St Mary's Church, Sheriffhales

The Church of St Mary, Sheriffhales, is a Church of England place of worship in the village of Sheriffhales, near the eastern edge of Shropshire, although for most of its history the parish was mainly in Staffordshire, with a small portion in Shropshire.

St Mary's Church, Sheriffhales
Church of St Mary, Sheriffhales
The church at Hales.
St Mary's church seen from the south-east
St Mary's Church, Sheriffhales Position within Shropshire
Location	Shropshire
Country	England
Denomination	Church of England
Website	Sheriffhales at A Church Near You
History
Status	Parish church
Founded	By 1081
Founder(s)	Uncertain: possibly Warin the Bald, first Sheriff of Shropshire
Dedication	St Mary
Architecture
Functional status	Active
Heritage designation	Grade II Listed
Designated	26 May 1955
Style	Gothic
Years built	12th and 14th centuries, with extension and refacing in 17th and 18th centuries and Victorian restoration 1884.
Specifications
Materials	Sandstone
Administration
Province	Canterbury
Diocese	Lichfield
Archdeaconry	Salop
Deanery	Edgmond and Shifnal
Parish	Sheriffhales (Benefice of Shifnal, Sheriffhales and Tong)
Clergy
Vicar	Reverend Christopher Thorpe
Listed Building – Grade II
Designated	26 May 1955
Reference no.	1053645

The history of the church goes back at least to the Norman period — possibly into Anglo-Saxon times. For more than three centuries it belonged to the Abbey of Saint-Evroul, an important monastery in the Pays d'Ouche region of south-east Normandy, before Henry V transferred it to Sheen Priory. The early modern period, from the Reformation to the English Civil War and Commonwealth, brought rapid change and turbulence, with a less eventful period after the Restoration

The fabric of the building dates from several periods, with some going back to the High Middle Ages, although much was constructed from 1661 as part of a major extension and improvement. There was Victorian restoration as well as further refurbishment in the 20th century. The overall appearance remains that of a square-towered, sandstone church, typical of its region.

The Middle Ages

Origins

There is some doubt about the precise origins of the church in Sheriffhales. Arthur Tompson Michell, the vicar who edited the parish register for publication in 1908, referred to a belief that the church was originally dependent on the church at Shifnal but dismissed it as being "on slender grounds." However the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535 reported that the vicar of Shifnal was still at that time drawing an annual pension of five shillings from Sheriffhales and made clear that it would continue to his successors, implying that it was paid by virtue of his office. This makes it plausible that Sheriffhales church began as a chapel dependent on the collegiate church at Shifnal in the Anglo-Saxon period. Shifnal evidently suffered an economic disaster after the Norman Conquest, which the noted Shropshire historian Robert William Eyton attributed to the upheaval caused by the revolt of Earl Morcar, the last Anglo-Saxon landholder. Its value reached a nadir at just six shillings around 1071. Robert Fitz-Tetbald took control and restored Shifnal's fortunes, so that it was worth 15 pounds in Domesday in 1086, but the church's collegiate status was lost during the recovery period, and it was gifted to Shrewsbury Abbey, with the proviso that it should pass finally only as the canons died off. Eyton assumes the existence Sheriffhales chapel among the Anglo-Saxon dependents of Shifnal church that became detached after the Conquest The disagreement between Tompson Michell and Eyton is probably not resolvable.

William the Conqueror as depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry

Ruins of the Abbey of St Evroult.

The first clear evidence of a parish church at Sheriffhales occurs in a charter of 1081, five years before the Domesday survey. The charter is known only because it was preserved in the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, an important Anglo-Norman chronicler. Orderic was a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint-Evroult, although he was born in Shrewsbury and had entered the order at Shrewsbury Abbey. In the charter, issued at Winchester, William the Conqueror approves a long list of donations by his barons to St Evroult. Including the church at Hales.

Guarinus vicecomes de Scrobesburia dedit S. Ebrulfo Neutonam et ecclesiam de Halis cum decima, decimamque de Deguestona in Estaforde; et haec dominus ejus Rogerius comes concessit.

Translation:

Warin, viscount of Shrewsbury, gave to St. Evroult Newton and the church and tithes of Hales, with the tithes of Weston in Staffordshire. All these Earl Roger his lord confirmed.

Warin was the first known Sheriff of Shropshire: Sheriff, rather than ‘viscount’, is the usual translation of the Medieval Latin viscomes , although both make clear that Warin was subordinate to great landowner and magnate of the region, Roger de Montgomery, the Count (comes) or Earl of Shrewsbury. Roger was one of a handful of Tenants-in-chief trusted by William I to control important strategic areas: he dominated the county of Shropshire and a large part of the Welsh Marches, as well as a section of the English Channel coast in Sussex, with well over 350 holdings listed in Domesday. Warin was unlikely to proceed in any major transaction without Earl Roger’s approval. This approval is signalled not only in the text of the charter, but by the attendance of Roger and Warin together at court in Winchester to act as witnesses. The other Staffordshire properties in Warin’s grant are probably the hamlet of Newton near Blithfield, in central Staffordshire, and Weston-under-Lizard, a short distance east of Sheriffhales along Watling Street. These grants failed to survive and neither property was held by St Evroult in 1086, but by Warin's successor, the Sheriff Reginald, as both tenant-in-chief and manorial lord. Sheriffhales, on the contrary, was divided between Reginald and St Evroult, with Roger de Montgomery as tenant-in-chief.

The Rectory

The rectory is essentially the right to use the income of the church, which came as rents from tenants on church lands; tithes, a 10% levy on the incomes of all parishioners; and produce of the glebe, the land retained by the church for its own use. In the early years these would have been paid largely in kind. Because of Warin’s grant, St Evroult Abbey, which in legal documents is represented as its abbot and convent, was the rector of Sheriffhales.

This arrangement, by which a foreign monastery took considerable profits from a Staffordshire village, was not unique and did not start with the Norman conquest. Lapley Priory a few miles from Sheriffhales was a satellite house of the Abbey of Saint-Remi or Saint-Rémy at Reims in Northern France. Founded and endowed by Earl Morcar’s father, Ælfgar, around the middle of the century, Lapley housed a cell, a small priory of monks who managed and exploited the Abbey’s lands in Staffordshire.

Evroult Abbey built up a much larger and more widespread endowment of lands and churches in England than most other French abbeys. Warin’s grant of three properties in Staffordshire was dwarfed by the other gifts even in the same charter of William I. Other similar royal charters hugely enlarged this property portfolio,. to the extent that its English possessions became its main source of income, bringing in, it claimed, up to £2000 a year. Instead of establishing many local priories, it chose to develop a central administrative and collection centre at Ware Priory in Hertfordshire.. Ware Priory is first explicitly mentioned as agent of St Evroult in a charter of William de Blois, bishop of Lincoln, whose episcopate lasted from 1203 to 1206, but it had probably been handling Evroult Abbey’s business in England for some time before that. By the early 14th century Ware is being mentioned in relation to Evroult’s business at Sheriffhales.

Effigy of Edward III, form his tomb in Westminster Abbey.

At the commencement of what became the Hundred Years' War in 1337, Edward III took over churches held by French monasteries, known as alien priories, including Ware Priory, annexing their revenue and presenting their priests. In this instance he allowed the priors to carry on administering their monasteries on condition they paid large sums to one of his favourites, William Trussell, a close relative of the manorial lords of Sheriffhales. The prior of Ware was told to find £115 by the following Easter towards a grant of £1000 for Trussell. The known vicars of Sheriffhales in the reign of Richard II and Henry IV were all appointed by the king during wartime, so the revenues of the rectory at those times will have been going to the king.

