Part 16

{216} Mr. Thomas Barker, author of a work on angling, was born at this village. From the singular vein of humour which runs through his book, he appears to have been a good-humoured gossiping old man. In the dedication he states, “I have written no more but my own experience and practice, and have set forth the true ground of angling, which I have been gathering these three-score years; having spent many pounds in the gaining of it, as is well known in the place where I was born and educated, which is Bracemeale, in the liberty of Salop, being a freeman and burgess of the same city.”—‘Barker’s Delight, or the Art of Angling,’ was published a few years after Izaak Walton’s Complete Angler (1659), to which Mr. Barker appears to have contributed the greater part of what is said on Fly Fishing.

{219} Longner, the ancient seat of the Burtons, is about one mile N.W. of this village, and forms part of the parish of St. Chad. In 1558 it was the residence of Edward Burton, Esq. a zealous protestant, who expired suddenly with Joy on hearing of the accession of Queen Elizabeth. His body was refused interment in the church of St. Chad by the popish priest, owing to some stipulations made either in his will, or by the zeal of his surviving friends, that the popish service should not be celebrated over his remains, which were in consequence buried in his own garden, over which a plain altar has been erected, with a quaint poetical inscription.

{221} A great battle seems to have been fought near this hill; for in 1833 a quantity of spear heads and celts, formed of brass, or some other composition of copper, and of rather elegant workmanship, were found near the Wrekin Farm.

{227} The errata has been applied to this transcription.—DP.