HALES OWEN ABBEY.

tenour of an indenture made between her and the abbot. She died soon after. Her son and heir, John de Botetourt, inheriting her pious disposition as well as her estate, gave the advowsons of the churches of Clent and Rowley, with their chapels, to the canons. John de Hampton also gave some lands to this house. Wolstan bishop of Worcester appropriated the church, &c. of Rowley, with the usual reservations to the vicar, and the tithes of calves and lambs, and all small tithes (except the lands belonging to the monastery), mortuaries, the herbage and trees of the church-yard, and all the altarage.

Sir Hugh Burnell, governor of Bridgenorth castle, and one of the favourites of Richard II. by his testament, dated October 2, 1417, in the fifth year of Henry V. bequeathed his body to be buried in the choir of the Abbey, under a fair tomb of alabaster (which he had before prepared) near the body of Joyce his wife; appointing his funeral" to be honourably solemnized, his debts paid, his servants rewarded, &c."

The Monastery at its dissolution was valued, according to Dugdale, at 280l. 13s. 24d. per annum; according to Speed, at 337. 15s. 64d. per annum.

HALES OWEN,

SHROPSHIRE,

Is one of those isolated districts which, in the division of the kingdom, was appended, for some reason not now discoverable, to a distant county; and though surrounded by Warwickshire, Staffordshire, and Worcestershire, is placed in the county of Salop, from which it is distant nearly thirty miles.

It is situated on the river Stour, a branch of which rises in this parish, and lies eastward of Stourbridge, at the distance of 118 miles from London.

The market is held on Monday, and there are here two annual fairs. The public buildings are the church, which is a stately edifice, a free-school, and a workhouse. The principal manufacture is the making of nails.

Near Hales Owen was formerly à Roman station, and several antiquities have been dug up in the neighbourhood. The principal attraction to this town is its vicinity to the LEASOWES.

The rural simplicity of the Leasowes is captivating: it is celebrated for being formerly the retreat of the admired SHENSTONE; and it has for ever established his pretensions to taste and judgment. "It is a perfect picture of his mind," says Mr. Wheatly, on Gardening, "simple, ele

HALES OWEN.

gant, and amiable; and will always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether, in the scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images which abound in his songs."

These plantations have been so variously and so generally detailed, that we shall only notice Shenstone's own description:

-Calm delight,

Verdant vales and fountains bright;

Trees that nod on sloping hills,

Caves that echo tinkling rills.

The view from the seat inscribed DIVINA GLORIA RURIS, is extremely fine: the front, occupied by the stately woodland of the Leasowes; the Clent hills, the spire of Hales Owen church, the obelisk in Hagley park; a variegated contrast of villages, gentlemen's seats, windmills, woods, and hillocks, fill up the centre of the landscape. The prospect is further extended to the Clee hills, twenty-five miles distant, and the Wrekin, thirty miles; and at the utmost verge of the horizon, the almost imperceptible view of the sullen mountains of Wales at the . distance of seventy miles, bounds a scene the most beautiful that can be conceived.

A large embankment to form the bed of a navigable canal has lately been thrown up near Hales Owen, which effectually deprives the Leasowes of one of its most admired prospects.