This changed in 1414, a year after the accession of Henry V, when he undertook the first major dissolution of monasteries in England. Authorised by the Fire and Faggot Parliament at Leicester, he dissolved all the alien priories: hence Sheriffhales church, and all the other estates of St Evroult vested in Ware Priory, were taken over by the king. Initially the income was simply used to meet current royal expenses. A large, lifelong, annual income from Ware was granted to Queen Joan, the king’s step-mother, in January 1415. In less than three months, the plan had changed. By a charter issued at Westminster on 1 April 1415, Sheriffhales rectory, along with the rest of the Ware endowment, was transferred to one of the king’s favourite building projects: Sheen Priory, a magnificent Charterhouse or monastery for forty Carthusians, and part of a royal complex centred on Sheen Palace, later Richmond Palace, at the side of the River Thames in Surrey. In July the prior of Sheen was given permission to pursue any debts owing to Ware in the Exchequer, and Joan was promised compensation for loss of the promised income. St Evroult took the matter as far as a complaint to the Pope, which was not finally dismissed until 1427, five years after the Henry V’s death.

Advowson

The advowson of church is the right to present or nominate a candidate to become its priest, who becomes entitled to its living or benefice, the package of rewards associated with the post. At Sheriffhales the advowson went with the rectory throughout the medieval period. So the Abbey of St Evroult held the right to appoint the parish priest from 1081 to 1414, subject to the approval of the diocesan bishop. The advowson at Sheriffhales was quite valuable because it gave access to a good income. The vicarage at Sheriffhales was valued for tax purposes at £13 6s. 8d. by the Taxatio Ecclesiastica of 1291-1292, an inquiry that was part of a fund-raising effort by Pope Nicholas IV, who promised a 10% cut to Edward I, By comparison, nearby Shifnal was worth rather more at £21 10s. 8d., while Tong was valued at a mere £4 6s. 8d. For Ware Priory and its mother Abbey of St Evroult, Sheriffhales was a useful office with which to reward faithful servants or a marketable asset to sell to ambitious clergy. It was described as ecclesia de Hales appropriata priori de Ware, the church at Hales, appropriated by Ware Priory. As with its flow of income from the rectory, the Abbey’s appointments were interrupted by the king’s own nominees in times of war, until Sheen Priory, also known as “House of Jesus of Bethlehem," took over in 1415.

The Domesday entry for Sheriffhales, from Staffordshire folio 5 at Open Domesday. The information about the priest is highlighted.

It is clear that St Evroult did ensure from the outset that a priest was provided for Sheriffhales. The Domesday, inquiry just 5 years after Warin’s grant to the abbey, found that “In this village Saint-Evroult's has 1 plough with a priest who has 2 oxen." At some point the Abbey established a vicarage – not in this usage a clergy house, but the position of resident priest supported by a designated portion of the tithes. The first vicar whose name is known, John Pillardington, was recorded as presented by the Abbot and Convent of St. Evroult in 1319, but his successor in 1328 was recorded as the nominee of Hugh of Wye, who was the proctor of the Abbot of St Evroult in England and also Prior of Ware. The two descriptions amount to the same thing.

The proctors seem to shown a marked preference for presenting clergy who were already in their employment. Three of the four earliest recorded vicars are identified by a placename: Pillardington. Several people with this surname are known to have been attorneys of Ware Priory. Pillardington is a Warwickshire village, now called Pillerton Hersey: two thirds of its rectory belonged to St Evroult, through Ware Priory In William I’s charter of 1081 both Pillerton and Ware were granted to St Evroult by Hugh de Grandmesnil immediately following Warin’s grant of Sheriffhales. The John Pillardington who was presented to Hales in 1337 had been the vicar of St Mary's Church, Ware. John exchanged with Richard Pillardington, who had been vicar of Hales, but was now presented to the church at Ware. The business was conducted at Woodstock Palace all on the same day. The names suggest the prior was still getting his candidates appointed but had to have presentations validated at the king's court, as the temporalities of Ware Priory were in his hands for the time being.

Once Sheen Priory took over the advowson, royal presentations ceased and the Prior of Sheen was free to choose the vicar of Sheriffhales, except in one instance. In 1478, John Hales (bishop of Coventry and Lichfield) intervened to impose one James Higgs as vicar in place of Roger Capse, the chosen candidate of the Prior and Convent of Jesus and Bethlehem at Sheen.

The Building

The main phases of medieval building at Sheriffhales church are generally considered to have been during the 12th and 14th centuries. Warin had presumably ensured that there was a viable building before handing it over to St Evroult in 1181. Whether the Abbey intervened at any time is unknown: its main interest was in extracting value. Manorial lords frequently contributed to churches. In the early church-building periods the manor of Sheriffhales was held by the Pantulf and Trussell families: it was even sometimes called by their names, in place of "Sheriff". William FitzAlan, Lord of Oswestry, then overlord of Sheriffhales, granted it to Ivo Pantulf in the mid-12th century. One of his decendants, Hugh Pantulf, was Sheriff of Shropshire throughout the 1180s. The Pantulfs were wealthy and eminent enough to contribute to the church, as were the Trussells after them, but there is no direct documentary evidence. It is known that the manorial lord, William Trussell of Kibblestone (now part of Oulton), undertook considerable building work at Sheriffhales in 1367, as he obtained permission both to fortify the manor house and to enclose his park.

By the early 15th century, the manor of Sheriffhales belonged to Fulk Pembridge. His widow, Isabel Lingen, inherited from him a half share. Her generosity to the Church is not in doubt: as early as 1410 she paid £40 to obtain permission to found a chantry and mausoleum church for herself, her late husband and numerous others — but at Tong, rather than Sheriffhales. The possibility of legal complications with the Trussells at Sheriffhales would have weighted the decision, as there were legal complications that dragged on for decades. Just as Sheriffhales church was transferred to Sheen Priory, Isabel was fortunate to win Henry V’s support and he assigned to her the confiscated possessions of Lapley Priory, which set the nearby Collegiate church at Tong on a secure financial footing.

Priests and People

Domesday revealed that Sheriffhales manor then had 44 households, perhaps a population of over 200. This placed it in the largest 20% of recorded settlements at the time, according to OpenDomesday. It is impossible to know how well the provision of priests by St Evroult served it at that time.

It seems that Ware Priory often used the church as a reward for its own legal team, who presumably had employment elsewhere, often for long periods. Some vicars were described as chaplains, suggesting that they also had responsibilities elsewhere: if not actually for the priors of Ware, then for some other important household or institution. The exchange of parishes by John and Richard Pillardington was not the only royal presentations motivated mainly by the convenience of the clergy concerned. In 1370, for example, Edward III presented Richard Erkalwe, the vicar of Audlem, to St Mary’s so that the vicar William Huwet could exchange parishes with him. By 1396 Huwet must have returned as vicar because he again exchanged St Mary’s, this time for Great Witley, while Richard II exercised the advowson in place of Ware Priory to present Richard Fanley in his place. On 22 December 1398 Richard II again stood in for Ware to present John de Walton to the vicarage of Sheriffhales. Another brief interlude saw Henry IV use the French war as an opportunity to present William Smyth as vicar in January 1403.

By the mid-14th century, all churches in Shropshire and Staffordshire were under great pressure from several directions. The Great Famine of 1315–22 followed by the Black Death, which arrived in the Spring of 1349 but recurred for three centuries, imposed a great spiritual and theological challenge, but also hugely reduced the value of agricultural assets and incomes. Churches and monasteries were affected as much as other landowners, and it seems that people perceived a fall in both the quantity and quality of the clergy.

