A Short History of Clent

Front matter

A SHORT HISTORY OF CLENT A SHORT HISTORY OF CLENT. BY JOHN AM PH LETT, M.A., S.C.L., BARRISTER- AT-LAW. ' ' Me terrarum mihi praeter omnes Angulus ridet." — Horace. ant. (&a. 6 SOUTHAMPTON-STREET, STRAND, LONDON; AND BROAD-STREET, OXFORD. 189O. Clent, Stourbridge, November, 1890. Dear Viscouxt Cob ha if, While I have had no small pleasure in collecting the materials for this little History, I have still greater pleasure in dedicating the result to you. From the long connection of your family with the manor, and from your neighbourly interest in the parish, f confidently trust that it will not be without value to you. Yours very truly, JOHN AMPHLETT,

Preface

. rPHE object of this little book is to place on record all that is at present known by its author of the History of Clent. There is much yet to be discovered from further examination of the Public Records and other sources of information, but to wait for completeness would be to wait for ever. Considerable use has been made of the William Salt Society's Staffordshire Collections. It is greatly to be hoped that some day a Society will be founded to do for Worcestershire what this is doing for a neighbouring county. The history of Worcestershire will never be worthily re-written till such is the case. To Lord Cob ham's kindness is owing an inspection of the Court Rolls of the Manor ; and a book of this character cannot be compiled without frequent reference to the works of Messrs. Stubbs, Free man, and Rogers.

But for the most valuable portion of the book, the examination of the Legend of St. Kenelm, the author is indebted to Mr. James Parker, of Oxford : through whom he is able to give an

PREFACE.

. VIII abbreviated translation of the whole legend as found in the earliest manuscripts, and also the Latin hymn in praise of St. Kenelm, which is of very early date, and which, it is believed, has never before been printed. Owing also to Mr. Parker's kind assistance, the earlier chapters have gained much in completeness and accuracy. The list given in Nash's History of Worcester shire has been depended upon for the names of Incumbents of Clent found in the Registers of the Diocese. But this is certainly imperfect, additional names being found in the Parish Register ; and it is probably inaccurate in some respects also. Further research in this direction is yet to be desired. J. A. Clent, Stourbridge, Nov. 1890. CONTENTS.

Chapter I

Clent before the Conquest. PAGE Meaning of the Name — Tumuli — Roman Occupation — The Hwiccas — Hilly Ground — Offa — Formation of Parishes — Kenelm's murder— The Legend of Kenelm— The Danes — Formation of Counties — Grant of Clent to the Prior of Worcester — Seizure of Clent by Ævic ....... I — 12

Chapter II

Clent under the Kings. Domesday Book — Feudal Customs — Church at Clent — Broom — Maurice de Ombersley — Master Herbert of St. Peter's— Sheriffs' Rolls— Murder— Clent Church — Litigation — Clent granted to Roger de Somery . 13 — 21

Chapter III

Clent under the Somerys. Value of Land in Clent — Clent Church ; its Architecture — Foundation of Halesowen Abbey — Litigation — Fair — Tallages — Forests — Inquisitions — Surnames — Simon de Somery — Murder — Feudal Customs 2—34

Chapter IV

Clent in Lord Botetourt's Time. Tenants of the Manor — An English Village— Famine — Subsidy Rolls — Surnames — Mills — Land in Cowbach X CONTENTS. PAGE — Grant of Advowson to Halesowen Abbey — Ninths — Appropriation of Rectory to Halesowen Abbey — St. Kenelm's Chapel— Rectors of Clent— Vicars of Clent— The Black Death— Chief Rent— Manorial Accounts — Lord Botetourt . . . • 35—5°

Chapter V

Clent in Lord Burnell's Time. The Black Death — Statute of Labourers — The Lollards — Enclosures — Common Fields — The Knoll Hill — Land gone out of cultivation — Waste Land — Pauperism — Walter de Clent — Clent Church Manor — Vicars of Clent — Joan Lady Bergavenny 51—61

Chapter VI

The War of the Roses. Lady Bergavenny — The Maid of Orleans — The Earl of Wiltshire — Fulke Stafford — Sir Walter Wrottesley — Charitable Bequest — Vicars of Clent . 62 — 67

