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HISTORY OF MADELEY, INCLUDING IRONBRIDGE, COALBROOKDALE, AND COALPORT,

From the earliest times to the present,

WITH NOTICES OF Remarkable Events, Inventions, AND PHENOMENA, MANUFACTURES, &c.

--:o:--

ILLUSTRATED

--:o:--

The work will be found to contain a copious Index, and list of old family names.

--:o:--

Published at "The Wrekin Echo" Office, Madeley, Salop, 1880.

INTRODUCTION.

PREFACE

THE field of history is a wide one, but, in addition to its well-beaten track, there yet remains less frequented paths to explore in connection with our smaller villages and towns.

The design of the present work may be stated in a few words. It is simply to place before the inhabitants of Madeley, and those interested in its history, the various phases through which it has passed in its progress from feudal times to the present. Strangers often come and seek for information which they do not always get: and much that is known by old people of Madeley and its traditions would be lost unless noted down at once.

It will be seen that our information extends from the notice we get in Norman times, when tillers of the soil, swineherds, fishermen, a miller or two, and foresters, composed the population, the profits of whose labours were reaped by a priest and the monks of Wenlock Priory.

After the Dissolution it will be seen that the mansion was sold to the Brooke family, particulars of which we have given, both in the earlier and later parts of the work.

MADELEY.

There is a touch alike of poetry and of meaning in the name. Our ancestors were delineators of natural scenery, verbally, and by the use of names. Taking possession of primeval lands and uncleared forests, driving their aboriginal owners before them--in one or more syllables they were wont to give the history of a place, or the more distinguishing features of a country, and word-pictures then current come down to us little altered, having coiled up within them considerable sense and by-gone meaning. Tradition, no less than the popular and generally accepted etymology of the name, informs us that Shrewsbury was originally the place of shrubs; that the dusky crow croaked at Crawley, and the chattering daw built its nest at Dawley. The broc or brag--Anglo-Saxon terms for the badger, once numerous along the Severn Valley--gave us the Brocholes. To reynard we are indebted, in like manner, for the modern name of Foxholes--a place near to the latter, where this animal flourished when Madeley Wood, now covered with cottages, was what its name implied.

Little local or archaeological lore is required to know that Madeley Wood was the wood bordering on the meadow, or that Madeley is a name derived from meadowly, or mead--a term still used in poetical productions of the day. In like manner, Mad-brook, a little stream on the borders of the village, meandering through meadow land, was Mead or Meadow-brook--as one of our smaller English rivers is called the Medway, from like circumstances, and as Brockton on Madbrook was formerly Brook-town--the town or enclosure on the brook. A tolerable estimate of Madeley, in one of its early phases, and as it appeared to the commissioners appointed to carry out the Domesday Survey, at the time it formed part of the manor belonging to the Abbey of Much Wenlock, may be gleaned from the following extract:--

England at that time was covered over with such manors; they had overgrown the free peasant proprietors which previously existed in Saxon times. On each manor was the house of the lord with the Court yard and garden, &c., comprising several acres. The manor land was for the use of the lord, but portions were let off. Some doubt now exists as to the true meaning of a hide of land, as both hides and virgates on adjoining lands differed, but the conclusion that the hide was a land measure of 33 English acres has been received by some, whilst others hold that it meant a measure of land sufficient for the support of a family. The most important agricultural operation of the period was ploughing, and a peasant rarely undertook this for himself on his own little plot, which was not sufficient for separate or independent management, with his own team and plough. The team of a plough consisted then as a rule of not less than 8 draught cattle, and this continued to be the case, as recorded by Arthur Young. The bad fodder of that period diminished the labour power of the draught cattle, especially during winter ploughing, which was on straw feeding alone. Madeley is undoubtedly derived from terms still in use, Meadow and ley, or lia; meadows having sometimes been subjected for a whole year to common pasturage whilst the adjoining land lay fallow, in order not to exhaust it by constant hay crops.

Such was Madeley in the olden time, when men were goods and chattels, subject to the rapacity and oppression of their owners, when laws were enacted by which to kill wild animals was a crime equal in enormity to killing human beings, and punished with the same rigour; when the right to hunt was in the hands of kings and those holding tenure to whom they thought proper to delegate it. The park, to which the modern names of Park, Rough Park, and Park Street, now apply--names that serve to recall former features of the surface--was enclosed from the forest, mentioned in the above extract. Its origin was this; November 28th, 1283, King Edward being petitioned that it would not be detrimental to his forest of Mount Gilbert if the Prior and Convent of Wenlock should enclose their Wood of Madeley with a ditch, and fence, and make a park there--allowed them to do so. The same park is alluded to in a valuation taken 1390; together with one at Oxenbold, which--including the meadows--was said to be scarcely sufficient to maintain the live stock of the Priory. The Prior, who appears to have built houses within the boundary of the forest, in 1259 was ordered to pull them down; but having offered a fine to the king a charter was granted the following year, stating that, "for ?100 now paid the Prior and Convent may have the houses in peace, although within the forest."

