A celebrated writer has said, that “History is philosophy teaching by example.” Local History was doubtless included in the reflection of the distinguished essayist, when he penned the memorable sentence, which has for years past been adopted as a national maxim. In Local History we have handed down to us facts and fiction, both grave and gay; traditions and customs illustrative of popular habits and manners; records of national edicts and social laws; municipal mandates, and parochial practice; doleful notes of superstition and ignorance, with gratifying statistics of the progress of truth and enlightenment; pleasing reports of the advancement of science and art, mechanical ingenuity, and industrial pursuits; and, speaking comprehensively, with a keen glance at the past, we descry enough, in the chequered examples of byegone times, to help us on in wisdom’s ways.

With these preliminaries, let us now lead our readers pleasantly onward through the devious paths and labyrinths of Oswestry’s varied history, beguiling them, perchance, by the way, with all that is agreeable pertaining to the Ancient and Loyal Borough, which, from its antiquity, its scenes of martial daring and prowess, the tranquil beauty of its surrounding landscapes, and its primitive, as well as modern relation to some of the sweetest spots of Cambria, has commanded the admiration and homage of historians, painters, and poets.

Derivation of Name, &c.

The derivation of the name of the Borough is still, and perhaps ever will be, involved in obscurity. As a place of retreat for the Cymry, or early Britons, when chased from the south by the Roman invaders, it is not unlikely to have had a primitive name that has been lost in the flood of ages. Pennant, whose industry and historical research have earned for him lasting fame, dates the commencement of its history in the Saxon period, not anterior to the celebrated conflict at Oswestry, between Oswald, the Christian King of the Northumbrians, and Penda, the Pagan King of the Mercians, which occurred in the year 642. Other Welsh biographical and historical writers trace the origin of its name to a much earlier period, and contend that Oswal, a son of Cunedda Wledig, sovereign of the Stratclyde Britons, and who lived in the early part of the fifth century, received from his father, as a tribute for special military services, an extensive grant of land, called from him Osweiling, in which the present town of Oswestry is situated. The coincidence is extraordinary that two distinguished chieftains should have flourished—although upwards of two centuries had rolled between their reigns—bearing names so similar to each other, that from either, it may be presumed, the town could, not inappropriately, have derived its present designation. The evidence in favour of Oswald’s right to the sponsorship of Oswestry is, however, in our opinion, so strong, that we must accord the honour to the Northumbrian Monarch, until the Cambrian or British claim shall be more authoritatively established. In the battle between Oswald and Penda, history informs us that the former was defeated and fell; that the barbarian victor ordered that the body of the slain monarch should be cut in pieces, and “stuck on stakes dispersed over the field as so many trophies; or, according to the ancient verses that relate the legend, his head and hands only were thus exposed:—

‘Three crosses, raised at Penda’s dire command,
Bore Oswald’s royal head and mangled hands.’”

After this battle the Welsh, or Cymry, (who seemed to have possessed for some time the district including Oswestry,) had called it Croes-Oswallt (Oswald’s Cross), in allusion to Penda’s ignominious exposure of Oswald’s slaughtered body. The spot where the battle was fought is said to have borne the name of Maeshir (the long field), as marking the length and obstinacy of the conflict. In the fulness of the Saxon period the town was known as Oswald’s Tree, in evident reference to Oswald’s death, and subsequently, to the present day, “without let or impediment,” by the name of Oswestry.

Industrious and talented antiquarian writers have given to the town other names and derivations. For instance, we are told that it was termed by the Saxons Blanc-Minster, White-Minster, Album-Monasterium, from its “fair and white Monastery,” whilst the Cymry, or “Old Britons,” as Williams denominates them, “called the town Tre’r Fesen, Tre’r Cadeiriau, the Town of the Oak Chairs,” or, as another writer has it, “the Town of Great Oaks.” These terms bear special allusion to Oswald’s unfortunate arrival in this district; for the ancient seal of the town, cut in brass, represents King Oswald sitting in his robes on a chair, holding a sword in his right hand, and an oak branch in his left, with the words around, “De Oswaldestre sigillum commune.” In repeating the long and tedious catalogue of names and derivations, it will be proper to mention that one writer renders the designation Tre’r Cadeiriau as follows:—“Oswestry was called by the Britons Tre’r Cadeiriau, literally the Town of Chairs, or Seats, commanding an extensive view, (as Cadair Idris, the chair of Idris, and others,) as there are several eminences commanding such views in the neighbourhood.”Here is a chapter on civic nomenclature and varied derivation, very curious, perhaps, to many readers, but little edifying to those who ask with the poet, “What’s in a name?” And yet, ancient civic names, like many other ancient relics, have valuable and salutary uses. They are as finger-posts to the Past; in some instances inviting us to the honest path of truth and honour; in others deterring us from the rugged ways of ignorance and error. In almost all respects they enable us to institute comparisons and form contrasts between men and manners in ancient and modern days. Whilst looking at such names, we are too frequently reminded of times when Might overcame Right, and are gently led with thankful spirits to the Present, when, in our own happy and highly-privileged age, every Briton can sit “under his vine and under his fig-tree,” none daring to make him afraid.

REVIEW OF ANCIENT HISTORY.

The British Period.

For ages the site of the town, with the surrounding district, was the theatre of brutal contention, rapine, and aggrandisement. Here, as in the Border-Lands of Scotland, it was

“The good old rule,
* * * the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.”

Education had not spread her benign wings over the people, to hush them into peace; and too commonly they who possessed the strongest physical power and the wildest barbarism became, in turns, “Lords of the Ascendant.” There is no record extant that the Roman invaders of Britain pitched their tents within the Oswestrian district; and yet it is more than probable that part of the legion, which traversed from the south of our island, actually touched at Llanymynech Hill (a Roman settlement beyond doubt), and most likely constituted a portion of the army which, under Suetonius, found its way along the mountain-passes of North Wales into Anglesey, may have halted there, if the ground was pre-occupied by the invaded Britons, or the ancient encampment, Hen Dinas, had then stood. We can produce nothing more than conjectural evidence of such a visit. There is no Roman architecture in the town, to mark the presence of the invaders, nor are there Roman relics rich as those discovered at Llanymynech. If the Britons occupied Hen Dinas during the Roman visit to the district, the destruction of that encampment may have been accomplished by the Roman marauders; and yet it is believed by some that the Britons possessed Oswestry, intact, from before the death of Oswald to the invasion of Offa. A Roman invasion of Oswestry, and the real history of Hen Dinas (or Old Oswestry, as it is termed,) are therefore alike still involved in mystery.

On this “vexed question” we may add the following:—“Remarking to a gentleman,” says Mr. Hutton, “that I had gleaned some anecdotes relative to Oswald, he asked me if I had seen Old Oswestry, where, he assured me, the town had formerly stood. I smiled, and answered him in the negative. He then told me, ‘that the town had travelled three quarters of a mile to the place where it had taken up its present abode.’ This belief, I found had been adopted by others with whom I conversed.”

The earliest sovereign possession of Oswestry, noted in the Welsh historic page, was in the beginning of the fifth century, as already referred to. Oswal, son of Cunedda Wledig, is there represented to have been its first monarch. The Welsh Chroniclers, however, furnish no details of his reign; and no event connected with the town is subsequently recorded, till the memorable one of King Oswald’s attack upon the Mercian King Penda, August 5th, A.D. 642. Oswald and Oswy were sons of Adelfrid, the seventh King of Northumberland. These young Princes had been driven out of the kingdom of their father by Cadwallawn, who had before been expelled from Wales, his rightful possession, by Edwin. Oswald, after seventeen years’ exile in Scotland, was restored to his kingdom by the overthrow and death of Cadwallawn. During his exile Oswald is said to have been baptized in a Christian church. He brought with him from Scotland a Christian bishop, Aidan, who preached Christianity to the people, and Oswald assisted him in his ministrations. The young Northumbrian King appears to have been zealous in the Christian cause, both in the pulpit and the field. Penda was a pagan prince, and had united with Cadwallawn in laying Northumbria waste. Oswald’s Christianity was not strong enough, it would seem, to subdue his revenge against Penda. The two monarchs at length met, a bloody conflict ensued, and Oswald was slain. The site of the closing scene of this memorable battle is said to have been a field called Cae Nef (Heaven’s Field), “situated on the left of the turnpike road leading to the Free School.” The writer from whom we quote mentions, that “Oswald approached with his army to what is called Maes-y-llan, or Church Field, then open.” “About four hundred yards west of the church,” he adds, “is a rising ground, where the battle began. The assailant appears to have driven Penda’s forces to a field nearer the town, called Cae Nef. Here Oswald fell.” These minute particulars give increased interest to the combat; but the writer does not state any authority for the details. We suppose it must have been merely traditionary. At the present time the sites of Cae Nef, and Church or Chapel Field, are well known to most of the inhabitants of the town. Oswald’s remains were first interred in the monastery of Bradney, in Lincolnshire, and afterwards, in 909, removed to St. Oswald’s, in Gloucestershire. The memory of the deceased King seems to have been held in great veneration, for churches, in various parts of the kingdom, still bear his name, as patron saint. Speed, in his “History of Great Britaine,” with his accustomed quaintness and minute graphic description, sums up Oswald’s closing scene in the following language:—

“But as the sunne hath his shadow, and the highest tide her ebbe, so Oswald, how holy soeuer, or gouernment how good, had emulators that sought his life, and his Countries mine: for wicked Penda the Pagan Mercian, enuying the greatnesse that King Oswald bare, raised warres against him, and at a place then called Maserfeild, in Shrop-shire, in a bloudie and sore fought battle slew him; and not therewith satisfied, in barbarous and brutish immanitie, did teare him in peeces, the first day of August, and yeere of Christ Iesus six hundred forty two, being the ninth of his raigne, and the thirty eighth of his age: whereupon the said place of his death is called to this day Oswaldstree, a faire Market Towne in the same Countie. The dismembred limmes of his body were first buried in the Monastery of Bradney, in Lincolnshire, shrined with his standard of Gold and Purple erected ouer his Tombe, at the industry and cost of his neece Offryd, Queene of Mercia, wife vnto king Ethelred, and daughter to Oswyn that succeeded him. From hence his bones were afterwards remooued to Glocester, and there in the north side of the vpper end of the Quire in the Cathedrall Church, continueth a faire Monument of him, with a Chapell set betwixt two pillers in the same Church.”

From the death of Oswald to 777, Oswestry is reported, as already mentioned, to have been in undisputed possession of the Britons. What its faithful history was during that long period we are unable to state. If the Britons did really occupy it, no event worthy of record seems to have occurred. If the Britons were preserved in peace, no chronicle is handed down to us of their social or industrial habits within the halcyon time. Whether they improved their land, instructed their minds in arts useful to their tribe, or were sunk in ignorance, sloth, and selfishness, there is no voice or pen to inform us. Three centuries later than this period the domestic architecture of the Cymry was in the lowest state of rudeness. One of the regal mansions of Hywel Dda, their great law-giver, was made of peeled rods; the people lived in wattled huts; and a gentleman’s hall was valued according to the number of posts it contained. These were filled up with wattled twigs and clay. The only notice we have of the period is in the Welsh Chronicles, and from them we learn that Cadwaladr (son of the Cadwallawn who was defeated and slain in a battle with King Oswald, near Denisbourne, in Northumberland,) the last of the Welsh Princes who assumed the title of Chief Sovereign of Britain, reigned over the Britons from A.D. 634 to 703, and was succeeded by Idwal Iwrch, or the Roe. In one of the Welsh Triads, Cadwaladr is called “one of the three canonized kings of Britain,” for the protection which he gave to the primitive Christians when dispossessed by the pagan Saxons; and his long reign is mentioned as having been peaceable, mainly in consequence, we are told, of his mother being sister to Penda, the Mercian king. Rhodri Molwynog, a brave and warlike prince, and grandson of Cadwaladr, succeeded to the western part of Britain about the year 720, and was engaged in constant hostilities with the Saxons until near the close of his life, in 755. These dottings from Welsh history show that the Britons had not peace within their borders during the long period already mentioned, and that “battles and murders” were still the constant theme and employment of the Britons and Saxons. It is hardly probable that the Britons possessed this district peaceably, and not unlikely that they still had to fight for their lives and property, inch by inch, and foot to foot. War, even in the present day, is the curse of nations; it fosters animosities, engenders ignorance and vice, and brutalizes man. What, then, must have been the effect of constant wars and incursions upon the British people by their invaders? The Britons had among them, about this period, their great bard, Llywarch Hen, a man ranked among the wise bards of the Court of Arthur, and whose poetical effusions display profound talent, if not genius, for so rude an age; but we have no proofs that they profited much by his vigorous instructions, although his life was lengthened out to one hundred and fifty years. The art of printing was unknown in Llywarch’s days, otherwise his humanizing productions might have wrought peace and harmony amongst both the oppressors and the oppressed.

The period had now arrived when the sovereignty of the Britons was so powerfully disputed that they were compelled to yield to the cohort strength of the impetuous Offa, King of the Mercians. Mercia was the largest of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and London was its capital. Offa passed the Severn with a mighty force, drove the Britons from their fertile and lovely plains, and limited the princedom of Powys to the western side of the celebrated ditch still known by the name of Offa’s Dyke. Offa enjoyed a victorious reign, from the year 755 to 794. During that period the finest part of Powys became a confirmed part of the Mercian territory, and Shropshire was permanently annexed to England. Owen and Blakeway, in their invaluable “History of Shrewsbury,” remark, “Though there can be no doubt that the cession of Shropshire was obtained from the British Prince (Eliseg, it is supposed,) only by the military preponderance of the Saxon, yet it seems equally certain that it must finally have been the subject of a pacific negociation. A work of so much labour as Offa’s Dyke, evidently designed, according to his practice in other places, as the line of demarkation between two kingdoms, could never have been carried into execution without the concurrence of the sovereign on each side of that boundary. * * * * The prince, thus despoiled of the fairest portion of his dominions, retired to Mathrafal, on the Vyrnwy, five miles beyond Welshpool, while Pengwern, degraded from the dignity of a metropolis, passed under the yoke of an English conqueror, and henceforth to be known by the name of Shrewsbury, a name of Saxon origin.”

Offa’s Dyke, called by the Britons Clawdd Offa, extended nearly a hundred miles along the mountain border of Wales, from the Clwydian hills to the mouth of the Wye. Part of the Dyke may be traced at Brachy Hill, and Leintwardine, in Herefordshire, continuing northward from Knighton, in Radnorshire, over part of Shropshire, entering Montgomeryshire between Bishop’s Castle and Newtown. It again appears in Shropshire, near Llanymynech, crosses Cern-y-bwch (the Oswestry race-course), descends to the Ceiriog, near Chirk, where it again enters Wales, and terminates in the parish of Mold, beyond which no traces of it are discovered. Offa may have imagined that the Clwydian hills, and the deep valley that lies at their base, would serve as a continuance of the prohibitory line. Pennant tells us, that in all parts the Dyke was constructed on the Welsh side, and that there are numbers of small artificial mounts, the sites of small forts along its course. In the MS. “Historia Wallica,” we are informed, that the work of forming this Dyke, forty feet in height, occupied a numerous band of men, “able and accustomed to work in the fields,” more than seven years. This great line of demarcation answered but little purpose as a line of defence, or even of boundary. The Border Lands were still the scenes of sanguinary contests, and superior force alone repelled the Britons. Severe laws were enacted against any that should transgress the limits prescribed by Offa; and one of these enactments declared, that “the Welshman who was found in arms on the Saxon side of the Dyke was to lose his right hand.” These laws, however, were unheeded by the Britons. They deeply felt their injuries, and concerted means of revenge, and, as they hoped, emancipation. They formed an alliance with the kings of Sussex and Northumberland, broke through the boundary, attacked Offa’s camp, slew great numbers, and the Mercian king himself narrowly escaped with a small remnant of his army. On this disaster Offa retired into his own dominions, meditating vengeance. Hostages having been given to him by the Britons, a short time before, during a brief period of peace, he now dealt out to them severe treatment, strictly confining them, and selling, or reserving for perpetual slavery, their wives and children. Still breathing destruction he marched into the confines of Wales with a powerful army, but for years was gallantly repelled by the Britons. At length the contending forces met on Rhuddlan Marsh (now the scene of peaceful arts, the Chester and Holyhead Railway passing over it), and the Britons, under the command of Caradog, were entirely defeated with terrific slaughter, their leader being slain in the conflict. The fury of the Saxon prince did not cease with victory. He savagely massacred the men, women, and children who fell into his hands; and, according to tradition, the remaining Britons, who had escaped the enemy’s sword, fleeing with haste over the marsh, perished in the waters by the flowing of the tide. This tragedy has been carried down to posterity by a plaintive Welsh melody, called Morva Rhuddlan, the notes of which are amongst the most touching and deeply-pathetic of Cambrian minstrelsy.

Having traced Offa’s Dyke, it is necessary to describe the course of Watt’s Dyke, as the space between these two great lines of demarcation was deemed neutral ground both by the Britons and their invaders, and subsequently, during the Norman period, became part of what is denominated the Marches, although it is difficult to define correctly the precise extent of territory they occupied. Watt’s Dyke is supposed by various writers to have been constructed anterior to the time of Offa. Its course is marked by Pennant as follows:—

“It appears at Maesbury, in the parish of Oswestry, and terminates at the river Dee, below Basingwerk Abbey. The southern end of the line is lost in morassy grounds; but was probably continued to the river Severn. It extends its course from Maesbury to the Mile Oak [on the old road from Oswestry to Shrewsbury]; from thence through a field [now belonging to Edward Williams, Esq., Solicitor, of Oswestry], called Maes-y-garreg-llwyd, between two remarkable pillars of unhewn stone [strongly resembling Druidic altar stones]; passes by the town [below the Shelf-bank’ Field], and from thence to Old Oswestry, and by Pentreclawdd to Gobowen, the site of a small fort called Bryn-y-Castell, in the parish of Whittington; runs by Prys Henlle and Belmont; crosses the Ceiriog, between Brynkinallt and Pont-y-blew Forge, and the Dee, below Nant-y-Bela; from whence it passes through Wynnstay Park, by another Pentreclawdd, to Erddig, where there was a strong fort on its course; from Erddig it runs above Wrexham, near Melin Puleston, by Dolydd, Maesgwyn, Rhos-ddÛ, Croes-oneiras, &c.; goes over the AlÛn, and through the township of Llai, to Rhydin, in the county of Flint, above which is Caer-estyn, a British post; from hence it runs by Hope church along the side of Molesdale, which it quits towards the latter place, and turns to Mynydd Sychdyn, Monachlog, near Northop, by Northop Mills, Bryn-Moel, Coed-y-Llys, Nant-y-Flint, Cefn-y-Coed, through the Strand Fields, near Holywell, to its termination below the Abbey of Basingwerk.”