Chapter VII

The Dissolution of Halesowen Abbey. Rents of Assize — Insurrection of the Monks — St. Kenelm's Chapel — The Dissolution — The Duke of Northumberland — The Earl of Ormonde — John Hay — Agriculture — Sheep — The Reformation 68-75

Chapter VIII

The Early Court Rolls. The Court— Water-courses — Customs and Orders — Timber — Scythe - making— Strays — Felonies — Copies of Court Roll — Assize of Ale . . . . 76— CONTENTS. XI

Chapter IX

After the Reformation. PAGE Parish Registers — The Duke of Northumberland — Clent Vicarage — Wills — Farming Stock — Gilbert Lyttelton — Names of Clent People— Litchgate — Pestilence — Robert Cleye — Henry Sparrey — Chancery Proceedings — Nether Clent — Calcott Hill — Poor Laws — The Armada — Setting up of the Bible in Churches — John Lyttelton ...... S4 — 100

Chapter X

The Manor Court in Elizabeth's Reign, The Court — Sheep — Game — Brawls — Butchers — Waste land — Enclosures — Crops — Pigs — Gleaning — Deodand — Scandalous Speeches — Archery — Beggars — Sumptuary Laws — Assize of Ale . . . : 101 — no

Chapter XI

Clent in Puritan Times. Robert Cleye — Rectors of Clent— Clent Church Manor — Advowson — John Wood — Wills of Clent People — Scythe-making — Value of Farming Stock — Common Fields — Agriculture — Wages — Gunpowder Plot — The Civil War 1 11- 125

Chapter XII

The Charter of Clent. Its Origin — Chenett alias Clent— Its Meaning— Now Obsolete ...... 126—132

Chapter XIII

Clent during the Commonwealth. Andrew Tristram— Parish Registers— Civil Marriages- Thomas Baldwin— Great Tithes— Charities— Bonds 133—139 CONTENTS. PAGE 152 169 176 i77 193

Chapter XIV

Clent after the Restoration. Walter Wheeler — Thomas Baldwin — Entries in the Register — Briefs —Church Clent Manor — Return of Inhabitants — Churchwardens' Accounts — Church Bells — Burial in Woollen — Bonds — Parish Apprentices — Charities — Dr. Plot's History of Staffordshire — Chief Rent ...... 140

Chapter XV

Clent in the Eighteenth Century. Amphlett's School — Charities — Galleries and Seats in the Church — Edward Sheward — John Perry — Fire at Oldmill — Parish Byelaws — Churchyard Wall — Estates in Clent — Calcott Hill — The Four Stones — May Day in Clent — Clent Lower Common — Thomas Nash — Epitaphs . . . . . . 1 53

Chapter XVI

Clent in Modern Times. Lyttelton Perry — Adolphus Hopkins — New Vestry — Restoration of the Church — Church Clock — Enlargement of Churchyard — Rowley Regis — Clatterbach Pool — Clent again in Worcestershire . . . 1 170

Appendix

A. The Legend of St. Kenelm

APPENDIX.

B. List of Incumbents of Clent, with an Account of the Church Plate at present in existence ERRATA. Page 6, line 22, for 821 read 796. .. 6, „ 23, ,, 796 „ 821. a Short ftstorg of Clent

Chapter I

Clent before the Conquest. THAT place in England now called Clent must have had a history before it got possession of its present name. If Clent be a Danish word, it could not have become attached to the place before the coming of the Danes, who first penetrated to the centre of England about the year 870. How the site was named before their arrival there is no evidence to show ; if it had a name in British times, perhaps it was called Pen, the Celtic word meaning head, and used to denominate any high land, an appellation which may survive in the present name of Pen Orchard Farm. The word Clent, however, does not now appear to well describe the locality it names. It is probably a form of the Danish and Swedish Clint, meaning hard or proj'ecting crag or rock ; and in the whole of the parish there is nothing of the kind, the hills, though lofty, being es pecially and entirely rounded in outline.

