Pitt’s “History of Staffordshire,” issued in 1817, gives a long list of local wells bearing at that time some similar repute for their remedial waters. Among them was Codsall Well, near Codsall Wood, supposed in olden times to be efficacious in cases of leprosy, and adjacent to which once stood a Leper House, replaced at a later period by a “Brimstone Ale-house,” so-called because the water was sulphureous. The waters of the Monmore Green Well are described as containing “sulphur combined with vitriol.” The Sea-well Spring still retained its name as a “Spaw” famous for its “eye water”; while those of Willenhall and Bentley were said to yield a valuable remedial sulphur water so long as they “could be kept from mixture with other waters.” Folklore not only connected these Wells with patron saints, but associated their magic precincts and curative effects with beneficent fairies. A well like that of Willenhall, which in a post-renaissance period was honoured with a stone frontal bearing a Latin inscription, would of a certainty be attended by fairy elves in an earlier and more primitive era. About this Spring (if ancient fame say true) The dapper elves their midnight sports pursue; Their pigmy king and little fairy queen, In circling dances gambolled on the green, While tuneful sprites a merry concert made And airy music warbled through the shade. [Picture: Decorative design] XVIII.—The Benefice. Owing to the meagreness of the record, a complete list of the holders of the benefice is not to be expected. Thomas de Trollesbury has been named as “the parson of Willenhall” in 1297 (Chapter VII.); while we also have the names of three chantry priests here—William in the Lone, 1341 (Chapter XI.); Thomas Browning, “chaplain of the chantry” in 1397 (Chapter VII.); and Hugh Bromehall in 1526 (Chapter X.); all of them doubtless nominees of the Deanery of Wolverhampton. Of course, it was possible, though not often the practice, for the holder of the living to act as “chaunter” priest as well. The Chantry endowments, as we have seen, were forfeited at the Reformation, at which period the benefice was returned as of the annual value of “£10 clear.” Either of these notorious evil-livers mentioned in Chapter XI., the non-preaching “dumb-dogs,” Mounsell and Cooper, may have been the occupant of the Willenhall curacy in 1586. In 1609 an improvement in the intellectual status of the holder had been effected, William Padmore, D.D., being then incumbent. In a previous chapter it was shown that the Rev. T. Badland was expelled from the living of Willenhall in 1662. It can now be shown that he was holding the benefice at least as early as 1658—and possibly from the beginning of the Cromwellian rule and the overthrow of the Episcopacy in 1646.