A warrior of unflinching resolve and proud belief in self was Clive, one of Shropshire’s greatest sons, whose bronze statue, its pedestal simply inscribed with his name, stands in advance of the Market-house. It was well merely to place his name there, for what do Shropshiremen need to be told of Clive? That would be an ill day when they should forget his youth, his manhood, his achievements, and his tragedy. To serve your country—to give her Empire, trade, and wealth—these things do not fall to the lot of many men, and it is well they should not, for they bring the curses and the rabid enmity of the factious, the deprecation of the feeble-hearted, and the vitriolic hatred of the envious and the mean-souled; ever the loudest voiced among the body politic. Few are those who, unmoved, could be the recipients of such base slander and ingratitude, and Clive was not one of them. The man who gave us India died by his own hand, but none the less done to death by the Little Englanders of that day.
The dedications of Shrewsbury’s churches are as unusual as the names of its streets. There are St. Chad’s, St. Alkmund’s, and St. Julian’s, among others; but the finest church of all is St. Mary’s, whose spire, soaring to a height of 220 feet, is oddly at variance with the tower and the rest of the building, being of white stone, while the body of the church is in red. St. Mary’s spire is visible from great distances. It tempted a steeple-jack named Cadman to a fearful death in 1739. He had been repairing the spire, and, having completed the work, was foolish enough to essay the feat of sliding down a rope fastened to the spire at one end, and at the other to an oak tree across the Severn. The rope broke, and he was flung from mid-air into the street of St. Mary Fryars, being instantly killed. A curious epitaph to him remains:—
Let this small monument record the name
Of Cadman and to future time proclaim
How by a bold attempt to fly from this high spire,
Across the Sabrine stream he did acquire
His fatal end. ’Twas not from want of skill
Or courage to perform the task he fell.
No, no; a faulty rope being drawn too tight,
Hurried his soul on high to take its flight