Reference to Chapter VII. of this work will recall how a Chantry Chapel had been founded and endowed in Willenhall by the Gerveyse family. This Chantry Chapel would be a “separated place” within the Chapel-of-Ease specially used to celebrate masses for the departed souls of certain persons. Now, one of the earliest signs of the approaching Reformation was a decline in the belief in Purgatory; and presently Henry VIII. was empowered by Act of Parliament to seize all lands, tenements, rents, &c., which had been given for the maintenance of Chantry Priests, with all their lamps, candles, torches, and other expensive appointments for what were declared to be “superstitious” uses. But a right was reserved to the King, as head of the Church, to direct such properties to uses which could be regarded as truly “charitable.” What became of the Willenhall Chantry endowments? It is the opinion of Mr. A. A. Rollason, no mean authority on the subject—vide his recondite articles in the “Dudleian,” having special reference to a similar Commission of Inquiry held in 1638 as to the alienation of lands belonging to Dudley Grammar School—that the Willenhall Inquisition, or Commission of Inquiry, was brought about, as was that at Dudley, in consequence of the uncertain state of the law as to whether the lands, and the income therefrom, came within the Charitable Uses Act; or whether the gifts were absolutely void. For while Magna Charta declared “that if any one shall give lands to a religious house, the grant shall be void, and the land forfeited to the lord of the fee”—the abbots of old took care to be “lords of the fee,” usually holding their lands direct from the King—there was a Statute of Edward III. by which the King was empowered to grant a Royal licence affording relaxation of lands held under the Statutes of Mortmain. It seems almost impossible to doubt that the freehold lands belonging to the Willenhall Chantry had escaped confiscation to the Crown under the Statute, I Edward VI., if they had been held solely for performing obits and singing masses for the dead. Yet it is just possible they may have been re-granted to aid in the maintenance of the Curate of the Chapel-of-Ease, in which case they would be recognised as a “charitable use,” and were consequently safe. The Willenhall Inquisition of 1607 was addressed by the King (as stated in the last chapter) to “The Reverend Father in God, William, Bishopp of Coventrie and Lichfield And to our right trustie and well beloved William Lord Pagett and to our trustie and well beloved Sir John Bowes, Sir Edward Littleton, Sir Edward Leigh, Sir Simon Weston, Sir Robert Stanford, Sir Walter Chetwynde and Sir William Chetwynde, Knights, Zacharie Baington (Babington), Doctor of Lawe, Chancellor of Lichfield, Raphe Sneade, Walter Bagott, William Skevington (Skeffington), Roger Fowke, John Chetwynde, and Walter Stanley, Esquires.”