The Annals of Willenhall

by Frederick William Hackwood

After the Civil War the Prebendaries found that they had suffered considerable losses by the acts of their predecessors; so it was determined by Thomas Wren, LL.D. (son of the aforementioned Rev. Matthew Wren, Bishop of Ely, whose literary remains include “A Brief History of the Parish and Jurisdiction of Wolverhampton, from the Time of King Edgar”) prebendary of

Willenhall, and Cæsar Callendine, B.D., prebendary of Hatherton, to file a bill in Chancery against Robert Leveson for a discovery of the lands he held which anciently belonged to the prebendaries of Wolverhampton, and that he might show by what title he held them.

The hearing was before the great Lord Chancellor of that day, Lord Clarendon, who dismissed the bill, though without costs.

The Leveson family consequently continued in the undisturbed enjoyment of the church property, granted to them in fee farm by six prebendaries, as well as of divers other freehold estates in the parish of Wolverhampton.

The Leveson property in Wolverhampton became much implicated in the numerous family settlements till, in 1702, Frances, Earl of Bradford, purchased it of Robert Leveson for £22,000. Lord Bradford also acquired, three years later, the estate of the Dean and Prebends of Wolverhampton which had been leased to the Earl of Windsor; so that the entire property of the Collegiate Church (except the prebendal houses and some property which had been set aside for the use of the Sacrist), passed into the hands of one and the same proprietor.

In the same year, however, the Dean, Prebendaries, and Sacrist filed a bill in Chancery against Leveson and the Earl for the recovery of the property. The plaintiffs were Gregory Hascard, D.D., dean; Prebendaries John Hinton (Willenhall), Richard Redding (Kinvaston), Thomas Allestree (Hilton), John Plimley (Fetherstone), John Hilman (Hatherton), Richard Ames (Monmore), Walter Ashley (Wobaston), and Henry Wood, sacrist.

They contended they were all clerks, constituted one entire body, and rector or parson incorporate, of the whole parish of Wolverhampton, which was of very great extent, consisting of 16 or 17 hamlets or villages besides the large town of Wolverhampton, being in circuit about thirty miles, in three of which said hamlets there were chapels of ease, the several cures thereof belonging to the said College or Free Chapel Royal.

In all this litigation it was a question much agitated whether, as all the prebendaries with the Dean and the Sacrist constituted one entire body, any single prebendary could demise his annual portion of the said general tithes without the consent of the whole body.

The defendant Leveson was accused of having contrived secret conveyances of many parcels of the said tithes and lands for the benefit of his own family, some of the properties having been sold for large sums of money, and the church revenues defrauded thereby. Also that he had so altered and confounded the buildings, fences, and boundaries of the church lands, and so mixed them up with his own inherited lands, that it had become impossible to discern or distinguish which were the original possessions of the College; possessions which at the Domesday Survey had extended to 3,000 acres, besides the lordship of Lutley, near Halesowen.

Dr. Oliver states that in his time (1836) there remained some “houses and lands now belonging to the prebendaries and Sacrist, which are leased out for lives.”