The Court House, formerly surrounded by this park, and near to the station now called by its name--on the Great Western line--is an exceedingly interesting building, and one claiming the attention of the visitor. The present structure is in the Elizabethan style of architecture; but the grounds present traces of earlier buildings. In the years 1167, 1224, 1250, and again in 1255, mention is made of the Madeley Manor. In 1379 the estimated value of pleas and perquisites of the court is entered at two shillings.

Near the old mansion is the Manor-mill, formerly worked by a steam called Washbrook, which formerly supplied the extensive vivaries or fishponds that furnished the kitchen of the establishment with the necessary means of observing fast-days. Interesting traces of former pools and fisheries are observable. Under date 1379, we find the water-mill at the Court or Manor house "fermed" for 10s. per annum, and at a valuation taken of the prior's temporalities at an earlier period, viz., 1291, the same mill is mentioned. Mills, then, were invariably the possession of the lord of the manor, lay or ecclesiastical, and tenants were compelled to grind there. They were therefore an important source of profit, and carefully enumerated, and it is worthy of remark that where a mill is described as being at a particular place, even at an earlier period--as in the Domesday survey of the country--there, as in the case of the Manor mill at the Court, one is now generally to be found in ruins or otherwise. In the garden, which is still highly walled, and which was probably originally an enclosed court, upon an elegant basement, approached by a circular flight of steps--the outer one being seven feet in diameter and the inner one about three--is a very curious planetarium, an horological instrument serving the purpose of a sundial, and that of finding the position of the moon in relation to the planets. It is a square block of stone three feet high, having three of its sides engraved, and the fourth or north side blank. Over this is a semicircular slab of stone so pierced that the eye rests upon the polar star.

This family appears to have been resident at Claverley in the fourteenth century. Mr. Brooke, of Haughton, near Shifnal, has deeds in his possession showing the purchase of certain arable and pasture lands at Beobridge, by Richard de la Broke, of Claverley, in 1316, and again in 1318, where he is described as Richard de la Broke, clerk, son of Richard de la Broke, Claverley.

Mailed and full-length fine stone figures of this highly-distinguished family, who lived here, and shed a lustre on the place, formerly reposed in the church, to whose sacred keeping they bequeathed their dust. Equally vain, however, were their bequests and hopes, for when the originals were no longer able to put a copper on the plate their very tombs were destroyed, and their stone effigies ruthlessly turned out of doors, and placed in niches outside the church, where, shorn of a portion of their limbs, they still do penance in pleading attitudes, and look as though they implored a bit of paint to prevent the inscriptions beneath from being lost for ever. The stone in one case has lost its outer coating, and the artifice of the sculptor in tipping nose and chin with a whiter material has been disclosed, and thick coats of paint are peeling off the defaced epitaphs which set forth the merits of their originals. The inscriptions are in Latin, but the following is, we believe, a free, if not an exact, translation:--

"Here lieth interred John Brooke, Esquire, the son of Robert Brooke, Knight, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. He was a zealous and loyal subject of Queen Mary, and assisted her in securing her rights in opposition to the violent factions of the time. He published an excellent commentary on the English Law in several volumes. After a study of jurisprudence and science, being of an extensively liberal mind and universally beloved, he made a Christian-like end, October the 20th, in the year of our Lord, 1598, in the 62nd year of his age."

The following is another:--

"Here lieth the remains of Etheldreda, the wife of Basil Brooke, Knight, a woman not only well-skilled in the knowledge of the Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish languages, and in the science of music, but also exemplary for piety, faith, prudence, courage, chastity, and gentle manners. She left to lament her loss a husband, with an only son, named Thomas, and five daughters, namely--Anne, the wife of William Fitzherbert, Esquire, the grandson of Henry, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, eminent for his commentary on our laws; Mary, the wife of Thomas More, a descendant of that renowned character, Thomas More, formerly Lord High Chancellor of England, a man in his life and death universally esteemed; Dorothy, Agatha, and Catherine, all of whom were of amiable dispositions. She died in the year of our Lord --" .

The original is in Latin. The pillared arches and backs of the recesses are elaborately carved.

