The Annals of Willenhall

by Frederick William Hackwood

The first cause of the quarrel was found in the fact that these two places, having become as populous as towns of ordinary status, were without legal burying-grounds. When land had been provided there seems to have been considerable hesitancy on the part of the authorities in allowing Willenhall and Bilston these ordinary parochial privileges. The Rev. Richard Ames, of Bilston, has left it on record that on June 9th, 1726, he waited upon the Bishop of the diocese, while he was holding a confirmation at Walsall, when “John Lane, Esqre., of Bentley, mov’d his lordship to consecrate Willenhall and Bilston Chapelyards for burial-places, wch. his lordship seemed inclinable to do.”

The history of the conflict goes back to 1709, when Dr. Manningham, on becoming Dean, convened a Chapter at Oxford which was attended by all the Prebendaries and the Sacrist. This meeting was specially called to consider the case of the inhabitants of Willenhall and Bilston, who had represented to the Dean the great inconveniences which arose in having to carry their dead from these chapelries for interment at Wolverhampton; and humbly praying that their respective chapels and chapelyards should be consecrated for the proper burial of the dead.

The prayer was granted, but it was most carefully stipulated that the inhabitants of the two chapelries should always pay the customary levies to the mother church, and also the fees for burials and for the churching of women, to the respective curates of the said chapels, as well as to the ministers of the mother

church; and that the expenses attending the desired consecrations should be paid by the petitioners.

A subsequent Chapter, held 10 October, 1718, confirmed this, when the Ministers and Inhabitants of the Chapelries of Bilston and Willenhall signed an Agreement to observe and perform the said conditions. For the carrying out of the agreement in business-like form the said Ministers covenanted to pay the said fees half-yearly, at Lady-day and Michaelmas, transmitting a copy of their respective Registers “without reserve or fraud” to be transcribed into the books of the mother church.

The fees to be charged each Chapelry were fixed to a scale: tenpence for “ye churching of every woman”; sevenpence for the burial of each body in the churchyard, and twice that amount for the burial inside the church: and so on.

Subsequently (some 30 years after, when St. John’s Chapel, Wolverhampton, was in contemplation) the inhabitants of the Liberties of Willenhall and Bilston, notwithstanding the written agreement aforesaid, peremptorily and finally refused to pay their respective fees for Christenings, Churchings, and Burials to the Sacrist and Curates of Wolverhampton; payments whereby the profits of their several offices were lessened more than half, and the loss was so considerable it was no longer to be borne.

At Bilston the quarrel of 1753 was practically not settled for nearly a century afterwards. It was ruled that whatever might be arranged in respect of fees for other rites no marriages could be legally performed in the Chapel except by licence of Wolverhampton, which claimed a “Peculiar” jurisdiction; and as the inhabitants indignantly refused to pay double marriage fees, no marriage was solemnised in the chapel from January, 1754, to February, 1841.

The same year—to be exact, the date was April 12th, 1841—the first marriage was solemnised at Willenhall Church, the Bishop having then issued a special licence to the Incumbent to marry persons living within the township.

Almost concurrently with this dispute there was another source of grievance to Willenhall, Bilston, and Pelsall which had to be strenuously fought by these outlying places.