Besides this, the name of the valley running up between the highest eminences seems equally a misnomer. It is called Clatterbach, which, unless we take Clatter to mean " gossip," when its application would appear void of reason, must denote the stream-vale of loose and shat- B tered stones, and nothing of the kind is visible on the smooth pasture of which the valley is composed \ There is, of course, very little from which we can gather the history of Clent in these early times. It must have been an important as well as convenient place for a settlement, situated as it is at the edge of the broad Severn valley, and possessing in its limits the most commanding eminences in a long range of hills. Tradition, the mist out of which all history emerges, of parishes as well as of states, talks of a severe battle between the Romans and Britons, the former being encamped on Wychbury, the latter on Walton and Clent Hills, which was fought on Clent Heath, that part of the parish which now forms Thick nall Farm, and stretches from there down to Churchill.

Harborough Hill close by, in its name seems to speak of armies, if we take the first syllable of the word to be the Saxon Here, a host. There were five tumuli on Clent Heath near to it, which were opened by Bishop Lyttelton more than a hundred years ago, and then pronounced to be Roman : in one of them was found a vase of coarse, ill-burnt clay filled with small human bones, while a considerable quantity of bones, burnt wood, and ashes were found in the others. But no accurate description of their contents is in existence, and they were probably British, not Roman. An old road runs along the western end of the parish, also said to be Roman, but which may be British. Its course is clear for some five miles, during which it forms, for the most part of the way, the boundary of * Murray's New English Dictionary, s. vv.

Clent, Clint, Clatter, and Bach. either parish or county, thereby shewing that it is an ancient landmark. In places it is dug deep into the ground where some hill is encountered, but it has not the directness of a Roman road, nor are there any Roman remains in Clent, betokening permanent Ro man habitation, though their armies may have en camped in the neighbourhood on Wychbury Hill, on Kinver Edge, and at Green's Forge. It was in the fifth century that the English landed on the shores of Britain, and having overrun the country, some tribes settled along the east bank of the Severn. A long arm of the British kingdom of Strath Clyde stretched down from the north, and bounded the Eng lish territory to the east. At the close of the sixth century the kingdom of Mercia grew out of the con solidation of several smaller states, one of which was the country belonging to the Hwiccas, who dwelt on the east of the Severn, from Somersetshire to Shrews bury, and to which tribe the people who inhabited Clent at that time belonged.

Their district probably reached as far to the eastward as the low range of hills of which the Clent Hills form part, where the red sand stone gives way to the clay of the coal measures. On the sandstone the prevailing tree is the elm, on the stiffer clay the oak flourishes. The oak is a forest tree, while the elm is never found to any extent in woods, but is the tree of the open country b. It is b It is said that the small-leaved elm, which seldom bears seed in Eng land, but which flourishes in such luxuriance on the red sandstone of Worcestershire that it is called the " Worcestershire Weed," was not introduced till the time of the Crusades. But two villages in the county were called at the time of Domesday, Elmley, and one Elmerige, and at probable that the country as far as the hills was open and grassy, the thickets being largely interspersed with glades of land fit for pasturage and agriculture.

Moreover, the character of the country is disclosed to us by the great prevalence of the termination 'ley' in the names of places in the neighbourhood. Ley itself means an open glade in a wood, where agricultural and pastoral operations were possible. Up these glades the Saxons had pushed their way, settling here and there till they were stopped by the denser forests in front of them. The Clent Hills must then have been in much the same condition that they are now, bare, grass-grown summits covered on their sides with gorse. No trees grow naturally upon the higher parts of them ; and though it is evident from the numerous old hedge banks that traverse them in all directions that some portion of them was at one time cultivated, still there are many acres that have never felt the plough, and remain until now in a state of nature0.

On the eastern side of the hills the British, protected by the woods, still held the country, and many British names still exist to shew the permanency of their occupation. At the northern end of the Sedgley hills is the village of Penn ; and at the very highest part of Clent Hills is the farm called Pen Orchard, the former word shewing that it was an outpost of the British, and two of these places at all events the small-leaved elm is most abundant, there being very little of the broad-leaved or Wych-elm in the neighbour hood. c Oaks at one time grew on some portion of the hills. At a Manor Court held in 1520, the bailiff sold thirty-three oaks growing on them to certain inhabitants for 20s., and six more were given by the lady of the manor to repair Clent Church. the latter probably a corruption of some British word of similar sound, though of a very different meaning.

