The Annals of Willenhall by Frederick William Hackwood (13 ebook reader TXT) 📕

Whereupon the said Walter with two of his servants, in peaceable manner, and without any harness, came to the said John Beamont to his place at Weddesbury, to know how the Mayor and Inhabitants of Walsale would entreat him.

John Beamont said that he knew of no hurt that they willed to him. It has been of old time used and accustomed on the said Fair day that the inhabitants of Hampton, Weddesbury, and Walsale have come to the Fair with such Captains as they have of old time used, to the intent to gather money with their disports to the use of the said churches of the said lordships.

And this is all we know of that lively "Whitsun Morris" at Willenhall Fair in the year of grace 1498. It all reads like a delightful chapter in the vein of Shakespeare's Dogberry and Verges; and it will be noted that the priests are among the captains or ringleaders in this Sunday revelling.

* * * * *

After the Reformation came the Puritans, who severely discountenanced all Sunday revelry. And so the lampoon of their enemies ran:--

There dwells a people on the earth That reckons true religion treason, That makes sad war on holy mirth, Count madness zeal and nonsense reason; That think no freedom but in slavery, That makes lyes truth, religion, knavery; That rob and cheat with "yea" and "nay," Riddle me, riddle me, who are they?

Yet, when religious differencies had brought on civil war, it had to be confessed of this Puritan people (so says Sir Francis Doyle in "The Cavalier"):--

That though they snuffled psalms, to give The rebel dogs their due, When the roaring shot poured thick and hot They were stalwart men and true.

And so the mighty struggle for liberty of conscience against the pretensions of a dominant Church had proceeded for over century, when we find the incumbency of Willenhall held by the Rev. Thomas Badland.

Thomas Badland was born in 1643, matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, 1650, and took his B.A. degree, 1653. He was one of the noble band of ministers who relinquished their livings on August 24th, 1662, rather than conform to the requirements of the Act of Uniformity, passed on the Restoration of Charles II.

On his ejectment from Willenhall, this conscientious Puritan divine returned to his native city, Worcester, where "he formed a distinct congregation of Christians, who assembled for worship in a small room" at the bottom of Fish Street. His family was an old one in Worcester, the name Badland occurring in a charter of James I.

According to Noake's "Worcester Sects," he was minister of that congregation for 35 years; but before his death the Declaration of Indulgence by James II. was made (1687), and immediately thereupon Mr. Badland's church was regularly constituted by the adoption of the Covenants of church membership which had been drawn by Richard Baxter--he was a personal friend of the eminent divine--in terms sufficiently general to include almost all denominations who might choose to make it a point of common agreement.

From Nash's "History of Worcestershire" we learn that on a monument on the south wall of the south aisle of St. Martin's church, Worcester, it was set forth:--

Under these seats lies interred the body of the Rev. Thomas Badland, a faithful and profitable preacher of the Gospel in this city for the space of thirty-five years. He rested from his labours, May 5th, A.D 1698, aet. 64.

Mors mihi vita nova.

When St. Martin's Church was pulled down in 1768 this marble tablet was carelessly thrown aside, and soon got broken into fragments. Happily the pieces were rescued and put together again with loving care for erection in the vestibule of Angel Street Chapel, at the expense of the congregation worshipping there. In the new Independent Chapel, which has taken the place of that older building (registered at Quarter Sessions in 1689 as a Presbyterian place of worship), the memorial has been placed near the pulpit.

From a MS. history of Angel Street Church, written by Samuel Blackwell in 1841, it would appear that Mr. Badland had as one of his assistants a Mr. Hand, who had been ordained at Oldbury. At Fish Street Chapel (the site of which was occupied in later times by Dent's Glove Factory), there were 120 Communicants in February, 1687; and the Declaration of Faith drawn up and signed by the church members that year bears first the name of Thomas Badland, pastor, and among many others that follow is that of "Elizab. Badland," presumably his wife. Such, briefly, is the life history of the good man who relinquished the living of Willenhall, and repudiated its "idolatrous steeple-house," at the Black Bartholomew of 1662, rather than stifle the dictates of his conscience.

In Palmer's "Nonconformist' Memorials" the Rev. Thomas Badland has been confused with the Rev. Thomas Baldwin, who was ejected (1662) from the Vicarage of Chaddesley Corbett, and who died at Kidderminster in 1693, his funeral sermon being preached by a conforming clergyman there, named White. There was also a Thomas Baldwin, junior, who had been expelled from the Vicarage of Clent, and died at Birmingham; but notwithstanding such common mispronunciations as "Badlam" for "Badland," it seems clear that the facts of the Rev. Mr. Badland's life are as given here, thanks to the careful researches of Mr. A. A. Rollason, of Dudley.

Life in Willenhall, as in many other places during the Stuart period, was not without its alarms and apprehensions. The trouble began when Charles I., by the advice of Archbishop Laud, tried to force the English liturgy upon Scotland. The resistance offered to this was the real beginning of the English Revolution, for the King, in the attempt to carry out his despotic will, had to enlist soldiers by force.