The Chester and Shrewsbury Railway intersects these two ancient dykes. At the junction of the branch line to Brymbo, Minera, &c., the railway crosses Watt’s Dyke, and continues to run on the left side of it, travelling from Chester, for about fourteen miles, until Gobowen is reached, where the line again crosses the dyke; the superintendants of modern improvements, especially railway engineers and contractors, paying little if any deference to mere antiquities. By this route the railway traveller passes a considerable distance on the neutral ground, where alone, for many years, the trade and commerce of the Britons, the Saxons, and the Danes, were transacted. Offa’s Dyke at Brymbo is about two miles to the right, from Chester, and runs parallel with the railway for about eighteen miles. Churchyard, in his “Worthies of Wales,” thus chronicles, in his quaint verse, the use to which the “free ground” was applied in early days:—

“Within two miles, there is a famous thing
Called Offa’s Dyke, that reacheth farre in lengthe;
All kind of ware the Danes might thither bring;
It was free ground, and called the Britaines’ strength.
Watt’s Dyke, likewise, about the same was set,
Between which two, both Danes and Britaines met.”

For many years after Offa’s memorable defeat of the Britons on Rhuddlan Marsh, the history of the district conveys but little information interesting in the present day. “Wars, and rumours of wars,” are the only topics on which past historians have filled their pages in reference to this period. Rhodri Mawr (Rhoderick the Great), one of the most celebrated warriors and princes of Wales, succeeded to the sovereignty of North Wales and Powys in 843. In the year of his succession his territories were invaded by Berthred, King of Mercia, whom he defeated with great loss. Rhodri left three sons, and, according to the law of gavel-kind, he divided his dominions among his children. His son Mervyn had the principality of Powys, with the palace of Mathraval. His three sons were called y tri thywsog taleithiog, or diademed princes, from their wearing diadems of gold set with precious stones; and Anarawd, his eldest son, received a yearly tribute from the Prince of Powys. Contentions still continued, and intestine divisions kept the Britons in as violent commotion as if they were battling with their avowed enemies on the border. Mervyn did not long enjoy his dominion, as he was slain in 892 by his own subjects, headed by his brother Cadell, who took possession of the throne. The reign of Cadell was also brief, and his son Hywel Dda (Howel the Good) succeeded him. The Welsh Justinian, as Hywel has been called, died in 984, deservedly honoured by his subjects, and leaving four sons, all of whom perished in the desolating wars to which his country soon after fell a prey.

The Norman Period.

Saxon dominance was now rapidly approaching to its close; and the Britons were about to be exposed to the incursions of a new body of invaders, under the usurpation of William, surnamed the Conqueror. Bleddyn ab Cynvyn, with his brother, obtained in 1062 the sovereignty of North Wales and Powys, through the influence of the Saxon King Edward. Bitter hostilities subsequently occurred between Bleddyn and his kindred; at length the succession to the whole principality passed from his children, but Powys-land devolved to his sons, and came at length entire to Meredydd, the eldest born, after the contentions and slaughter incident in those days to such partitions. Oswestry, we are told, was called Trefred (a contraction of Tre Meredydd, Meredydd’s Town), in honour of this prince, but after his death the name was soon discontinued, and the town resumed its former appellation of Oswald’s-tree, or Oswestry. His eldest son, Madog, inherited from his father the tract known by the name of Powys Vadog, which consisted, according to the division of the times, of five cantrevs, or hundred townships; and these were subdivided into fifteen commots, or cwmwds:

CANTREVS.	CWMWDS.	COUNTIES.
Y Barwn,	Dinmael	Denbighshire.
	Edeyrnion	Merionethshire.
	Glyndyfrdwy	Ibid.
Y Rhiw,	Yale, or Ial	Denbighshire.
	Ystrad Alun, or Mold	Flintshire.
	Hope	Ibid.
Uwchnant,	Merffordd	Ibid.
	Maelor Gymraeg, or Bromfield	Denbighshire.
	Maelor Saesnaeg	Flintshire.
TREFRED,	Croes-Vaen	Denbighshire.
	Tref-y-Waun, or Chirk	Ibid.
	Croes-oswallt, or Oswestry	Shropshire.
Rhaiadr,	Mochnant-is-Rhaiadr, Cynllaeth, &c.	Denbighshire.
	Nanheudwy	Ibid.
	Whittington	Shropshire.

To Madog is assigned the honour of erecting the Castle of Oswestry. Whether he is entitled to this distinction it would be difficult now to prove. Welsh historians assert, that he built also the Castles of Overton (Flintshire) and Caereinion, and that in the former, which received the additional name of Madog, he resided. Powell says of him, that he was “ever the King of England’s friend, and was one that feared God, and relieved the poor.” Madog married Susanna, daughter of Grufydd ab Cynan, Prince of North Wales, by whom he had two sons, Grufydd Maelor and Owain ab Madog. To the first he gave the two Maelors, Yale, Hopedale, Nanheudwy, Mochnant-is-Rhaiadr, &c.: to Owain, the land of Mechain-is-Coed; and to his natural son, Owain Brogyntyn, a nobleman of distinguished talents, he granted the lordships of Edeirnion and Dinmael. The last-named Owain resided at Brogyntyn, near Oswestry, now called Porkington, whence he assumed his surname. His dagger and cup are still preserved at RÛg: and many families in Merionethshire and Denbighshire are directly descended from him. Madog’s second wife was Maud Verdon, an Englishwoman of noble lineage. He died in 1159 at Winchester, whence his body was conveyed to Meivod, in Montgomeryshire, where it was deposited in the Church of St. Mary, which he himself had built some years before. His widow is stated to have been married to William Fitz-Alan, Lord of Clun, and he, in right of his wife, obtained the town and castle of Oswestry. Fitz-Alan was a descendant of Alan, one of the companions of the Conqueror, and was the first of his name who bore the title of “Baron of Oswaldestre.” Alan was progenitor of the entire noble family which from him derived the name of Fitz-Alan, and for many succeeding centuries were the most distinguished personages in Shropshire. From this powerful race is descended the present Duke of Norfolk, who holds the title of “Baron of Oswaldestre,” in addition to his other patrician honours. His Grace’s ancestor, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, married Lady Mary, daughter of Henry, the last Earl of Arundel named Fitz-Alan, 13th Elizabeth, when the barony of “Oswaldestre” was conveyed to the Duke.

The Norman conquest was “a heavy blow and great discouragement” to the impetuous Britons. During that eventful period almost the whole of Shropshire was parcelled out, and bestowed by William the Conqueror on his kinsman, Roger de Montgomery, as a reward for his great military services in the conquest. The Earl of Shrewsbury, whilst thus taking possession of Powys, among his other newly-acquired lands, brought under his subjection the town and castle of Trefaldwyn, (from Baldwin, Montgomery’s lieutenant,) which fortress he strongly fortified, and afterwards called it after his own family name. Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester, (the founder of the Grosvenor family,) likewise did homage for Englefield and RhÛvoniog, with the country extending along the sea shore from Chester to the waters of Conway. Ralph Mortimer did the same for the territory of Elvel; as did Hugh de Lacie for the lands of Eulas; and Eustace Cruer for Mold and Hopedale. Brady relates out of Domesday, that William the Conqueror granted to Hugh Lupus North Wales in farm, at the rent of £40 per annum, besides Rhos and RhÛvoniog. These Norman Barons erected fortresses on their lands, and, so far as they were able, settled in them English and Norman defenders. In a MS., relating to the Welsh Marches, from the library of the late Philip Lloyd Fletcher, Esq., of Gwernhaylod, in Flintshire, it is stated “that about this time, Bristol, Gloucester, Worcester, Shrewsbury, and Chester were rebuilt and fortified, and formed a line of military posts upon the frontiers.” Thus the last asylum of the Welsh was invested on almost every side, or broken into by their enemies. The kingdom of North Wales, reduced to the island of Anglesey, to Merioneth and Caernarvonshire, and to part of the present counties of Denbigh and Cardigan, still preserved the national character and importance. The natives of Wales, aided by the virtue and courage of their Princes, became more formidable than ever to the English; and at times, as they acquired union with additional vigour from despair, their invaders, instead of being able to make new conquests, held those which they had already obtained by a precarious tenure. William’s policy, in giving to his barons the power to make such conquests in Wales as they were able, led to the erection of the Marches Lordships, of which Oswestry formed a part. These lordships consisted of more than a hundred petty sovereignties, and were the fruitful source of innumerable disorders, till their partial suppression in the reign of Henry VIII. Pennant says, that William’s design was, in establishing these seignories and jurisdictions, to give to those whom he had brought over to England the power of providing for themselves, and to reduce, at the same time, the opposition of the Welsh people. The precise extent of the Marches Lordships it is difficult, as we have already said, to define. During the Saxon period the Severn was considered the ancient boundary between England and Wales. The lands conquered by Offa on the western side of that river were annexed to Mercia, and afterwards incorporated with the monarchy by Alfred the Great. The term Marches signifies generally the limits or space between England and Wales, of which the western part of Shropshire, Oswestry included, formed a principal portion. Of the Norman Barons, besides the first Earl of Shrewsbury, who did homage for royal grants of territory, were Fitzalan for Oswestry and Clun; Fitz-Gwarine for Whittington; and Roger le Strange for Ellesmere. The tenure by which the Baronies Marches were held, was, that—

“in case of war the lords should send to the army a certain number of their vassals; that they should garrison their respective castles, and keep the Welsh in subjection. In return for these services the lords had an arbitrary and despotic power in their own domains. They had the power of life and death, in their respective courts, in all cases except those of high treason. In every frontier manor a gallows was erected; if any Welshman passed the boundary line fixed between the two countries, he was immediately seized and hanged. Every town within the Marches had a horseman armed with a spear, who was maintained for the express purpose of taking these offenders. If any Englishman was caught on the Welsh side of the line, he suffered a similar fate. The Welsh considered everything that they could steal from their English neighbours as lawful prize.”

After the conquest of Wales by Edward I. the Baronies Marches were continued, but under regulations somewhat different from the former. In the reign of Edward IV. they were governed by a Lord President and Council, consisting of the Chief Justice of Chester, and three Justices of Wales. In cases of emergency other parties were called in. By a statute passed in the reign of Henry VIII. the principality and dominion of Wales became formally annexed to England; and all the Welsh laws, and most of their peculiar customs and tenures, were by this statute entirely abolished. By this statute also four new counties were formed, Brecknockshire, Denbighshire, Montgomeryshire, and Radnorshire. The Marches became annexed partly to England, and partly to the new counties of Wales. The President and Council of the Marches were however allowed to continue as before, and their general court was held at Ludlow. A statute was passed in the reign of William III., by which the government of the entire principality was divided between two peers of the realm, on whom was conferred the title of Lords Lieutenant of North and South Wales. From that period the Lordship Marches were entirely abolished.

There is another salient point in the history of Wales which it will not be inappropriate here to mention. Many of our readers have heard or read of the Royal Tribes of Wales.

“The five regal Tribes, and the respective representative of each, were considered as of royal blood. The fifteen common Tribes, all of North Wales, and the respective representative of each, formed the nobility, were lords of distinct districts, and bore some hereditary office in the palace. Grufydd ab Cynan, Prince of North Wales, Rhys ab Tewdwr, of South Wales, and Bleddyn ab Cynvyn, of Powys, regulated both these classes, but did not create them; as many of the persons, placed at their head, lived before their times, and some after. Their precedence, as it stands, is very uncertain, and not governed by dates; the last of them were created by Davydd ab Owain Gwynedd, who began his reign in 1169. We are left ignorant of the form by which they were called to this rank. Mr. Vaughan, of Hengwrt, informs us that Grufydd ab Cynan, Rhys ab Tewdwr, and Bleddyn ab Cynvyn made diligent search after the arms, ensigns, and pedigrees of their ancestors, the nobility and kings of the Britons. What they discovered by their pains in any paper or records, was afterwards by the Bards digested, and put into books, and they ordained five Royal Tribes, there being only three before, from whom their posterity to this day can derive themselves, and also fifteen special Tribes, of whom the gentry of North Wales are for the most part descended!’”

It will be seen from the foregoing pages that we have abstained from all minute detail in our description of the continued struggles for mastery between the Welsh and their own kindred, as well as of the strife for power and dominion between the Cambrian princes and their foreign invaders. These scenes in the history of Wales are nothing more, to use the eloquent language of Warrington, than “a recital of reciprocal inroads and injuries—a series of objects unvaried and of little importance, which pass the eye in a succession of cold delineations, like the evanescent figures produced by the camera obscura. The characters and events are not brought distinctly into view, nor are they sufficiently explained, to enable the historian to judge of their proportions, their beauty, or defects; whence he can neither develope the principles of action, nor trace the connection of causes with effects, by leading incidents, or by the general springs which govern human affairs.” “The story of our country under its native princes,” observes another impartial writer on Welsh history, “is a wretched calendar of crimes, of usurpations, and family assassinations; and in this dismal detail we should believe ourselves rather on the Bosphorus than the banks of the Dee.” The British or Welsh rulers had doubtless much to complain of against their Roman, Saxon, and Norman invaders; but their own conduct towards their own people—to those who by affinity claimed their protection and regard—was quite as guilty as that of their foreign foes.

Throughout the entire reign of Henry I. we read in the Welsh annals of nothing but “a series of retaliated injuries arising in regular succession; evils naturally springing from the passions, where they usurp the sword of justice.” Henry died about the year 1135, and Stephen succeeded to the English throne, and was soon embarked in a sea of troubles. Engaged in continual hostilities, and in supporting a doubtful title, he prudently concluded a peace with the Welsh, and allowed them to retain the territories they had lately recovered, free of homage or tribute. The incidents of Stephen’s reign were marked by no feature of national interest; and the only reference made to it in connection with this district is William Fitz-Alan’s espousal of the claim made by the Empress Maud to the English crown. His union with other noblemen, to dethrone Stephen, exposed him to danger, and he was compelled to leave the kingdom, abandoning his lands and other property to the incensed monarch. Whilst an exile from England he remained faithful to the interests of the Empress; and on his return to this country on the death of Stephen, and the accession to the throne of Henry II., he reaped the reward of his spirit and fidelity, by receiving back all his forfeited honours and estates, including the Castles of Oswestry and Clun. Of Oswestry Castle we shall speak particularly in subsequent pages. Of Clun we may at present say, that it remained in the direct line of William Fitz-Alan down to the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when the last Earl died. By the marriage of Mary Fitz-Alan with Philip Howard, the son of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, it became vested in that noble family. From them it passed to the Walcotts, and afterwards, by purchase, to Lord Clive, in whose family it continues. The Duke of Norfolk still retains the title of “Baron of Clun,” as well as that of “Baron of Oswaldestre.”

Henry was an inveterate and formidable enemy to the interests of Wales. He speedily employed his utmost force in attempting to subjugate the Cambrian people; and it is recorded of Madog ab Meredydd, Prince of Powys, who had united with the enemies of his country, that he incited the English king to an invasion of North Wales. Henry listened to the solicitations of the Powysian prince, and eagerly exerted every means for the conquest of the country. He quickly raised a powerful army, and marched without delay into North Wales. Mathew Paris states that the levy of Henry, raised at this time, amounted to 30,000 men. Owain Gwynedd, in this campaign, gallantly led the Welsh, and in one of the actions, at Coed Euloe, near Hawarden, Flintshire, the monarch himself, who had encamped near the field of battle, escaped from the hands of the Welsh with the greatest difficulty. The English forces, having been strengthened, pursued the Welsh, and at length Prince Owain, fearful that his army would perish for want of provisions, concluded a peace with the King of England. He himself and his chieftains submitted to do homage to Henry, and to yield up the castles and districts in North Wales which, in the last reign, had been obtained from the English. Lord Lyttleton tells us, that to complete this humiliating position, Owain was obliged to deliver up two of his sons as pledges of his future obedience. The year after this important event a general peace took place between England and Wales; the princes and all the chieftains of South Wales repaired to the court of England, where Henry granted peace, on the Welsh doing homage for their own territories, and formally ceding to him the districts recovered from the English in the last reign. This peaceful state of things was but of short duration. Rhys, the son of Grufydd ab Rhys, immediate heir to the sovereign power of South Wales, having been outraged by several English lords, threw off his allegiance, commenced a revolt, and rallied around him a numerous force, which perplexed and baffled the English monarch. Shortly afterwards, fired by the gallant example of Rhys, the Prince of North Wales (Owain Gwynedd), and all his sons, his brother Cadwaladr, and the chieftains of Powys, united with him, in the endeavour to regain their independence and honour. After some slight skirmishes with the Welsh, Henry gathered together a formidable force, with which he marched into Powys, breathing slaughter and extermination against the inhabitants. All the historical writers, in describing this fearful onslaught, admit that few events of ancient times were more deeply stained with the blood of innocence. The English army, formed of the choicest troops, from Normandy, Anjou, Flanders, Brittany, and other territories which Henry possessed in France, entered the Welsh confines at Oswestry, where it was encamped for some time. The forces of North Wales were collected under the command of Owain Gwynedd and his brother Cadwaladr; the army of South Wales was headed by the chivalrous Rhys ab Grufydd; and the men of Powys were led by Owain Cyveiliog, and the sons of Madog ab Meredydd. The combined forces of the Welsh assembled at Corwen, where they awaited the approach of the English. Henry, burning with ardour to attack the enemy, marched his army to the banks of the Ceiriog, near the present village of Chirk, and at once ordered that the woods on each side of the river be cut down, to prevent ambuscades and sudden approaches of the enemy. It is related by some writers, that on the passage of the Ceiriog Henry was in imminent danger of losing his life: attempting to force a bridge, an arrow aimed at him by the hand of a Welshman must inevitably have pierced his body, if Hubert de St. Clare, Constable of Colchester, perceiving the danger, had not in a moment sprang before his sovereign and received it into his own bosom, and thereby met with his death-wound. Whilst the English soldiers were employed in felling the woods, a detachment of the Welsh forces forded the river, and suddenly attacked the van of Henry’s army, composed of pikemen, considered to be the most daring and gallant portion of his soldiers. A fierce battle ensued; many were killed on both sides, but at length Henry gained the passage, and advanced onward to the Berwyn mountains, to recruit his troops. There he remained in camp for several days. The Welsh were posted on the mountain-heights opposite, watching with lynx-eyed care every movement of the enemy. They succeeded in cutting off his supplies, and his army was reduced to extreme distress and privation, for want of food for man and horse. To increase his difficulties, sudden and heavy rains fell, which rendered the country on the Berwyn side so slippery and dangerous, that neither men nor horses could stand on their feet. Torrents of water, from the incessant rains, poured down from the mountains into the vale where Henry was encamped; and, unable to maintain his ground amidst all these unexpected disasters, he retired, with great loss of men, and, what was more annoying to his vaunting spirit, with defeat and disgrace. Fired with revenge, and urged by the barbarism which ever marks the tyrant, he commanded that the eyes of all the hostages which had been placed in his hands should be put out. The two sons of Rhys ab Grufydd, Prince of South Wales, and the two sons also of Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, became the unfortunate victims of Henry’s cruelty. Holinshead, in his Chronicles, tells us, that besides these young chieftains, the atrocious monarch caused the sons and daughters of several Welsh lords to be treated with the same severity; ordering the eyes of the young striplings to be pecked out of their heads, and the ears of the gentlewomen to be stuffed.

