of powder bought in 1706 for eight shillings being probably gunpowder to make a cheerful noise when Marlborough's victories were announced. "A whip for Robt. Beddoe" in 1707 probably has reference to dogs, but four and sixpence "paide to Mary Humpheris for putter gun" at Edstaston in 1698 is a puzzle. Perhaps it was for the destruction of sparrows, though the epithet may be a "misword" for "pewter," and "gun" is an old name for a flagon. Thus, twopence and fourpence were paid at Myddle in 1672 and 1673-4 "for mending the Pewter gunne." We hope the vessel was for sacred use, and not for the renowned ale of Wem. In 1726, when £5 had been paid for "Dials and fingers," Mr. Churchwarden Wicksteed was charged with having done this "without the consent of the parish." However, Mr. Wicksteed made "great submission," and "upon further consideration" was "excused by the Vestry." Indeed, in February, 1728, the appeased assembly ordered "an horizontal Dial to be made and a new Pedestal erected at parish expense," and the parish paid £9 9s. 8d. accordingly. This dial is witnessed to on the title page of the Edstaston Register, and still stands. On Lady Day 1729 the parish declared that it wanted new cushions for the Communion Table. It paid £17 4s. Id. accordingly, but still was not satisfied, and in the year following laid out a further sum of £18 25. od. on "A Dark Cloth of velvett with a Gold Fringe upon it, to be Uniform with ye Pulpitt Cloth." In 1733 George Tiler or Tyler, lately curate of Wem, gave "the branch," i.e., the handsome brass candelabrum which hangs to this day in the centre of the church. This branch cost £15, as is stated in the terrier of 1841, and the wardens paid a few shillings for fixing it up, adding "five branches " in 1736 at a cost of £3 2s. 6d. And before George Tyler left for the Rectory of Petton he, with seventeen others, set his name to a decree of our parochial bigwigs whereby "when any swine shall come into the churchyard . . . through the negligence of the owners," those neglectful persons should be cited to Lichfield or otherwise proceeded against according to law. Of miscellaneous entries, perhaps the most interesting is this: "John Alcock of the parish of linsale1 was [cried?] the 30th of 9ber Anno Domini 1693 in Wemm Town for passing counterfeit halfpence and was whip'd the 1st of 1ober accg to the orders of Edward [Kinaston?] and John Kynaston Esqs. 2 of their Majti's Justices of Peace and stands here as Rogue upon Record." This record is by no means easy to read, and the poor rogue's offence was very common at the time, though I cannot find that the whole of his punishment was. "Quær. What am I to doe," wrote Philip Henry in his diary thirty three years before, " if I receive brasse money and know not of whom, may I put it off if I can to others, or must I suffer losse by it?" And the Puritan casuist made answer to himself, "Suffer." Pepys, too, in 1663 speaks of new money which would be hard to counterfeit, but was "deadly inconvenient for telling, it is so thick, and the edges are made to turn up." Lord Macaulay tells of hurdles, with four, five, six wretches convicted of counterfeiting or mutilating the coin of the realm dragged month after month up Holborn Hill, and of seven men hanged and a woman burned on one morning for clipping, and this though constables were unwilling to arrest the offenders and justices unwilling to commit. Macaulay here is speaking of the year 1695, and in 1696 Abraham de la Pryme makes the first of his many remarks on the subject' which was the theme of diarists and the despair of statesmen at the time. 2 In 1791 £1 16s. od. was paid for an umbrella, ten years after one was bought by the wardens of St. Juliana, Salop. Commenting on a guinea paid at Wrexham in 1745 "for an Umberellow," and on eighteenpence twenty years later "for mending ye Humbrelo," Mr. Alfred N. Palmer says this article was for the use of the clergyman when officiating at funerals in wet weather, and that in a list of Church Goods at Wrexham in 1833 it is still mentioned. Ours, from its cost, ought to have 1 As Lilleshall is spelt Lineshelle in Domesday Book and Lincel in Leland's Itinerary, I have little doubt that that is the parish here meant. 