[Picture: Mosley Hall. Photo. by J. Gale, Wolverhampton]

In the year 1640 a special muster was made for the war against the Scotch Covenanters; the men from Staffordshire consisted of trained bands who had been employed in the previous year, and 300 men who were impressed for the occasion. The service throughout the country was very unpopular, and in some counties the men mutinied and murdered their officers. Staffordshire did not escape some riots, and one of the most serious of them occurred in front of Bentley Hall, a mile and a-half out of Willenhall.

[Picture: Boscobel House. Photo. by B. Williams, Wolverhampton]

This was the last attempt at raising men on the old feudal levies; the trained bands were armed partly with pikes and partly with the newly-invented firelock, while the whole of the impressed men were armed merely with pikes. The Muster Roll for this immediate locality contains these names (that of Aspley is cancelled):--

Traine. Presse. Tipton Thomas Dudley, --Thomas Winney. The L. dnd.

--William Aspley pst.

--John Winspurre in loco.

--John Husband.

--Joseph Richard.

--William Dutton.

--Richard Rushton: to be sp: per R. Turnor. Darlaston & Bentley Thomas Pye, Willm Turner, Wednesfield John Hill, Willenhall William Wilkes,

Another Roll dated 1634, but apparently in use at this time, gives among the names of the "trayned horse" liable as (or for) 2 "curiasiers," "Thomas Levison, Esq.," and "Mrs. Lane and her sonne."

Within a couple of years Civil War had broken out in England, and Willenhall had to endure its full share of suffering lying, as it did, midway between two opposing strongholds--Dudley Castle, held for the King (under Colonel Leveson), and Rushall Hall, garrisoned for the Parliamentarian side.

Both sides in turn, as they were in a position to enforce payment, made levies of money upon the unfortunate inhabitants of the district. While Rushall Hall was a fortified position, first under its owner, Sir Edward Leigh, and afterwards under its military governor, Captain Tuthill, Willenhall was forced to pay to the support of the garrison there.

Here is the evidence of an official notice:--

April 8th, 1643.--Ordered that the weekly pay, and five weeks' arrears, of Norton and Wirley, Pelsall, Rushall, and Goscote, Willenhall, Wednesfield and Wednesbury, shall be assigned to Col. Leigh for payment of his officers of horse and troopers

There is a similar military order, dated 22nd June, 1644, by which the weekly pay of all these places is assigned to Captain Tuthill, governor of Rushall, though in the parcelling out of contributory areas, Bushbury, Wolverhampton, Bilston, and Bradley are included in another district. The other side were employing forced labour for strengthening the defence of Dudley Castle, and not improbably the Leveson tenants from Wednesfield and Willenhall were impressed to go up there equipped with spade and mattock.

Doubtless troops and detachments of armed men were frequently to be seen passing through Willenhall; while Wolverhampton, owing to the influence of the Levesons and the Goughs, was almost a Royalist rallying place. Soon after the skirmish at Hopton Heath, near Stafford, in 1643, Charles I. found shelter in the old Star and Garter Inn (then in Cock Street), and to this hostelry came Mr. Henry Gough, who had accommodated Charles, Prince of Wales, and his younger brother, James, Duke of York, at his private residence, to proffer the King a willing war loan of 1,200 pounds.

The same year the King made the same hostelry his headquarters, dating a letter which he addressed to the Lichfield magistrates, directing them to send their arms to join the Royal standard at Nottingham, "Att our Court at Wolverhampton, 17 August, 1642."

In 1643, Prince Rupert, after his memorable fight at Birmingham, made an attack upon Rushall Hall; and notwithstanding the gallant defence of Mistress Leigh, in the absence of her husband, its lord, took and held it for the King, putting in as governor Sir Edward Leigh's neighbour, Colonel Lane, of Bentley. With a garrison of 100 to 200 men, he held Rushall Hall for some months, having some exciting times, chiefly in the plundering of the enemy's stores, and the private merchandise of carriers passing along the great Watling Street over Cannock Chase.

On May 10th, 1644, the Earl of Denbigh, after a vigorous attack, recaptured Rushall, finding there thousands of pounds' worth of stolen goods, and taking among other prisoners William Hopkins, of Oakeswell Hall, Wednesbury. It was then Captain Tuthill became commander of the garrison.

In the same month the Stafford Parliamentarian Committee ordered the seizure of all the horses and cattle belonging to that staunch Royalist, Squire Lane, and of all the other cavalier landowners around Bentley. The seizure was duly made, and realised by sale at Birmingham. As a set-off to this it must be recounted that at the beginning of the year Colonel Lane had fallen upon a Parliamentary escort convoying stores and provisions to Stafford, routed the enemy, and taken no less than sixty horses, fifty-five of their packs containing ammunition. Hence, the reprisal at this first opportunity.

In the September of the year (1644) a remarkable episode occurred. The governor of Dudley Castle, Sir Thomas Leveson, employed one of his trusty tenants, a yeoman named Francis Pitt, of Wednesfield, to make a secret attempt to bribe Captain Tuthill to betray Rushall and its garrison into his hands. A number of letters passed between Leveson and Tuthill, for the latter pretended from the outset to fall in with the treacherous proposal,