In "Villages and Village Churches," published a few years ago, in describing Claverley, we stated that the present vicarage was supposed at one time to have been the residence of the Lord Chief Justice, whose likeness is carved upon one of the timbers. We also described a magnificent tomb of Lord Chief Justice Brooke, in the north-east corner of the Gatacre chancel, which is both elaborate and imposing. On the top are recumbent figures of the Lord Chief Justice in his official robes, and of his two wives, with ornamental head-gear, mantles, ruffs, ruffles, &c., of the period; and round the tomb are their eighteen children, also in the respective costumes of their time. On the outside is the following inscription, in Old English characters:--

Jukes, in his Antiquities of Shropshire, says:--

Mr. Brooke had the reputation of being a great lawyer, and whilst a barrister we find him engaged by the Corporation of Shrewsbury to examine a petition from the town "for the discharge of the subsidies." According to the entry in the Corporation books he and Serjeant Molyneux were paid 15s. for their services. He is described as Recorder of London whilst visiting the town, with Roger Townesende, Chief Justice of Wales, and Richard Hasshall, Esqr., "one of the Commissioners of our Lord the King," and as being presented with "wayffers and torts," at the expense of the corporation.

With regard to Basil Brooke, we find by an indenture of release, dated the 29th of May, 1706, that he, Basil Brooke, Esq., of Madeley, deceased, by his will bequeathed to the poor of the parish of Madeley the sum of ?40, which the churchwardens and parishioners of the parish desired might be laid out in the purchase of lands and tenements for the use of the poor. And it was witnessed that Comerford Brooke, in consideration of the said ?40, and also a further sum of ?30 paid to him by Audley Bowdler and eight other parties to the said indenture, granted to the said Audley Bowdler and others, their heirs and assigns, three several cottages or tenements, with gardens and yards thereto belonging, situated in Madeley Wood, in the said parish, and in the said indenture, more particularly described, on trust to employ the rents and profits thereof for the use of the poor of the said parish in such manner as the grantees, with the consent of the vicar and parish officers, should think fit.

Near one of the fields adjoining the Court House, called the "Slang," a man, while clearing a piece of rough ground, which appeared not previously to have been cultivated, a few years ago, came upon a large number of gold coins, chiefly of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and of the modern value altogether of between three and four hundred pounds.

Looking at what the place now is, and calling to mind what it must have been when the spacious rooms rang with the joyous laugh, and echoed the minstrel songs of bygone days, one is reminded of Southey's Eclogues, in one of which he seeks to connect the past and present by an old man's memory, only that in this case more than one generation has gone to rest since the old Court House was complete with park, and moat, and fish-ponds. The old stonebreaker bemoans the change in some old mansion-house thus--

"If my old lady could rise up-- God rest her soul!--'twould grieve her to behold What wicked work is here.

Aye, master, fine old trees. Lord bless us! I have heard my father say His grandfather could just remember back When they were planted there. It was my task To keep them trimmed, and 'twas a pleasure to me; My poor old lady many a time would come And tell me where to clip, for she had played In childhood under them, and 'twas her pride To keep them in their beauty.

Still greater changes than those described in the lines quoted above are witnessed at the old Court House and in its immediate vicinity,--changes so great that were it possible for one of its former feudal owners to revisit the scene he would fail to recognise the place. Ugly pit-mounds are seen surrounding the building; the place is illumined by the blaze of the blast-furnace, the screech of machinery is heard around it, and the snort of the iron horse sounds across the park, where the hounds were wont to

"Rend the air, and with a lusty cry Awake the echo, and confound Their perfect language in a mingled voice."

The fashions and manners here represented have passed away, and these relics of antiquity look like fossils of old formations, or like dismantled wrecks cast up by the ever-moving current of time. They contrast strangely enough--these trophies of times gone by--with the visible emblems of man's altered genius around. Modes of life have changed; every age has turned some new page as it passed. Instead of monasteries and moated manor-houses, with country waste and wood, thistled and isolated, whose wild possessors neglected even to till the surface, we have men of active mould, who do daily battle with the stubborn elements of the earth, while flashing fires flicker round their stolid effigies, telling of wealth-producing agencies that make millions happy. Ideas begotten of time, not then dreamt of, have leaped over moat and rampart, re-constituted society, converted parks into pit-mounds, and around the habitations of knighted warriors reared forges and constructed railways.

"The Archdeacon of Richmond, we are told, in his initiation to the Priory of Bridlington, came attended by ninety-seven horses, twenty-one dogs, and three hawks. Walter de Suffield, Bishop of Norwich, bequeathed by will his pack of hounds to the king; whilst the Abbot of Tavistock, who had also a pack, was commanded by his bishop, about the same time, to break it up. A famous hunter, contemporary with Chaucer, was the Abbot of Leicester, whose skill in the sport of hare hunting was so great, that the king himself, his son Edward, and certain noblemen, paid him an annual pension that they might hunt with him."

"The prior ground down the vicar, the vicar in turn impoverished his subordinates, and they either starved their flocks or were themselves paupers. The bishops moreover, doubtless for certain considerations, connived at, nay, prominently aided the whole system of extortion."

