[Illustration: Title page] NOTES AND QUERIES FOR Worcestershire. BY JOHN NOAKE, AUTHOR OF "THE RAMBLER," &c. LONDON: LONGMAN AND CO. AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. MDCCCLVI.] =PRICE FIVE SHILLINGS=. [Illustration] DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO JOHN GOODWIN, ESQ., TWICE-ELECTED MAYOR OF WORCESTER; AND UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF THE VERY REV. DR. PEEL, DEAN OF WORCESTER, THE RIGHT HON. EARL BEAUCHAMP, J. H. H. FOLEY, ESQ., M.P., AND R. PADMORE, ESQ. In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire, With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales Of ages long ago betid. Preface. Another trifling instalment towards the history of Worcestershire is now respectfully presented to its inhabitants, and the Author ventures to express a hope that it may meet with the general favour of the reading public, equal to that which his previous works have elicited. The materials of historical works usually consist of tables of pedigrees, charters, battles, sieges, enumerations of manors, with their successive owners, statistical details, and other tedious though useful information. These, however, are but the dry bones--the skeleton of history. The spirit of the past can only be evoked by a deep and extensive research among documentary and traditional evidences--by careful comparison and analysis--by judicious deduction and inference. To perform this effectually, even for the limited area of a county, the coöperation of many minds is almost indispensable. Let us take Worcestershire as an instance. Habingdon, Nash, Thomas, Green, and others, have accumulated large masses of the matter which conventionally passes for history, and I would not for one moment desire to detract from the merit of their labours: yet the history of Worcestershire remains to be written. What do we yet know of the manners and customs, the hopes and aspirations, the social every-day life, the habits and thoughts, of our ancestors? Yet surely this is not the least considerable feature of the times of which we would fain glean tidings. Who would not vastly prefer an hour or two's conversation with one who was in the flesh some centuries ago--could that be possible--to studying the pages of the most intelligent contemporaneous historian? Education had rendered the world dissatisfied with the old modes and precise forms of this department of literature, when such pens as Macaulay's were soon ready to supply the new want. Yet Macaulay could have done but little service in this way had he been content to receive old stereotyped facts which had for centuries been lazily copied by preceding writers. It was