Chapter 8
On entering the house, the visitor feels a pang of regret that the venerable building should ever have been degraded to the purposes of commerce; particularly as the fabric retains many of its characteristics, thanks to the soundness of the workmanship of two centuries ago. The decorations in the form of plaster mouldings that cover the beams, and the medallion or panel pictures, being partly historical and partly classical, all exhibit the Renaissance feeling of the early eighteenth century.
The ceilings of two lower rooms are in a splendid state of preservation, and contain excellent work. One room is square with beams across the middle; the ceiling on one side of the beam representing "The Seasons," and on the other side "The Elements." The Seasons are severally depicted as follows:--A young face, with the hair of the head bedecked with flowers, for "Spring"; a face in the bloom of womanhood, with the hair bedecked with corn, represents "Summer"; a well-matured face, having the hair bedecked with fruit, "Autumn'"; while a pleasing aged face, the brow bedecked with holly, stands for "Winter." Painted on the wall over the fireplace is the Castle of St. Angelo, and the bridge crossing the Tiber at Rome. The Elements, (so called by the old alchemists) are also figuratively, represented by four heads; one bearing a castle, with three towers and other buildings in the background (Earth); one surmounted by an eagle with outspread wings (Air); the next with tongues of fire issuant (Fire); and the other spouting forth a fountain (Water).
The other room is oblong, with beams across dividing its ceiling into four parts. In these parts there are four well-drawn figures, one believed to be Bacon, with beard, moustache, whiskers, and in Elizabethan costume; two close cropped heads, carried on noble necks, believed to be respectively Julius Caesar and Mark Antony; and the fourth is said to be Homer, with the customary curly hair and beard, but showing a collar of some sort, and apparently wearing a skull cap. Over the mantel, painted on canvas, is the Coliseum, showing the Arch of Titus and a pool in the foreground.
In the main room upstairs is still to be seen the portrait of Dr. Wilkes, painted on canvas, over the mantelpiece. He is depicted as a clean shaven man with benevolent face, bluish or blue-grey eyes, a good forehead, nose, mouth and chin well-defined, and wearing a wig. His costume includes a high-cut waistcoat, bearing ten buttons, opened in front nearly all the way down to show cravat and frilled shirt, the cravat having a buckle--probably jewelled in front. The outer coat is without a collar, cut a little lower than the waistcoat, sloping from above outwards, showing eight buttons, and apparently of greenish-brown velvet.
The pool which formerly ornamented the garden had disappeared; but the boathouse is still there, and the room above it in which the Doctor used to keep his Antiquarian Collection and other artistic treasures. As to the lawns, shrubberies, gardens, orchards, and pleasaunces, there is scarcely a remnant left.
Of the once sweet and pellucid stream, spanned by an ornamental bridge, which conducted the rambler to the pleasant meads beyond, nothing remains but the name, "Willenhall Brook"--it is now little better than a dirty open sewer.
It may not be generally known that a passing allusion is made to Wilkes in Boswell's "Life of Johnson."
In the IV. chapter of Vol. I. of this monumental biography we read that in 1740 Dr. Johnson wrote "an epitaph on Phillips, a musician, which was afterwards published with some other pieces of his, in 'Mrs. Williams's Miscellanies.' This epitaph is so exquisitely beautiful, that I remember even Lord Kaines, strangely prejudiced as he was against Dr. Johnson, was compelled to allow it very high praise. It has been ascribed to Mr. Garrick from its appearing at first with the signature G; but I have heard Mr. Garrick declare it was written by Dr. Johnson, and give the following account of the manner in which it was composed. Johnson and he were sitting together, when amongst other things Garrick repeated an epitaph upon this Phillips, by a Dr. Wilkes, in these words:--
Exalted soul! whose harmony could please The love-sick virgin, and the gouty ease; Could jarring discord, like Amphion, move To beauteous order and harmonious love; Rest here in peace, till angels bid thee rise And meet thy blessed Saviour in the skies.
"Johnson shook his head at the common-place funeral lines, and said to Garrick, 'I think, Davy, I can make better.'"
The great biographer goes on to state that Johnson, after stirring about his tea and meditating a little while, produced these lines:--
Exalted soul! thy various sounds could please The love-sick virgin, and the gouty ease; Could jarring crowds, like old Amphion, move To beauteous order and harmonious love. Rest here in peace, till angels bid thee rise, And join thy Saviour's concert in the skies.
