Owing to the meagreness of the record, a complete list of the holders of the benefice is not to be expected. Thomas de Trollesbury has been named as “the parson of Willenhall” in 1297 (Chapter VII.); while we also have the names of three chantry priests here—William in the Lone, 1341 (Chapter XI.); Thomas Browning, “chaplain of the chantry” in 1397 (Chapter VII.); and Hugh Bromehall in 1526 (Chapter X.); all of them doubtless nominees of the Deanery of Wolverhampton.

Of course, it was possible, though not often the practice, for the holder of the living to act as “chaunter” priest as well. The Chantry endowments, as we have seen, were forfeited at the Reformation, at which period the benefice was returned as of the annual value of “£10 clear.”

Either of these notorious evil-livers mentioned in Chapter XI., the non-preaching “dumb-dogs,” Mounsell and Cooper, may have been the occupant of the Willenhall curacy in 1586. In 1609 an improvement in the intellectual status of the holder had been effected, William Padmore, D.D., being then incumbent.

In a previous chapter it was shown that the Rev. T. Badland was expelled from the living of Willenhall in 1662. It can now be shown that he was holding the benefice at least as early as 1658—and possibly from the beginning of the Cromwellian rule and the overthrow of the Episcopacy in 1646.

About 1645–6 ordinances were passed appointing a Committee to consider ways and means of upholding and settling the maintenance of ministers in England and Wales. In 1654 the powers of the Plundered Ministers’ Committee were transferred to the Trustees for Maintenance. The Committee took the receipts of all Tithes, Fifths, and First Fruits; and later on the income of the rectories, bishoprics, deaneries, and chapters; they sold the bishops’ lands, &c.

It was out of this income that augmentations and advances were granted by the said Committee to ministers and school-masters. In the Record Office at London there is an audited account the Treasurer to the “Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers and other pious uses of moneys,” showing among the disbursements for the year ending 26 December, 1658, one to

“Thomas Badland, of Willenhall (6 months to 1659, March 25) . . . £10.”

In curious contrast with this high-minded clergyman, who sacrificed his living to his conscience, is his successor in the Curacy of Willenhall, the Rev. Mr. Gilpin, who had to be seriously admonished for non-residence and other faults, and was at last, in the year 1674, turned out of the living altogether. Not improbably this gentleman was a pluralist, an example of the class of clergymen by which the Church of England was very much degraded at that period.

Dr. Oliver’s history printed the following “Dismissal of the Rev. Thomas Gilpin,” from the original document found in the possession of Mr. Neve, of Wolverhampton, in 1836:—

We, whose names are subscribed, the undoubted and immediate lords of the Manor of Stow Health, hearing and well weighing the said complaints of the Inhabitants of the towne of Willenhall, lying within our said Manor, made and brought against you, Thomas Gilpin, clerk, Curate of the Chapell there:

Doe in consideration thereof and in pursuance of an Order made and inrolled on some of the Rolls of the Court of our said Manor, bearing date 11th day of October in the Sixth Year of the Reign of our late Soveraigne, Lord, King James, over England, etc.

And of our power and authority thereby, Displace and Discharge you, the said Thomas Gilpin, from the place, Dignity, and office of Curate, Minister, or Priest in the said Chapell.

And do hereby present and allow John Carter, clerk (a person elected and approved by the Inhabitants of Willenhall aforesaid), to be Curate of the said Chapell in your place and stead, to read divine service there; and to do and perform all such other offices and things as shall properly belong to his Ministerial function and calling.

And thus much you, the said Thomas Gilpin, are hereby desired to take notice of.

Dated under our hands and seals this 18th day of November in the year of our Lord God, 1674, and in the six-and-twentieth year of the reigne of our Soveraigne Lord, Charles II., by the grace of God, King of England, etc.

Walter Giffard. l.s.

W. Leveson Gower. l.s.

After the expulsion of Mr. Gilpin the Rev. John Carter, who was appointed to succeed him, continued in the Curacy of Willenhall till his death in 1722. In 1727 mention is made of a Mr. Holbrooke being Curate of Willenhall.

Soon after the Registers assist in tracing the successive holders of the benefice. Here are three interesting memoranda, for instance, bearing the signature of the Rev. Titus Neve:—

1748, March 4th.—The faculty for rebuilding and enlarging ye chapel of Willenhall, ye then present minister, ye Rev. Titus Neve—(to charge and receive certain fees, etc.)