In the annals of Wales this battle is ranked among the brightest achievements of the Welsh, in their long-continued struggles for liberty. The site is known by the mournful designation of Adwy’r Beddau, or the Pass of the Graves. The conflict is called in most of the ancient books, “The Battle of Crogen.” Yorke observes, “it has been erroneously said that the term Crogen was used in contempt and derision of the Welsh; but that was not the truth: the English meant to express by it animosity, and the desire of revenge.” “Many of the English,” he adds, “were slain, and buried in Offa’s Dyke, below Chirk Castle, and the part so filled up is to be seen, and forms a passage over it, called to this day Adwy’r Beddau, or the Pass of the Graves.” The late Mr. William Price, in an annotated edition of his “History of Oswestry,” published in 1815, has the following note on the Battle of Crogen:—

“Owain Gwynedd slept at Tyn-y-Rhos, the present residence of Richard Phillips, Esq., who has still in preservation the bedstead he at that time lay upon. Likewise a Deed or Lease of a piece of land, of five acres, for 2s. 8d. per year; with a cock and hen at Christmas, and a man a day in the harvest; which still preserves the name.”

Turning for a moment to the civil government of Oswestry, it may be mentioned that in the reign of Henry II, the first Charter was granted to Oswestry, by William, Earl of Arundel. The Welsh called it “Siarter Cwtta,” the Short Charter. It was a Charter of protection, of which there were many granted about this period. It states, “I have received in protection my Burgesses of Blanc-Minster. Richard de Chambre was Constable of White-Minster. Thomas de Rossall held Rossall, of John Fitz-Alan, in chief, of one knight’s fee at White-Minster.” Guto (y Glyn), an excellent poet who flourished from 1430 to 1460, a native of Llangollen, and domestic bard to the Abbot of Llanegwestl, or Valle Crucis, near that romantic town, speaks of White-Minster in his days. He says, “I know not of any Convent of Monks superior to White-Minster.”

About the year 1188, William Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, gave a sumptous banquet in the Castle of Oswestry, to Giraldus Cambrensis, and Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, on their return from Wales, the bleak and barren mountains of which they had just travelled over, in an attempt to incite the people to the intended Crusade to the Holy Land. Giraldus seems to have considered that the entertainment given by the Norman Earl was too luxurious for saintly personages. He speaks, however, with much complacency of the comfortable accommodations provided for him and the Archbishop at Shrewsbury, whither they repaired from this town. “From Oswestry,” says he, “that Prelate and his retinue came after Easter (1188) to Slopesbury, where they remained some days to recruit and refresh themselves, and many assumed the cross in obedience to the precepts of the Archbishop, and the gracious sermon of the Archdeacon of St. David’s. Here also they excommunicated Oen de Cevelioc (Owain Cyveiliog, Prince of Powys), because he alone of all the Welsh princes, had not advanced to meet the Archbishop.” The visit of Giraldus and Baldwin to Oswestry might have been induced by a two-fold motive, namely, to partake of the princely hospitality of Fitz-Alan, in his baronial castle, and to hold “ghostly communication” with Regner, Bishop of St. Asaph, who at this period resided in Oswaldestre.

The succeeding portion of Henry II’s long reign was largely occupied with plans and movements to subdue the Welsh princes and their people. After repeated struggles, the English monarch saw, with exulting spirit, that he had reduced Cambrian independence to a bye-word of contempt, by seducing them from patriotism and virtue, and rendering them a disunited and improvident people. When he had accomplished this signal victory over them, and hoped to enjoy further years of sovereign power in comparative ease and tranquillity, the fate even of monarchs was dealt out to him. His mortal career was ended, and he was “gathered to his fathers:”—

“The glories of our blood and state are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings.”

Henry was succeeded by Richard, his son, surnamed Coeur-de-Lion, whose reign continued for about ten years, when he was slain at the siege of Chalons, in France, and John, his brother, ascended the throne. During Richard’s monarchy the town of Oswestry was not marked by any event worthy the record of the contemporary historian.

The reign of John was distinguished by strong enmity to the Welsh. In 1211 he assembled a large army at Oswestry, and was there joined by many of the Welsh Chieftains, his vassals, with whom he marched to Chester; resolving to exterminate the people of North Wales. It is revolting to trace the history of this feeble-minded and capricious king. His reckless attacks upon Wales, and his inveterate quarrel with his son-in-law, Prince Llywelyn ab Jorwerth, added to his troubles, and probably hastened his end. As a last effort against Wales, resenting Llywelyn’s stern defence of Cambrian independence, John demolished the castles of Radnor and Hay; and then, proceeding to the Marches, he set fire to Oswestry Castle, then under the governorship of John Fitz-Alan, (who had united with the barons of England in renouncing allegiance to the English Monarch, on his refusal to confirm their constitutional rights,) and burnt it to the ground.

In the reign of Henry III. John Fitz-Alan, who was reconciled to the king, procured for his Manor of Blanc-Minster the grant of a Fair on the eve, the day, and the day after St. Andrew’s feast. The Bailiffs were also made clerks of the market, with privilege to imprison any person detected in forestalling; for which they were paid twenty marks as a consideration. These petty officers, “dressed in a little brief authority,” abused their power, and gave occasion to frequent remonstrances from the inhabitants. Powel, who seems to have paid great deference to “the powers that be,” concludes, not very logically, we think, that it was “no wonder that so many of the grievances which the Welsh so much complained of to Edward I. should originate from this place.”

The historic facts recorded subsequent to this period are brief and meagre. We are told that in 1233 Oswestry was again destroyed by fire. Llywelyn ab Jorwerth had just made an inroad into the county of Brecknock, destroying all the towns and fortresses belonging to that territory; he then invested the castle, lay before it a month, raised the siege, finding his efforts to be fruitless, set fire to the town, and pursued his way to the Marches. Conflagration and ruin marked his progress: he burnt the town of Clun, in Salop, demolished Redde Castle, in Powys, and laid Oswestry in ashes. A few months afterwards, Llywelyn and Lord Pembroke, having joined their forces, made another inroad into the English Marches, and having rendered all that country a scene of devastation, they finished their fiery career by laying part of the town of Shrewsbury (Frankwell, it is supposed,) in ashes.

Early in the reign of Edward I. that monarch was intent on bowing the stubborn neck of Llywelyn ab Grufydd (the last native sovereign Prince of Wales). Llywelyn was refractory, and ambitious to maintain his order. Edward summoned him to a parliament in London, but Llywelyn refused to comply with the royal command. In reply, he offered (Oct. 14, 1276–7,) to repair to Montgomery, or to “the White Monastery of John Fitz-Alan,” as Oswestry was then called, but declined a journey to the metropolis of England. On the receipt of this answer, by which Edward, resolute to exact a personal obedience, was, or affected to be, greatly enraged, the Parliament immediately condemned Llywelyn as a rebel, for his non-appearance. The melancholy end of the Welsh prince is well known. “If,” says an elegant historian, “the valour of Llywelyn, his talents, and his patriotism, had been exhibited upon a more splendid theatre,—on the plains of Marathon, or in the straits of ThermopylÆ,—his name would have been recorded in the classic page, and his memory revered, as an illustrious hero, and as a gallant assertor of the rights of nature.”

Edward did not confine his attention to Wales only, but extended it to the Borders, and included in his eagle-eyed glance the town of Oswestry. “Provision was made,” says Pennant, “against future insults; for in the reign of Edward I. the town (Oswestry) was surrounded with walls. This happened when that politic monarch meditated the conquest of Wales; he therefore thought proper to secure this town, one of the keys of the country, with proper defence.” He commenced the erection of the walls in 1277. They are said to have been about a mile in circumference, with an intrenchment on the outside, which could be filled with water from the numerous streams in the vicinity. Edward’s order to put Oswestry into a state of defence issued from Shrewsbury—the seat of his government for several months—and his letters patent, directed to the Bailiffs and Burgesses of the ancient town, are worthy of record, as they show the mode in which taxation was levied in early days. This curious document is as follows:—

“Of the Murage of Oswaldestre. The King to the Bailiffs and Burgesses, and the other good men of Oswaldestre greeting.

“Know ye that we have granted in aid of enclosing our town of Oswaldestre, that from the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle in the twelvth year of our reign to the end of twenty years thence ensuing, ye may take in the same Town, to the reparation of the walls of the same Town, of every horse-load of corn to be sold, one halfpenny; of every horse and mare, ox and cow sold, one halfpenny; of every hide of horse and mare, ox and cow, fresh, salt, or tanned, one farthing; of every cart bringing salted flesh to sell, twopence; of five bacons sold, one halfpenny; of a salmon fresh sold, one halfpenny; of ten sheep, goats, or pigs sold, one penny; of ten fleeces of wool, one penny; of one hundred skins of sheep, goats, stags, hind bucks and does, one penny; of every hundred skins of lambs, kids, hares, rabbits, foxes, cats, and squirrels, one halfpenny; of every cart of salt to sell, one penny; of every horse-load of salt to sell by the week, one farthing; of every horse-load of cloth to sell, one penny; of every entire cloth to sell in the town of Gloucester, one penny; of every cloth of silk brocaded and diapered with gold, one penny; of every cloth of silk without gold and chef de cendall, one halfpenny; of every dole of wine to sell, two pence; of every horse-load of honey to sell, one penny; of every dole of honey to sell, four pence; of every sack of wool to sell, four pence; of every truss of cloth to sell brought by cart, four pence; of every horse-load of cloth to sell, or other diverse and small things coming to be sold in the same town, one halfpenny; of every cart of iron to sell, one penny; of every horse-load of iron to sell, one halfpenny; of every carriage of lead to sell, two pence; of tallow and lard to sell, one farthing; of every hundred of alum and copperas to sell, one halfpenny; of two thousand onions, a farthing; of every thousand of herrings to sell, one halfpenny; of every hundred of boards to sell, one halfpenny; of every mill sold, one penny; of every thousand of laths sold, one penny; of every new cart sold, one halfpenny; of every hundred of faggots to sell, one halfpenny; of every quarter of salt, one farthing; of every twelve horse-loads of coal sold, one halfpenny; of every thousand of all manner of nails to sell, except cart nails, one farthing; of a thousand of cart nails to sell, one halfpenny; of every hundred of horse shoes and clouts to carts to sell, one halfpenny; for every truss of any sort of merchandise coming for sale to the aforesaid town, of the value of two shillings, one farthing; of every cauldron sold to brew, one penny; of every quarter of oatmeal to sell, one halfpenny: And we therefore command that ye take the said custom to the end of the term aforesaid, but the term of the said twenty years being compleat, the said custom ceases and is done away. In witness, &c.”

Pennant states that the walls were begun in the sixth of Edward I., and that “the murage or toll was granted on the inhabitants of the county, which lasted for six years, in which time it may be supposed the walls were completed.”

Archbishop Peckham visited Oswestry, June 12, 1284. He was received with great respect by Anian, Bishop of St. Asaph, the clergy, and others. Anian obtained from the king a confirmation of the rights and privileges of his church, and received from John Fitz-Alan, Earl of Arundel, and Baron of Oswestry and Clun, the grant to his church of one hundred acres of land at St. Martins, paying yearly at Midsummer, for ever, a pair of gilt spurs; with the condition, that neither the bishop nor his successors should alienate the same. This grant is dated at Album Monasterium, 1271. Richard, son of the said John Fitz-Alan, afterwards confirmed it, and also gave forty-five acres more, with the manor-house belonging thereto. Anian had a long dispute at Rome respecting the placing of a vicar in Blanc-Monasterium, the tithes of which his predecessor had given to the Abbey of Shrewsbury. The issue was, that the abbot, for the peaceable enjoyment of his tithes, gave the whole of his lands at St. Martins, upon paying two Welsh knives yearly. These said knives, if now produced at Sheffield, would doubtless disturb the risible faculties of the keen knife-manufacturers there.Edward II. was much annoyed and harassed in the latter part of his reign, partly from his want of fidelity to many of his most distinguished nobles, the two Mortimers, uncle and nephew, among their number. A revolution broke out against the king, in 1325, concocted, it is said, by the queen and her favourite, Roger Mortimer, Lord of Wigmore, in which the French monarch also took part. A strong feeling for and against Edward was manifested in Shrewsbury, where the Mortimers were well known. Edmund, Earl of Arundel, was one of the few peers who had preserved their loyalty to the crown. He assembled a multitude of his Welsh tenantry at Oswestry, with a view of seizing Shrewsbury for the king. Arundel was, however, apprehended near Shrewsbury, with certain of his adherents, after an obstinate struggle. The Earl was taken from that town to Hereford, where he expiated his loyalty on the scaffold. For this “service” the “good men of Salop” had all the goods and chattels found upon him. After his execution, the queen, to show her attachment to her paramour, Lord Mortimer, obtained the Castle of Oswestry for that favourite. In 1324, Edmund, Earl of Arundel, granted two shops in Leg-street, to the burgesses of Oswestry for ever, on payment of 13s. 4d. yearly. This grant is witnessed by “Lord Richard, Abbot of Haggemon,” and others, and “dated at Oswaldestre, on the feast of St. Michael, in the 18th year of the reign of King Edward, the son of King Edward.”

Edward III.’s reign was long and glorious. It was distinguished by the ever-memorable battle of Cressy. Part of the inhabitants of this town doubtless contributed to the victory thus obtained; for in 1346 the king directed Richard Fitz-Alan to raise two hundred of his vassals from Oswestry and Clun, to attend him in the French wars.

In 1397 Richard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, was attainted and executed, when Richard II. seized all his lands and manors, and granted them to William le Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire. In the Historia Regum AngliÆ we find the following bit of superstition entertained at this period. On this occasion the Earl of Arundel must, of course, have deeply regretted his contempt of the marvellous stone of which John Ross, the Antiquary, of Warwick, writes. “The earl,” says this grave author, “kept a raven in his court; and one day, as he was playing at chess in the garden, the bird,” or, as Ross suggests, “a spirit in that form, brought up (eructavit) a stone having the virtue of invisibility. The earl set no value upon it, contrary to the advice of his nobles; and soon after, being arrested by strong hand, he was committed to ward, and finally beheaded.”

The king, having put down all opposition to certain measures which he was resolved to carry, by the execution of Arundel, and the murder of his uncle of Gloucester, adjourned his Parliament at Westminster to Shrewsbury, and from thence to Oswestry. An apprehension of tumult among the Earl of Arundel’s tenantry in this county, from his violent death, and the seizure of his estates, was probably the reason for making both Shrewsbury and Oswestry the scene of that national assembly. The Parliament met at Shrewsbury Jan. 29, 1397–8, and was designated The Great Parliament. In this regal visit he displayed great magnificence, and entertained the members with a sumptuous banquet, he appearing among the people in his costly royal robes. Whilst in Shrewsbury Richard made Chester a Principality, and annexed to it the Castle of Holt, the lordship of Bromfield and Yale, Chirkland, and various other places in Wales and on the Borders. During the proceedings in Parliament it was ascertained that deadly hatred subsisted between the Dukes of Hereford and Norfolk. These noblemen had been jointly concerned in the impeachment of Arundel and his fellow-sufferers, at Westminster. Norfolk, touched by remorse for his share in the ruin of a patriotic peer, or desirous of ensnaring his late confederate, who had charged Norfolk with using words disrespectful to the king, fell into open quarrel with Hereford, who made the matter a subject of public accusation in the Parliament against his antagonist. The king, unwilling that any discourse about himself should be made the subject of open discussion, suddenly closed the proceedings of Parliament, and adjourned to Oswestry. In the assembly there the dispute between the two Dukes was recommenced, and the king resolved that it should be ended by a duel between the belligerent parties at Coventry. The combat did not take place, as the Duke of Norfolk refused to fight; upon which Norfolk was banished from the kingdom for ever, and Hereford for ten years. As a mark of the royal favour, Richard granted, before the Parliament closed, the first Charter conferred upon Oswestry, by which the town was incorporated by the name of “The Bailiffs and Burgesses of Oswestry, infra Palatinatum CestriÆ in Marchia inter Angliam et Walliam.” The Charter, which was founded upon the one granted just before at Shrewsbury, exempted the Burgesses from all contributions and exactions whatsoever, throughout the kingdom, the city of London excepted. It bears date, August 14, 1399.

The close of Richard’s kingly rule was near. His love of idle show and magnificence, his delight in popular applause, the buzzing about him of parasites and flatterers, and his indulgence in pleasures, were followed by a brief scene of bitter existence, which ended in degrading humiliation and painful death. The eyes of Henry of Lancaster, Duke of Hereford, had long been directed towards the throne, and he actively employed his agents to place him upon it. The classic historians of Shrewsbury assure us that, either from the disgust occasioned by outrages perpetrated upon the Burgesses, by Richard’s body-guard, or disorderly multitudes brought into the town during the sittings of his Parliament, “it is certain that the revolution which placed Henry of Lancaster on the throne had the entire concurrence of the inhabitants of these parts (Shropshire). When the Duke proceeded into Wales to circumvent the unhappy Richard, he passed through Ludlow and Shrewsbury, and was joined here (Shrewsbury) by the Lords Scales and Bardolph, Sir Robert and Sir John Legh, and other gentlemen of Cheshire.” Richard, after suffering much indignity, was secured a prisoner in Flint Castle, by the great conspirator Lancaster, and from thence was led in the Duke’s train to Chester. Here Bolingbroke delivered the subdued monarch to the Duke of Gloucester and Thomas, Earl of Arundel, saying, “Here is the murderer of your father, you must be answerable for him.” He was subsequently conveyed to Pontefract Castle, where he was basely assassinated by a band of armed ruffians, four of whom he killed with a battle-axe before he fell.

The untimely death of Richard caused an immediate change in the government of Oswestry. Its newly-created lord, the Earl of Wiltshire, fell a victim to popular fury, and Thomas, son of the attainted Earl of Arundel, was restored to the manorial rights and dignities of Oswestry. The Earl of Huntington, the king’s brother, fled into the county of Essex; but passing through a village belonging to the Countess of Hereford (sister of the deceased Richard, Earl of Arundel), he was discovered, and arrested. The countess apprized the new monarch, Henry, of the capture, and desired him to send to her the young Earl of Arundel, her nephew, that he might witness the mode in which she intended to avenge herself of her brother’s death. The Earl of Arundel posted to the place where Huntington was prisoner, and loaded him with reproaches. The countess delivered the captive nobleman, bound with chains, into the hands of eight thousand of her vassals, whom she called together for the occasion. The wretched prisoner, struck with terror at the preparations made to take away his life, sued for mercy, and protested that he had not committed the foul act of which he was accused. Had the countess restrained her rage, and listened to reason and justice, she would have found that Huntington was not a guilty murderer, but that Richard, Earl of Arundel, was brought to the block mainly by the treachery of the Earl of Nottingham. Heedless of his protestations and cries for mercy, she commanded her vassals to cut him to pieces. His assembled executioners are said to have taken pity upon him; whilst the countess and young earl strenuously urged his death. Maddened by rage, she exclaimed, “Curse on ye all, villains; you have not the courage to put a man to death.” This violent exclamation roused an esquire, who offered himself as executioner. He seized the hatchet, and approached Huntington, but was so touched with his tender complaints, that he trembled with emotion; and returning to the countess, his eyes being filled with tears, he said, “I would not put the earl to death for all the gold in the world.” The countess, full of indignation, looking at him “unutterable things,” exclaimed, “Do what thou hast promised, or thy own head shall be cut off.” When he heard this he was so afraid that he knew not what to do, and approaching the earl again said, “Sir, I entreat your pardon; forgive me your death.” He then struck him a violent blow on the shoulder, which felled him to the ground. Huntington sprang up again, and said, “Alas, man, why do you treat me thus? For God’s sake kill me more easily.” The esquire then struck him eight times on the shoulder, being so terrified that he could not aim his blows at the neck. Another blow followed, which fell on the neck, when the wretched nobleman, suffering pain and agony from his cruel treatment, cried out, “Alas, dear friend, have pity upon me, and free me from my pain.” The executioner then seized a knife, and cut the Earl’s throat, separating his head from the body.