Suffice it to add that the personage who inspired the lines was an eccentric genius named Claudius Phillips {88}, on whose memorial tablet in the porch of Wolverhampton Church were engraved the said lines, attributed to Dr. Wilkes, who strangely enough is described as "of Trinity College, Oxford and Rector of Pitchford, Salop"--a clergyman whose name was John, and who lived a century previously. We are further informed that our Willenhall worthy is spoken of by Browne Willis in the "History of Mitred Abbies," Vol. II. p. 189--Browne Willis being one of the most notable antiquarians of that period, and an eccentric individual withal.
All this points to the fact that Dr. Richard Wilkes was well known as a writer, and acknowledged as an authority.
[Picture: Decorative flower]
XVII.--Willenhall "Spaw."
It is difficult to imagine Willenhall as a health resort; yet it was no fault of Dr. Richard Wilkes that his native spot did not become a fashionable inland watering place.
It should be explained that during the eighteenth century there was almost a mania to discover and exploit wells and springs, and to regard them as fountains of health to which the fashionable and the well-to-do might be attracted. Before the newer fashion of sea bathing was introduced--which was early in the next century--there was a great number of these newly-invented places of inland resort. For instance, Dudley had its charming Spa on Pensnett Chace; and to show that Wolverhampton was not behindhand, we take the liberty of quoting from the MSS. of Dr. Wilkes:
"A medical spring has lately been discovered at Chapel Ash, in the south-west part of this town, which purges moderately and without the least uneasiness. A brown ocre, or absorbent earth, remains after evaporation, mixt with salt and sulphur; so that it seems to promise relief in all kinds of disorders proceeding from costiveness, and alcaline, fiery, and acid humours in the stomach and bowels, attended by a flow of feverish heat, eruptions on the skin called scorbutic, headaches, giddiness, flatulency, sour eructations, flying pains called nervous and rheumatic, the hemorrhoids or piles, asthma, and many other disorders which seem incurable by the most powerful medicines."
Truly the Doctor might have earned a good living nowadays by writing the advertisements for modern quack specifics.
Shaw's description of the Willenhall Spa says that "the spring arises on the north side of a brook which runs almost directly from the west to the east, and so very near to it that a moderate shower will raise the brook as to cover it. About 200 yards up this brook, on the same side, are several springs, one of which was much taken notice of by our ancestors, and consecrated to St. Sunday, no common saint. Over it is the following inscription:--
Fons occulis morbisque cutaneis diu celebris, A.D. 1726."
"Saint Sunday" must have been some local saint; or, more probably, a jocular embodiment of the sacredness of this day of the week with its peculiarly pagan name, to the cause of idleness, and so dubbed by the native wit of Willenhall; anyway, no saint of this name is to be found in the authorised Calendar of any church.
One of the Wilkes MSS. utilised by Shaw, and dated 1737, records the following experiment worked by the learned doctor with the local mineral waters:--
"I evaporated in a brass furnace 13.5 gallons to 3 quarts, then let it stand 3 days to settle, and poured the clear water from the foeces. This was a light smooth insipid earth of a yellow colour, fat between the fingers, insipid and impalpable, which being dried, weighed 93 grains. The remaining 3 quarts I evaporated in a brass kettle and had from it 53 grains of a very salt glutinous substance which dried into a solid mass of a brown colour. When the water came to a pint or thereabout, it began to smell like glew, and continued to do so when in a solid substance; it was then also as high-coloured as lye; but I am afraid this colour might arise from the brass kettle, in some measure, or too great a fire, being perhaps burnt."
Another of his scientific records runs:--
"Oct. 9th.--I put into a Florence flask as much of this water as filled it up to the neck within 5 inches of the top. This I placed in a sand heat and increased the fire gradually till it boiled; and so I evaporated ad siccitatem. Some volatile sal stuck to the glass even up to the top; at the bottom was a small quantity of dark coloured matter, like that above, but I could not get together 2 grains of either. Here it is plain this sal is so volatile as to be raised and fly away by heat."
In another place he writes:--
"On the 5th of November, 1737, I filled several glasses with this water, and put into them the following simples:--
1. Green Tea. This, in about 24 hours, made it of the colour of sack, and, by standing, it became much deeper coloured, like strong old beer.
2. Fustic; not so deep, more like cyder.
3. Red Sanders; almost the same colour in the light; but if I held the glass in the shade, it appeared of a blueish green, exactly like some old glass bottles I have formerly seen.
