MILLINGTON’S HOSPITAL,
founded in 1734, by Mr. James Millington of Shrewsbury, draper, and endowed with the greater part of his ample fortune. This charitable institution consists of a school-master and mistress, who have each a house and salary, and instruct twenty poor boys and as many girls, natives of Frankwell. These children are completely clothed twice in every year, and at the age of fourteen are clothed and apprenticed with a small premium, and at the expiration of their first year’s apprenticeship rewarded with a gratuity, upon their producing a certificate of good conduct. Twelve poor men or women selected from the single housekeepers of Frankwell, or the nearest part of St. Chad’s parish, reside in the Hospital, to each of whom are allotted two comfortable rooms and a small garden, with an allowance of £6 per annum, a gown or coat on St. Thomas’s day, and a load of coals on All Saints’ day. Gowns or Coats and forty shillings each are also dispensed every year to ten poor single housekeepers resident in Frankwell, the eldest of which pensioners in time, succeeds to a vacancy in the hospital. The hospitallers and out-pensioners receive likewise two twopenny loaves weekly. A chaplain daily attends and reads prayers.
Two exhibitions of £40 a year each are founded for students of Magdalen College, Cambridge, to which, scholars originally on the hospital foundation have the preference, or in default of such, two born in Frankwell, educated at the Free Schools, and having been one year in the upper form in the head school are most eligible.
The hospital is a plain brick building. The central portion surmounted by a pediment and clock turret comprises the chapel and school-room, and the houses of the master and mistress, and in the wings on each side are the apartments of the hospitallers. A lodge has recently been erected and the ground in front enclosed from the street by an iron railing. [176]
We now continue our walk along the undulating eminence, which rises abruptly from the Severn opposite the Quarry, until we arrive at
KINGSLAND,
a large tract of ground, the common property of the Burgesses, studded with small enclosures and buildings called “Arbours,” to which the several incorporated trading companies of the town annually resort in procession on the second Monday after Trinity Sunday, accompanied by bands of music, flags, devices emblematical of their crafts, and preceded by “a king” on horseback, gaily dressed with “crownlets and gauds of rare device,” either representing the monarch who granted their charters, or some principal personage of their trades. The Mayor and Corporation, attended by many of the respectable inhabitants of the place, visit the several Companies, and partake of refreshments prepared in their respective arbours:—
“Whilst the merry bells ring round,
And the jocund rebecks sound,
To many a youth and many a maid
Dancing in the chequered shade;
And young and old come forth to play
On this sunshine holiday,
Till the live-long day-light fail.”
The pageant of “Shrewsbury Show” originated, no doubt, in the procession which took place on Corpus Christi day, one of the most splendid festivals of the Romish Church. The several Companies, preceded by their Masters and Wardens, attended the Bailiffs and Corporation, who with the Abbot and dignified Ecclesiastics of the Abbey, Friaries, and Churches of the town, clad in their splendid robes, and bearing the Holy Sacrament under a rich canopy, lighted with innumerable wax tapers, proceeded in solemn order to a stone cross called the Weeping Cross, without the town. Here having bewailed their sins, and offered up petitions for a joyous harvest, they returned in the same order to St. Chad’s church, and attended the celebration of High Mass. Three days of unbounded jollity and recreation followed this magnificent festival. On the Reformation of religion this ceremonious procession was of course discontinued, and the present single day of relaxation and amusement substituted in its stead by the authorities of the place.
While on the subject of our ancient customs, we must not omit the popular one of Heaving, formerly prevalent over most of the kingdom, but latterly confined to Shropshire. Heaving is performed on Easter-Monday, by men who perambulate the streets, and call at the houses with chairs gaily adorned with ribbons and flowers, in which they sportively hold down any young woman they meet, and heaving her up three times, turn her round and set her down again. The ceremony invariably concludes with a hearty kiss, to which is often added by the more opulent of the inhabitants a small present of money. On Easter-Tuesday the young women perform the same ceremony to the men. This custom is supposed to have originated in the usage of binding persons in chairs, anciently practised on Hock Tuesday, or Binding Tuesday, designed to represent the stratagems employed by the English women to aid their husbands in massacreing the Danes on St. Brice’s day, 1002. At the Reformation, this, with many other old customs, of which the origin was imperfectly remembered, was spiritualized, and intended to represent the Resurrection of our Lord. For more particulars of the custom of Heaving we would refer the reader to Brand’s Popular Antiquities, i. 155, and Hone’s Every Day Book; in which latter excellent work there is a spirited engraving of the ceremony.