The Glyndwr or Glendower insurrection arose about this period, and the town of Oswestry greatly suffered from it. Owain Glyndwr was descended on the mother’s side from Llywelyn, the last sovereign Prince of Wales, his father, Grufydd Vychan, having married Helen, a grand-daughter of that puissant chieftain. He studied the law at one of the Inns of Court in London, and finally was admitted as a barrister. He may have quitted his profession, for we find he was appointed an esquire to Richard II., to whom he was devotedly attached, and whose fortunes he followed even to Flint Castle, and till his royal master’s household was dissolved. He had been knighted by King Richard, and was married early in life to Margaret, daughter to Sir David Hanmer, of Hanmer, in Flintshire, one of the Justices of the Court of the King’s Bench. His resentment against Henry IV. was strong and implacable. He had suffered deep private wrongs from the usurpation of the king, and burned with indignation to avenge himself.

Owain Glyndwr’s sudden appearance as a military leader of his countrymen roused their ancient martial spirit, and thousands flocked to his standard. In the year 1400 the town of Oswestry was burned, the Welsh having attacked it; and in 1403 Owain Glyndwr assembled his forces in the town, that he might join Lord Percy (surnamed Henry Hotspur) against the king. The Welsh leader dispatched to the “tented field” his first division only, amounting to 4000 men, whose prowess was distinguished on the day of battle. The great body of his troops, about 12,000 in number, did not approach nearer than Oswestry, they having been detained at the siege of Kidweli Castle. It is thought by some writers, that Owain did not remain inactively at Oswestry. Gough, the historian, mentions, that about two miles from Shrewsbury, where the Pool road diverges from that leading to Oswestry, “there stands an ancient decayed Oak Tree, of which there is a tradition, that Glyndwr ascended it to reconnoitre; but finding that the king was in great force, and that the Earl of Northumberland had not joined his son, he fell back to Oswestry, and immediately afterwards retreated into Wales.”

In the “Beauties of England and Wales,” the Shropshire history edited by Mr. Rylance, we find the following passage on Glyndwr’s alledged abandonment of Hotspur “at his utmost need:”—

“The army of Glyndwr, amounting to twelve thousand men, had remained inactive at Oswestry during the battle. There is a tradition that he himself quitted that place in disguise, and hastening to Shrewsbury, hid himself in a gigantic oak, which commanded a full view of the field; and that after witnessing the discomfiture of his friends, returning with speed to Oswestry, he withdrew his forces into Wales, whither he was pursued by Prince Henry.”

Hulbert, too, in his “History of the Town and County of Salop,” referring to the famous battle, says, “Owain Glyndwr beheld the battle of Shrewsbury, instead of sustaining, by his arms, the cause of his ally, the gallant and intrepid Hotspur.” Another writer on this memorable event declares, that had Glyndwr brought up his reserved troops when Hotspur by his impetuous onslaughts was within an ace of victory, or when the brave warrior was slain, the battle would have been won, and the royal forces entirely routed. Taking these allegements to be truths, Glyndwr perpetrated a baseness which all faithful men must condemn.

Many writers have taken pains to solve the question, “Did Owain Glyndwr act merely as an idle spectator at the battle of Shrewsbury; or did he actually lead his corps de reserve to Shelton, to aid the gallant Hotspur?” No author that we have read has settled that doubtful inquiry. Owain’s hatred of Henry, and his ardent efforts to give freedom to his countrymen, with his chivalrous bearing in the rebellion he had created, would suggest no evidence that Glyndwr was pusillanimous; and yet history furnishes alleged facts strongly reflecting upon his heroic spirit, and almost charging him with craven cowardice. To conclude that Glyndwr was actuated by base and unmanly curiosity in perching himself upon a branch of the Shelton Oak would be to brand his name with infamy; and yet, if he were espying the battle from that famous tree, his troops being close in reserve, but not in action, an accusation no less severe must ever rest upon his character as a chieftain and a man. On this interesting subject, which will always engage the attention of historical readers, a poet of bright fancy and manly sentiment—Dovaston of Westfelton—has given sarcastic expression to an opinion, in a Miltonic sonnet on the Shelton Oak, that Owain Glyndwr, at the battle of Shrewsbury, was a traitor to gallantry and faith:—

“Tradition says, and why not trust Tradition,
When many a haunt breathes, hallowed by her song,
From this Great Oak, backed by twelve thousand men,
Wrung at their country’s wrongs and murdered king,
Glyndwr, the wise, the bountiful, the brave,
Beheld young Percy fall: and conquest crown
The perjured Bolingbroke.—‘Bright youth, he cried,
Thy spur is cold. One thoughtless act hath lost
An Empire’s tide. Mark what the great have said—
‘The better part of valour is discretion,’
For safe on prudence every good attends.”

“The Battle of Shrewsbury” is not only “clad,” as the same poet fancifully describes, “in cold-hearted History’s homely weeds,” but “garlanded with Avon’s dewy flowers.” The conflict is part of the history of this district; and the narrative we subjoin, from the able pens of the historians of Shrewsbury, will attract the attention of all who value “pure English, undefiled:”—

“Of the famous and severely-contested battle which ensued under the walls of our town, the awful prelude to so many more between the rival houses, through the remainder of the century, we have five contemporary and perhaps independent narratives; but one of them is a mass of errors, and another extremely succinct, and of the others only one is circumstantial: nor is any of them sufficient to satisfy the minute curiosity of the local historian: but the best account that can be drawn from a comparison of the whole, supplied in some instances by a consideration of the ground, and in a few others by modest conjecture, shall be laid before the reader as the conclusion of the present chapter.

“We are unable to trace the progress of Hotspur’s long march from the North to Shrewsbury, a journey of not less than 250 miles. He probably set out in the beginning of July; and skirting along the eastern side of Cheshire, where his army received a considerable augmentation, passed through Stafford, and was joined there by his uncle the earl of Worcester. The king, aware of his intention to gain possession of Shrewsbury, and desirous of cutting off his junction with Glendower, pursued him with hasty marches. We find his majesty on the 16th of July at Burton-upon-Trent, and on the 17th at Lichfield: whence, finding that he could not overtake his enemy, he hastened on to reach Shrewsbury before him. He would naturally take the Watling Street road, and enter this town over the Abbey Bridge. The route of Hotspur was more to the north, in order to keep up a communication with the Severn, so important for his junction with Glendower. In all probability he marched through Newport, by High Ercall and Haghmond Hill; and hoped to gain admittance through the North or Castle Gate. The king arrived just in time to save the town: he entered it only a few hours before Hotspur, who reached the Castle Foregate on the evening of Friday, July 19th, and the king’s forces could not have advanced from Lichfield before the morning of that day. They were certainly here before Percy: for, aware of the intention of that young nobleman, and desirous to save the Castle from his attack, they set fire to that extensive suburb, and marched out of the Castle gates to offer him battle. Hotspur, unwilling to bring his army into action at the close of a toilsome march, and learning, from the royal banner which waved on the walls, that the king was in possession of the town, called off his followers from the attack, and retired to the Bull-field, an extensive common which stretched from Upper Berwick to the East. He thus protected his rear by the woody and impervious precipices extending to Leaton shelf, and had the river not only on his side, but also, if it had not entirely deserted its ancient channel under Cross-hill, (as there is reason to believe it had not,) in his front also. This position enabled him likewise to communicate readily over that stream by the ford of Shelton with the forces of Glendower, when they should arrive, as he hoped, on the opposite bank. Here he passed the night in council. His army consisted of 14,000 chosen men, of whom a considerable part were of the county of Chester, at that time eminent for its skill in archery; but, if Hall is correct, the royal army was nearly double that number; for he writes that above 40,000 men were assembled on both parts, and every circumstance of the battle proves that the king was at the head of a very superior force. His situation was, however, by no means devoid of anxiety. He must have been conscious how slender the title was which he possessed to the throne: and how ill-disposed his peerage of the realm were to maintain him upon it. From the Castle he might view, as the dawn arose, the plain which stretched to the north glittering with hostile arms: while the dreadful Glendower was believed to be in full march from Oswestry, to join the rebels with his Welsh forces. But the difficulties of the crisis only sufficed to call forth his energies and display his talents.

“Henry was himself a distinguished warrior. In earlier life he had, in company with his princely uncle the duke of Gloucester, travelled into the north of Europe in quest of martial glory; and under the banners of the renowned Teutonic order had made a glorious campaign against the Pagans of Lithuania. He was still in the vigour of life, being much under forty years of age, and an adversary every way worthy of the gallant Percy; whom, relying upon the superiority of his numbers, he determined, if possible, to force to an engagement, before that nobleman should receive his reinforcements from Wales or the north. By break of day, therefore, he dispatched, it is probable, a strong force, under the nominal command, for it could be no more, of the young prince, the future hero of Agincourt, but then a youth of fourteen years, to come up with Hotspur at Berwick, if possible. He himself, with the main body, appears to have marched out on the Hadnall road, ready to proceed as occasion might demand, either to the north of Cross Hill and Almond Pool, and close the rebels between his two divisions; or else to advance further on upon that road, where it branches off to Shawbury, with the view of cutting off their retreat, if Hotspur, aware of his design, should attempt to march to the east. It happened as the king anticipated. Hotspur, on his advance, broke up in some disorder, and marched by Harlescot and Abright Hussey to Hately-field, which stretches from thence eastwards. Here, however, finding it impossible to avoid an engagement, on account, as we may suppose, of the obstruction to his retreat presented by the king’s movement above mentioned, he made his stand in the rear of a field of peas nearly ripe; behind which he stationed his army, and hoped thereby to deter the king from advancing over a tract which must necessarily impede his operations.

“He then addressed his little army in a short harangue, of which Walsingham has preserved the heads. ‘We must desist,’ said he, ‘from any further attempt to retreat, and turn our arms on those that come against us. Ye see the royal banner, nor is there time to seek a passage even though we wished it. Stand, therefore, with steadfast hearts: for this day shall either promote us all, if we conquer; or deliver us from an usurper, if we fall: and it is better to die in battle for the common wealth, than after battle by the sentence of our foe:” and with this, to support the courage of his men by proving his design to fight to the outrance, he dispatched two of his esquires, Knayton and Salvayn, with that strange defiance, in which he loads the king with the most horrid crimes. * * * *

“No one has informed us how the king received this furious manifesto. He had something else to engage his attention. He proceeded to marshal his forces, dividing them into two columns, or wedges. Of one of these he took the command himself, and entrusted the other to his son. The front rank of his own column was led on by his nephew the young earl of Stafford, a soldier of conspicuous valour, on whom he had that morning conferred the high office of constable of England, recently enjoyed by the earl of Northumberland. Previous to the final onset, the king, in compliance with the customs of chivalry, bestowed the honour of knighthood on certain of his most distinguished esquires. Hotspur, perceiving that an engagement was unavoidable, called for his favourite sword. His attendants informed him that it was left behind at Berwick, of which village it does not appear that he had till then learned the name. At these words he turned pale, and said, ‘I perceive that my plough is drawing to its last furrow, for a wizard told me in Northumberland that I should perish at Berwick: which I vainly interpreted of that town in the North.’ His courage did not, however, yield to the impressions of superstition; he rallied his spirits, and arranged his troops with his usual ability: assigning their respective stations to his uncle Worcester, the Scottish earl of Douglas, his recent captive at Halidown, sir Richard Venables, baron of Kinderton, Hugh Brow, Hugh Vernon, and others. His troops appear to have been chiefly stationed on the north side of the spot now occupied by the church in a field still called the Hateleys: on the east side of the church is a field denominated the King’s croft, in which, it may be presumed, were ranged those which the king commanded in person. These positions exactly agree with the objects which we have assigned above to the respective leaders; and lend, it is hoped, some confirmation to the conjectural part of the preceding narration.

“While the hostile armies, drawn up in battle array facing each other, waited, with mute expectation, the sound of the trumpet, the dreadful signal for combat, two venerable divines, Thomas Prestbury, lord abbot of Salop, and the clerk of the privy seal, advanced out of the royal army, and proceeded towards that of Percy. The king, desirous to spare the blood of his subjects, offered him and his adherents pardon and peace, and redress of all grievances of which they could justly complain. Hotspur was touched by these unexpected overtures, made under circumstances of such numerical inequality, and requested his uncle of Worcester to repair to the royal presence in company of these holy men, and state the grounds on which he had taken up arms. The king, we may suppose, was in his turn somewhat softened by the sight of the earl, who had been so recently engaged in the domestic office of governor to the prince of Wales; and a recollection of the obligations he had received from the Percy family might mix itself with his other reflections. It is certain that to the remonstrances of Worcester, delivered in a fierce and haughty tone, he listened with respect, and replied with a condescension which, in the opinion of the spectators, was somewhat unbefitting the royal dignity. A contemporary writer has preserved, though with a mistake of the person, the dialogue supposed to have passed between them. The king ‘counselled him to put himself on his grace.’ To which the other replied, ‘I trust not in your grace.’—‘I pray God,’ rejoined the king, ‘that thou mayest have to answer for the blood here to be shed this day, and not I. March on standard-bearer!’ and the battle was set.—It is certain that the stern temper of Worcester rejected all attempts at conciliation: he was conscious how deeply he had been engaged in fomenting the quarrel; and, on his return to his friends, he misrepresented the demeanour of Henry in such a manner to his nephew, that the latter, with whatever reluctance, was compelled to relinquish all hopes of accommodation. At length, therefore, much of the day having been consumed in these fruitless negociations, both parties flew to arms, and the air was rent with the war-cries of ‘St. George’ on one side, and ‘Esperance Percy’ on the other. In the meanwhile, Glendower had advanced as far as Shelton on the opposite bank of Severn, where he awaited the issue of the contest, determined to proceed or retire according to its event. He is said, by the constant tradition of the country, to have ascended there the branches of a lofty oak, whose venerable trunk yet remains, for the purpose of viewing the battle; at least of gaining, from personal inspection, the earliest intelligence of its event.

“The fight began by furious and repeated volleys of arrows from Hotspur’s archers, whose ground, as may be seen, greatly favoured that kind of warfare: and they did great execution on the royal army. The king’s bowmen were not wanting in return, and the battle raged with violence. The military art had not yet attained that perfection which almost supersedes the effect of individual exertion; and Hotspur, with his associate Douglas, bent on the king’s destruction, rushing through the midst of the hostile arrows, pierced their way to the spot on which he stood. To adopt the vivid language of a contemporary, ‘in the ardour of his spirit, he assembled a band of thirty warriors, broke into the royal army, and made a great alley in the midst thereof,’ (such was the terror which his presence inspired) ‘even to the stoutest of the king’s guards.’ Monstrelet says, Henry was thrice unhorsed by the Scottish earl, and would have been taken or slain had he not been defended and rescued by his own men. And the fortune of the day would have been forthwith decided, if the Scottish earl of March had not withdrawn him from the danger; for the royal standard-bearer was slain, his banner beaten down; and many of the chosen band appointed to guard it (among whom were the earl of Stafford and sir Walter Blount,) were killed by these desperate assailants,—while the young prince of Wales was wounded in the face by an arrow. In short, notwithstanding all the exertions of the royalists, victory seemed inclined to favour the rebel army, who fought with renewed ardour, from an opinion naturally derived from the overthrow of his standard, that the king himself had fallen, and animated each other to the combat with cheering and redoubled shouts of ‘Henry Percy, king! Henry Percy, king!’

“In this critical moment the gallant Percy, raging through the adverse ranks in quest of his sovereign, fell by an unknown hand; alone, and hemmed in by foes. The king lost no time to avail himself of this event. Straining his voice to the utmost, he exclaimed aloud, ‘Henry Percy is dead!’ The sound was heard by either army: into those it struck dismay, while these it animated and encouraged. The rebels fled in every direction, nor could the king, anxious as he was to terminate the slaughter, restrain the impetuous pursuit of his own troops, till the flower of Cheshire, two hundred knights and esquires (besides pages and footmen) were slain. Douglas broke through, and endeavoured to escape in the direction of Haghmond-hill: being closely pursued, and leaping from a crag, he experienced a severe injury, and was captured: but the king, in admiration of his valour, set him at liberty. The loss in both armies was great. * * * An ancient manuscript rates the number of gentlemen at two thousand two hundred and ninety-one, besides commons. They were chiefly buried, says that authority, in a great pit, the dimensions of which are there specified, and over which the present church of Battlefield was afterwards erected: but many are stated to have lain dispersed in various directions for the space of three miles about the field of battle: a fact which confirms what has been said above of the desultory nature of the conflict. Others, of the most distinguished rank, were interred in the neighbouring town, chiefly in the cemetery of the Dominican or St. Mary’s Friars.

“The body of Hotspur was at first delivered to his kinsman lord Furnival for interment, and it was by him committed to the ground with the suffrages of the church, and with all the honours which, in that haste, could be procured as due to his rank. It is painful to reflect, that the king afterwards repented him of this generous attention to the remains of deceased valour. He caused the corpse to be taken out of the tomb in which it had been laid, and to be placed between two mill-stones in the public street, near the pillory; where, as if he feared lest the general sympathy should rescue it from its ignominious situation, it was kept under military guard, till the head was severed from the body, which was divided into quarters, and transmitted to several cities in the realm.”

