a thousand sources now combine to smooth the path of the country clergy, mining districts, like others where the physical energies of the body are developed to the utmost stretch by the nature of the employment, presented the greatest obstacles to progress; the most dogged indifference to efforts made for their advancement; and, where attempts were made to put a check upon the brutal amusements of the population, they offered the most determined resistance. At out-door or in-door services, in such semi-civilized portions of the parish, the sound of prayer, both on Sundays and week-evenings, would ascend mingled with the yells and cries and curses of drunken colliers, the barking of dogs, the roar of a bull, or some indulgence of the kind with which publicans seasoned their attractions. The Green, at Madeley Wood, was a favourite spot for such games, and narrowly upon one occasion did this zealous and pious man escape being pulled from his horse and made the victim of a party of infuriated colliers, who made the bargain to “bait the parson.”
Mr. Fletcher, with a view of further promoting his mission of usefulness in 1767 visited Yorkshire, Bristol, Bath, and Wales, and subsequently his native country, Rome, &c. He returned to England in 1770; and some time after undertook the charge of a college founded by the Countess of Huntingdon, at Trevecca, in South Wales, but resigned the appointment, in consequence of his repugnance to Calvinistic views. This brought out Mr. Fletcher as a controversialist, with Toplady and others. At the breaking out of the American War Mr. Fletcher took up his pen in defence of the Government, and the right divine of kings, contending that “if once legislation was affirmed to belong to the people, as such, all government would be overturned,” and that such a scheme ought to be totally extirpated; doctrines which so pleased the King that the Lord Chancellor was commissioned to offer him preferment, which he declined.
Poor human nature at best goes on crutches; and one infirmity he had to struggle with when young, Mr. Benson tells us, “was temper. He was a man of strong passions, and prone to anger in particular, insomuch that he has frequently thrown himself on the floor, and laid there most of the night, bathed in tears, imploring victory over his spirit.” He obtained it, and by the means employed—by earnest wrestling, by prayer articulate at times—voiceless, waiting prayer at others. Holiness to be realised in man—holiness incarnate on earth, eternal in the heavens—and the annihilation of all that would bar it out from the soul was his motto. But the man that would tremble before the suspicion of a fault, on the other hand, could beard a gamester armed, and pour an avalanche of indignation upon his head—aye, while the infuriated duellist held a pistol to his breast. There was a combination of earnestness, sincerity, and, withal, humiliation, about the man that won its way and fused all before it. There was a primitive simplicity and singleness of purpose, an enthusiasm unmixed with bitterness, and that heavenly temper about Mr. Fletcher which reminds one of the sublimated virtues and graces of the early Christians. Like the old fathers, he accommodated himself to his hearers, suiting his exhortations to their modes of thought, and seizing opportunities for imparting instruction and advice, so as to secure for both the most favourable reception. His parishioners soon began not only to perceive but to appreciate these excellent features of his character. Unmoved by storm and tumult, actuated by the purest motives, with a grace and sweetness that shone through every look and gave value to every action, his visits, wherever he went, brought with them influences like the reviving breath of spring. If he overtook on the road a poor woman, wearied with a load, he assisted her to carry it, meanwhile taking care to exhort her to relieve herself of that more intolerable one of sin. If he saw a man fetch down a bird with his gun, he complimented him upon his aim and called his attention to the mark for the prize of his high calling—thus tempering and interweaving with things and pursuits of this life those relating to that which is to come. A very atmosphere of good surrounded him, from whence distilled heavenly and refreshing dew. To meet the objections of his parishioners to early Sunday morning meetings, on the ground of their being unable to rise so early, he was accustomed to go round the village himself, tinkling a bell; “thus, though free from all men,” as the Apostle said to the Corinthians, he made himself the servant of all, giving himself up to the work as practically and devotedly as though each particular department had been his special duty. If a poor man was ill and lacked attendance he sat by the sickbed and tended him; if he needed clothes to keep him warm he stripped himself; if he needed money he gave it; and even the furniture in his house was at the service of the poorest. He was not only a servant, but a “servant of servants,” therefore, unto his brethren; and upon the well-recognised principle of true greatness laid down by his divine Master—“Whomsoever would be chief amongst you, let him be your servant”—he obtained that reverence and regard with which, even now, his name is spoken of both in the cottages of the poor and houses of the rich.
There was in Mr. Fletcher a combination of distinguished virtues seldom found in one man, and those so marked and developed that each by itself would have been sufficient to confer distinction upon any individual possessing it in an equal degree. Of his ministrations in the pulpit of the old church none now left can speak. By the children, however, of those who have listened to him we have often heard it said—“Never were hearers more riveted and enrapt by lips of a fellow-mortal.” Every topic received at his hand a fresh bloom—a brilliancy, a fascination, a fragrance that entranced. Christ the Saviour, Christ in the garden, and upon the cross; now at the right hand of the Father, and again coming in great glory to judge the world; man regenerated; the benediction and the curse; the two hemispheres of the one truth needful for man to know, were themes upon which he began, continued, and ended.
The “Rock Church,” previously spoken of, at Madeley Wood, was a cottage built on a spur of one of the sandstones of the lower coal measures, and it still stands, overlooking the valley of the Severn. Mr. Fletcher exerted himself, however, to erect a place of better accommodation in 1776, and succeeded in building what now forms part of the old Wesleyan chapel, a short distance from the Rock Church; and we find him devoting £25, being a balance of £105 received as the annual income from his estate in Switzerland, to its completion: the remainder previously appears to have been devoted to other charitable purposes. He was unable then, however, to clear off the whole, for in the following year he wrote to Thomas York and Daniel Edmunds, who assisted him in the secular concerns of the vicarage, saying:—
“I have attempted to build a house in Madeley-Wood, about the centre of the parish, where I should be glad if the children might be taught to read and write in the day, and the grown-up people might hear the word of God in the evening, when they can get an Evangelist to preach it to them; and where the serious people might assemble for social worship, when they have no teacher.
“This has involved me in some difficulties about discharging the expense of that building, and paying for the ground it stands upon; especially, as my ill health has put me on the additional expense of an assistant. If I had strength, I would serve my church alone, board as cheap as I could, and save what I could from the produce of the living to clear the debt, and leave that little token of my love, free from encumbrances, to my parishioners. But as Providence orders things otherwise, I have another object which is, to secure a faithful Minister to serve the church while I live. Providence has sent me dear Mr. Greaves, who loves the people, and is loved by them. I should be glad to make him comfortable; but as all the care of the flock, by my illness, devolves upon him, I would not hesitate for a moment to let him have all the profit of the living, if it were not for the debt contracted about the room. My difficulty lies, then, between what I owe to my fellow-labourer, and what I owe to my parishioners, whom I should be sorry to have burdened with a debt contracted for the room.
“I beg you will let me know how the balance of my account stands, that, some way or other, I may order it to be paid immediately: for if the balance is against me, I could not leave England comfortably without having settled the payment. A letter will settle this business, as well as if twenty friends were at the trouble of taking a journey; and talking is far worse for me than reading or writing. I do not say this to put a slight upon my dear friends. I should rejoice to see them, if it would answer any end.
“Ten thousand pardons of my dear friends, for troubling them with this scrawl about worldly matters. May God help us all, so to settle all our eternal concerns, that when we shall be called to go to our long home and heavenly country, we may be ready, and have our acquittance along with us. I am quite tired with writing; nevertheless, I cannot lay by my pen, without desiring my best Christian love to all my dear companions in tribulation, and neighbours in Shropshire.”