1750, January 20.—Then it was yt service began to be performed in ye New Chapel, after almost two years discontinuance, by Titus Neve, Curate.

1763, February 17th.—Joyce Hill made oath that ye body of Benjamin Stokes was buried in a shroud of Sheep’s Wool only, pursuant to an Act of Parliament in that case made and provided.—Witness my hand,

Titus Neve.

(This entry has reference to the Act for Burying in Woollen, one of those pieces of legislative folly whereby it was sought to bolster up artificially our decaying trade in wool.)

The Rev. Titus Neve, whose descendants at the present day are a well-known Wolverhampton family, was born at Much Birch in Herefordshire, son of the Rev. Thomas Neve, in 1717. He matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, became Rector of Darlaston, 1764, holding the two livings, together with the Prebendary of Hilton his death in 1788. He was buried at Willenhall.

A sermon preached by him in Worcester Cathedral on August 12th, 1762, was printed in Birmingham by the celebrated Baskerville (see Simms’ “Bibliotheca Staffordiensis”).

His successor was the Rev. William Moreton, who, according to an entry in the Registers, was “sequestered to the vacant chapelry of Willenhall, December 4th, 1788.” Toward the close of his ministry Mr. Neve appears to have had the assistance of Curates—George Lewis signs the Registers as “Clerk, Curate” between December, 1778, and July, 1779; and the signature of Mr. Moreton in the same capacity begins to appear in 1784. Among the entries of the last-named is a record that in 1786 he paid the “tax” on a number of Baptisms and Burials himself, whereas in 1785 he shows that a “Collector” received it.

* * * * *

The advent of the Rev. W. Moreton marks an epoch, and we now turn aside to consider the peculiar history of the Advowson, or right of presentation to the living of Willenhall. In 1409 it is found in private hands, being then the property of William Bushbury and his wife (see Chapter VII.).

When the lord of a manor built a church on his own demesne, he often appointed the tithes of the manor to be paid to the officiating minister there, which before had been given to the clergy in common; the lord who thus founded the church often endowed it with glebe, and retained the power of nominating the minister (canonically qualified) to officiate therein. But a chapel-of-ease like Willenhall, built by a resident in the locality, often had its minister, maintained by the subscriptions of persons living close around it, and they naturally claimed to elect their own ministers. The authorities at the mother church would reserve the right to approve and confirm, and would see that they suffered no loss of fees and other emoluments.

An old book in the Registry at Windsor (without date) contains this entry:—

The curacy of Willenhall is endowed with land to the value of £35. The lords of Stow Heath have, in the last two vacancies, usurped upon the Dean and Chapter, and have nominated to it.

Shaw, the county historian, writing in 1798, after stating that whoever holds the Curacy of Willenhall must have a licence from the Dean of Wolverhampton, proceeds to say:—

There has been lately a serious contest between the Marquis of Stafford and the inhabitants about the nomination of a curate.

The gift of the living (says the same authority), or nomination of the minister or curate, is in the principal inhabitants that have lands of inheritance here. He is to be approved of by the lords of the manor, and admonished by them when he does amiss; and if he does not amend in half a year, they may turn him out and nominate another.

This practice is believed to have existed in Willenhall since the time of James I.

The power of the parishioners to elect their own clergymen, though not common, exists in various parts of the country; as at Hayfield and Chapel-in-le-Frith, both in Derbyshire; and in this more immediate locality at St. John’s Deritend, Birmingham, and at Bilston and Bloxwich, nearer still.

In London the only example where the elective principle is employed in the choice of a parish priest is presented by Clerkenwell. But wheresoever a vacancy of the kind has to be filled by popular election, with all the accessories incidental to the turmoil of Parliamentary electioneering, all the bitterness of party strife, the parish is inevitably divided into two or more factions; while the clergyman upon whom the lot eventually falls must for a long time afterwards be regarded as the nominee of one of them, rather than the spiritual director of the whole body of the people. He succeeds to his high office as a victor in a great parochial struggle which cannot fail to leave behind it those feelings of rancour so harmful in matters sacred.

The only remedy for this state of things seems to be the voluntary surrender of their privilege by the parishioners; or the provisions of a special Act of Parliament.

As to the soundness of the general principle of a people being consulted in the choice of their spiritual pastor, there can scarcely be two opinions. But where the danger lurks in a case like that of Willenhall is the assumption of our English law—an assumption quite unwarranted in any country where freedom of conscience exists, and with us one of the penalties for maintaining an established State Church—that every parishioner is a Churchman.