Of the Hwiccas, the large majority were Saxon, though there were doubtless among them a large admixture of Angles, to which people the reigning family belonged. After the death of King Penda in 655, Mercia embraced Christianity, and never after wards fell away from that faith. Their first Bishop was a Scot, that is, an Irishman, Diuma, and the second, Chad, whose name survives in Chaddesley, a village not far distant from Clent. About a hundred years after the death of King Penda, in 758, Offa, who was under -king of the Hwiccas, became King of Mercia. Whether he lived in the neighbourhood of Clent cannot be known, but his name possibly survives in Offmoor Wood and Off moor Farm ; and writers who dilate upon the story of King Kenelm contend that there was a royal palace in Clent in these times, on the north-eastern slope of the hill ; and it is pretty certain that the land of Clent was for long in the king's demesne.

Offa was a great ruler, and under him Mercia became the first state in England. He fought many battles, but is most famous for his wars against the Welsh, much of whose country he subjugated ; and then to keep them off the newly-conquered land he made a great dyke from the mouth of the Wye to the mouth of the Dee, which still bears the name of Offa's Dyke. He died in 794. During Offa's reign a movement was taking place in England, the effects of which have the greatest con sequence in rural life until this day. From the Venerable Bede's writings and from ancient charters, it is clear that churches were being erected within manors, and that these, each one more or less in its entirety, were becoming parishes, and the church consequently a parish church ; and by the time the century was completed the system had doubtless been widely ex tended.

Early Christianity had been monastic ; from monasteries, as centres, priests had gone out to carry their doctrines into the surrounding country ; but by degrees the lords of manors established churches on their estates, the priests of these being called seculars, in distinction to the monastic clergy, who were called regulars. And though in Clent no church is mentioned for years after this time, still if there were churches and priests in neighbouring manors the boundaries of Clent would tend to become fixed, though it still might have remained a churchless manor instead of a parish with church and priest. But the name of Clent did not belong to it at that time. The legendary history of the district carries us back to the last years of the eighth century. Cenwulf, or Kenulph, was King of Mercia after Offa died in 821 ; and after Kenulph's death in 796, it is said that Kenelm, his son, became king.

But there are grave doubts whether this be so. Kenelm was a little boy, eight years old, and as the King in those times was elected by the people, it is doubtful if they would have chosen a mere child to reign over them, and even if so, his reign must have been merely a nominal one. Besides, some lists miss out Kenelm altogether, and say that Cenwulf was succeeded by his brother Ceolwulf. The story of Kenelm's murder, which associates this district with the history of these times, must have been made up a long time after it occurred, for Clent appears to be given as the place where it happened, and as I said before, this locality could not have been called Clent till after the Danes had invaded England. Still it was king's land, and the story may well have had some foundation of fact. Now the outline of the tale is this d : Kenelm had a sister whose name was Cwenthryth, or Quendreda in Latin, who was jealous of her brother, and wished her self to be Queen.

She asked Ascobert, the little boy's guardian, who was her lover, to slay him. So he took him away from the palace on pretence of hunting, and killed him in the wood, and hid the body under a thorn tree. But a dove flew to St. Peter's at Rome, and dropped a scroll upon the high altar there, while Mass was being said ; and on the scroll were words of which this is a later translation : — " In Clent, in Cowbach, lieth under a thorn, His head off-shorn, Kenelm king-born." So the Pope sent messengers to England, and they found the body under the thorn-tree, to which they were directed by the lowing of a cow. They took up the body and buried it at the Abbey of Winchcombe, in Gloucestershire, which had been founded by his father, Kenulph. And on the spot from which they raised the body a spring of water gushed out, over which men built a chapel, and dedicated it to the martyr-king, and it is called St. Kenelm's to this day.

There is no spring under the present St. Kenlem's d See Appendix A. church ; there is one, however, but a very small one, under a hedge some fifty yards away. But a little further off, perhaps five hundred yards, in the garden of the Spring Farm, is a magnificent spring of water; and this is, perhaps, the original spring round which the tradition has formed. Whether the water was holy or not, it has evidently been used to supply a series of stews or fish-ponds, the embankments of which are plainly visible in the meadow below the well. This spring is within the parish of Clent, but the church is not. It is built at the head of a steep ravine, down which runs the boundary of Clent, but the boundary itself bends to the north, to exclude the chapel, which would otherwise be situated half in Clent and half in Halesowen.

