Notwithstanding these rigorous measures, the evil still continued; and so alarmed were certain of the inhabitants of Shrewsbury, and regardful of the safety of their fellow-burgesses who had to visit Oswestry market weekly, that prayers for their preservation were offered up in one of the churches, on Monday mornings, before they started on their perilous journey. A timid gentleman, William Jones, Esq., left to the Drapers’ Company “one pound six-shillings and eight-pence, to be paid annually to the Vicar of St. Alkmond’s Church, for reading prayers on Monday mornings, before the Drapers set out for Oswestry market!” Pennant informs us that at this period “Oswestry was the great emporium for Welsh cloth; a privilege to which it was well entitled from its vicinity to those districts of Wales in which that important branch of commerce was manufactured, at a period when the English trader could not, with any degree of safety, trust himself in the Principality. To this town (Oswestry) the Drapers of Shrewsbury repaired every Monday. We learn the fact from a curious MS. Chronicle of the last-mentioned town, which relates that ‘on Monday, Dec. 5th, 1575, the Drapers of Shrewsbury had like to have been robbed, if they had not been privately warned; but the bailiffs and a great company went, strongly aimed, upon their usual trade toward Oswestry. The robbers proposed to rob them in the dale between Shelton and Shrewsbury, and lay over night in Master Sherar’s barn, on the other side of the water.’ The whole narrative, which is told much at length in the Chronicle, exhibits the unsettled police of a country slowly emerging from a state of barbarism, and strongly reminds the reader of the inimitable scene at Gadshill, so admirably pourtrayed by our great dramatic bard in the first part of Henry IV.” The same writer adds, “notwithstanding, however, this and similar proofs of the general insecurity of the country, the Welsh manufacturer was unwilling to meet the purchaser even half way with his commodities. ‘Not satisfied,’ says our countryman Dr. Peter Heylyn, in his _Cosmography_, ‘with having fixed the market at Oswestry, they sought to draw the staple more into their own country.’ The MS. quoted above informs us, under the year 1582, that it would have been removed thence, ‘to the great decay of that town and of Shrewsbury, yf Sir Thomas Bromley, being Lord Chancelor, had not by his great wisdom opened the same to the Queen’s Majestie, for which godly deede theye of the said townes are contynewally bownde to praye daylye.’ Lord Chancellor Bromley was a Shropshire man, and possessor, by purchase from the Earl of Arundel, of the Castle and Lordship of Shrawardine; he was therefore personally interested in the prosperity of the county, and by his influence at Court enabled to promote it.” It would further appear, that the market was continued at Oswestry, so that it is likely that Lord Bromley’s interposition at Court prevailed.