Now, as a matter of fact, votes are recorded at these elections by Romanists, by Dissenters of various shades of opinion, by those who are unattached to any religious denomination, and by many who never, at other times, take a great interest in Church of England affairs. At the last election even trustees of Nonconformist chapels were empowered to vote if they were householders, and the trust in respect of which they qualified had been constituted by a properly executed deed. So it can scarcely be claimed that the choice of minister rests solely with those most concerned, namely, the congregation, the customary worshippers at St. Giles’s Church.

Resuming the story of the benefice at the election of 1788, it is said that Mr. Moreton having been elected, the then lords of the manor declined to present him to the bishop on the ground that they did not regard him as a fit and proper person. Litigation ensued, and the High Court of Justice declared the election void, and ordered a new one. Meanwhile, the income seems to have sequestrated, probably lying in the hands of the churchwardens till the new minister should be properly instituted.

The electors for a second time returned Moreton, and the lords of the manor then took up the attitude that it was not part of their duty to live in litigation, either with the electors or with Moreton; they had expressed their opinion of the man in the strongest manner possible, and this they considered relieved them from further responsibility; so now at the electors’ wish they nominated him to the bishop for induction, and in due course he was formally inducted.

The new incumbent of Willenhall was popularly given out to be an illegitimate “nephew” of George III.; he bore a strong facial likeness to the Royal family, and had been at college with the Duke of York. But whatever his origin or extraction, he was a typical sporting parson of the old school, an enthusiastic cock-fighter, and “a three-bottle man.”

It was not long before the old mocking doggerel was applied to Willenhall:—

A tumble-down church—
A tottering steeple—
A drunken parson—
And a wicked people!

That this old rhyme fairly described the condition of things we may venture to believe if we can also accept as true the rhyme oft quoted by this Willenhall worthy, and which was said to embody his philosophy:—

Let back and sides and head go bare,
Let foot and hand go cold,
But God send belly good ale enough,
Whether it be new or old.

Of “Parson Moreton” innumerable tales are told, all of them racy, though not a few of them apochryphal. There can be little doubt that in the later years of his life he was a bon vivant, and indulged openly in the less refined sports of the period, a cockfight above all things having a strong fascination for him.

And yet, on the plea that “a merciful man is good to his beast,” he indulged his old grey pony, “Bob,” on which he regularly ambled about, with a share of every tankard of ale he quaffed on his rounds, till the knowing quadruped refused to pass any inn along the road for miles around without stopping for refreshment.

Parson Moreton is not to be judged by modern standards. At that time the church was asleep; and Dr. Johnson once declared that he did not know one religious clergyman. Though the Parson of Willenhall became noted throughout the countryside for his eccentricities, he managed to labour among the rough population, to whom he ministered, with some sort of success.

Into all his lapses from the conventionalities of clericalism, he was a gentleman at the core, having a dignified bearing and a commanding presence. He candidly admitted his shortcomings as a clergyman, telling his flock to do as he said, not as he did. This naturally failed to satisfy very many of them; and it has been asserted that the strength of Dissent in Willenhall at the present time is directly due to the influence of his incumbency.

Of the Rev W. Moreton, it may at least be said that he was a remarkably fine reader, and his sermons were always well-constructed compositions. For many years he lived with Mr. Isaac Hartill in the house at the corner of the Market Place, opposite the Metropolitan Bank; an old house still retaining its original oak floors and staircase, and its substantial old-fashioned doors of the same material, although the building is now made into two shops.

For nearly fifty years Parson Moreton was a familiar figure in the streets of Willenhall. His last signature in the Registers appears in 1833, a year previous to which the Rev. George Hutchinson Fisher had come into the parish to assist him, taking up his residence in the house next to “The Neptune Inn,” now the Police Station. He died July 16th, 1834, and was buried on Sunday the 20th.

When Mr. Fisher came to preach Mr. Moreton’s funeral sermon, the most notable feature of the oration was the absence of direct reference to the departed. Towards the close of the sermon, however, the following passage was uttered with impressive solemnity:—

“May every occasion like the present bring instruction and edification to your souls. May the failings which you have witnessed and lamented in others urge you to examine and correct your own; and when their removal makes you think on the nature of the account they will have to render, may you be awakened to scrutinise your own stewardship; and instead of recording the sins of the departed, seek to be delivered, whilst the Redeemer invites you, from those which are a burden to your consciences.”

Truly a charitable and Christian-like obituary!