2 Diary, 23 Nov., 1663. 3 History of England, vol. iv., p. 622. 4 Diary, 1696, &c., pp. 77, 84, 93, &c., &c. lasted yet longer, and may have been 7 ft. high and furnished with an ironshod point, like that at Bromley in Kent, so as to stand like a tent,' and endure for ages. The old timber market house of Wem having been consumed in the great fire of 1677, the slight fabric which was hastily erected in the same year "upbraided the town with its mean condition" for over twenty years. On Oct. 4, 1699, twenty-five of the elders of Wem, though lacking the leadership of the non-resident rector and of his curate Moses Hughes, resolved to raise £73 6s. 8d. by lewn for the erection of a more suitable building. Garbet goes into raptures over this building, which he says was erected in 1702, and which from his description and from prints appears to have been terribly like the ugly creation which followed it about 1848, and is now threatened with destruction. Only one entry in the Wardens' Accounts seems to refer to the Market Hall, but a considerable part of the book of 1790 to 1813 is filled with the resolutions of the vestry to pull down the old Gothic Church, of which a print may be seen in Eyton's Antiquities of Shropshire, and to erect in its stead the present nave, of which, I need not say much more than that it is characteristic of the period, and does more credit to the honest workmanship of George Ridgway than to the genius of William Turner. Between 1809 and 1813 the thing was done, which the parishioners since wished undone, though, happily, the ancient tower was left standing. Not to mention £7 paid for the use of the Town Hall, apparently as a substitute for the House of God, and over £11 for brass plates for pew doors, and two guineas for registering the allotment of seats in the church, the vestry, besides quarrelling both with their architect and their contractor, seem to have paid in all £2,897 10s. 11d. for the building of the nave and of a tiny chancel, which has now been superseded, through the munificence of the late Rector Russell, by one of dignity and beauty. They left, too, a debt of £190 16s. od., owing after June 20th, 1820, and that is the last date up to which we need follow our parochial history as recorded by its church officers in their accounts. 1 Clinch's Old English Churches, 1903, p. 112. It is to be regretted that the Wardens' Accounts contain no reference to that ponderous piece of their property, the fire hook, which hangs to this day under the old Town Hall. A "Fire Engine Account" appears in 1794, and then mention of an engine house. It seems probable therefore that a century ago the hook was looked upon as antiquated. As a note on fire hooks has already been printed in these Transactions, nothing further need be added here on the subject. The following, however, apropos of the curious word "knee-resters" on page 248, may conclude this long paper. Admiral Lord Collingwood in a letter to J. E. Blackett, Esq., from the "Dreadnought" off Ushant, on 4th Feb., 1805, wrote:-"You will not be surprised to hear that most of the knees which were used in the Hibernia were taken from the Spanish ships captured on the 14th February: and what they could not furnish was supplied by iron." 1 3rd Series, Vol. IV. (1904), Part I., page vii. (Miscellanea). THE PROVOSTS AND BAILIFFS OF By THE LATE MR. JOSEPH MORRIS. (Continued from 3rd Series, Volume III., page 388.) [p. 3855.] Anno (THOMAS THORNES. See page 3829. 1485. NICHOLAS PONTESBURY. See page 3832. Shrewsbury, mercer. Was of RICHARD WANTENOR. See page 3851. 1486. (JOHN HOORD. See page 3838. JOHN BAXTER. See page 3849. 1487. 1488. JOHN OTTLEY. See page 3844. 1489. THOMAS PONTESBURY. THOMAS PONTESBURY. See page 3832. JOHN GUTTYNS. See page 3854. 1490. ROBERT THORNES. 1491. THOMAS TRENTHAM. See page 3847. He was of FLORENCE SEYMPER. See page 3841. THOMAS MYTTON. See page 3826. 1492. NICHOLAS PONTESBURY. See page 3832. WILLIAM COLE. See page 3812. 1493. WILLIAM PONTESBURY. See page 3832. 1494. LAURENCE HOSYER. See page 3849. Warin de Onslow of Onslow, in the parish of St. Chad, was the common ancestor of the families of Onslow of Vol. IV., 3rd Series. LL |