tenure being free to roam at night through standing corn or grass: a provision as just as that with which in this the nineteenth century the lord of the manor has power, after purchase, to mine under and throw down the house one has built, in this same manor of Madeley, without one farthing compensation. Sturdy radicals, troublesome fellows, then as now held up at times the glass by means of political squibs to perpetrators of such injustice. One quaint old Shropshire satirist in the 14th century lashes severely the vices of the times. Another in a political song colours his picture deeply. The church at times interfered to mitigate the condition of the people, but the spiritual overseers of the poor, as a rule, thought more of the sports of the field than of their flocks except, indeed, at shearing time. Chaucer in estimating their qualifications was of opinion that “in hunting and riding they were more skilled than in divinity.” We need not wonder, then, to find in the thirteenth century the Rector of Madeley a sportsman. Henry III, being in Shrewsbury, in Sept. 1267, at which time he concluded a treaty with Llewellyn, and settled sundry little differences with the monks and burgesses respecting a monopoly claimed by the former, of grinding all corn used in the town, and possessing all mills within its limits, granted through Peter de Neville to Richard de Castillon the rector, licence to hunt in the royal forest of Madeley. In such sport the clergy were borne out by their prelates. Of one Walter, bishop of Rochester, it is recorded that he was so fond of the sport that at the age of four score he made hunting his sole employment, to the total neglect of other duties. There were jolly churchmen in those days, for “The Archdeacon of Richmond, we are told, in his initiation to the Priory of Bridlington, came attended by ninety-seven horses, twenty-one dogs, and three hawks. Walter de Suffield, Bishop of Norwich, bequeathed by will his pack of hounds to the king; whilst the Abbot of Tavistock, who had also a pack, was commanded by his bishop, about the same time, to break it up. A famous hunter, contemporary with Chaucer, was the Abbot of Leicester, whose skill in the sport of hare hunting was so great, that the king himself, his son Edward, and certain noblemen, paid him an annual pension that they might hunt with him.”