Thus closes this circumstantial and able description of the celebrated battle of Shrewsbury; an event so interesting in the annals of the county, that we make no apology for having transferred so detailed an account of it to our pages. A nobler theme could not well be conceived for the lay of a minstrel. “The characters of the leaders, both of the royal and of the rebel party, the chivalrous spirit of the times in which they lived, and the magnitude of the cause that roused them to arms, are circumstances highly susceptible of poetical description, while the train of incidents from the very origin to the termination of the feud, is of that romantic cast which requires little embellishment from fiction. There is indeed one objection which may have deterred our later Poets from the undertaking; it is, that the ground which Shakspeare has trod is sacred; but without any violation of the reverence due to his memory, it may be wished that this magnificent subject had also been celebrated by the muse that sang the tale of Flodden Field.”We have already stated that on the deposition of Richard II. the Earl of Wiltshire, recently appointed lord of the Manor of Oswestry, fell a victim to popular fury, and Thomas, son of Richard, Earl of Arundel, was restored in blood. This last-named nobleman was a liberal supporter of the Corporation of Oswestry. In 1406 he gave it a release for £100 (a large sum in those days,) which that body was indebted to him, in consideration of the distresses which the town had suffered during the Glyndwr insurrection. He also obtained pardon from the king for his vassals in Chirk, Bromfield, and the Manor of Oswestry, for the share they had taken in that rebellion. In the same year with the release he granted a most extensive Charter to the town, containing many matters showing the customs of the times. This Charter ordered, that “neither the lord nor his heirs should confiscate or seize the effects of persons with or without will in the corporation; that no burgess should be compelled to be the lord’s receiver-general, but only collector of the issues arising within the borough; that the burgesses should be discharged from all fees demanded by the Constable of the castle, or any of his menial servants, for any felonies or trespasses committed out of the same liberties, when brought to the prison of the castle; saving that the Constable might receive one penny at his own election, from every mansion-house in the town, and a farthing from every cottage, on the feast of St. Stephen annually; that the burgesses should be free for the future from all excise of ale, brewed and sold in the town, which had hitherto been payable at the rate of seven-pence for every Bracena cervisiÆ exposed for sale; that they were to be freed from the duty of Amobyr, or Lyre-Wyte; that whoever lived in the house of a burgess, and happened to die there, the burgess was to have a heriot after his decease, in the same manner as the Uchelwyr, or freeholders residing on the lands of the lord in the Hundred of Oswestry; that no Shrewsbury ale should be sold in the town without license, while any ale brewed in the town was to be had, under the penalty of 6s. 8d.; that none of the inhabitants of the lordships of Oswestry, Melverley, Kinardsley, Edgerley, Ruyton, and the eleven towns, should drive or carry any cattle, corn, or victuals, or other wares, to any foreign fair or market, before the same had first been exposed for sale in the town of Oswestry, under the penalty of 6s. 8d.; that none of the lord’s tenants should be compelled to pay the redditus advocarii for the security of the castle,” &c. The Amobyr of the Welsh, and the Lyre-Wyte of the Saxons, were fines paid by the vassal to his lord, to buy off the power to violate domestic relations. Pennant gives a different interpretation to the term Amobyr, but does not succeed in giving us its literal and precise meaning. There is one curious fact mentioned in the aforesaid Charter, and which, even in these days must excite a smile. The respective six-and-eightpences of the gentlemen who now study “Coke upon Littleton” was actually prescribed even so far back as the fifteenth century. It would be a still more curious fact developed, were we acquainted with the lord of the Manor’s law-adviser when this Charter was granted, because we might perhaps then be able, from the knowledge of that fact, to ascribe the origin, if not honour, of lawyers’ six-and-eightpences to the ancient Borough of Oswestry!

According to Pennant, “until the time of the above-mentioned Charter, the lord’s Welsh tenants of the Hundred of Oswestry were accustomed by their tenure to keep watch and ward, for three days and three nights, at the four gates of the town, during the fairs of St. Andrew and St. Oswald, with a certain number of men called Kaies; but these treacherously, with others, ravaged and plundered the place. On this the tenants were compelled to pay a sum of money as wages to a sufficient number of Englishmen, as the burgesses should think convenient, for the custody of the four gates; and the Welsh men were for ever to be discharged from that duty. The vassals of the Earl of Arundel in these parts were of a mixed nature; either descendants of the Norman followers of Alan, or of the native Welsh, who were most numerous, and bore an hereditary dislike to their co-tenants of foreign stock. The Welsh part was called Walcheria, and lay in the upper part of the parish.”

Reverting to Owain Glyndwr’s career, we see that his escape from the Shelton Oak, at the Battle of Shrewsbury, did not deter him from fresh enterprises. Evidently regardless of the ruin of his allies—they, as Leland tells us, “whom he promised to unite with” at that battle—he continued to infest the English borders, where he committed great havoc, the king being unable, from the want of funds, to resist his aggressions. Owain’s marauding parties committed serious damage to Shrewsbury and several of the adjoining townships, and extended their ravages as far as Buildwas Abbey, which they wasted with fire, so that divine service was for a time discontinued, and the monks were reduced to the greatest poverty. At length Henry directed a writ to Edward Charlton, Lord Powys, to raise forces with which to subdue the renewed rebellion; and similar orders were sent to Lords Arundel and Grey, and Sir Richard L’Strange, Lord of Knockin, Ellesmere, and other bordering manors. Glyndwr had despatched to Shrewsbury two of his best officers, Rhys Ddu and Philipot Scudamore, to command the insurrectionary party; but Lord Powys, having promptly obeyed the orders of his sovereign, fortified several castles, and speedily took as prisoners the above-named two leaders, and they were both soon afterwards executed in London. Holinshed says, that “Glyndwr himself in the same year, dreading to show his face to any creature, and finally lacking meat to sustain nature, for mere hunger and lack of food miserably pined away and died.” He was living, however, six years later, but in a state of concealment, chiefly at the house of one of his daughters, married to a gentleman of Herefordshire named Monnington. In July, 1415, the new king Henry V., anxious to leave his country in tranquillity before he engaged in the war with France, offered a pardon to Glyndwr; and this would probably have been accepted by the Cambrian chieftain, had not the negotiation been interrupted by his death, which occurred September 30th, 1415, in the 61st year of his age. It is said that David Holbetch, Steward of the manors of Oswestry, Bromfield, and Yale, and founder of the Oswestry Free Grammar School, took a distinguished part in this negotiation, and obtained the promised pardon for Glyndwr. Tradition states that he was buried in the churchyard of Monnington-on-Wye.

With Glyndwr ceased most of the troubles and calamities which had too long afflicted the English and Welsh Borders. The superstitious charm with which Owain’s name had been invested by his countrymen soon faded away, and his life, though startling in a rude and ignorant age, soon proved that he was “in the common roll of men!” Shakspere was justified in creating him, poetically, as self-idolatrous, for his daring incursions and fiery movements indicate that he believed himself to be of the meteoric class, to curb oppression and give liberty to the enslaved. For years after Glyndwr’s fall Oswestry, for aught that history tells us to the contrary, lay in comparative repose, entirely free from foreign aggression. Intestine feuds and disorders seem to have been the chief disturbers. The Welsh were arrayed against the English, and the latter appear to have had no less enmity against their Cambrian neighbours. To Pennant’s industrious and accurate research we are indebted for the scanty notices collected of the history of this period. Among the records of the Drapers’ Company of Shrewsbury, he tells us there is the following order:—“25 Eliz. 1513. Ordered, that no Draper set out for Oswestry on Mondays before six o’clock, on forfeiture of six shillings and eightpence; and that they wear their weapons all the way, and go in company—not to go over the Welsh Bridge before the bell toll six.”However numerous and fierce marauders were in the days here referred to, it would seem that peaceful employments were nevertheless pursued by the inhabitants of Oswestry, and that their manufactured cloth was of so good a quality as to be held in high repute among the Shrewsbury Drapers. The “contests, robberies, and disturbances in the Marches of Wales” still continuing with unabated force, and both Welsh and English seeming to have considered everything as lawful plunder which they could seize in each other’s territory, the Stewards, the Constable, and Lieutenant of Oswestry and Powys entered into covenants in the year 1534, to restrain these plundering excursions. It was agreed, that “if, after a certain day then fixed, any person of one lordship committed felony in the other, he should be taken and sent into the lordship where the offence was committed, to receive punishment; and that if any goods or cattle were stolen from one lordship and conveyed into the other, the tenants and inhabitants of that lordship should either pay for the same within fifteen days, or otherwise four principal men should remain in bail, a main-prize, till they were either paid for or recovered.”

Notwithstanding these rigorous measures, the evil still continued; and so alarmed were certain of the inhabitants of Shrewsbury, and regardful of the safety of their fellow-burgesses who had to visit Oswestry market weekly, that prayers for their preservation were offered up in one of the churches, on Monday mornings, before they started on their perilous journey. A timid gentleman, William Jones, Esq., left to the Drapers’ Company “one pound six-shillings and eight-pence, to be paid annually to the Vicar of St. Alkmond’s Church, for reading prayers on Monday mornings, before the Drapers set out for Oswestry market!” Pennant informs us that at this period “Oswestry was the great emporium for Welsh cloth; a privilege to which it was well entitled from its vicinity to those districts of Wales in which that important branch of commerce was manufactured, at a period when the English trader could not, with any degree of safety, trust himself in the Principality. To this town (Oswestry) the Drapers of Shrewsbury repaired every Monday. We learn the fact from a curious MS. Chronicle of the last-mentioned town, which relates that ‘on Monday, Dec. 5th, 1575, the Drapers of Shrewsbury had like to have been robbed, if they had not been privately warned; but the bailiffs and a great company went, strongly aimed, upon their usual trade toward Oswestry. The robbers proposed to rob them in the dale between Shelton and Shrewsbury, and lay over night in Master Sherar’s barn, on the other side of the water.’ The whole narrative, which is told much at length in the Chronicle, exhibits the unsettled police of a country slowly emerging from a state of barbarism, and strongly reminds the reader of the inimitable scene at Gadshill, so admirably pourtrayed by our great dramatic bard in the first part of Henry IV.” The same writer adds, “notwithstanding, however, this and similar proofs of the general insecurity of the country, the Welsh manufacturer was unwilling to meet the purchaser even half way with his commodities. ‘Not satisfied,’ says our countryman Dr. Peter Heylyn, in his Cosmography, ‘with having fixed the market at Oswestry, they sought to draw the staple more into their own country.’ The MS. quoted above informs us, under the year 1582, that it would have been removed thence, ‘to the great decay of that town and of Shrewsbury, yf Sir Thomas Bromley, being Lord Chancelor, had not by his great wisdom opened the same to the Queen’s Majestie, for which godly deede theye of the said townes are contynewally bownde to praye daylye.’ Lord Chancellor Bromley was a Shropshire man, and possessor, by purchase from the Earl of Arundel, of the Castle and Lordship of Shrawardine; he was therefore personally interested in the prosperity of the county, and by his influence at Court enabled to promote it.” It would further appear, that the market was continued at Oswestry, so that it is likely that Lord Bromley’s interposition at Court prevailed. In 1585 the Welsh cloth market was removed from Oswestry to Knockin, the plague having broken out in this borough, and destroyed “three-score and four persons, and no more;” according to the parish register. The plague continued from April to August, when it entirely disappeared, and the market was held, as before, in Oswestry.

Oswestry was visited with other calamities some few years before this period. In 1542 a fire broke out in the town, which was so destructive, that “two long streets with great riches” were consumed; and in 1567 there was another fire, which destroyed “seven-score within the walls, and three-score without.” The suburb still known by the name of Pentre-Poeth (the burnt end of the town) suffered severely, and may have derived its designation from this destructive fire; or, as Price intimates, from the frequent fires that may have occurred there during the conflicts between the Welsh and English. These accidents were looked upon, at the time, through astrological telescopes, by Camden, the historian, and a Dr. Childrey. They both gravely ascribed these events to astrological phenomena, Camden seriously remarking, “that the eclipses of the sun in Aries have been very fatal to this place; for in the years 1542 and 1567, when the sun was eclipsed in that sign, it (Oswestry) suffered much by fire!” After reading such absurdity as this from men professing to be learned, we have reason to be thankful that we are living in a more enlightened and scientific age.

A few years before the conflagration last referred to, the town was visited by a no less alarming evil. In 1559 pestilence consigned to the grave, within one year, more than five hundred of the inhabitants. The disease which thus afflicted the people is stated to have commenced with profuse perspiration, (from which it was called “the sweating sickness,”) and to have continued until the death or recovery of the patient. Its operation was quick and powerful, and cure or death occurred within twenty-four hours. Those persons who were seized in the day were put to bed in their clothes to wait the issue; and those seized in the night were desired to remain in bed, but not to sleep. The desolation of the town during the long continuance of the plague is described in affecting language by the writer of the clever historical sketches, on the History of Oswestry, that appear in Mr. Roberts’s publication, entitled “Oswald’s Well:”—

“It was then that Croeswylan received its name. Croes wylan, or the Cross of weeping, was there erected, the base of which still remains to be seen. To this, with superstitious reverence, all the people resorted. The diseased and dying sought in grief beneath its sacred shadow a preparation for the doom to which they were appointed, and there they languished till that doom was fixed. Before it, the whole and healthy ones confessed and deplored their sins, and deprecated the vengeance of heaven. Throughout the succeeding century this foul contagion lurked on our shores, and at intervals visited our town, converting it into a vast charnel house. Its attacks were so insidious and sudden that the glow of health suffered no process of removal, but instantly fled, as scared and affrighted on the approach of the fell devourer. During its presence no sights were to be seen but the wan and sickly visage of those who were dying, or the panic-stricken gaze of the man yet uninfected, almost delirious with alarm, and starting from the touch of the dearest friend of his heart. The air was rent with shrieks and laden with lamentation. Death alone seemed contented and satisfied, and sat like a monster unmoved as he banqueted on hundreds of his victims. All commerce was at a stand-still. Every house was locked, the inmates scarcely venturing upon a communication with each other, much less exposing themselves to contact with those without. With foreboding reluctance they breathed the breath of heaven, pregnant as it was with the seeds of death. If one of their number was attacked, no consideration of friendship or kindred spared him the aggravation of being hurled into the street, there to await the regular arrival of the dead-cart. That sad accompaniment of the contagion, the gibbet of the scene, rolled sullenly along the death-smitten streets upon its gloomy mission, and never returned without the sad evidences of the rapid progress of the desolating scourge. In the ears of the expiring it must have sounded like the toll of the passing bell, the knell of their speedy departure. Upon it, whether dead or just gasping for life, the diseased victims were heaped, and hurried off to the brink of a huge pit, dug, probably, in a corner of the Old Churchyard, into which they were remorselessly thrown. Everything bespoke the presence and working of a mighty power, in league with ‘the King of terrors.’ All human ties were forcibly disrupted, every human sympathy was sacrilegiously immolated, until the people were reduced to that extremity of sadness, in which life is burdensome for its sorrows, and death terrible for the grim and ghastly shroud in which it lies hid.”

The market was held, during the Plague, at Croes wylan, that the people from the surrounding country-places should not visit the town, and thereby suffer from the infection. No doubt that with the dreadful scourge stalked, hand in hand, gaunt poverty. It may be easily imagined that the poor suffered severely from the sickness, and that many of them required relief. We have some testimony before us that the public authorities of the time sympathized with the sufferers. The following extracts from the “Accompt of Richard ap Lley, Muringer of the town of Oswestr, for and from the xvj day of September, in the 2nd yere of our sovraynge Lady Elizabeth,” show how pecuniary aid was rendered to certain parties:—

The sayde accomtante doth asc alowaunce for rent bayted to the Towlers (toll-takers) for one qr. in considracion of the PLAGE:
		s.	d.
Fyrst to the executors of John Vyghan		xx
Allso, &c. rent bayted to Thomas ap Rc. for Wolyws-gate		xx
Allso, &c. to David Glover the elder, for Newe-gate		xiij	iiij
Allso, &c. to Wyling Lloyd, for Betresce-gate		x
Allso, &c. to David ap David, for Blak gate		iiij	ij
Allso, &c. rent of Crofft-pystil, in the hande of Rc. ap Mrdyth, dyssessed		ij
Allso, &c. money payde for wrytinge of a suplycacion to my lord of Arundell			xij
Allso, &c. for Lewys Tayler, and Guttyn Furbur, beinge unpayde for setting of stales, by reason of the Plage			xiiij
Allso, &c. for Rc. Lewther, for one qr. beinge absent from the towne			xx
Tanners.	Allso, &c. for a qr. rent unto tanners beinge apsent in in tyme of the plage; and fyrste, Thomas Baker (2 other similar items)		xiiij
Glovers.	Itm. The sayde accomptaunt dothe asc alowaunce for them that are deade or fled, and them that are in decaye; and fyrst, Thomas ap John Wyling, beinge a poore man (five others fled, &c.)		xij
Buchers.	Imp. the sayde accomtant, &c. Lewys, bucher, that is dead (one for the like and 7 fled)		v
Corvsers.	Edward Gorg, fled (2 others fled)		iij
Backers.	David ap sr. Rc. saythe that he dothe not occupey his backhowes, and prayth alowance		vi
	David Bobyth hathe ben longe secke, and asc alo		iij
Hucksters.	Jonet vrch. David ap Morys asc alowance for a qr. Rent (1 other)		x
Alle Selers.	Edward Lloyd pray the alowance for a qr.		xjj
	David Glover the elder, in lycke manner		xiiij
	Richard Salter was longe sycke, and praythe alowance		xiijj
	Thomas Glover praythe alowaunce for half a yere; aledginge, that he sold no alle for that space (3 others)		xx

Payments for the provision of the genrall Feast unto the Coo-burgesses according to the aunsient costom, holden the vth day of Desember, in the thryde yere of the raynge of our sovraynge layde Ellizabeth, by the grace of God quene of England, &c. at the making of this accompt:

		s.	d.
Whete.	Fyrste, the saide accomptaunt hathe payde for ii stryckes and a hoope of whette for brede and for peys	xj
Maullt.	Allso payde for iii strycke of maullt	xij
Boochers.	Allso payde for a qr. and ii rybes of byff	vj	viij
	Allso payde for mytton for to make peys for this feast	ij	vj
	. . . for iijlb. ressyns		xij
	. . . s pep	v	ij
Cloves, &c.	Allso payde for cloves, masses, aud saffrone		vj
	Allso payde for synamon and sugr.		vij
	Itm. pd. for buttr. spent at this feast		viij
Chese.	Allso payde for chesses	ij	ix
Nyttes, &c.	Allso pd. for appells and nyttes		xvj
Saullt.	Allso payde for a hoope of sallt for the byff		x

This Accompt was made before us, the persons under-named, then Bailiffe of the said Towne, John Stanney, Thomas Evans.

With these awful calamities the people endured severe privation, both as to food and clothing. Provisions had risen so enormously in price as to place even the coarsest food beyond the reach of the poor. We are told that so deficient were the working-classes of the commonest provision, that they were glad to resort, for subsistence, to horse-bread, composed of beans, oats, and bran. “The good old times” are too frequently quoted as periods of comfort, compared with the present days; but such facts as have been now related must convince every Englishman of right feeling that, however humble his lot, he still possesses “a goodly heritage.”