This had been carried so far as to require the presence of Bishop Swinfield, who held the See, in 1285, to rectify misappropriations of tithe in sheep and corn, and to arrange disputes respecting them within the boundaries of the Priory. In April, 1290, the bishop paid another visit, being by invitation the guest of the Prior; we do not get the expenses of the feast, but he is known to have been a joval soul, well to do, with two palaces in the country, and three in London, constantly moving about, taking care to carry about with him his brass pots, earthen jugs, and other domestic utensils for his retainers, who were littered down in the great halls of the manors, at each stage of the journey. He had numerous manor houses of his own, a farm at each, stables for many horses, kennels for his hounds, and mews for his hawks. His kitchens reeked with every kind of food; his cellars were filled with wine, and his spiceries with foreign luxuries. Take a glance at the bishop's feast after a fast at his residence on the Teme. On Sunday, October the second, at the bishop's generous board, the consumption was, three quarters of beef, three sheep, half a pig, eight geese, ten fowls, twelve pigeons, nine partridges, and larks too numerous to mention, the whole accompanied with a due proportion of wine.

Madeley not being a "fat living," there was great shuffling on the part of the incumbents, none of them caring to hold it very long. One, master Odo de Horbosio, who was instituted March 14, 1299, on presentation of the Convent and Prior of Much Wenlock; and again, June 4th, 1300, has license to study, and to attend to business of himself and friends. August 2nd, 1300; William de Fonehope, who was presented by the Bishop of Hereford, on March 18th, 1318, we find exchanging in 1322, with Sir William Hoynet, rector of Westbury; the said William the fifth of August, the same year, exchanged with James de Tifford, who exchanged with another, John Aron, who resigned it in November, 1319.

The oftener these changes occurred the better for the priors, who held the right of presentation to the bishop, and exacted fealty and fees. In Madeley, being lords of the manor, they nominated and presented the vicars: and in Badger, Beckbury, and elsewhere, where there were lay lords who nominated, they held the right of presenting such as were nominated to the bishop, and of exacting fees for their mediate offices between the nominators and the bishop.

As the land came to be cultivated, and the population engaged in agricultural and other pursuits increased in number, the living, we imagine, improved in value, and the advowson in importance. We have shown from the commissioners' description in Domesday what was the state of Madeley just subsequent to the Norman conquest, and Madeley being still within the limits of the forest of the Wrekin, which surrounded it on three sides, little progress was made in the way of cultivation. From the "Survey of Shropshire Forests" in 1235, it appears that the following woods, besides those of Madeley, were subject to its jurisdiction:--Leegomery, Wrockwardine Wood, Eyton-on-the-Weald Moors, Lilleshall, Sheriffhales, the Lizard, Stirchley, and Great Dawley. Forest laws were rigorously enforced, and encroachments, either by cultivation or building without royal license to do so, were severely punished.

Prior Imbert was fined for three such trespasses, in 1250, in the heavy sum of ?126 13s. 4d., chiefly in connection with Madeley. In 1390 the park and meadows the prior had been permitted to enclose with those at Madeley, Oxenbold, and other manors, were estimated as barely capable of maintaining the livestock of the priory.

At any rate the prior, sub-prior, and eleven monks retired upon a pension of ?100, which was divided between them thus:--

? s. d. Extranni Baylie nuper 30 0 0 priori ibidem Willielmus Corfeld nuper sub prior ibidem 6 13 4 Richard Fishewyke presbitero 6 0 0 Thomas Acton presbitero 6 0 0 Johanni Caslett presbitero 6 0 0 Richardo Fenymo presbitero 6 0 0 Richardo Benge presbitero 6 0 0 Richardo Norgrave presbitero 6 0 0 Thomas Ball presbitero 6 0 0 Willielmo Morthowe presbitero 5 6 8 Johanni Lee presbitero 5 6 8 Willielmo Chamberlain presbitero 5 6 8 Johanni Hopkins presbitero 5 6 8 Summa 100 0 0

Sir John, the last of the long list of Wenlock priors,--many of them noble and distinguished men,--retired upon his life-pension of ?30 to the old Court House, Madeley, where he resided till his death, which took place in 1552. Mr. Eyton says he died on Christmas-day, at the Madeley manor-house, and was buried next day in Madeley church. The Wenlock register, at Wynnstay, contains the following entry by Sir Thomas Butler, the then vicar:--

The same authority, Sir Thomas Butler, who seems to have been a most painstaking recorder of events, under date of February 20, 1539, has the following entry a little higher up:

"Edwd Browne Servant to my Lord Prior was married in Madeley and the Certf. entered in the book of the parish Church of Madeley."

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