Mass of St. Gregory, c. 1490, attributed to Diego de la Cruz, oil and gold on panel (Philadelphia Museum of Art) Gregory’s legendary vision was a popular theme in the 15th century, providing a graphic argument for transubstantiation. Mirk also employed a similar legend about Oda of Canterbury

There is evidence from the vicinity of Sheriffhales that attitudes to the parish clergy were divided and often critical and that this was a matter of concern to the Church. The Testimony of William Thorpe, a Lollard document claims the eponymous author delivered a fiery sermon in 1407 at St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, denouncing clerical abuses and pilgrimages. Thorpe’s responses, when arrested and questioned before Thomas Arundel, the Archbishop of Canterbury, encapsulate a widespread lay attitude to the clergy:

"Sir, it is now no wonder, though the people grudge to give priests the livelihood that they ask. Mickle people know now, how that priests should live, and how that they live contrary to Christ and to his apostles. And therefore the people is full heavy to pay (as they do) their temporal goods to parsons, and to other vicars and priests, which should be faithful dispensators of the parish's goods, taking to themselves no more but a scarce living of tithes nor of offerings...

The pastoral theology John Mirk of Lilleshall Abbey, only 3km from Sheriffhales, makes clear that even orthodox thinkers shared the widespread disenchantment with the clergy. His last known work, is the Manuale Sacerdotis, or Priest’s Handbook, probably written around 1400, when he was Prior, or deputy to the Abbot of Lilleshall. It is possible that it was addressed personally to John Sotton, who became vicar of St Alkmund's Church, Shrewsbury, in 1414. Unlike his earlier Instructions for Priests, a text in Shropshire Middle English that told priests how to perform the practical functions of parish work, the Handbook is concerned more with what makes a good priest and what a bad priest or, as Mirk designates him, a modern priest. Susan Powell summarises that Mirk’s purpose is “to shock a young man...into awareness of what being a priest actually means." Mirk was a strong believer in transubstantiation. The priest’s role in this he saw as both an awesome power and huge responsibility. This meant that “the whole life of a good priest, if he lives rightly, ought to be a cross and a martyrdom." (Tota itaque vita boni sacerdotis, si recte vivat, crux debet esse et martirium).

Reformation and Revolution

Dissolution and its Consequences

After the dissolution of the monasteries the rectory and advowson of the church both found their way into the hands of local gentry. The Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535 reported that the John Moorhouse (sometimes rendered as Morris), the vicar of Sheriffhales, had a gross annual income of £12. This net income was £11 1s. 8d., rendered as eleven pounds and twenty pence. The produce from the glebe was worth only 10 shillings and the largest single contribution to his income was £4 from the grain tithe levied on his parishioners. John Jobourn, the Prior of Sheen, was due the sum of £6 6s. 8d., an amount confirmed by the entry for Sheriffhales in the Priory’s own listing.

The Valor was soon followed by the Suppression of Religious Houses Act 1535 which provided for the dissolution of the lesser monasteries. This affected the ecclesiastical landscape around Sheriffhales in stages. Wombridge Priory, a very small house near Shifnal was soon dissolved, while neighbouring Lilleshall Abbey was above the threshold income of £200 per annum. Sheen Priory in Surrey seemed untouchable with a huge income of just over £800. However, the greater monasteries were increasingly subjected to cajoling and intimidation which wore away their will to resist, even before any legislation was passed to suppress them. Lilleshall surrendered on 16 October 1538.

At Sheen Priory, even before the valuation, Prior John Jobourn had angered Henry VIII, by his reluctance to take the Oath of Supremacy, bringing on himself pressure, imprisonment and removal. After an internal power struggle, Henry Man emerged as prior. He was a supporter of the king, brought in from Witham Charterhouse, where he had been prior, to subvert resistance. Before he became prior at Sheen he served a year or two as proctor, responsible for managing all the priory’s huge endowments, Sheriffhales included. He was probably well-placed to advise on the value of its assets. Sheen Priory surrendered to the king early in 1539 (or late 1538 in the Julian Calendar) and Prior Man was awarded a very large pension of £133 6s. 8d., going on to become successively Dean of Chester and, appropriately, Bishop of Sodor and Man.

Advowson and Rectory

Sir Rowland Hill

The Aston family of Tixall Hall presented all the vicars to the church at Sheriffhales between the dissolution of the monasteries and the English Civil War. It seems that successive kings, Henry VIII and Edward VI kept Sheriffhales church for more than 13 years after the suppression of Sheen Priory before putting it on the market in 1552. On 14 November of that year Sir Rowland Hill, an immensely rich Protestant business man of Hodnet, Shropshire, and the City of London, paid the very large sum of £408 10s. 8d. for a portfolio of churches. The reason for the sell-off was made very clear: Hill brought "ready money" to an always-cash-strapped government. His purchases included "the rectory, and the advowson, of the vicarage of Shereff Hales, Salop and Staff," as well as the appurtenances – presumably any buildings, fittings and fixtures. The other churches included were St Michael's Church, High Ercall and St Andrew's at Stanton upon Hine Heath. The entire purchase was expected to yield an annual income of only £17 17s. 9½d.

However, Rowland Hill bought churches wholesale and sold them retail, making a profit by splitting them among buyers who wanted them. He had even bought and sold the advowson of his own home parish of Hodnet. The next presentation at Sheriffhales was in 1556, and the advowson at that point was certainly held by Sir Edward Aston. The rectory of Sheriffhales too was sold on by 1560 to Sir Richard Leveson of Lilleshall who made his will shortly before his death in that year, at which point he held the rectory, alongside his lordship of the manor of Sheriffhales.

Vicars 1534–1649

The Book of Common Prayer, 1552.

John Moorhouse or Morris was the last vicar presented to Sheriffhales by the prior of Sheen – in his case probably Jon Jobourn, on 13 January 1534, Little is known of Moorhouse himself beyond his obvious adaptability and ability to survive Less than a year after his induction into Sheriffhales Henry VIII initiated a process of rolling change and reaction that would preoccupy the church in England for more at least a century and a half. The Act of Supremacy later in 1534 made the king supreme ruler of the Church of England. Moorhouse remained vicar through the increasing radicalization of Edward VI's reign. In 1552, late in Moorhouse’s lifetime, a national inventory, taken in response to the widespread destruction of religious images and the looting of fittings and fixtures, found that Sheriffhales church owned:

Fyrste one challess of sylver with a paten ; two vestements of dornex; ij albes ; two copes of sylke, one grene the other red ; two alter clothes ; one senser of brasse ; two cruetts of leade ; one cope blewe sylke ; three bells and a sanctus bell.
Mem. — That one crosse of brasse was stolne out of the churche.

Translation:

First one chalice of silver with a paten; two vestments made of linen fabric from Tournai; 2 albs; two silk copes, one green, the other red; two altar cloths; one brass censer; two lead cruets; one blue silk cope; three bells and a sanctus bell.
Memo: a brass cross was stolen from the church.

Moorhouse lived through the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer which brought in a full liturgy in English, and died in the reign of the Catholic monarchs Mary I and Philip, who repaired relations with the Papacy and commenced a new persecution of Protestants.

John Beeche was presented to the Benefice of Sheriffhales by Sir Edward Aston of Tixall Hall, and instituted as Perpetual Vicar on 7 September 1556 by Ralph Baines, the last Roman Catholic Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield There is a record of a young Johens Beche serving as a curate of Cropthorne in 1550: this may be him. It is likely he was sometimes absent from Sheriffhales, as he was also chaplain to Aston. A few months after his appointment, on 16 April 1557, the extant parish register began, recording baptisms, marriages and deaths at Sheriffhales church in a narrow parchment volume. The register proudly bears the names and regnal years of Mary and Philip. The first recorded incidents are the burials of William Horsebrook and William Ditcher, on the same day. Registers had been compulsory since 1538 but many parishes had not complied.

Tixall Gatehouse is all that remains of the Aston family seat.

Beeche must have ridden out the momentous changes brought about by the Elizabethan settlement, which definitively turned the English Church Protestant. He was involved in a controversy with the John Cotes over the jurisdiction of the chapel at Woodcote, within Sheriffhales parish. Thomas Bentham, the recently appointed Protestant bishop, wrote to both of them on 29 November 1560 to arrange a meeting, although the outcome is unclear. Bishop William Overton was in communication with Thomas Parkyn, a curate, at Woodcote in 1584 but it is not known how he was appointed: it is possible that Parkyn was a student at Magdalene College, Cambridge and graduated in 1567. Beeche was buried at Sheriffhales on 29 March 1586, as recorded in his own parish register.

