A HISTORY OF SHREWSBURY. VOL. I. EDITA PENGWERNI LATE FASTIGIA SPLENDENT, TERRA, ALTRIX ET BELLATORUM MATER EQUORUM. URBS SITA LUNATO VELUTI MEDIAMNIS IN ORBE, COLLE TUMET MODICO; DUPLICI QUOQUE PONTE SUPERBIT: ACCIPIENS PATRIA SIBI LINGUA NOMEN AB ALNIS. LELAND. Genethliacon Eadverdi principis Cambriæ, ver. 445. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY HARDING, LEPARD, AND CO. FINSBURY SQUARE. 1825. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS Nowe Shrewsbrie shal be honourd (as it ought :) CHURCHYARD'S "Pleasant Conceite," 1593. PREFACE. THE Reader is here presented with a History of Shrewsbury, Civil and Ecclesiastical, founded upon authentick documents, and cleared, we hope, from some of the errors which had previously obscured it. We cannot, however, flatter ourselves, that none remain for the elucidation of future enquirers. "It is not imaginable," says an accomplished writer, "to those who have not tried, what labours an historian, that would be exact, is condemned to: he must read all, good and bad, and remove a world of rubbish, before he can lay the foundation." It has been our uniform endeavour to consult the original authorities; and if we have thence deduced any views of the national history differing from those of preceding writers, we trust it has in no case arisen from the love of paradox or party, but from what appeared to us the interests of historick truth. The whole value of a book like this depends upon the authenticity of the materials out of which it is constructed; and we shall therefore succinctly recount the principal ones on which we have built. Among these, the first place, after the brief notices of LELAND, CAMDEN, and CHURCHYARD, is undoubtedly due to the anonymous CHRONICLE OF SHREWSBURY, still remaining in MS. in our School Library, and extending from 1372 to July 25, 1603. It was probably compiled by several successive individuals of the old Shrewsbury family of Lyster: at least it was certainly in the possession of their descendant, Richard Lyster, Esq. of Rowton, so many years knight of the shire, and thence generally known in Shropshire by the name of The Senator. Having been given by him to our learned townsman John Taylor, LL.D. when a fellow of St. John's, Cambridge, it acquired the name of TAYLOR'S MANUSCRIPT; and the indefatigable Thomas Baker made large extracts from it, which are extant in the thirteenth volume of his Collections in the publick library of that university.' It is unnecessary to describe this chronicle, as the nature of it will be easily understood by our numerous quotations from it. We have nothing to add to our description of OLIVER MATHEWS'S Account of Shrewsbury, 1616, vol. i. p. 2. Of the author, we have only discovered, besides the information there communicated, that he was a Mercer of this town in 1576; and that on the 22d of June, 1580, he obtained a lease from the Crown for twenty-one years, of six acres of land and all tithes of grain in the town and fields of Cleobury Mortimer, parcel of the possessions of the dissolved priory of Wigmore, employed for the maintenance of a sexton in the said parish church. EDWARD LLOYD, Esq. Barrister at Law, during his residence in the Metropolis in the early part of his life, employed his leisure in transcribing from the publick records whatever might illustrate the history of this his native county; and when he retired to his paternal seat of Trenewydd, in the parish of Whittington, he digested a part of his extensive collections into a valuable MS. volume in folio, which he entitled The Antiquities of Shropshire, and seems to have brought to a conclusion about the close of Queen Anne's reign. In this he gives a pretty full account of Shrewsbury, of which we have availed ourselves. In the absence of a complete history of the county, it is to be desired that this volume were committed to the press. It is the same which Mr. Pennant erroneously attributes to Mr. WILLIAM MYTTON." We are not aware, however, that Mr. Mytton ever reduced any part of his collections into a narrative form. He was a long time accumulating materials, and when these were got together, severe ill health clouded his latter years, and prevented him from arranging them for the press. Perhaps, too, like Dodsworth and others, he had devoted himself so exclusively to the labour of transcription, as to have lost all inclination for 'See Biographia Britannica, art. Baker, Note F. Some charters of Shrewsbury, and a list of its bailiffs from 1372 to 1614, are among Bishop More's MSS. in that library: and the Appendix to the first Report of the Committee on Publick Records (P. 1.) speaks of a MS. in that repository entitled "Laws and Customs of the Town of Shrewsbury," which may probably be the same book; but we did not deem it worth while to enquire after it. 2 Mr. Gough has done justice to Mr. Lloyd, and quotes this MS. in his edition of Camden, as the work of its real author. |