Prudence dictated another secret flight, and taking advantage of a dark night the unhappy King was taken by Colonel Lane to his own house, and was next hidden at Bentley Hall.

The story of the escape of Charles II. from Bentley towards the continent, disguised as a groom and riding in front of Jane Lane’s pillion, is too well known to need re-telling here. The episode is historic; it is the subject of a fresco painted on the walls of a corridor in the gilded chambers of Parliament.

The whole romance of Boscobel and Bentley is told with considerable fulness in Shaw’s “Staffordshire” (I., pp. 73–84), and is accompanied by very interesting engravings of Boscobel, Moseley Hall, and Old Bentley.

As a result of the Revolution of 1688, and with the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the impracticable Stuarts disappeared for good from the English throne; but as adherents to their discredited cause, known as Jacobites, still remained numerous, it may be guessed they were not lacking in and around Willenhall.

After the Hanoverian Succession there were, in fact, a number of avowed Jacobites in this vicinity, who refused to take the oath of allegiance to George I. Their names and behaviour were kept strictly under notice by the Government, but for fear of driving them to extremes no active measures were taken against them or their estates. A list of these non-jurors and Roman Catholics was compiled after the rebellion of 1715, and again in 1745, when the rebellion of the Young Pretender once more disturbed the Kingdom. A list of these suspects was published on each occasion by the Government, with the amount of penalties

incurred (but not exacted) against each name. In these lists appeared the following names:—

£ s. d.
Charles Smith, of Bushbury, Esq. 67 0 0
Anne Kempson, of Estington, widow 11 0 0
Ursula Kempson, of Wolverhampton, widow 39 0 0
John Kempson, of Great Sardon 41 0 0
William Ward, ditto 9 2 6
Mary Leveson, of Willenhall, in Wolverhampton 31 10 0
John Leveson, ditto 50 17 6
John Brandon, of Prestwood, yeoman 12 5 6
Thomas Giffard, of Chillington, Esq. 2100 6 6½
Elizabeth Giffard, of Wolverhampton, spinster 58 19 0
Thomas Whitgreaves, of Moseley, Esq. 73 2 6

XIV.—Litigation Concerning the Willenhall Prebend (1615–1702).

The Prebend had little to do with Willenhall, except in name. However, as the name of Willenhall was attached to this particular “canonical portion” in the Collegiate Church of Wolverhampton, and more especially as the Levesons are connected with its later history, reference to it cannot well be omitted.