Sir Walter Aston of Tixall (1530–1589), patron of Sheriffhales church.

George Dunne, was presented by Sir Walter Aston and instituted on 9 June 1586. He was probably identical with the George Dune who was ordained priest by John Bullingham, the Bishop of Gloucester, on17 September 1583, so still a young man when he became vicar of Sheriffhales. There is no reference to his being a chaplain. The steady growth of his family can be traced through the parish register, showing that he was the first legally married vicar, and suggesting that he was generally present in the parish. His and his wife Elizabeth’s first child, Thomas, was baptised on 26 February 1588. Another son, William, was baptised on 2 March 1590 Their first daughter Elizabeth was baptised on 7 Feb 1592 However her burial was recorded only two months later In the next two years came two more daughters, Judith and Margaret. Then came another six children: Joseph in 1597, A second Elizabeth in 1599, Susan in 1601 Benjamin in 1604 and, after a considerable break, Mary in 1608 Most of children were given common Biblical names. Although deuterocanonical heroines, both Judith and Susanna were popular among Puritans and later Nonconformists. It was not unusual to repeat a name, in this case Elizabeth, the mother’s own name, but also the queen’s, especially, but not only, when the earlier holder of the name died young. In 1600 the parish register listed the name of the churchwardens, alongside the vicar. They were George Unton and Stephen Taylor. Churchwardens had existed for centuries but this was the first time they were named at Sheriffhales. From this point they were generally listed each year in the register.

The controversy over Woodcote chapel seems to have subsided. By 1616 Bishop George Abbot had appointed a reader, Thomas Beeston, to serve at the chapel, possibly an acknowledgement that it was of subsidiary status. George Dunne was buried on 8 Feb 1622 at Sheriffhales.

Walter Aston, 1st Lord Aston of Forfar

William Jeffreye (known under of numerous spellings) was fresh out of university, with a Bachelor of Arts, from Pembroke College, Cambridge, when he was presented to the church at Sheriffhales by Sir Walter Aston and instituted by Bishop Thomas Morton on 12 August 1622. He was attributed at that time an MA but the university’s record shows that it was not awarded until 1625. He seems nevertheless to have been an outstanding student from a relatively humble background, as he was admitted as a sizar, an assisted student, at the age of 13 and so only 17 when he became a vicar. He did not attend his own induction at Sheriffhales. As it was necessary for a newly appointed clergyman to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles a deputy, Alexander Fore, attended to do so on his behalf, but only orally: the diocesan record points out that he did not sign. Jeffreye himself was said to be abroad, acting as chaplain to Sir Walton Aston.

Charles, Prince of Wales (1615 portrait by Isaac Oliver)

The Infanta Maria Anna (1617 portrait by Bartolomé González y Serrano)

In July 1619 Aston had been appointed ambassador to Spain by James VI and I. with the proviso that he accompany the existing ambassador, Lord Digby to Madrid and take over only after Digby had dealt with unfinished business. It soon became clear that Aston’s role was to prepare for the Spanish match, the proposed marriage of Prince Charles to the Infanta Maria Anna of Spain. To prepare for this work Aston introduced himself to Charles, tentatively expressing the hope that "theare may may fall out many ocations for the service of yr highnes in the place where I live..." Jeffreye set out for Madrid before his induction at Sheriffhales. Probably while Jeffreye was with him, Aston converted to Catholicism. There followed the fiasco of Charles’s failed wooing in Madrid, which ruined Digby. Charles forgave his friend Aston both the failure of his match and his conversion.

A curate called Peter Hadfield had taken over at Sheriffhales even before Jeffreye was presented, and his name is written in the parish register beside that of the churchwardens from 1622 until 1627, which may indicate that Jeffreye was absent, although not necessarily in Spain, throughout that period. Jeffreye seems to have been ambitious and he expanded his income by taking on other clerical posts while he was vicar of Sheriffhales. These included prebends at Lichfield Cathedral: Gaia Major, just north of the cathedral, in 1625, succeeded by High Offley in 1627 In 1628 he also took on what should have been a very demanding post as Archdeacon of Salop in 1628, a post he did not resign until 1663. Moving on to a more lucrative parish, in January 1631 he was instituted Rector of Hamstall Ridware. He resigned the vicarage of Sheriffhales the following month, on 10 February 1631.

John Morton was presented by the same patron, who was now Lord Aston of Forfar. He was another young and inexperienced appointment, only slightly less precocious than Jeffreye, and only a year or two younger. He was probably the son of William Morton, an Archdeacon of Durham. He was admitted to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge as a pensioner in 1621, aged 14. However, he took four years to graduate as a BA. Shortly after he graduated MA in 1629 he was ordained deacon at Eccleshall by Bishop Thomas Morton. He is likely to have been priested in 1630 and on Saturday 26 February 1631 was inducted vicar of Sheriffhales by the rectors of Longford and Edgmond, as recorded in a memorandum in the parish register. The following day he read the Thirty-nine articles in the Sunday service. Thereafter his name appears annually, alongside the churchwardens’, in the parish register until his death in 1649.

Puritan Activism

At the time of Jeffreye’s resignation in favour of Morton, the country was almost two years into the Personal Rule of Charles I, in which no English Parliament was convened for eleven years. The king promoted Laudianism in the Church of England, intensely opposed by Puritans. A particular focus of ire was the willingness of Charles I to take Roman Catholics into his confidence, including the queen, Henrietta Maria, and converts like Walter Aston, the patron of Sheriffhales, whom he continued to employ long after he became king: as late as 1635 he booked a passage for Aston from Portsmouth to A Coruña in a ship named the Henrietta Maria. Charles continually denied working with Catholics but continued to do so right into the Civil War.

During this period of growing tension there was intense Puritan activity in Sheriffhales, focused on Lady Margaret Bromley, who settled in the village after ther husband, the distinguished lawyer Sir Edward Bromley died in 1626. They had lived at Shifnal Grange but there were land disputes with the Davenport family that forced several alterations to Margaret’s jointure arrangements and led her to take up residence in Sheriffhales: Sir Edward must have had connections with the village as he set aside in his will a small sum for distribution to its poor. Margaret settled at Sheriffhales while Jeffreye was still vicar: her servant Robert Cowper was buried in the churchyard on 12 June 1630. Margaret and her two sisters, Margery and Katherine, were the heirs of their father, Michael Lowe of Tymore, in Fisherwick parish, near Lichfield, a noted Protestant lawyer. Lowe provided for his daughters partly by arranging their marriages to close and capable Protestant colleagues at the Inner Temple: Bromley, Abney and Bromskill.

All accounts of Margaret Bromley’ activities at Sheriffhales make clear that she was active in securing a supply of notable preachers by opening her home to Puritan ministers in need of refuge from the authorities. Samuel Clarke praised Margaret Bromley’s generosity, which benefited a stream of fugitive Puritan preachers:

...the vertuous Lady Margaret Bromley (who then dwelt at Sheriffe Hales in Shropshire) deserves an honorable remembrance, because she was a constant and unparallel’d favourer of all good ministers and People, being both tender-hearted and open handed such who suffered under Prelatical pressures and otherwise, and at her house the most famous ministers in all neighbour-countries had hearty welcomes, with manifold sweet opportunities of service unto God, and of mutual edification.

Benjamin Brook, a nonconformist minister and writer later explained:

These divines often preached in her neighbourhood, whom she sheltered from the oppressive measures of the prelates, as long as she was able; and when they durst not preach, they kept days of fasting and humiliation at her home.