4. Alkanet; deeper, like old mountain wine.
5. Galls; paler than any of the foregoing. A large blue scum on the top, such as we see upon urine in fevers, and standing lakes of water, where there are minerals. With logwood, tormentil, cort, granat, etc., there are some spots of this kind, but with none so much as with galls.
"A little below the Spaw (continues our authority), on the other side of the brook, they meet with a white clay, full of yellow veins of a deep colour, like gumboge when it has been for some time exposed to the air. These two they temper together and make into cakes, which they sell to the glovers by the name of ochre cakes, and with them they give a yellow colour to leather.
"Near the surface of the earth the country is for the most part a strong clay, which makes good brick, but, for a small compass from this Spaw all along the village on the north side of the brook we have sand. Underground the whole country abounds with coal and ironstone."
The glovers' handicraft, it may be mentioned in passing, was once strongly represented in olden Darlaston.
The situation of Willenhall is by no means an elevated one, and the whole plain in which it is situated formerly abounded in Springs, ere the surface had been so much disturbed by mining operations.
On the edge of the valley, under the shadow of Sedgley Beacon, was the famous Spring known as the Lady Wulfruna's, and which gave the place its name, Spring Vale; from this spot the silvery stream flowed eastwards into Willenhall, seeking the cool shade of the pleasant woodland there.
The stream, as it came in from Bilston, and ran eastwards through Willenhall, till it met the Tame, was once called the Hind Brook, or Stag River. In Saxon times the Tame here seems to have been designated Beorgita's Stream; and Mr. G. T. Lawley, in his "History of Bilston," says that the original bed of this brook was discovered in Willenhall some years ago when extensive excavations were being made.
So far the scientific aspect of this once famous Well. The popular view of a much frequented mineral spring which had "long been celebrated for disease of the eye and skin" opens out an even wider aspect. As previously mentioned, the brook flowing past it ran from west to east; a stream so directed was always accounted by the Druids of old as a sacred watercourse. Being thus from the earliest dawn of history within sacred precincts, there can be little doubt the Willenhall fountain enjoyed the reputation of a "Holy well" for many centuries. As such it came in for the annual custom of "well dressing," a vestige of the old pagan practice of well worship. Respecting this ancient custom, Dr. Plot, writing in 1686 in his "Natural History of Staffordshire," says:--
"They have a custom in this county, which I observed on Holy Thursday at Brewood and Bilbrook, of adorning their Wells with boughs and flowers; this it seems they do at all gospel places, whether wells, trees, or hills, which being now observed only for decency and custom's sake, is innocent enough. Heretofore, too, it was usual to pay their respect to such wells as were eminent for curing distempers (one of which was at Wolverhampton in a narrow lane leading to a house, called Sea-well; another at Willenhall; others at Monmore Green, near Wolverhampton; at Codsall and many other parts of Staffordshire) on the saint's day whose name the well bore; diverting themselves with cakes and ale, and a little music and dancing; which, whilst within bound, was also an innocent recreation."
Dr. Oliver says the beautiful spring at Dunstall was the favourite resort of the Lady Wulfruna, and from contact with her sanctity acquired a reputation for possessing healing virtues of a miraculous character, and that this fountain was long known among its devotees as Wulfruna's Well.
Pitt's "History of Staffordshire," issued in 1817, gives a long list of local wells bearing at that time some similar repute for their remedial waters. Among them was Codsall Well, near Codsall Wood, supposed in olden times to be efficacious in cases of leprosy, and adjacent to which once stood a Leper House, replaced at a later period by a "Brimstone Ale-house," so-called because the water was sulphureous. The waters of the Monmore Green Well are described as containing "sulphur combined with vitriol." The Sea-well Spring still retained its name as a "Spaw" famous for its "eye water"; while those of Willenhall and Bentley were said to yield a valuable remedial sulphur water so long as they "could be kept from mixture with other waters."
Folklore not only connected these Wells with patron saints, but associated their magic precincts and curative effects with beneficent fairies. A well like that of Willenhall, which in a post-renaissance period was honoured with a stone frontal bearing a Latin inscription, would of a certainty be attended by fairy elves in an earlier and more primitive era.
About this Spring (if ancient fame say true) The dapper elves their midnight sports pursue; Their pigmy king and little fairy queen, In circling dances gambolled on the green, While tuneful sprites a merry concert made And airy music warbled through the shade.
[Picture: Decorative design]
XVIII.--The Benefice.
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 pounds 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 pounds."
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 pounds. 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:--