XIII A Century of Wars, Incursions, and Alarms (1640–1745)
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.
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.
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.
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, with the object of recovering some prisoners; which having accomplished, he seized Pitt, the go-between, and delivered him up to the Parliament.
Colonel Leveson, unconscious of this treachery, came according to arrangement to Rushall, but instead of finding an easy entrance, had two “drakes,” or small cannons, fired upon him, killing a number of his troops. The letters of Leveson and Tuthill will be found printed in full in Willmore’s “History of Walsall.” The unfortunate messenger, Francis Pitt, was tried in London by “Court Martial,” and hanged at Smithfield on October 12th. It transpired at the trial that he was selected by Colonel Leveson because he held a farm of him for life, was familiar with Rushall Hall, and had told him he had to go there to pay his war contributions, and sometimes to redeem his neighbours’ cattle. On the one side Captain Tuthill had promised him £100 of the £2,000 bribe by which it was proposed to seduce him, and on the other his landlord had offered to remit seven years of his rent. Such is the fortune of war, however, the poor wretch, instead of reward, met with an ignominious death at the age of 65, after a life of honest toil.
In 1645 Prince Rupert had his headquarters in Wolverhampton, while the King lay two miles to the north of the town, where tradition says he watched a skirmish with the enemy from Bushbury Hill. When Charles I. fled before Cromwell at Naseby on June 14th of that year he passed through Lichfield and entered Wolverhampton. After sleeping the night, either at the Old Hall, Robert Levenson’s residence, or at a house in Old Lichfield Street, the unfortunately King passed on the next morning towards Bewdley.
Some interesting local information during this war time is to be derived from the literary remains of an officer in the King’s Army, one Captain Symmonds, who amused himself on his marches by taking heraldic notes, and noticing monumental inscriptions. An entry in his Diary thus alludes to the foregoing facts:—
Friday, May 16, 1645.
The rendezvous was near the King’s quarters. Began after 4 o’clock in the morning here. One soldier was hanged for mutiny.
The prince’s headquarters was at Wolverhampton. A handsome towne. One faire church in it.
The King lay at Bisbury. A private sweet village where Squire Grosvenor (as they call him) lives. Which name hath continued here 120 years. Before him lived Bisbury of Bisbury.
Our military diarist next writes:—
Satterday, May 17, 1645.—His Majestie marched from here to Tong—
and goes on to enumerate the garrisons in Staffordshire at that date, distinguishing by initials which were “Rebel” and which were the “King’s”; among them:—
K. Lichfield.—Colonel Bagott, governor.
R. Russell hall.
—A taylor governor.
R. Mr. Gifford’s house at Chillington, three miles from Wolverhampton. Now slighted by themselves.
K. Dudley Castle.—Colonel Leveson, whose estate and habitation is at Wolverhampton, is governor.
“Slighted” signifies dismantled of its fortification; the allusion to “a tailor” being military governor of Rushall is, of course, a cavalier’s sneer at the Republican soldiery.
Coming now to the end of the war, when Charles II. was defeated at Worcester in 1651, the country round Willenhall became the scene of that fugitive monarch’s most romantic wanderings. Flying from the battlefield at the close of that fatal September day, Charles made his way through Stourbridge to Whiteladies and Boscobel. Then occurred the episode of his hiding in the “Royal Oak,” and his concealment inside the house, in the “priests’ hole” at the top of the stairs, by Mrs. Penderel.
Fearing discovery, the King was escorted by the brothers Penderel to Moseley Hall, near Bushbury, a timber-framed mansion in the picturesque Elizabethan style, the home of the Whitgreates, where the hunted monarch was welcomed and immediately refreshed with some biscuits and a bottle of sack. Charles had scarcely departed from Boscobel ere a troop of Roundheads arrived to search it. And another narrow escape now occurred at Moseley, where again a cunningly contrived hiding place was brought into requisition. Even after the frustration of the search party, one Southall, a notorious “priest catcher,” called at the suspected house.
Prudence dictated another secret flight, and taking advantage of a dark night the unhappy King was taken by Colonel Lane to his own house, and was next hidden at Bentley Hall.
The story of the escape of Charles II. from Bentley towards the continent, disguised as a groom and riding in front of Jane Lane’s pillion, is too well known to need re-telling here. The episode is historic; it is the subject of a fresco painted on the walls of a corridor in the gilded chambers of Parliament.
The whole romance of Boscobel and Bentley is told with considerable fulness in Shaw’s “Staffordshire” (I., pp. 73–84), and is accompanied by very interesting engravings of Boscobel, Moseley Hall, and Old Bentley.
As a result of the Revolution of 1688, and with the death of Queen Anne in 1714, the impracticable Stuarts disappeared for good from the English throne; but as adherents to their discredited cause, known as Jacobites, still remained numerous, it may be guessed they were not lacking in and around Willenhall.
After the Hanoverian Succession there were, in fact, a number of avowed Jacobites in this vicinity, who refused to take the oath of allegiance to George I. Their names and behaviour were kept strictly under notice by the Government, but for fear of driving them to extremes no active measures were taken against them or their estates. A list of these non-jurors and Roman Catholics was compiled after the rebellion of 1715, and again in 1745, when the rebellion of the Young Pretender once more disturbed the Kingdom. A list of these suspects was published on each occasion by the Government, with the amount of penalties incurred (but not exacted) against each name. In these lists appeared the following names:—
| £ | s. | d. | |
| Charles Smith, of Bushbury, Esq. | 67 | 0 | 0 |
| Anne Kempson, of Estington, widow | 11 | 0 | 0 |
| Ursula Kempson, of Wolverhampton, widow | 39 | 0 | 0 |
| John Kempson, of Great Sardon | 41 | 0 | 0 |
| William Ward, ditto | 9 | 2 | 6 |
| Mary Leveson, of Willenhall, in Wolverhampton | 31 | 10 | 0 |
| John Leveson, ditto | 50 | 17 | 6 |
| John Brandon, of Prestwood, yeoman | 12 | 5 | 6 |
| Thomas Giffard, of Chillington, Esq. | 2100 | 6 | 6½ |
| Elizabeth Giffard, of Wolverhampton, spinster | 58 | 19 | 0 |
| Thomas Whitgreaves, of Moseley, Esq. | 73 | 2 | 6 |