In 1382 the Guild of the Holy Cross was founded to maintain two priests at St. Martin’s Church, and was ten years later made a Fraternity of men and women under the name of “the Bailiffe and Communalite of Birmingham and other adjacent places for a Chantrie of Priestes, and services in the Church for the souls of the Founders and all the Fraternitie.” It also had other and more secular objects. In the year 1545 the lands belonging to it were seized by the Crown, and five years afterwards were given by Edward VI. for the “Free Grammar School of King Edward the Sixth, for the Education and Instruction of Children in Grammar for ever.” The property so arbitrarily acquired was thus in the end devoted to a useful purpose. At that time it was valued at £31 : 2 : 10, and this formed the endowment fund of the famous school, the income of which at the close of 1880 amounted to the large sum of nearly £22,000, and is now computed to be almost £50,000. The manor–house and seat of the De Berminghams, not a trace of which now remains, was situated within a few yards of St. Martin’s Church, and a little to the west of Digbeth, the site now being occupied by the prosaic cattle–market of large extent. Leland speaks of the town at the time of his visit, which took place in 1538, thus: “The beauty of Birmingham, a good markett towne in the extreame parts of Warwickshire, is one streete going up alonge almost from the left rype (bank) of the brook, up a meane hill, by the length of a quarter of a mile. I saw but one Paroche Church in the towne.” Camden, who visited Birmingham some half century later, writes of it as “full of inhabitants, and resounding with hammers and anvils, for the most of them are smiths.” “The lower part” (of the town), he adds, “standeth very waterish; the upper riseth with faire buildings.” Some authorities seem to infer that Birmingham was not noted for its metal works until a comparatively recent period, but Leland states: “There be many smithes in the town that used to make knives and all mannour of cutting tooles, and many loriners that make bittes and a great many naylors. Soe that a great part of the town is maintained by smithes whoe have their iron and seacole out of Staffordshire.” Hutton, Birmingham’s most famous and completest historian of the past, claims for this city, whose rise has been so phenomenal during the last half century, that history proves its progress has been continuous, and that the town has never suffered a decline. But, of course, during the centuries before Charles II. it was slow, and only notable in comparison with that of other places.