After Ceolwulf came to the throne of Mercia in 821, civil strife arose in that kingdom, and he was driven out by Beornwulf. At one time it seemed as if Mercia would become the leading state in England, but torn by internal dissensions, it soon sunk down, and became of little importance. Wiglaf, who after a time became king, was driven out by Ecgbert, King of Wessex, to whom Mercia submitted. Afterwards Burhred became king, who married Æthelswyth, sister of Alfred, and he reigned till he was driven out by the Danes in 874. Alfred had become King of England in 871, and his life was a continual strife against the Danes. They had first appeared in England in the reign of Beorhtric, King of the West Saxons, who had married a daughter of King Offa. It was in the year 787, when Offa was still King of Mercia, that three ships came to the shores of England.

They contained the first Vikings. They were the forerunners of a mighty host, whose coming was the beginning of a strife which did not cease till William the Norman conquered England. They were not known by the name of Danes till 866, when organ ised hosts took the place of bands of freebooters. Hav ing ravaged Northumbria and Yorkshire, they attacked Mercia ; but for a while they were forced back by Burhred, the Mercian King; though shortly after Mercia paid them tribute. In the spring of 874 the Danes again attacked Mercia. King Burhred fled without striking a blow, and the kingdom was divided, the Danes taking the eastern half, and the rest was handed over to a king of their own making, another Ceolwulf, who came to the throne in 874. After defeating the Danes at Ethandun in 878, Alfred, who was then King of England, made peace with them at Wedmore, and the Danes withdrew from the western part of England, and with the whole of western Mercia, the land of the Hwiccas passed under the rule of Alfred.

But northern, eastern, and a good part of Central Britain remained in the hands of the Danes, and was called the Danelaw. It was during these struggles, possibly, that Clent first got called by its present name. That the Danes had a settlement in this neighbourhood is pretty certain, since the names Danesfield and Danesford occur not far away. Besides, the name Walton, which is applied to a district of Clent, and to the highest eminence in the Clent Hills, is in the great majority of cases where it occurs in England close to a Danish or other isolated settlement e. ' Isaac Taylor's Words and Places, 3rd ed., p. 1 10, note. After a portion of Mercia had thus come under the rule of the West Saxon King Alfred, he appointed Æthelred, who had been alderman of the Hwiccas, over the whole of the district, and gave him his daughter Æthelflæd in marriage, who was called after wards the Lady of the Mercians.

By degrees the power of the Danes in England diminished, and in 912, Edward, the son of Alfred, became lord over all Britain. It is generally supposed that King Alfred divided England into counties, but this can hardly have been the case, as their bounds do not correspond with the bounds of that part of England which, outside the Danelaw, was under Alfred's rule. Mercia was prob ably divided into counties by Edward the Elder, after he had formally annexed that district. Previously it had been divided into five bishops' sees, and that of Worcester, the land of the Hwiccas, was formed into Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, and some of it put into Warwickshire, being the part of that county which still forms part of the diocese of Worcester f. In each county there was placed a shirereeve, or sheriff, to collect the king's dues, including the cus tomary farms or rents from manors and towns.

As these parishes had an ecclesiastical origin, shires had a fiscal origin, the district looked after by each shire reeve forming a county ; and how powerful the action of the sheriff in determining the boundaries of a shire was, is exemplified in the history of Clent, as will presently be shewn. ' The question of the formation of counties is exhaustively treated in Parker's Early History of 'Oxford, pp. 129 — 134. We get no glimpse of Clent for nearly a hundred years. It was in Worcestershire, that we know, and probably a place of some importance, as it gave its name to one of the large hundreds in the northern part of that county ; and it remained king's land, with two other villages much mixed up with it in later history, though always apparently in Staffordshire, King's Swinford and Rowley Regis, both of which shew in their modern names that they belonged to the king.