Clarke and Brook mention a number of preachers who took refuge with Margaret Bromley. Probably most prominent was Julines Herring, another Cambride graduate. He was the public preacher appointed to St Alkmund's Church, Shrewsbury, by the town's corporation, and closely connected with a circle of Puritan businessmen and their wives, centred on the wealthy brewer John Rowley. Herring was considered a powerful and attractive preacher: Clarke pictured him in an earlier position at Calke in Derbyshire, preaching through open windows to a surrounding crowd, many of them bringing picnics so that they could spend the whole day in teaching and discussion. Also well-known was John Ball, an old friend of Herring, ordained alongside him by an Irish bishop in 1610, in order to avoid subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles. Robert Nicolls of Wrenbury, in Cheshire, Herring's brother-in-law; took refuge at Sheriffhales and died there. He had got into trouble for criticising signing with the Cross in baptism, the surplice and kneeling to receive Communion. Thomas Langley of Middlewich was another refugee from Cheshire at Sheriffhales, one of a number fleeing John Bridgeman, Bishop of Chester. Thomas Pierson of Brampton Bryan, where the fiercely Presbyterian landowner Robert Harley held sway, was one of the Puritan ministers Herring brought in to preach at Shrewsbury, along with Nicolls.

All of this network of Puritans were committed to reform of the Church of England. At Shrewsbury Herring had clashed with separatists who favoured breaking away to form Independent or Congregational churches, including Katherine Chidley and her husband Daniel. Herring spoke for Presbyterians generally, averring:

It is a sin of an high nature, to unchurche a Nation at once, and that this would become the spring of many other fearful errours, for separation will eat like a Gangrene into the heart of Godlinesse.

One of Lady Margaret's close supporters was her nephew, Oliver Bromskill, who moved into her house, bringing his wife, Sarah. This must have been by 1633, as the vicar, John Morton, baptised their first daughter, also called Sarah, on 25 April that year, although Morton was also called upon to bury her in August. A son born the following year, Epaphras, also died when aged only 3. Other children survived long enough to be mentioned in Margaret’s will in 1556, along with their cousins, the Abney family.

Oliver Bromskill was a Church of England clergyman, educated at Christ's College Cambridge, where he matriculated as a sizar in1612, and ordained deacon in 1620 by Bishop Thomas Morton, when he subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles, However diocesan records seem to have nothing further on Bromskill. The Victoria County History covering Coventry claims that Bromskill was curate of Sheriffhales and appears to cite the Shropshire Calvinist theologian Richard Baxter and nonconformist historian Edmund Calamy but neither actually actually mention Bromskill's post: Baxter tells us no more than that Bromskill "lived with that eminent saint the old lady Bromley." Writing about Margaret Bromley, the Puritan biographer Samuel Clarke refers to the Bromskill family as "Parishioners of the Congregation to which she was related." The only recorded curate at Sheriffhales in this period was called John Smith. The parish register merely names Bromskill, never giving him an ecclesiastical title. Calamy described Bromskill as "a judicious, solid Divine, and excellent Preacher, and holy Liver...His Deportment was grave and serious, his Temper mild, humble and peacable; but he was a little reserved.".

The sources all state or hint that the Puritan preachers who stayed at Sheriffhales extended their preaching to nearby parishes and there were notable Puritan strongholds in the locality. At Tong, for example, the lord of the manor was William Pierrepont, a leading Presbyterian who was sent on the eve of the Civil War by Parliament, together with Sir John Corbet and Richard More to secure Shropshire for Parliament.

Herring himself was forced to leave Shrewsbury in 1635 by a visitation initiated by William Laud himself. He moved with his family to Wrenbury to stay with Nicoll’s widow (his wife’s sister) and finally, in 1637, escaped the country to take up a post at the English Reformed Church, Amsterdam. Herring’s departure marked a sharpening of conflict that culminated in the outbreak of civil war in 1642.

The Civil War

The outbreak of the English Civil War perhaps prompted the Aston family to sell their advowson of St Mary’s, Sheriffhales. On 4 October 1642, Walter Aston, 2nd Lord Aston of Forfar sold it to another Sir Richard Leveson, then lord of the manor of Sheriffshall, for £100 Leveson’s financial position was usually precarious but, at this precise time he was more secure, as he had just recovered half his estates at Trentham Lilleshall and Sheriffhales because of the death of Margaret Howard, widow of his godfather, the admiral Richard Leveson, from whom he had inherited. The sale took place as Shrewsbury was under the occupation of a royalist army that had already eroded support for Charles I through looting and forced requisitions. Considered variously "a sturdy royalist" by Tompson Michell, and "neutral at the outbreak of the First Civil War" by The History of Parliament Leveson was asked by his brother-in-law Richard Newport to help mediate between the two sides Newport soon gave the king £6000 for a peerage but he and Leveson were still discussing the prospects for peace at the end of November. The decision for King or Parliament was not easy, as both sides at the outset claimed to support both: the King in Parliament, with invocations of the Protestant religion and the rights of the people. Families were divided in their loyalties, as were some individuals. It took some time before the bitterness of actual bloodshed solidified the opposed factions. Leveson finally opted for the royalist side, was ruined financially and physically by the war and died, without issue, in 1661, without ever presenting a vicar to St Mary’s, Sheriffhales.

Many Puritans left the royalist areas. Lady Margaret Bromley and the Bromskill family must have fled early, as Richard Baxter met them at Coventry, the regional parliamentarian stronghold, just after the Battle of Edgehill They never returned: Lady Margaret died and was buried at Loughborough in 1656, where she had lived with the rector, Oliver Bromskill. John Morton, the vicar of Sheriffhales, opted for the royalist side. The Puritan chronicler and controversialist John Vicars, based in London, heard of Morton and recorded a curious incident that he took to be a sign of divine displeasure with him.

April the 23, 1643, being the Lord's day, one Master Morton Vicar of Sheriff-Hales preaching upon a portion of Scripture out of the 120 Psalme, took occasion thence to in his Sermon, to vent bitter imprecations against the Round-heads (that is, God's faithfullest servants and gracious Saints, and the Kings and the Parliaments loyall ans fastest friends) charging them with faction, rebellion, and such like opprobrious scandals, adding withall in express terms, that the Powder-plot, and other treasons that have been practised by the Papists, were nothing to this their late Round-new-invention. At which words (having stood halfe his time) he gasped and gaped as he stood in the Pulpit, and stared in his Auditors faces, but could not speake a word more for a good space after, the people all that while being amazed at this so suddain and strange dumb shew in him. At length, he (the said Master Morton) stooping down, as it were to take up somewhat at his feet, re-erected himself, and then said, let us give thanks for what we have heard, which he accordingly did, in a fumbling and hardly intelligible manner, and soon made an end.

Although there were no major battles in Shropshire, there were seven field engagements with over a thousand soldiers. There was also a great deal of, often bloody, fighting around fortified positions. The fighting often came into the environs of Sheriffhales, as it was close to the garrisons at Lillehall Abbey and Tong Castle. In August 1643 William Brereton and his Cheshire forces helped his Staffordshire allies to take Eccleshall Castle, and on 28 December they advanced to capture Tong Castle, although it changed hands several times subsequently. On 25 March 1644 an attempt by Parliamentarians to advance on Lilleshall led to a pitched battle between there and Longford with about 1500 involved. Even after the fall of Shrewsbury, in February 1645, and the decisive Parliamentary victory at the Battle of Naseby in June, operations continued locally. Lilleshall Abbey, garrisoned with about 160 troops on the king's behalf by Sir Richard Leveson, still held out. It's capture on 22 July 1645, was perhaps the most disruptive of the war around Sheriffhales. The Parliamentarian Thomas Malbon remarked that it came "after a great breache made in the same & the Governor slain." Before they stormed it the besiegers' artillery had demolished the towers, lady chapel, and north transept.