For a considerable time no event occurred in Oswestry worthy of detailed notice. In the 42nd of Elizabeth, Coke, Attorney-General, acknowledges all the liberties and franchises of Oswestry, by an order that all further proceedings on the part of the Crown, on a writ of Quo Warranto against the Bailiffs and Burgesses of Oswestry, should wholly cease. In 1603 a dispute took place between the Bailiffs, Burgesses, &c. and the Earl of Suffolk, then lord and owner of the town and manor, the former body having, in numerous assembly, resolved to maintain the rights and privileges granted to them by Richard II., and confirmed by their “late sovereigne of famous memorye, queene Elizabeth.” A petition setting forth their grievances, mainly caused by the Earl of Suffolk’s steward, had been presented by them to the Lord President of the Marches; to which Lord Suffolk replied as follows:—

“To his good freinds, the Burgesses and Townesmen of his Towne and Manor of Oswester:

I have of late receaved a Letter from my hon^ble good Lord and freind, the L. President of Wales, w^ch declared unto mee, a great desire in his L^pp to give some satisfaction to you uppon a Peticon given him from yo^r Towne, as exceptinge against the Course w^ch Mr. Lloyd, my Officer, healde with you. Nowe you must knowe, that I doe, and will avowe him in such things as he, in his discreation, shall find to bee profitable for mee w^ch, perchaunce, may bee displeasinge to you, but herin you may further wronge yo^r selves then you are aware off; for yf you shall deny to yeald mee thoes Rights & Proffits that are due unto me, as Lord of the Manor, you must then knowe, that I doe look for at Mr. Lloyds hands such a resistance of yo^r wills as I may not bee prejudized thereby: & I knowe his understandinge & discreation is such, as he would not drawe mee into frivolous and needles questions.—Therefore I must tell you, that yf you have refused the duties wh^ch belonge unto mee, that I will execute my remedies as the lawes of the Land will allowe mee. But, becawse I wolde not be thought rigorous, and that yt may appeare that my L: President hath the powre of an honorable & kind ffreind in mee, I am contented that yf you doe sende upp to the Tearme at Winchester, such as shall have powre to followe the cawse in the behaulf of you all, that then the questions w^ch are risen between the Steward & you shall, yf yt may be, have an end; by Councill chosen of each syde; w^ch Course shall please mee well: but yf yt happen otherwise, the fault shall not be myne, for I desire not contencons; but then of necessety, Lawe must determyn them. In the meane tyme, I charge you all to carry yo^r selves respectively and duetifully to my Officers; for you must learn to obey, yf you will desire to be obeyed; w^ch you, being a Corporate Towne, should principally desire. And soe I leave you for this tyme, untill I heare further from you. From the Court at Wylton, this 25th of October, 1603.

Yo^r Lovinge freind & Lord,
SUFFOLKE.”

James I. in 1616, granted a Charter to the town, thus removing “divers doubts and ambiguities” which had “arisen concerning the ancient liberties, francheses, &c., of the town and borough of Oswaldstre,” and extending their liberties and privileges, as well as confirming them a body corporate, by the name of “the Bayliff and Burgesses of Oswestry, in the Countie of Salope.”About this period a heavy blow was struck at the commerce of the town, by the Drapers of Shrewsbury (a reference to whose complaints and apprehensions has already been made), “who weary,” says Pennant, “of their weekly journeys to Oswestry, determined to transfer the market to their own town, from that in which Queen Elizabeth had established it. But this attempt proved in the first instance abortive. The Lordship of Oswestry was enjoyed at this time by Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, to whom it had been granted by the late queen, in the 43rd year of her reign. He was in great favour with James, in whose Court he held the office of Lord Chamberlain, and to whom he had recently recommended himself by his vigilance and promptitude in the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. Possessed of the highest notions of the privileges of the peerage, and jealous of the infringement of his rights by the traders of Salop, he issued his mandate to them by one of their own body,—Arthur Kynaston, merchant of the staple, a younger brother of the house of Ruyton,—to desist from such attempts in future. Their answer is recorded in their own books: it is entitled ‘The copy of a letter sent by the Company to the Earle of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain of his Majestie’s househoulde, ye 24th June, 1609.’ ‘Right Honerabell,—Your letter bearing date the second of this June, by the hands of Mr. Kiniston wee have received: wherein ytt appereth yor Lordship was informed that wee the Societie of Drapers wentt aboute by underarte and menenesse to withdraw your markett of Walsh clothe from your towne of Oswester;’ and they proceed to exculpate themselves from the charge in those phrases of submission which were in that day the established usage of inferiors in their addresses to those above them. This was their tone during the plenitude of the Earl’s power, which, five years after the date of this letter, received a great increase by his appointment to the exalted post of Lord High Treasurer of England. During this time we may be sure ‘the market for frize and cottons continued, where, according to Heylin, it was originally fixed, at Oswestry.’ But in 1618, the King’s necessities caused an enquiry into the management of the treasury, and Suffolk, whose unbounded expenses in his magnificent palace at Audley-End, had brought him into pecuniary difficulties, was fined by the Court of Star Chamber in the vast sum of £30,000, and dismissed from all his employments. The clemency of James mitigated this enormous fine, but the influence of the Earl of Suffolk was gone; and in 1621 the Shrewsbury Drapers made an order upon the books of their Company, ‘That they will not buy cloth at Oswestry, or elsewhere than in Salop.’”

As we have shewn in a preceding page, the struggles of the Welsh, to recover the freedom they had lost, terminated with the death of their last great leader, Owain Glyndwr. “Their wild spirit of independence, and their enthusiasm for liberty,” says the eloquent historian whom we have already quoted, “from this period gradually declined. The blood of their beloved Princes was nearly extinct; and their native bravery was subdued, or rendered ineffectual, by their intestine divisions and by their repeated misfortunes. When fierce valour and unregulated freedom are opposed to discipline, to enlarged views, and to sound policy, the contest is very unequal: it is not therefore surprising that the genius of England at length obtained the ascendancy. It was, indeed, an interesting spectacle, and might justly have excited indignation and pity, to have seen an ancient and gallant nation, falling the victims of private ambition, or sinking under the weight of a superior power. But such emotions, which were then due to that injured people, have lost at this period their force and their poignancy. A new train of ideas arises; when we see that the change is beneficial to the vanquished—when we see a wild and precarious liberty succeeded by a freedom which is secured by equal and fixed laws—when we see manners hostile and barbarous, and a spirit of rapine and cruelty, softened down into the arts of peace, and the milder arts of civilized life—when we see this Remnant of the Ancient Britons uniting in interests, and mingling in friendship with their conquerors, and enjoying with them the same constitutional liberties; the purity of which, we trust, will continue uncorrupted as long as the British Empire shall be numbered among the nations of the earth.”

We now approach a period in our national history which has ever been viewed, by opposing political parties, in a conflicting spirit. The turbulent elements of

THE CIVIL WARS

were not allayed until Death had silenced the two great actors in the tragic and murderous drama. The present volume, devoted principally to local history, is not an appropriate organ in which to discuss the merits and demerits of Charles I. and his sturdy rival Cromwell. Charles was doubtless guilty of many gross violations of his prerogative, and plunged into a reckless course of misgovernment, accompanied with galling taxation, which the people, beginning to learn the lessons of liberty, and to understand the genius of the British constitution, would not tamely submit to.

The ill-fated monarch, looking at him through the long vista of two centuries, was greatly to be pitied. The son of a king, who disregarded the instructions of his wise preceptor, George Buchanan, and who, in his rule over the English people, was prodigal, unprincipled, and tyrannical, he ascended the throne with a corrupt education, and urged to despotism and injustice by his infamous minister Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, he speedily exhibited in his regal capacity, a passion for power, which, as Macauley remarks, soon became “a predominant vice; idolatry to his regal prerogative, his governing principle. The interests of the crown legitimated every measure, and sanctified in his eye the widest deviation from moral rule.” Such was the son of a kingly father who was fond of cockfighting, and the brutal pleasures of inebriation, who utterly neglected the affairs of state on the plea that “he should not make a slave of himself;” who sold titles and privileges of all kinds, that his vices might be fed; and who basely deprived people of their patents, after having paid for them to himself. These were only a small portion of the sire’s iniquities. What surprise then can be entertained that Charles, his son, walked much in the father’s footsteps! Notwithstanding his despotic and infatuated measures, to which all the evils of the civil wars may be traced, yet he had many excellencies; and the closing scene of his unhappy life proved that had he been blessed with a wiser tutelage, and taught to govern with a just and righteous hand, he might have descended into the tomb with virtue and honour, embalmed in the grateful recollections of his country.

Of his powerful rival and successor much has, and still may be said, in his praise and condemnation. His character, however, singular and erratic as it was, was mixed, as that of other men; and whilst he displayed a religious enthusiasm and sanctity in most of his public acts, apparently impressed with the conviction that he “was doing God service” in the course in which he had embarked; yet the troublous events of his life—the fears, anxieties, and weakness of his mortal nature—must have convinced him, if he sincerely believed in the religion of which he made so loud and trumpet-tongued a profession, that “he had done many things which he ought not to have done, and left undone many things he ought to have done.” Now that we look calmly back upon Cromwell’s life, we can see much in his administrative policy that elevated the nation during his transient rule, and that has shed its salutary influences even upon the present generation; but the deep, dark spot in his escutcheon—the murder of Charles—a crime which harrows up the feelings, and rouses the indignation of all right-minded men—that foul murder, with all its cruel and inhuman associations, blots out any excellency that he ever did achieve, and stamps his character indelibly as that of a religious, enthusiastic professor only, and not of a Christian man. Charles may have been guilty, and deserving of punishment for his misrule; but we have yet to learn that Cromwell had plenary power to execute the mandate of Jehovah, and to have adopted the inspired exclamation, “Vengeance is Mine!”

“At the breaking out of the Civil Wars,” says Pennant, “the whole of Shropshire, with few exceptions of persons and none of places, adhered to the cause of royalty. Oswestry, like the rest, was garrisoned for the king. The town was defended by a new gate and draw-bridge; the castle was fortified very strongly; and to prevent it from being commanded by the church, in case of the capture of the town, the steeple was pulled down, and a part of the sacred edifice was also demolished.” The same popular author, with his fervid nationality, and strong royalist principles, adds, with evident pride and delight, “The garrison consisted chiefly of Welsh (a people almost to a man staunch in the cause of their sovereign).” The governor of Oswestry Castle at this disturbed period was a Colonel Lloyd. Edward Lloyd, Esq., of Llanvorda, compounded for his estates, as a royalist, in the sum of £300; and at the period of which we write (1643) he was in the prime of life, and therefore physically able to assume the important command of Governor of the Castle. Colonel Thomas Mytton, of Halston, near Oswestry, a man well skilled in military art, and of great personal courage, had united as a commander with the Parliamentary forces, and first signalized himself in an assault upon the town of Wem, which he seized and garrisoned; that place soon became the centre from which attacks were directed against the royalist garrisons in the neighbouring towns. Mytton’s success at Wem was achieved in the latter end of August, 1643; and although he actively assisted the Parliamentary army in its attacks upon other parts of the country, he frequently visited Wem to concert measures for fresh conquests. In January of the following year, a plan was there determined upon for a sudden and covert attack upon Oswestry. The story is on record that Mytton well knew the bon vivant qualities of the Governor of Oswestry. It was said of this royalist Commandant, that in the social circle he was the life and soul of the company, and that when he entered upon the convivialities of the table, he found it a difficult matter to interrupt the rosy hours by wending homewards. Colonel Mytton might know the frailties of his gallant opponent; and, with a strategetic art unworthy of a modern general, he devised a scheme for capturing the Governor and seizing the town of Oswestry. The anecdote proceeds to state, that Colonel Lloyd was to be invited to dinner at the house of a neighbouring gentleman; and Mytton calculated that no dinner invitation would be refused by good-humoured Col. Lloyd. The plot included the spread of further net-work, in which the unsuspecting Governor was to be surely caught. His gastronomic and vinous attachments were to be plentifully gratified; and whilst indulging in bacchanalian revels, a military force, under Mytton’s direction, was to enter the dining room in which the innocent Governor was carousing, to seize him, vi et armis, take him before his own garrison, in Oswestry, and there compel him to issue orders to his officers to surrender the town and castle. The plot, as we have described it, was partly successful, but eventually failed. Colonel Lloyd accepted the apparently-friendly invitation to dinner; and all went merrily on with him for a brief period. The detachment of troops was sent from Wem to take him prisoner, so that the first act of the drama was nearly completed. Whilst, however, the Parliamentarians were on their way to surprise him, two of their scouts were seized by some royalist friends; they confessed their share in the treacherous plot; the Colonel was apprized of the danger he was in, fled from the habitation of his Judas-like host, reached the “post of honour” which he had so improperly abandoned for the pleasures of the table, and secured from the grasp of his enemies both the town and castle. Colonel Lloyd’s misconduct was reported, it seems, to the royalist commander-in-chief, who removed him from his important position, and appointed as his successor Sir Absetts Shipman.

The parliamentary leaders were numerous and powerful, and they were all fired with zeal and enthusiasm in the cause which they espoused. The town of Oswestry was a military post of distinction in their eyes; and to possess it was an achievement “devoutly to be wished.” Oswestry stood on a towering height, vigilantly watching the varied movements of the parliamentary hosts, and protecting the communication between the town and Wales. The opposite party were equally active and observant. Colonel Mytton was well acquainted, from his local connexion, with the strength and resources of the town, and brought to his aid, in his meditated attack upon it, Sir Thomas Fairfax, the equal to Cromwell in military tactics. In the month of March, 1644, Fairfax and Mytton, with a strong force under their command, made a sudden attack upon the town, which was gallantly repulsed by Prince Rupert (the King’s nephew), who commanded the royalist troops in garrison. This triumph was but of short duration, for the town was attacked in a few months afterwards, and in this renewed onslaught, the parliamentary forces were victors. The Battle of Oswestry, if such it may be called, was fought on the 22nd June. The Earl of Denbigh, a young parliamentary leader of some military talents, and son of a nobleman who had died in defence of the crown, suddenly left the main body of his army, and marched, with his “forlorn hope” upon Oswestry, determined upon taking the town by a coup de main. He reached the vicinity in company with Colonel Mytton, about two o’clock in the afternoon of June the 22nd, the former probably knowing, from the “false brethren,” as spies were then called, that the garrison was partly defenceless, the Governor having imprudently gone to Shrewsbury with certain parliamentary prisoners. Denbigh’s force consisted merely of two hundred infantry, and two troops of cavalry. The engagement was short and sharp. After a hot affair of about two hours, in which Lord Denbigh’s artillery played fiercely upon the garrison with small and great shot, a breach was made in the walls of the town, and the infantry poured in, headed by Major Fraser, with the loss of only one man killed and three wounded. “The New-gate,” adds Pennant, “was next demolished by the cannon, when a young fellow, one George Cranage, went with a hatchet, and cutting down the chains of the draw-bridge, enabled the cavalry also to enter. The besieged made an attempt to maintain the Church, but soon finding it untenable, fled to the castle. Hither they were closely pursued, and the pioneers were quickly called in to undermine its walls; in which, we are informed, the skill as well as valour of Colonel Mytton was very conspicuous. He was probably enabled, from his residence in the neighbourhood, to direct the miners to proceed with most effect. But the daring valour of Cranage again anticipated these slower operations. He was persuaded to hang a Buttar (a petard) at the castle-gate! Being well animated with sack, he undertook this desperate attempt, crept with the engine from house to house, till he got to that next to the castle, fastened it to the gate, set fire to it, and escaped unhurt! The gate was then burst open, and the garrison, finding it impossible to make any further resistance, surrendered the castle upon promise of quarter for their lives. * * * It is greatly to the honour of the victorious commanders that they restrained their soldiers from pillage, at the expense of a gratuity of £500. One can scarcely err in ascribing this noble and uncommon act of mercy to Colonel Mytton’s solicitude for the welfare of his neighbours. The Earl dispatched intelligence of his success to the Parliament. His letter was read to the House of Commons, on the 27th June, giving an account of his taking the town and castle of Oswaldstree, with 400 prisoners and 300 arms. Thanks were voted to him for this his good service, and former testimonies of affection to the house.” The circumstantial narrative proceeds to state that “his Lordship returned, after this exploit, to his main army at Drayton,” and left Colonel Mytton in defence of the town. The fall of Oswestry was a severe blow to the royal party. Besides opening a door for the reduction of North Wales to the power of the Parliament, it lowered them in the scale of public opinion, a loss, in the declining posture of their affairs, of incalculable importance. Active and energetic as were both Lord Denbigh and Colonel Mytton, in their attack upon Oswestry, still they did not escape the slanders even of their own party. The Earl of Denbigh seems to have felt their calumnies acutely, for a few months after the siege his Lordship wrote a letter to Mytton, vindicating the gallantry of both; which we subjoin:—

“COLL. MITTON,

I will not trouble you with the injuries that are offered to you and myselfe, by the Committe of Wem. I am sure you have deserved more of the Parliament then the rest of that Committe. Captaine Clive, as I am informed, reports I was not at the takeing of Oswaldstre, and that my horse stood att too great a distance; I am sure they entred with the foote; but the false representations of passages heere shall not divert me from those occasions that may fully expresse me to be

Your faithfull frend and servant,
DENBIGH.”

“Condor, 29th Oct. 1644.”

At this period the King’s position was critical and alarming. In the early part of the month he determined to take refuge within the walls of Shrewsbury, in his march through Worcester and Bewdley. Waller, the parliamentary leader, hearing of Charles’s movements, broke up from Oxford, and hastened in the direction of Shropshire. On this intelligence the King left Shrewsbury, and retraced his steps. The battle of Copredy Bridge (June 29th) terminated in the defeat of the parliamentary forces; and in July the Earl of Denbigh, encouraged by his success at Oswestry, drew his forces towards Shrewsbury, but was repulsed by the royalist army, with a loss of 120 of his men. The King’s defeat at Marston Moor (July 3rd) added, however, to his disasters and dangers. The whole of Shropshire was in arms, and jeopardy and distress stared every man in the face.

Among the prisoners taken in the late disaster at Oswestry was Francis Newport, Esq., who had served both in the short and long Parliaments. The historians of Shrewsbury have furnished us with an interesting account of this distinguished man:—

“Mr. Newport was son and heir of Sir Richard Newport, of High Ercall, one of the knights of the shire. This young gentleman was but just eligible to serve in parliament, having arrived at full age only on the 23rd day of the preceding February. He manifested the same ardent loyalty which actuated his father: and ventured, with rare but honourable gallantry, to vote for the acquittal of Lord Strafford, at a time when such votes exposed those who gave them to no small personal hazard; the populace, with their usual toleration of sentiments differing from their own, denouncing all such, fifty-six in number, as Straffordians; and exposing their names to execration and danger by public placards. Mr. Newport was soon expelled from the house as a malignant; appeared in arms against the parliament; and was among the prisoners taken at Oswestry, on the capture of that town by the Earl of Denbigh and Colonel Mytton. It is needless to say that he suffered very considerably in his estate: being obliged to compound in the large sum of £5284, in addition to £3287, and £170 a year extorted from his father for the same crime of loyalty. Yet though attached to the monarchy, he was friendly to the rights of the subject; and it is not a little remarkable, that he who had suffered so deeply for the first Charles, was so much disgusted by the base and arbitary measures of the two succeeding kings, by the last of whom he had the honour of being dismissed from the office of lord lieutenant of this county; that he was a great promoter of the Revolution, and was excepted, by the abdicated monarch, from his general pardon. He was created earl of Bradford by king William; and died Sept., 1708, in the eighty-ninth year of his age.”

