In effecting national improvement, that sagacious monarch acted on the just conviction that his own paid army was better to be relied on than the retainers of his nobles: he wisely conceived that, having already dethroned their sovereign, they might be little scrupulous of removing his successor, whose personal pretensions to the throne, though strengthened by his marriage, were by no means universally admitted.
[19] Buried in the family vault, near the altar of Benthall Chapel.
[20] This gentleman and his wife, Ann, daughter of Piers Cariswall, Esq. of Lilleshall, were interred in St. Clement’s Chapel, in the south aisle of the parish church of Much Wenlock. There is a small estate in the parish belonging to their descendants, the Benthalls of Buckfast, in Devonshire.
[21] Rot. Hund.
[22] At that time the head of the family of Cassey of Wightfield, Cassey Compton, and Kilcot, in the county of Gloucester.
These manors descended to John Cassey, Chief Baron of the Exchequer in the reign of Henry IV., and from him to Thomas, the subject of this note, who died while on a visit to his son-in-law at Benthall, A.D. 1634, and was buried in Wenlock Church.
[23] Hulbert’s “History of Shropshire.”
[24] This tower was erected by one of the family of the Phelips. The ascent to it is so gradual, that he is said, upon one occasion, to have visited the summit in his coach and four. The road winds round the hill.
[25] The family suffered considerably, in consequence of their devotion to the royal cause during the unhappy reign of Charles the First; and, afterwards, their loyalty being unchilled by their losses, Colonel Richard Phelips united with Colonel Wyndham in secreting, and subsequently conveying out of the kingdom, the Second Charles.
[26] “Skimmitting, or, as it is called in the north of England, stang-riding, is still kept up in many parts of the kingdom, for the purpose of exposing to shame and ridicule, the man who has been guilty of cruelty or infidelity towards his wife.” In the basso-relievo at Montacute, the wife, accompanied by a crowd of villagers, is represented bestowing a few sound blows with her shoe upon her faithless partner, and “the artist has with happy effect introduced a church in the back-ground, to intimate that certain vows and promises which had been there solemnly pledged ought to have been kept in remembrance.”