Under the Commonwealth

As the fighting subsided, the Parliamentarians purged the Church throughout Shropshire, with about forty clergy displaced during and after the retaking of the county, according to Auden's ecclesiastical history of the period. However, of John Morton, Auden reports that "though reported as bitter against Parliament at the beginning of the war, seems not to have been interfered with." At this point Shropshire was scheduled to undergo a reorganisation of church governance on Presbyterian lines. Shifnal and Tong were assigned to the third classis, centred on Bridgnorth, with William Pierrepont heading the list of lay presbyters. However, the classis never functioned fully and Sheriffhales was entirely excluded, presumably because of its ambiguous position, mainly in Staffordshire. Morton was thus spared any involvement in the reorganisation and the scrutiny it might have entailed.

Morton actually benefited greatly from the new dispensation, particularly from the ruin of Sir Richard Leveson at nearby Lilleshall. On 1 October 1646, Leveson, faced with a huge fine of £9,846, made an agreement with the Committee for Compounding with Delinquents, the body that negotiated settlements with royalist landowners whose estates had been sequestrated. To get the fine reduced to £6000 he agreed to pay £380 annually for ever. The sum was to be distributed among the ministers at five churches, apparently places where he held the rectories, and any others the Committee decided. The minister of "Sheriffs Hall" was to get £50 – second only to the minister of Lilleshall, who was promised £80. In addition Leveson had to transfer the great tithes of the churches to their ministers, essentially placing them in the same financial position as rectors, rather than vicars.

However, Morton would have been required to conduct services based on the Directory for Public Worship, a comprehensive description and prescription of the pattern of Presbyterian worship that was made obligatory under an Act of January 1645. Even before setting out the text of the directory the legislation also made the regulations governing the parish register clearer and firmer: it was to be made of vellum and had to contain a record of every birth, baptism, marriage or burial, and it was to be available for inspection and copying. Other requirements affected the layout of the church. The Communion Table was to be "decently covered, and so conveniently placed, that the Communicants may orderly sit about it, or at it." Fonts were not explicitly banned but baptisms had to be held "in the place of publique Worship, and in the face of the Congregation, where the people may most conveniently see and hear; and not in the places where Fonts in the time of Popery were unfitly and superstitiously placed." With these major exception to past practice, Morton remained undisturbed at Sheriffhales, considerably more prosperous, until his death. He was buried at Sheriffhales on 9 December 1649.

John Nott was appointed as minister to Sheriffhales in 1650 and in November of that year was named in the parish register alongside the churchwardens, John Glover and Anthony Wood. He is named in a number of sources as being the son of Charles Nott, vicar of Shelsley in Worcestershire. The benefice of Shelsley Beauchamp was never a vicarage but a rectory, so Charles Nott might have been the rector. The clergy database is currently not helpful in this regard, as there is a long gap in the list of rectors, stretching from 1611 until 1764. The name "Charles Nott" does not appear in the database at all. Charles Nott, known as the Parson of Shelsley Beauchamp, is notable as a leading figure in the movement of the Clubmen. The organised with makeshift weapons to resist the taxation and exactions of both armies. In Worcestershire in 1645, when Charles Nott emerged, this mostly applied to looting by scattered but threatened royalist garrisons. On 5 March Charles Nott led an assembly of Clubmen to Woodbury Hill, near Great Witley, where they issued the Woodbury Declaration, declaring their intention

To retain the property of the subject by protecting and safeguarding our persons and estates by the mutual aid and assistance of each other against all murders, rapines, plunder, robberies, or violences which shall be offered by the soldier or any oppressor whatsoever...

It was possibly the Parson Charles Nott who married Mary Wympne at Shelsley Beauchamp in 1621, which fits with John Nott's presumed birth year of 1624, as calculated from his memorial in Thame church, although it is an uncertain connection.

John Nott was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge from November 1642 until May 1645, when he migrated to Trinity College, at about the time his father was involved in the Clubmen's activities. At that point Trinity College was undergoing a purge, instigated in 1644 by the Earl of Manchester. Most of the fellows lost their positions and the master, Thomas Comber, was replaced by Thomas Hill, who had perhaps been master of Emmanuel. Nott moved at about the time Hill was appointed. He graduated BA and became a Scholar around 1646 and a Fellow the following year. By 1650, before his appointment at Sheriffhales, Nott was working at Wolverhampton as assistant to Ambrose Sparry, who was minister at the former St Peter's Collegiate Church. The source of income was precarious and began to dry up soon after Nott moved on. The clergy at the church, and several surrounding parishes were paid from the sequestered estate of Colonel Thomas Leveson who had fled abroad, making it impossible for the Compounding Committee to come to a proper settlement with him.

Nott was presented to Sheriffhales under the Great Seal on 30 May 1650 It would not be possible to accept the post unless he had previously taken the Oath of Engagement. This was introduced by an Act of 2 January 1650 and ran:

I Do declare and promise, That I will be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of England, as it is now Established, without a King or House of Lords.

The oath drove a wedge betweenIndependents or Congregationalists and the Presbyterians: the latter tended to have scruples about breaking their former adherence to the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, which envisaged a king presiding over a Presbyterian Church of England.

Under the terms of Sir Richard Leveson's agreement with the Compounding Committee, Nott was assigned the great tithes, and would also have received the £50 enhancement to the vicarage, so the Sheriffhales appointment would have marked a major improvement in his material circumstances. He went back to Wolverhampton to wed Elizabeth Sparry on 26 September 1650. Elizabeth was John Sparry’s 20-year old daughter, Ambrose Sparry's sister. A year later Charles Stuart's Scottish Presbyterian army camped at Tong Heath, south-east of Sheriffhales, on its way to a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651. The local confusion and disruption was compounded by fleeing troops, who stopped at Tong again on their way back to Scotland, and by the Parliamentarian search for the fugitive Charles, who passed through, among other places, Stourbridge, White Ladies, Madeley, Shropshire, Boscobel House and Moseley Old Hall.

The Notts' first child, named Elizabeth like her mother, was baptised just as the chaos subsided, on 30 October 1651 More children followed: John on 22 March 1653,. Mary on 2 December 1654,. another Elizabeth on 15 July 1656, although there is no indication the first had died. When Penelope Nott was baptised on 15 November 1657, the register gives the details not only that she was born five days earlier but that it was at 2:00. The arrival in March 1660 of Charles Nott, was recorded with similar precision, as was that of Samuel in March 1662 These were the earliest entries in Sheriffhales register which gave details of birth dates and times, although this had been a legal requirement since the 1645 Act introducing the Directory.

Meanwhile, Nott was confirmed as minister of Sheriffhales in 1652 by the Westminster Assembly, the body charged with reorganizing the Church of England since 1643. The Assembly was becoming increasingly isolated from the onrush of events. The Presbyterian Members of Parliament, the Assembly’s political base, had been systematically removed from the House of Commons on 6 December 1648 in Pride's Purge, in preparation for the Trial of Charles I. William Pierrepont of Tong, for example, was forced out of Parliament, although he continued to be influential as a friend of Oliver Cromwell and later Richard Cromwell, as well as a lay member of the Assembly. Since then the Independents, who supported Cromwell, had gained ever greater influence. The end of the Assembly and the collapse of Presbyterian governance led to a series of practical issues around coordinating local churches – primarily how to impose uniform church discipline if there was no authority above the local level. One sanction used by ministers was exclusion from the Lord's Supper, which could be side-stepped simply by going to another church. There was also a problem in securing more than local recognition for the ordination of ministers. Richard Baxter sought a solution by creating a wider framework for cooperation, originally intended to cover just his own county of Worcestershire. Despite being in Staffordshire and Shropshire, Sheriffhales was part of this association from the outset. By the time the association was formalised May 1653, the signatories included a considerable number of ministers in neighbouring counties: John Nott, rendered as Knott, and described as the "teacher at Sheriff Hales." was one of them.