The town of Oswestry was now in the hands of the parliamentarians, under the temporary Governorship of Colonel Mytton, but was not long permitted to remain quietly in the power of the victors. Only one short week elapsed before a formidable attempt was made by part of the royalist army, under Colonel Marrow, a skilful and intrepid commander, to retake the town, and drive the parliamentary forces from their position. Colonel Marrow invested the town with 3,500 infantry, and 1,500 cavalry, and maintained a close siege for the three following days. This sudden assault greatly embarrassed Colonel Mytton, whose only hope for relief was from Sir Thomas Myddleton, his kinsman by marriage, who was then stationed at Knutsford, in Cheshire, more than fifty miles distant. Colonel Mytton, however, succeeded in making Sir Thomas acquainted with his position in less than twelve hours from the commencement of the royalist attack; and the gallant knight, who was heartily engaged in the parliamentary cause, immediately mustered three regiments, namely, Booth’s, Mainwaring’s, and Croxen’s, with Major Lothian at the head of the reserve, and marching onwards with all speed, reached in two days within sight of Oswestry—it is supposed between Halston and Whittington. During this interval of time the royalists had not obtained full possession of the town, though consisting, as Sir Thomas Myddleton says, “of the most valiant commanders and soldiers, drawn out of the garrisons of Chester, Cheshire, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Ludlow, Denbighshire, Flintshire, and other places.” They had possessed themselves of the Church, but had made no inroad upon the Castle. Myddleton’s approach having been made known, Colonel Marrow marched out from the town, determined to attack him before his troops could recruit themselves after their long march. “They had taken the passage of water neere to Whittington,” says Sir Thomas, in his letter to Lenthall, the Speaker, “and very furiously assaulted and charged us, but were repulsed and forced to retire, through the courage of our horse, who most courageously entertained the enemy. Three several times the skirmish was doubtful; either side being forced so often to retreat. But in the end, our foot forces, coming up, relieved the horse, beat back the enemy, and pursued them with such force, that our horse being thereby encouraged, which indeed was formerly weary, joining with the foot, they put the enemy to an absolute flight, in which we pursued them five miles towards Shrewsbury, to a place called ‘Felton Heath,’ and where we remained after their flight, again masters of the field. In the skirmish with the enemy, and in the pursuite, we lost several of our horse, some of our troopers, but never a footman, which I am yet informed of. As for the enemy they lost several stout men; had many of them taken prisoners, some of them being of great quality, as the Lord Newport’s eldest son; and besides, in their flight, such was their haste, that we found in our pursuite the highway as it were strewed with bread, cheese, bacon, and other good provisions; clothes, and such necessary appurtenances to an army, besides some whole veals and muttons, new killed.” Sir Thomas adds, that “his forces followed up their blow nearly to Shrewsbury, and that Majors Manley and Whitney were afterwards taken under the walls of that town, in pursuite of them.”

This affair closed the struggle between the royalist and parliamentary forces for the possession of Oswestry. On the very day on which Sir Thomas Myddleton raised the siege, Prince Rupert was signally defeated at Marston Moor, with the loss of ten thousand men killed and taken prisoners. Colonel Mytton must subsequently have delegated his command as temporary Governor of Oswestry, as we find him soon afterwards actively engaged in commanding the parliamentary troops in the conquest of Shrewsbury. That event happened early in 1645, when the town was placed in the hands of the parliamentarians. At this period we find Mytton named, in several public documents, as Major-General in the parliamentary army, and some time afterwards as Commander-in-chief of the forces in North Wales.

All the historical records referring to this period give evidence of the arduous duties of General Mytton, and of the difficulties which he had suffered in maintaining his hold upon Oswestry. A letter which we here give indicates the straits he was in, and at the same time the friendly offers of support made to him in the county. The letter is from a Mr. Edward Mynshull, of Bearstone, near Drayton:—

“Hono^ble S^r,

I came to Drayton, hearinge you were there, butt unfortunately mist of you, yo^r honor lyeinge in Stafforde the night before; I have since then waited yo^r retorne from London, haveinge 30 able men in readiness, and 20 of them well armed, to doe yo^r honor servise. I have kepte them together upon my owne charge, and should have bin glad they might have bin accepted in Ossestrie, to doe duty for theire free quarters till yo^r honor had returned. I motioned this to Major Goldegay, butt itt could nott be granted without an order from the Comitte. S^r, I am resolved to doe you servise, or no man; and for my fidelity, I will engage £400, paid in Shropshire, and if you please, as much in Cheshire; if yo^r honor please, I could wish to have a comission sent me by the first, because I only tooke itt in direction from yo^r honor, and whether thatt may suporte me in yo^r honor’s absence, (should I be questioned) I make a doubte of. S^r, my request is, I may have order by the first, to martch to Osestree, where I and my men will doe duty for free quarters, (requireinge noe pay) till yo^r honor retorneth; and lett me receive order from Major Goldegay to thatt purpose, if you soe please, for were I settled in a garrison, I could have men sufficient. I beseech yo^r honor retorne me yo^r pleasure by the first, and I shall willingly embrace yo^r commands; if yo^r honor send to Hugh Bate, Shoemaker, in Wem, he will convey yo^r letter to Mr. Joⁿ. Grosvenor, in Berson, from whence itt will come safe to me. S^r, I pray for yo^r honors prosperity and safe retorne, and whilst I live I shall remaine

Att yo^r servise,
EDWARDE MYNSHULL.”

“Berson, April 25th, 1645.”

The fall of Shrewsbury into the power of the Parliament was marked by “a solemn thanksgiving throughout the City of London,” on the 12th March; Mytton was summoned to appear before the House of Commons on the 29th of that month, and “Master Speaker, in the name, and by the command of the whole House, gave him hearty thanks for his many and faithfull services done to the state; giving him all encouragement to persist in the same: especially for that gallant service of Shrewsbury; assuring him that he shall never want the encouragement of the House of Parliament in his undertakings.”

General Mytton had evidently embarked all his energies in the parliamentary cause; yet notwithstanding the tribute paid to him by the Commons, it does not appear that he obtained from that source any more substantial honours. This neglect seems to have given him much pain. A letter to him from the Duke of Northumberland, about this period, shews that even the Governorship of Oswestry was not actually accorded to him till late in the year 1645. The letter we subjoin:—

“S^r,

By an indisposition in my health, I have not beene able for some dayes to attend the Committie of both kingdomes, so as I can not give you so good an account of your businesse as I desired, but I heare that a commission for your being governor of Oswallds-tree is alreadie signed; to-morrow I shall make a further enquirie after this particular, and if it be in my power to contribute any thing towards your satisfaction, none shall more readily assist you then

Your very affectionate freind and servant,

“London, Nov. 21, 1645.”

NORTHUMBERLAND.”

“For my very loveing Freind, Col. Mytton.”

The conquest of Shrewsbury, by the parliamentary troops, is generally acknowledged to have been achieved by the gallantry and superior tactics of General Mytton; and having accomplished so signal a service for his party, he naturally expected, now that the Governorship of that town was vacant, that the office would he conferred upon him. His ancient relation to the town, his ancestors having been inhabitants and burgesses for upwards of four centuries, added strength to his claim. All his important services to the Parliament were, however, of no weight, and the Governorship was bestowed upon another man. We are told that “Colonel Mytton’s politics were getting very fast out of fashion. He had sided with the Parliament only for the limitation of prerogative, not for the subversion of the monarchy. The Presbyterians, to whom, it appears, he belonged, had no insurmountable objections to the office of a king, provided he was under their controul: or to a national establishment of religion, if its revenues were at their disposal. But those who commence important changes in a state have seldom the satisfaction of reaping the fruit of their labours. Spirits more ardent, with views more extensive, step in between them and the consummation of their designs.” With Sir William Waller, another of the ablest and most successful commanders of the Presbyterian party, he could say, “after the expence of so much blood and treasure, all the difference between our former and present estate is this, that before-time, under the complaint of a slavery we lived like freemen; and now, under the notion of a freedom, we live like slaves, enforced by continual taxes and oppressions, to maintain and feed on our miseries.”

Although General Mytton had been thus ungratefully treated by the Parliament, he still occupied his military position, for we find that in 1648 he was engaged with Sir Thomas Myddleton in the attack upon Caernarvonshire and Anglesey. In June of that year the Speaker of the House of Commons communicated to him a letter, highly approving his “good and faithfull service” against “Sir John Owen and his rebellious crewe.” The letter referred to is a curiosity, as it shows the blasphemous freedom which Cromwell’s parliament took with the holy name of God:—

“Sir,

I received a letter subscribed by yourself and the Governor of Conway, wherein you gave an account of the late successe wherewith God hath beene pleased to blesse the forces under both yo^r commands and conductes in yo^r late expedition into Carnarvonshire, against Sir John Owen and his rebellious crewe, w^ch I have imparted to the house, and hath beene there read. Yo^r good and faithfull service in that expedition is soe well represented, that I am comanded, as from the house and in their name, to returne thanks for the same, w^ch hereby I doe, and you are desired to do the like to those officers and souldiers under the charge and comand w^ch God hath beene pleased to make instrumentall in the obteyning of such a seasonable mercy, and withall to represent to the house what course (like to be effectual) may bee taken for remunerating ye officers and souldiers for their good service. This beeing all I have in comand at present, I shall only add that I am

Yo^r assured loveing freind,
WM. LENTHALL, Speaker.”

“June the 13th, 1648.”

Lenthall, the Speaker, was profuse, as we have shewn, in compliments, but still no substantial mark of favour upon General Mytton was bestowed. The Committee to whom the appointment of Governor of Shrewsbury Castle had been referred had long before found “reasons of weight to put another” in that office, after having held it in their own hands for some time. In 1647 the Governorship was filled by Humphrey Mackworth, Esq., of Betton, a Presbyterian, and Colonel in the army, who occupied the post till his death, in 1654, and having been one of Cromwell’s Privy Council, was buried in Henry VII.’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, on the 26th December, with great magnificence. He was succeeded in office at Shrewsbury by Thomas Hunt, Esq., representative of the town in Parliament, and a Colonel in the army. Mytton retired to London, from what immediate cause there is no record to show; but some writers assert that he resigned his command. In 1651 we find that the Parliament again solicited Major-General Mytton’s services, the following letter having been forwarded to him by the President Bradshawe. The kingdom was disturbed at this period by the Scottish Covenanters, under the nominal command of Charles II.:—

“S^r,

The Scotts army being now entred into England, and bending their course towards those parts where wee know you have a good interest, wee conceive your presence there may bee of use for the service of the Commonwealth; wee therefore desire you forthwith to repaire into the Countie of Salop, and there, with the rest of your fellow Commissioners, doe your best endeavour, and put out your interest there for the raiseing of what force of horse and foot you can, for the service of the Commonwealth in this present exigency of affaires.

Signed in the name and by order of the Councell of
State, appointed by authority of Parliament,
JO: BRADSHAWE, Prsidt.”

“Whitehall, 14th August, 1651.”

“For Major General Thomas Mytton.”

Most probably by this time General Mytton had grown tired with the hard toils of intestine warfare, and become disgusted with the faithlessness of the men whom he had so ardently and faithfully served; for we do not find that he complied with Bradshawe’s letter, or took any further part in public affairs. He died in the metropolis in the year 1656, and his body was taken down to Shrewsbury, and interred in St. Chad’s Church there.

THE RESTORATION.

It is unnecessary here to do more than merely advert to the unhappy close of Charles I.’s reign, the triumphs of Cromwell, and the bold and manly efforts made by Charles II. to obtain the Crown which had been so violently wrested from his father. Although Cromwell had made himself Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, yet he reposed not on a bed of roses. “Every party in the kingdom soon became disgusted with Cromwell’s dominion. The royalists were indignant to see the ancient monarchy usurped by an upstart who had no hereditary claim upon their allegiance; the republicans were mortified to see all their blood and efforts, which had been spent for the setting-up of the Commonwealth, lavished only for the support of a government which, in everything but the name, was a most despotic monarchy; the Presbyterians were chagrined at the favour of their rivals, the Independents, and at a general toleration of every religious denomination (except the Church of England).” Conspiracies and plots were hatched in many parts of the land; and the Protector was kept on the alert by daily intelligence that the exiled king would challenge the usurper, and claim the British throne as soon as a favourable opportunity presented itself for so bold an enterprise. Cromwell, however, after various struggles with the royalist forces, was summoned to “the house appointed for all men living.” He was succeeded, for a brief period, by his son Richard, who speedily retired from public life. General Monk, who had been an intrepid commander both of the royalist and the parliamentary forces, and who possessed powerful influence in the country, on the death of the Protector Cromwell wisely threw the weight of that influence into the royalist scale, and adopted measures at once to bring back Charles II. from France to England. Upon that joyful event all ranks hastened to return to their allegiance, and on the 29th of May, 1660, Charles II. set his foot again upon British soil, and immediately assumed the functions of sovereignty.

During the events to which we have been adverting the town of Oswestry suffered much privation and distress by the feuds and divisions into which all classes of men were thrown. A letter from Mr. John Griffith to Major-General Mytton, dated January 7th, 1650, shows that Oswestry was enduring much hardship. The letter, which is copied from the Halston MSS., is as follows:—

“Honor’d Sir,

I receaved a note from * * * * to write unto yo^r honor concerning our sufferings. I presume yo^r honor knowes the maner of our sufferings, and how we may be releeved is better known to you then to us. The Baylifes and the rest of the sufferinge people of Oswestree depende much upon your assistance, and hope yo^r honor will have a fitt opportunity to doe this poor towne good. * * * I shall make bould to put yo^r honor in mind of your promise to draw a petition to the Parliament w^th yo^r owne handes, w^ch we all hope you will doe before yo^r returne, and then yo^r honor shall further ingadge the whole towne ever to pray for yo^r honor, and especially

Yo^r servant,
JOHN GRIFFITH.”

“Osw., the 7th of January, 1650.”

“To the Honrable Major Generall Mytton, at London.”

There are no records extant showing precisely the position of civil and military affairs, as regards the town of Oswestry, in the struggles of Charles II. for the Crown. The parliamentary party held firm possession of all towns which they had taken, and against Charles they fought as fiercely as against his murdered father. Whatsoever the position of Oswestry was at the period to which we are referring, that of a valiant neighbour, Sir Thomas Myddleton, of Chirk Castle, was dangerous and deeply painful. In 1659, upon the royalists of Cheshire, headed by Sir George Booth, declaring in favour of Charles, the venerable old man, then eighty years of age, decided in favour of the ancient constitution, believing monarchy to be indispensable to the settlement of the nation, and proclaimed Charles II. at Wrexham. For this act he suffered severely, but was named afterwards as Commander-in-chief of the Counties of North Wales, and as Governor of Shrewsbury, although this latter nomination seems to have embarrassed Sir Edward Hyde, Chief Minister of Charles II., as likely to clash with the views of his friend Lord Newport, who had ever been a staunch friend to the royalist cause.

The events of public interest that occurred in connection with the town subsequent to the Restoration were “few and far between.” The most important act in Charles II.’s reign was his grant in 1673 of a Charter, which, looking at the privileges it confers upon the town, is considered by some to be the Magna Charta of Oswestry. Its importance to the borough, as its provisions are still acted upon in the leading Law-Court of the town, justifies us in giving a correct abridgment of it:—

