Great Britain -- Description and travel; Railroad travel -- Great Britain; Railroads -- Great Britain
"On the 12th of November, 1296, Edward I. granted to Lord Furnival a charter
to hold a market in Sheffield on Tuesday in every week, and a fair every year
about the period of Trinity Sunday. This fair is still held on Tuesday and
Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, and another on the 28th of November. The
same Lord Furnival granted a charter to the town, the provisions of which
were of great liberality and importance at that period, viz., that a fixed
annual payment should be substituted for the base, uncertain services by
which they had previously held their lands and tenements, that Courts Baron
should be held every three weeks for the administration of justice, and that
the inhabitants of Sheffield should be free from the exaction of toll
throughout the entire district of Hallamshire, whether they were vendors or
purchasers."
About this time Sheffield began to be famous for the manufacture of falchion
heads, arrows, files, and whittles. Chaucer tells us of the miller that
"A Sheffield thwytle bare he in his hose,
Round was his face, and camysed was his nose."
The ample water-power, the supply of iron ore close at hand, and in after
times, when its value for smelting was discovered, the fields of coal--all
helped Sheffield.
"Another only daughter, and another Maud, transferred by her marriage the
lordship of Sheffield to the more noble family of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
William Lord Furnival died 12th April 1383, in his house in Holborn, where
now stands Furnival's Inn, leaving an only daughter, who married Sir Thomas
Nevil, and he in 1406 died, leaving an only daughter, Maud, who married John
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. George, fourth Earl of Shrewsbury, built the
lodge, called Sheffield Manor, on an eminence a little distance from the
town, and there he received Cardinal Wolsey into his custody soon after his
apprehension. It was on his journey from Sheffield Manor up to London, in
order to attend his trial, that the Cardinal died at Leicester Abbey. In the
reign of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, who had been committed to the
custody of George, sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, after being confined in Tutbury
Castle, was removed in 1570 first to Sheffield Castle, and then to Sheffield
Manor House, where she spent fourteen years. It was for the alleged
intention of moving her hence that Thomas Duke of Norfolk, an ancestor of the
ducal family, still closely connected with Sheffield, suffered on the
scaffold. The grandson of this Duke of Norfolk, at whose trial the Earl of
Shrewsbury presided as High Steward, afterwards married the granddaughter of
the Earl, and thereby became possessed of this castle and estate." And now,
in 1851, another son of Norfolk is about to acquire a large fortune by a
Talbot.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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