Historical and Descriptive Guide Through Shrewsbury

Transcribed from the 1881 Drayton Bros. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org, using scans from the British Library.
By S. F. WILLIAMS.
NEW AND REVISED EDITION
1881.
SHREWSBURY: DRAYTON BROS., PRINTERS AND PUBLISHERS.
This “Historical Guide” has no pretensions to the value of either a full history or a complete handbook of Shrewsbury. It consists simply of a sketch of the historical associations of Shrewsbury, and of a directory just sufficiently complete to conduct residents or visitors to the principal objects or places of interest in the town. In the Guide, the object has been to preserve the historical element.
“Proud Salopians!” Well, have we not some good reasons for being proud? Is it not natural that as Shrewsbury has been the scene of important events and incidents, we should feel a little inordinate self-esteem? Hamlet will have it that the poor should not trumpet their own praises; but we are rich, and therefore we can indulge in some degree of conceit. Have we not something to be vain about? Have we not found homes and hiding-places for kings? Have we not had a mint here and made money—which is a difficult thing for most people to do? Has not “the finest legislative assembly in the world”—the British Parliament—been held here? Have we not received Charter upon Charter from the hands of kings, and “advanced them loans”—without security? Has not an English monarch actually sat in Shrewsbury, wearing a real crown? Have we not contributed thousands of men to the protection of the crown and dignity? Did not that “glorious old martyr”—Charles I., who was “murdered” by Oliver Cromwell—raise an army here, and did he not lay his uneasy head in a house on the Wyle Cop? Finally, not least though last, did not Falstaff, that “gross, fat man,” foolish, witty, and blusterous, “fight one long hour by Shrewsbury clock”? He says he did, if he may be believed; and is not that something to boast of? Treasuring up these things, is there not some justification for our being proud?