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.
Four or five more extracts from this interesting Survey, relating to other parts of this neighbourhood, may not be out of place to quote here:—
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.
XII.—Before the Reformation—and After.
It may be assumed that Willenhall Church has been dedicated to St. Giles from the first, because the period for holding the dedicatory Wake synchronises with St. Gile’s day (September 1st), making allowance for the eleven days’ difference effected in 1752 between the Old Style and the New Style calendars. As the Protestant Reformers took objection to non-Biblical saints (West Bromwich Church was altered from St. Clement’s to All Saints’), a dedication to St. Giles may safely be accepted as a pre-Reformation one; and as St. Giles was the patron saint of cripples, he doubtless retained his popularity here on account of the reputation for healing qualities acquired by the Willenhall “Holy Well”—of which more anon. But in addition to its Wake, the town seems to have possessed in mediæval times a much frequented Summer Fair, held on Trinity Sunday. Our knowledge of this interesting fact is derived from the records of the Court of Star Chamber.
This court was established by Henry VII. to deal with routs, riots, and all other cases not sufficiently provided for by the common law; but the oppression practised by the unscrupulous abuse of its indefinite jurisdiction led to its summary extinction in the reign of Charles I.
The case to be quoted is one of an alleged riot in the year 1498 (13 Henry VII.), in which the men of Wednesbury were deeply involved. These turbulent townsmen seem to have made themselves notorious for riotous behaviour at various times; as witness the historic Wesley Riots of 1744, their march on Birmingham to regulate the price of malt in 1782, and their attack on the same town during the Church and King Riots in 1791.