The Prince, provoked at the resistance, in revenge, set fire to the town. His wrath is said to have kindled in Bull-street, and consumed several houses near the spot, now No. 12.
He obliged the inhabitants to quench the flames with a heavy fine, to prevent farther military execution. Part of the fine is said to have been shoes and stockings for his people.
The parliament forces had formed their camp in that well chosen angle, which divides the Stratford and Warwick roads, upon Camp-hill.
The victorious Prince left no garrison, because their insignificant works were untenable; but left an humbled people, and marched to the reduction of Lichfield.
In 1665, London was not only visited with the plague, but many other parts of England, among which, Birmingham felt this dreadful mark of the divine judgment.
The infection is said to have been caught by a box of clothes, brought by the carrier, and lodged at the White-hart. Depopulation ensued. The church-yard was insufficient for the reception of the dead, who were conveyed to Ladywood-green, one acre of waste land, then denominated the Pelt Ground.
The charter for the market has evidently been repeated by divers kings, both Saxon and Norman, but when first granted is uncertain, perhaps at an early Saxon date; and the day seems never to have been changed from Thursday.
The lords were tenacious of their privileges; or, one would think, there was no need to renew their charter. Prescription, necessity, and increasing numbers, would establish the right.
Perhaps, in a Saxon period, there was room sufficient in our circumscribed market-place, for the people and their weekly supplies; but now, their supplies would fill it, exclusive of the people.
Thus by a steady and a persevering hand, she kept a constant and uniform stroke at the anvil, through a vast succession of ages: rising superior to the frowns of fortune: establishing a variety of productions from iron: ever improving her inventive powers, and perhaps, changing a number of her people, equal to her whole inhabitants, every sixteen years, till she arrived at another important period, the end of the civil wars of Charles the first.