The Sheriffhales parish register of marriages 1654–1655 features two certificates from a local Justice of the Peace. These were in accord with an Act of 1653 passed by Nominated Assembly, known to its royalist detractors as the Barebones Parliament. Convened by Oliver Cromwell, its sole Act, passed in August moved marriage from the remit of the Church to that of local government, although the couple still had to swear an oath to God before the magistrate issued a certificate of marriage, priced at twelve pence. The Sheriffhales examples were both signed and sealed at Gnosall by Mathew Moreton: a long serving Staffordshire JP, he was a resident of Engleton in Brewood parish.

A new volume of the register was begun in 1657 and inside the cover is a list of collections made among the congregation for good causes. The donations are not dated but the editor thought they might relate to the years 1658–1662, which is borne out by references to some easily dated public events. The second entry on the list names Edgbaston church as the recipient of 5s. 5d. and this corresponds to a collection authorised in 1658 by the Council of State, to help replace the building destroyed in the Civil War. Towards the end of the list, Condover church is reported as receiving 4s. 4. It is known that its nave and north aisle collapsed in November 1660. Afterwards comes a record of 4s. 10d. donated for a fire near Whitehall, the seat of government, which could correspond to either or both the fires reported there in 1661–1662, in which offices and living quarters were damaged. Special collections seem to have been quite frequent, with 26 over a period of about four years, and many were for individuals, who are harder to trace and explain than the public disasters. Such collections continued well after was Nott was ejected from Sheriffhales in 1662.

The Stuart Restoration

The Great Ejection

John Nott lost the parish of Sheriffhales at the Great Ejection of 1662. After the Stuart Restoration Puritans were outmanoeuvred and an Act of Uniformity passed on 19 May 1662 to reimpose the Book of Common Prayer and the Epicopacy of the Church of England. Although Charles II had announced his commitment to religious freedom in the Declaration of Breda, the changes were made compulsory and enforced by penalties. Each clergymen was ordered not only to use the prayerbook but also, after a morning or evening service, "openly and publiquely before the congregation there assembled declare his open and unfeigned assent and consent to the use of all things there contained." Any who failed to do so was to be deprived of his benefice and the patron could "present or collate to the same as though the person or persons so offending or neglecting were dead." The deadline of 24 August 1662 was set for incumbents to make the declaration.

Nott evidently failed to comply with the Act of Uniformity and his name was struck out, with several others, from the Liber Cleri, the diocesan record of clergy, on 29 September. The benefice of Sheriffhales was considered vacant. Nott went on to "preach publicly in a chapel near Hadly 3 or 4 years, as long as he was suffered” for three or four years: it is not known if this was the Hadley near Wellington, Shropshire.. Then he acted as chaplain to Richard Hampden, a member of the Cavalier Parliament who had remained resolutely Presbyterian and refused to attend parish Communion. Not until 1688, with the passing of the Toleration Act was he able to return to public preaching at Thame in Oxfordshire, where he died in 1702.

Restoration Vicars

Bishop John Hacket, the first bishop of Lichfield and Coventry elected after the Stuart Restoration.

William Peers was instituted vicar of Sheriffhales on 15 December 1662. In the register the vicar’s surname is consistently rendered Pierce, while the Cambridge alumni database renders it as Peirse, which might indicate the pronunciation. Like Nott, his Puritan predecessor, Peers had studied at Emmanuel College, where he was admitted as a pensioner in 1656. He graduated BA in 1659 or 1660, so his university education had probably been entirely under the Commonwealth: Emmanuel had a reputation more than thirty years old as one of what Laud called the "nurseries of Puritanism." However, Emmanuel was distinctly Presbyterian and its leadership was unhappy with both with the Engagement and the Restoration: William Sancroft, a leading and popular member, was forced out in July 1651 for evading the Engagement. Discipline loosened to the extent that some students had to be admonished for playing cards in the college. No less than 155 Emmanuel alumni lost their posts in the Great Ejection. Peers however became vicar of Sheriffhales because of it.

Peers was ordained a deacon at St Mary's Church, Lichfield on 14 December 1662 by Bishop John Hacket. He was then ordained priest on the same day: the day before he was instituted as vicar of Sheriffhales. This hurried ordination process seems to have been normal in the diocese during the 1661–1662 period. Large numbers of clergy were ejected from their livings and replacements required urgently. Peers was presented by Richard Fowler of Harnage Grange, the father and guardian Francis Fowler.After Sir Richard Leveson's death in 1661, he had left his estates, including the manor, rectory and advowson of Sheriffhales church, to Margaret Fowler, his niece, and her husband Francis. As Francis was under age, the advowson was exercised by his father, Richard. Peers was not actually inducted into the benefice, ie admitted to its temporalities until 1 January 1663. The fact was attested by the churchwardens, John Smith and Jeffrey Backhouse in the parish register: this was the first entry in the register since 7 September. In 1665 the vicarage was worth only £45 per annum.

There is no indication in the register that Peers ever married or had children. Little disturbs the regular life cycle of the parishioners except a note that John Talbot of Chadwell left £5 for the interest to be distributed to the poor of the parish in the form of a bread ration every Good Friday. Collections for good causes outside the parish probably continued under Peers, and one recorded on the inside back cover of the register, of 12 shillings for a fire at the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, can be dated to 1672.. In the same year, during a temporary lull in discrimination brought about by the Declaration of Indulgence, Michael Old of Sheriffhales sought permission to open his house as a Presbyterian meeting house, a sign that Puritanism was not dead in the parish. Peers served the parish of Sheriffhales for almost a decade, until his own funeral was registered on 19 January 1673, when he was probably in his mid-thirties.

George Plaxton was instituted vicar of Sheriffhales on 8 July 1673 by Bishop Thomas Wood. He was presented by Sir William Leveson Gower, a grand-nephew of Sir Richard Leveson, but he was not inducted into the benefice until 12 November. Four days later he stood before his congregation to make the statutory declaration of assent and consent to the liturgy and doctrine of the Church of England. Between his institution and induction at Sheriffhales, on 20 October, Plaxton had been instituted and admitted as Rector of Kynnersley, a few miles north-west of Sheriffhales on the Weald Moors. He was to retain his rectory throughout and beyond his time as vicar of Sheriffhales.

Plaxton was a Yorkshireman: born at Wressle in the East Riding, he was educated at Pocklington School before admission to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1666. Since the Restoration the college had been under the mastership of Peter Gunning, who had in 1643 been expelled from it for preaching against the Solemn League and Covenant. He was the first of four masters who moved it into the phase the Victoria County History describes as "Anglican and Tory." Plaxton graduated BA in 1670 and in May of that year was ordained deacon. He had received his MA by the time he was instituted at Sheriffhales.

Plaxton married Alice Perratt at St Mary's Sheriffhales on 26 September 1677. The Perratt or Perrat family were from York and evidently made a close connection with the Plaxtons, as later a Thomas Perrott was to marry George and Alice's daughter Anastasia. William, son of George and Alice Plaxton, was baptised on 29 December 1678. However, another son named William was recorded as baptised on 6 December 1679 This is all the Sheriffhales parish register tells of the Plaxton family but it has large gaps in this period. Later, after he left Sheriffhales for Donington Plaxton had some family details inserted into the register of St Cuthbert’s Church there. There are listed William, born in 1678 but recorded as baptised on 26 December; Jane, who was born in December 1679 (casting doubt on the second William) but died young in 1685; young George, born in 1681; John, who was born on 12 March 1683 and baptised immediately because he seemed so weak; Anastasia, born on Easter Day in 1686; Anna, born in 1688. All of these were actually born at Sheriffhales, although there is no mention of them in the register there, except for William. Only Charles was born at Donington, on 3 February 1690, and baptised on 3 March. The register for Kynnersley might tell more of the story, but it seems not to have been published.

Portrait by John Greenhill of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, leader of the Whig opposition.