The Charter

was granted

“to the ancient Borough and Corporation of Oswestry, alias Oswaldstrey, in the County of Salop: That they be encorporated by the name of The Mayor, Aldermen, Common-council-men, and Burgesses of Oswestry; and that they are empowered to purchase lands to them and their heirs for ever, and to give and bequeath or otherwise dispose of the same: That the said corporation may have one common seal for dispatching of all business concerning the said borough; and to change and make new their same seal, as often as they shall think convenient: That there be Twelve Aldermen and Fifteen Common-council-men; whereof one of the said aldermen is to be Steward: and that whoever is chosen steward, must come in as an alderman. And that there shall be chosen a discreet person for Recorder, well learned in the law, who must be one of the Common-council-men: That the said borough may have one house of meeting, to be called the Guild-hall of the said town; and that the mayor, aldermen, common-council-men, steward, and recorder may meet there, or in any other convenient place within the said borough, for making, establishing, &c. any laws, orders, &c. for the better government of the said corporation; and to declare in what manner the said mayor, &c. may manage themselves in the negociation of the said borough: and that the said mayor, aldermen, &c. or the greatest part of them, may imprison the bodies or impose fines or otherwise, upon all such as shall offend against the said laws, &c. and that the one moiety of the said fines to be levied for the use of the said mayor, aldermen, &c.; and the other moiety to the use of the lord of the manor: provided, such laws, &c. be not repugnant to the laws of the land, or contrary thereto, or prejudicial to the lord of the manor: That Richard Pope, first mayor, continue in his mayoralty from the day of the date hereof, until the next Friday after the feast of St. Michael, the Archangel, 1674, and until another be sworn in his stead. Sir John Trevor, knt.; Morgan Wynne, esquire; Edward Owen, Richard Edwards, Richard Lloyd, the aforesaid Richard Pope, gentlemen; Gabriel Edwards, woollen-draper; Hugh Price, woollen-draper; John Jones, mercer; Richard Jones, John Blodwell, gentlemen; and John Lloyd, mercer, to be the first aldermen; and to continue in their office during life, unless for just cause any of them shall be removed by the mayor, aldermen, common-council-men, &c. or the greatest part of them.—Richard Price, brewer; Richard Jones, mercer; John Glover, tanner; Richard Jones, glover; Edwd. Evans, apothecary; John Jones, glover; John Muckleston, shoemaker; Thomas Edwards, gentleman; Thomas Edwards, baker; Nathaniel Jones, brewer; Hugh Edwards, shoemaker; Timothy George, mercer; Thomas Vaughan, chandler; William Price, butcher; and Thomas Felton, brasier, to be the first common-council-men; and to continue in office during life, unless removed as aforesaid. The mayor, &c. to meet on the next Friday after Michaelmas, yearly, and to choose at that time, out of the common-council-men, a new mayor; and to swear him in then, if present, or within twenty-one days next after such election, before the old mayor or (in his absence) before two or more of the aldermen of the said borough. If the mayor happen to die, or be removed out of his place for not well demeaning himself, or for any other just cause, before the expiration of the said year, that then and in such case, the aldermen, and common-council-men, &c. or the major part of them, shall elect and choose another mayor for the executing the said office of mayoralty during the remainder only of the said year. And upon the decease of any aldermen or common-council-men, to choose others to make up the number; administering to them their oaths for the executing of their places: and that they shall be sworn in the presence of the mayor, or (in case of his absence) of the aldermen, common-council-men, or the major part of them. In case the mayor be sick or absent, that the mayor may constitute and appoint one of the aldermen to be his deputy; and that being duly sworn, he may officiate the place of mayoralty during such sickness or absence, as fully and effectually in every respect as the said mayor might or could have done personally. When Morgan Wynne, the present Recorder, dies, or should happen to be dismissed, that the mayor, aldermen, &c., choose another, able and experienced in the law, within one month after such decease or dismission. The mayor, coroner, steward and recorder, during the time and term of holding their places, shall be Justices of the Peace, &c., and that each and every of them are Clerks of the Market, to settle weights and measures, and all other laws and ordinances incident thereto; and to officiate the same as fully and effectually as any other of his Majesty’s justices of the peace might or could do. Sir John Trevor, knight; Robert Owen, and Edward Kinaston, esquires, or any of them, to swear the first mayor; and that the mayor being sworn, he is to swear the coroner, steward, recorder, &c. That the mayor, steward, and recorder, or any two of them (whereof the mayor to be one) may keep a Quarter Sessions for all offences, as fully and effectually as the justices of the said county of Salop may do; and that any one of them may commit to the common gaol of the said county any person accused of treason, murder, man-slaughter, or felony, whatsoever: and that the justices of the said county have no power to intermeddle with the said borough upon any cause whatsoever. That the mayor (for the time being), shall choose any inhabitants of the borough, Constables; and to swear them in accordingly. The mayor to choose two Sergeants, to attend upon him or his deputy, when required; and to continue for one year (if they well demean themselves): and that the said sergeants shall carry two maces with his Majesty’s and successors’ arms, and the arms of the lord of the manor thereon, in their hands or upon their shoulders bare-headed, before the mayor, when required: and that the said sergeants shall be sworn by the mayor, for the due executing of all precepts, warrants, &c. The last mayor to be Coroner, who shall have as full power to officiate as any other coroner in any of his Majesty’s counties hath, or may have; and not to execute his power before he be sworn before the mayor or his deputy: and upon the death of any coroner, the mayor, aldermen, &c., to choose another. A Court of Record to be kept every Friday, at the guild-hall, before the mayor or his deputy; and to try all actions and causes whatsoever, as fully as the bailiffs and burgesses formerly did, or as fully as any corporation in his Majesty’s kingdom do, or did formerly: and that the mayor, &c. shall have to their use the one moiety of the issues, amerciaments, &c.; and the other moiety thereof, to the use of the lord of the manor. John Morral to be Common Clerk of the Borough, and Clerk of the Court; and may have a deputy, to be appointed by the steward: that the common clerk to be nominated by the lord of the manor, and to be sworn, as well as all other officers by the mayor: that if he shall not reside in the said borough, then he shall employ, in his absence, an honest and able attorney of the said court, to be approved of by the steward: and the said attorney shall officiate in the time of his absence.—Six Attornies to be of the court: whereof four to be chosen by the mayor, and two by the steward. One Marshal, or Crier to be chosen by the mayor. The mayor, aldermen, &c. to have within the borough a Gaol or Prison, for detaining of all prisoners, committed by the mayor, steward, or recorder, or any of them: and that the mayor, recorder, clerk of the market, common clerk, marshal, keepers of the prison, and sergeants (for the time being) shall receive such Fees, &c. as the bailiffs, &c. of Ludlow, and the said borough, have hitherto received. [Ludlow fees are half of the Common Pleas.] All burgesses and other inhabitants of the said borough to pay scot and lot, and to be assessed for the maintenance, good order, and further profit of the same; and in default of payment, distresses to be laid upon their goods.—The mayor, &c. to have power to elect persons who have served seven years’ apprenticeship, or that have been householders (paying scot and lot) seven years within the said borough, Burgesses: and with the approbation of the steward, to make any other person burgess of the said borough; and so continue, unless for any just cause he be expelled by the mayor, &c. No Stranger or Foreigner shall exercise any Trade in the borough (except it be in time of fair) unless he be a burgess; nor keep any shop, without special licence from the mayor, aldermen, &c. or the major part of them: the mayor, &c. to punish such foreigners and strangers by fines, and to distress upon their goods, in default of payment. The mayor and corporation, and burgesses, Exempt from serving on Juries out of the borough, at assizes or quarter-sessions. The corporation to have return of writs; and all which returns to be made by the mayor. No high-sheriff, or any of his officers, to enter the liberty, unless in defect of the mayor for the time being. The mayor or clerk to receive recognizances, according to form of Statute Merchant, or Acton Burnell; and to make execution, &c. as fully as any other town can do, by virtue of the said statute: and that there shall be a seal for the sealing of those recognizances. The mayor and corporation may purchase lands, &c. not exceeding £50 a year, but such as are not held in capite or knight’s service. The said borough is to enjoy two Markets weekly, for ever; that is, one on Wednesday and the other on Friday. To have a Fair on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th days of March, yearly; and the fairs on the 1st and 2nd of May, the 4th and 5th of August, and the 29th and 30th of November, to be continued as heretofore. And if any of the said fairs shall fall upon the Lord’s-day, then the same to be kept on the Monday following. The mayor, &c. may hold a Court of Pie-poudre at the time of the fairs; and to take the usual tolls of markets and fairs—all rights, &c. of the lord of the manor excepted.”

The privileges secured to the inhabitants of the borough by this Charter must, at the time of its being granted, have been very valuable, and no doubt contributed greatly to the good government and prosperity of the town, during subsequent times. Some of such privileges have been superseded by the provisions of the Municipal Corporation Act, 5 & 6, William 4th, cap. 76, entitled “An Act to provide for the Regulation of Municipal Corporations in England and Wales,” and other modern enactments; but others still remain, although the value and convenience of them appear in some degree to be overlooked. The Charter secures some peculiar privileges with respect to trade which may not probably harmonize with modern views and notions; but the privileges of trying at Quarter Sessions all offences, except felonies, committed within the borough, and of suing for debts, unlimited in amount, in the Court of Record, ought not to be regarded otherwise than as precious relics of byegone times. It is true, that the Court of Quarter Sessions has been constantly and regularly held by the most able Recorder, J. R. Kenyon, Esq.; but the Court of Record has of late years been so seldom resorted to, that on a late occasion, when a cause was tried before it, a local newspaper referred to it with special wonder, hinting its surprise that, in a place where the weapons of legal warfare were so easily obtained, the inhabitants should so long have ceased to use them, and to remain in peace amongst themselves, without any legal strife in a Court of Record. Although, however, debts without limit, as regards amount, may be sued for, the final process of the Court is confined to the borough, and cannot be put in force beyond its boundary; and this circumstance, connected also with the facilities for the recovery of debts afforded by the Small Debts Act, has rendered resort to the Court of Record less frequent than, under other circumstances, it doubtless would have been; still, to have it is a privilege, as is also the exemption from serving on Juries at the Assizes, or County Quarter Sessions, secured by the Charter.

The Restoration brought with it, of course, the ascendancy of loyal subjects and monarchical principles in all parts of the realm. Charles, however, did not make the wisest use of the power and influence he had newly acquired; and the closing hours of his life proved that his religious principles, unfixed and vacillating, were ill adapted to the requirements of the age. Howsoever much other parts of the kingdom were disturbed during this reign, the town of Oswestry would seem to have resumed a tranquil position: the injury and damage sustained in it during the many years of disquietude and war were partially restored; the ancient Church was gradually repaired; but the Castle, so dilapidated and broken down, was permitted to lie in ruins; the crown made no effort to restore it; and by degrees its shattered walls and fallen columns were carried away by nocturnal depredators, until at length the vestiges of the fortress consisted of little more than the mound still left in our sight.In 1681, only four years before Charles’s death, a polemic scene was enacted in Oswestry, which, from the celebrity of the parties engaged in it, forms no uninteresting feature in the history of the town. Charles’s reign was marked by odious political intolerance and injustice. He aimed at absolutism, and was as regardless of religious liberty as of religion itself. The controversy to which we have alluded occurred in the Guildhall of Oswestry, in September, 1681, and was conducted throughout in a spirit of candour and moderation not frequently to be witnessed in that turbulent period. The leading parties engaged were Dr. Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph (the prelate who preached the first sermon in the Chapel Royal to William III.), and the distinguished Philip Henry, of Broad Oak, Flintshire (father of the erudite and evangelical Matthew Henry, the Commentator on the Bible). Other nonconformist Ministers were present, and took part in the proceedings, especially Mr. James Owen, then of Oswestry—but afterwards of Shrewsbury Seminary for the education of Dissenting Ministers—a man of considerable acquirements and genuine piety. The Bishop, upon his elevation to the episcopal chair, was desirous of securing the conformity of those who dissented, and “that he might do it with the cords of a man, he resolved to reason the matter with them, and endeavour to effect their conviction by discourse, in which he had a very great facility both by learning and temper.” The account from which we derive these particulars goes on to state, that “one of the most eminent nonconformist ministers in his diocese was Mr. James Owen, of Oswestry. The Bishop had several interviews with Mr. Owen in private. At last he appointed a meeting to be held in the Town Hall, Oswestry, on Tuesday, the 27th of September, 1681, at which he requested Mr. Owen to give an account ‘by what right he exercised the ministry, not having episcopal ordination.’ He also directed him to procure any other ministers he could to assist him, for ‘he would be glad to hear what any of them had to say for themselves.’ Mr. Owen sought the co-operation of Mr. Henry, which, after much hesitation, was granted; to whom also was joined Mr. Jonathan Roberts, ‘a plain man of great integrity, and a very good scholar.’ On the day appointed the Bishop made his appearance with the famous Henry Dodwell. In those days of intolerance, some parties had refrained from engaging in the controversy, ‘lest it might be prejudicial to their liberty. The Bishop, however, was pleased to promise that no thing which should be said, by way of argument, should be any way turned to the prejudice of the disputants, nor advantage taken of it to give them trouble.’ There was convened a large number of the gentry and clergy of the neighbourhood, the magistrates of the town, and a great concourse of people. The discussion lasted from two in the afternoon till between seven and eight at night. ‘Much was said, pro and con, touching the identity of bishops and presbyters, the bishoping and unbishoping of Timothy and Titus, &c. It was managed with a great deal of liberty, and not under the strict laws of disputation.’ ‘The Bishop won golden opinions from all parties on account of the gravity, calmness, and evenness of spirit’ with which he conducted his part; while he seems to have been so much gratified with the temper of his opponents, as to have formed from that time a most intimate friendship with Mr. Henry.” The report does not inform us whether the Bishop was convinced by the arguments of the nonconformists. That Philip Henry retained his opinions is undeniable; for he never ceased advocating, with Christian zeal and moderation, the principles of nonconformity. It is gratifying, however, to read of so tolerant and well-conducted a disputation in so persecuting an age; it speaks much in favor of the just and beneficent spirit of Bishop Lloyd.

The reign of James II. offers no particular incident in relation to Oswestry. As a sovereign he was worthless and dangerous. His darling objects were, the establishment, throughout the land, of the Roman Catholic religion, and the restriction of popular freedom. During his brief occupation of the throne he paid a visit to Shrewsbury and Whitchurch; and on his way from the metropolis sojourned at Ludlow for a night, and passed through the Strettons. The people of Shrewsbury had not been favoured with a royal visit for nearly half a century, and were now disposed to give the monarch a cordial reception. All the public functionaries were trained and disciplined as to duty, for an incident had occurred in the royal progress, so ludicrous in character, that the Shrewsbury corporation resolved it should not be re-enacted amid their loyal congratulations. The story to which we refer may be true or fabulous; but it is too good not to be connected with a notice of James’s reign: and, after all, the mayor of the town where the scene is laid, in adopting literally the promptings of the learned recorder, was not, to use a common phrase, “so great a fool as he seemed to be.” If King James had received those promptings in a wise spirit—mirth-exciting as they must have been—he might have been a good sovereign, and had around him loyal and devoted subjects.

The mayor whose absurdities we are about to describe is said to have been both illiterate and dull, incapable of reading or remembering an address. It was settled therefore, says the tale, that the recorder should stand behind him, to set him right if he happened to be out. When they (the corporation) were ushered into the royal presence, and the chief magistrate was about to commence his harangue, as he appeared somewhat sheepish and embarassed, his friendly monitor whispered in his ear, “Hold up your head, sir, and look like a man!” Mistaking this for the beginning of his speech, he boldly stared the king in the face, and roared out, “Hold, up your head, sir, and look like a man!” Alarmed at the frightful blunder just made, the recorder whispered to the chief magistrate (who at this moment must have resembled the celebrated Mayor of Garrat, with two nosegays in his coat), “What the d—l do you mean, sir?” The mayor, as stolid as ever, and nothing abashed, thundered out the recorder’s exclamation as boldly as before. The recorder, indignant and irritated, muttered, “By heavens, sir, you’ll ruin us all!” His worship, taking this to be a continuance of the speech, and still staring his majesty full in the face, with a yet louder voice repeated, “By heavens, sir, you’ll ruin us all!” Even kingly patience could bear this no longer, and rising, his majesty in an angry tone demanded what was the meaning of this jargon? when the recorder laid before him “the facts of the case,” and the king passed the affair by with a gracious smile.

THE REVOLUTION.

The Revolution of 1688 brought over to England William III.; and his reign was followed by that of “good Queen Anne.” Her reign has been termed the Augustan era of English literature, as it was graced with the polished writings of Sir Isaac Newton, Addison, Steele, Farquar (who laid the scene of his comedy, “The Recruiting Officer,” in Shrewsbury, and who, in his epistle dedicatory, first used the lively sentiment, “To all friends round the Wrekin,” now one of the social laws of Salop), of Vanbrugh, Prior, Pope, Parnell, Garth, Gay, cum multis aliis. Instructed as the nation was by these and other eminent men, still bigotry and enthusiasm were evidenced by many in matters of religion and politics. In the year 1709 the nation was thrown into a gentle ferment by the indiscreet conduct of the government towards an obscure clergyman named Sacheverell (who had long been starving on a poor curacy in London), in consequence of his having preached and published two scurrilous and intemperate sermons, of which red-hot politics were the staple. He was summoned to the bar of the House of Lords, and impeached. The Whig ministry viewed his attacks with alarm, and he was sentenced not to preach for three years. This persecution, as the proceedings of the government were called at once martyrised Sacheverell, who suddenly found himself famous. A gentleman residing in the neighbourhood of Oswestry, Robert Lloyd, Esq., of Aston, sympathized with the suffering Sacheverell, and became his friend. Mr. Lloyd had been the doctor’s pupil at Magdalen College, Oxford; and as the rectory of Sylattyn, in his gift, became vacant at this juncture, he presented it to the high-church meteor. This was doubtless a god-send to the doctor, who set off from London, to take possession of his new living, with all the state which a corrupt popularity could give to him. A Tory writer of Queen Anne’s reign tells us that “he entered upon his triumphant progress to Shropshire. He was magnificently entertained at Oxford by the University, and received in the other great towns he passed through (Shrewsbury and Oswestry included) with the loud acclamations and joyful congratulations of the people, upon his deliverance from whig persecution.” In Shrewsbury the crier was sent about to proclaim his arrival, and the bells were rung in honour of the event. As he passed through Oswestry, it is related, the crowd assembled to witness his arrival was so great, that an enthusiastic old woman, a great dabbler in politics and religion, no doubt, was so excited in her endeavours to obtain a sight of the distinguished bigot, that she succeeded only in catching a passing glance at his figure and periwig. “I could see only part of the holy man,” she exclaimed, “but I console myself with having had a sight of his ever-blessed wig as he rode along.” This sort of mummery was not confined to Oswestry. In many towns people were desirous to have their new-born infants christened with a name so revered; which, having been transmitted through succeeding generations, is not yet extinct in this county. On his return to London he met with nothing but laudations, except at Worcester, where, by the direction of Bishop Lloyd, a suitable rebuff was administered to him. Of Dr. Sacheverell nothing more was heard worthy of transcription. Like most other men whose popularity is created by intolerant doctrines in religion or politics, he speedily found that his sudden greatness was as mutable as it was undeserved.The death of Queen Anne, in 1714, secured to the kingdom the Brunswick Dynasty. The Act of Settlement, passed in the reign of William III., provided that the crown of Great Britain should henceforth be held only by Protestant Princes. James Stuart, Queen Anne’s brother, known more popularly as the Pretender, could not reign in England because he was a Roman Catholic, and George, Duke of Brunswick, and Elector of Hanover, a Protestant Prince, whose mother was grand-daughter of James I., became King of Great Britain. The Brunswick succession has continued till the present time, the united kingdom deriving especial benefits from the reigns of the three Georges, of William IV., and of Queen Victoria. Under the sway of George III. enlarged freedom, civil and religious, was extended to his subjects; arts, science, and commerce flourished, and the people made rapid advancement in religious and moral improvement. The memorable wish of the venerable monarch George III., “That every one of his subjects should read and possess the Bible”—a far more generous sentiment than that of the French King who desired to see the day when every one of his subjects should be able to put a fowl into the pot once a week—was largely realized through the instrumentality of Robert Raikes, Dr. Bell, and Joseph Lancaster, the great promoters of education in the land, and by, also, the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society, whose distribution of the Scriptures gave an impulse to religious and benevolent efforts which have been increasing in usefulness and efficiency to the present day. Under the auspices of George IV. the nation derived numerous blessings, deficient as he was of many of the bright qualities that ought to shine in the moral diadem of a British King. The reign of William IV.—the Sailor King, as he has been familiarly but appropriately called—was rendered illustrious by his intense regard for the interests of the people, and his sanction to the Second Great Charter of British rights. Under the mild and gracious rule of our beloved Sovereign Queen Victoria, the rights and privileges of Britons are held sacred; literature, arts, and science have acquired “a more than double sway;” commerce and manufactures, in a multiplicity of forms, for the comfort and luxury of mankind, have careered onwards with giant steps, that have astonished and delighted the wisest and the best; the social comforts of all classes of the British community are rendered almost boundless by the progress of invention, the ingenuity of mechanical skill, and the unceasing activity of all industrial pursuits; the unrighteous laws that prohibited the importation of corn have been abolished; free trade in bread has been established with all the nations of the earth; ancient grinding monopolies have been destroyed; national imposts reduced; the just demands of the people speedily granted; harsh feudal laws, carrying with them inhuman punishments, have been blotted out of the Statute-book; “man’s inhumanity to man,” under the sanction of Acts of Parliament, has been softened if not wholly subdued; the just principle of national brotherhood, inculcated by divine precept, has gained vital force; religion has become less sectarian, and more thoroughly Christian in profession and practice; the helping hand of man to his brother man, in the hour of necessity, is seen now more actively at work than ever; the people at large are united as one man, in all great designs of philanthropy and benevolence, and in all puissant combinations against injustice and oppression; our Queen and her enlightened and virtuous Consort are ever watchful for the country’s weal. The reign of Victoria is thus far the brightest page of regal history, because it has been pre-eminently the best. We may sum up in the eloquent language of Dr. Southwood Smith:—“We live in a glorious age. The rapidity of the progress of liberal opinion, and I will add, of liberal feeling, within these few years has been unexampled in the history of our race. Sometimes indeed the tide of improvement like the tide of the ocean may appear to have receded; but soon, as if deriving strength from its momentary retreat, slow, majestic, irresistible, it has rolled beyond its former limit; but, unlike its type, it has not returned, and it will not return, to the boundary it has passed.”