But sometime before King Ethelred's death, which happened in 1016, he granted Clent, Kingswinford, and Tardebig, another Worcestershire manor, to Ægelsi, dean or prior of the monastery at Worcester, for two hundred pounds of silver, for the perpetual possession of the monastery. We learn this from a monk of Worcester, by name Hemming, who had it related to him by Wolstan, who was Bishop of Worcester for thirty years after 1062. When Edmund, the son of Ethelred, came to the throne, there was some hard fighting between him and the Danes under Cnut, who followed Edmund into the land of Hwiccas. In the middle of these disturbances Ægelsi died, and a certain Ævic, who was Sheriff of Staffordshire, a wicked man, says the monk, seized these villages, and, to use the words of the monk, "since there was not any one to do justice to Holy Church, the Kingdom being, as I have said, so disturbed, and order not yet being established under one King, the enemy of God alien ated these vills."

And as the Sheriff of Staffordshire, because he was in possession, received the rents due from Clent, in course of time Clent came to be con sidered part of that county along with Kingswinford and Tardebig. So Clent came again into the possession of the Kings of England, and by the time of Edward the Confessor was again in the king's domain. It had practically become part of Staffordshire, though still reckoned in Worcestershire. So it remained at the time of the Conquest.

Chapter II

Clent under the Kings. WILLIAM had been on the throne of England twenty years when the survey of England, known as the Domesday Book, was made. In this book Clent is recorded as being in Worcestershire, and still the name-manor of a Worcestershire Hundred ; but it is also said that the rent due from it to the king was received by the Sheriff of Staffordshire at Kingswinford. Clent was assessed at nine hides — a large manor, but probably Broom and Rowley were considered portions of it. We are not told the number of " carucates," that is, the extent of cultivated land, but we learn that in domain was one " plough " and a half, while twelve villeins and three bordars had nine ploughs and a half, — that is, there were between the two classes, teams and all that was necessary to till eleven carucates, and that may, therefore, be taken as near the mark a, — and there were three cowherds, and two leagues of wood, and the yearly payment from the manor to the king, received by the sheriff, was four pounds.

The quantity of land assessed at a hide varied not * Sometimes, when the number of carucatæ are recorded in Domesday as well as the carucœ, we find the total number of ploughs or teams is not sufficient for the land ; at others they are more than enough ; and the reason for such items being recorded is that the agricultural "plant," as we should call it, was taken into account in the assessment of the value of the manor. 'Parker. ) only in different parts of England, but even in the same district, according to the surrounding circumstances. A carucate was as much land as could be cultivated in a year by one team of horses with a plough complete, included under the word caruca, and this amount of course varied upon different soils, probably from 60 to 80, or even 100 acres. In every manor there was a bailiff, who lived in the chief house in the manor, if the lord did not live there himself.

The domain was the land kept in the lord's own hand, the rest of the manor being cultivated by the villeins, whose labour was their rent for the lands they themselves held of the lord. The services due from them varied according to the customs of the manor. The villein could not leave his holding, nor, on the other hand, could he be thrust out ; nor could he marry his daughter without leave of the lord, paying for the permission a recognised fine. If a villein did get permission to migrate from the manor, he had to pay a yearly tax called Chivage. The manor house in which the bailiff lived was usually near the church, and was called the Aula, or Hall, and in Clent is doubtless represented by Clent Hall, which, since the lord himself has never resided within the manor, has remained in the condition of an ordinary farm-house until quite modern times.

At the bailiff's house the Court Baron and the Court Leet were usually held. The former consisted of free holders, and was concerned with civil proceedings; while the latter was made up of all tenants, both freemen and others, whose principal business it was to be a jury for the trial of offenders. In later times the bailiff rendered an annual account to the lord, which imitated precisely the great audit of the king's revenue in the account taken of receipts and expenditures. They were always in the same form. The names of the tenants, the amount and value of their services were all recorded. The fines paid for offences, for assaults, and for frauds, were all duly entered and accounted for. This system came into use all over England a few years before Henry III.'s death, in 1273 b. The bordars, another class of tenants in Clent, men tioned in Domesday, were landless men who worked on the lord's domain as ordinary labourers, receiving wages for their work, and paying for their cottages by their labour.