William Leveson-Gower, the patron of St Mary's, was a Yorkshireman by birth. He had attended Pocklington School, probably at the same time as Plaxton. Although initially a supporter of Charles II, the Exclusion issue, pushed him toward the Whig opposition, led by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, which promoted legislation to ensure that the king’s Catholic brother, James, Duke of York, could not succeed him. Early in 1682 he was named as a supporter of dissenters and on 29 March 1682 Leoline Jenkins, Secretary of State, wrote to the Bishop of Lichfield’s secretary offering up to £10 to recruit informers to keep Leveson Gower under surveillance, recommending the former MP for Stafford, Walter Chetwynd, whom Leveson Gower himself had nominated in the county seat in the previous general election. Communication was to through the office of Owen Wynne, Jenkins’ confidential secretary. A network of spies began to envelope Leveson Gower and his associates. As early as 4 April, a rumour mill had been set in motion: a spy’s charge that he was stockpiling arms was supplemented by the entirely groundless accusation of Freemasonry. Sir William received and entertained the Duke of Monmouth, the Whig candidate for the succession, at Trentham on his northward progress to Chester in early September 1682, and did so again on his return south on 19 September, accompanying him to Stafford, where he received a rapturous reception but was then arrested on the king’s orders. Leveson Gower was among those who offered to stand bail for him at that point and he renewed the offer after Monmouth was interview by Justice Raymond.

This political shift placed Leveson Gower and his vicar, George Plaxton, on opposite sides. It was the Rye House Plot of 1683 that created a critical situation. Leveson Gower had allowed dissenting academy, intended to circumvent the ban on university education for nonconformists, to open in the Sheriffhales manor house, a very short distance west of St. Mary's. It's master, John Woodhouse came under intense pressure after the discovery of the plot and Plaxton wrote a damning character reference for him, which he sent in October to George Weld, a deputy lieutenant of Shropshire, although it soon landed, as was intended, on Secretary Jenkins' desk.

George Plaxton to George Weld. Reminding him of his promise to write to some of the powers above about Woodhouse. His school is of ill consequence, for while our youth are poisoned in their principles of sedition they will prove no good subjects to the King nor obedient sons to the Church. I beg your assistance. Woodhouse is gone to London to move for a prohibition or to appeal from the Chancellor’s sentence. If you would write to Sir L. Jenkins, who is Dr. Rains’ great friend, it might stop this bold man’s career and do the doctor great service. If the Archbishop of Canterbury would call in his surreptitious licence, it would do well, for under colour of it he vends his counterfeit wares and traffics in faction.

Tompson Michell described Plaxton as "a careful Antiquary." He left a body of notes and lists in the Donington register containing information on the history of the parish. Plaxton was a friend and correspondent of Ralph Thoresby, a noted Yorkshire historian. Thoresby was a nonconformist and had been prosecuted at Leeds in October 1683 during the intense repression following the Rye House Plot: the time Plaxton was denouncing Woodhouse to the authorities. Although his correspondence with Thoresby dates from long after his departure from Sheriffhales, it reflects close attention to details of local life. Here he reports on a Shropshire wedding custom.

Ralph Thoresby

The Quintain, or Quintan, is a ludicrous military exercise, used yet in the midland counties of England; you may call it a military sport or pastime. We have a quintan set up almost at every wedding in Shropshire. The custom is thus: in the open road, through which the bridegroom brings his bride to his own or to the wedding house, there is usually a post fixed in the ground, sometimes bedecked with flowers and branches. The young men of the villages adjoining, who have set up this quintan, stand ready with bundles of long sticks, in imitation of spears; these they offer to the bridegroom's attendants, who being on horseback, take each man his stick, or spear, and run full speed at the quintan, each striving to break his spear against it, and he is thought the bravest fellow who breaks the most sticks. They ride full gallop, and tilt upon the course: oftentimes they are unhorsed, and become the sport of the by-standers. They follow one another in their charge, and each man takes his turn. They have a notable slight in running at the post, and knapping their spears asunder. At the last, comes the bridegroom, to whom a fine white spear is offered, adorned with flowers. He rides a full career, and manfully breaks it; though commonly in favour of him the spear is a little cut, that it may break the easier. Many miss the quintain; sometimes the shivers of the stick hurt them. Sometimes they are overthrown, and fall from their saddles. Generally there is good sport and pastime, and much laughing amongst the rabble at some accident or other which befals these tilting knights. When the spears are all broke, they give the young men who set up the quintain something to drink, and ride away to dinner.

Plaxton resigned his post at Sheriffhales in 1790 when he became Rector of Donington, once again presented by Sir William Leveson Gower. He kept his rectory at Kynnersley for the time being but in 1703 he resigned both Shropshire benefices and went back to Yorkshire to become Rector of Barwick-in-Elmet in the West Riding.The exact date of his death is unknown. However, on 20 November 1720, the antiquarian and diarist Thomas Hearne noted:

About half a Year since, died of a good old age the Reverend Mr. George Plaxton, a Cambridge Man. He was a very ingenious Man and a good Scholar. He loved Antiquities. He lived of late Years much at my Ld Gower's.

Dissent and the Academy

The manor house at Sheriffhales, c. 1900 - a dissenting academy under John Woodhouse, late 17th Century. The photo was provided by Arthur Tompson Michell to the Congregational Historical Society.

Sheriffhales is well known in Nonconformist history as the site of one of the dissenting academies founded by John Woodhouse, a Presbyterian minister and preacher. He was probably the son of John Woodhouse of The Wodehouse at Wombourne, Staffordshire. He seems to have entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1655 but never graduated. In 1669 he was resident at Saxelbye in Leicestershire, said to have been silenced in Nottinghamshire. Meanwhile, on 27 November 1667, while he was living at Saxelbye, he had married Mary Hubbert, daughter of William Hubbert, an army officer. In 1675 the couple were living at Wartnaby when Woodhouse was licensed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Gilbert Sheldon, to teach grammar in the dioceses of Lincoln, Lichfield and Hereford. Shortly afterwards, Woodhouse was conducting his academy in Sheriffhales manor house, which had been built in the late 16th and 17th centuries and was generally rented out by the lord of the manor, at this time Sir William Leveson Gower. It is a four-bayed structure, just west of the church.

The precise opening date of the Sheriffhales academy is debatable. Early historians of the dissenting academies tended to favour a very early date, notably Irene Parker who thought it was in operation from 1663–1697. Woodhouse’s time in Leicestershire seems to preclude such an early date at Sheriffhales. A recent thesis by Mark Burden implies 1675, when Woodhouse received his licence to teach grammar, as the earliest possible date The earliest mention of John and Mary Woodhouse in the Sheriffhales parish register is 12 January 1677, when their son John was baptised by George Plaxton. Burden finds there is no evidence for teaching a university-style curriculum before 1680. This university learning was essential if the nonconformist students were to circumvent the ban on their entry to the two English Universities, which demanded an oath of allegiance to the Church of England. Joshua Toulmin, a radical nonconformist theologian and historian, reported in 1814 on the curriculum followed by Woodhouse, with lectures in logic, anatomy and mathematics, followed by physics, ethics and rhetoric, as well as Greek and Hebrew. Toulmin also claimed that there were more professionally-oriented lectures for those going on to become lawyers or ministers. He stressed that:

Practical exercises accompanied the course of lectures; and the students were employed at times in surveying land, composing almanacks, making sun-dials of different constructions, and dissecting animals.

Toulmin included a lengthy account of the texts generally read and discussed by the students. He cited as his source a manuscript from a John Woodhouse Crompton of Birmingham, which is no longer extant. Irene Parker and other authors largely repeated or condensed Toulmin’s account of the curriculum. A contemporary critic of the academy was Thomas Foley who was dissatisfied with Woodhouse’s skills in mathematics. However Foley was in revolt at the restrictions imposed by his Puritan father, rejected ethics as a pursuit unsuitable for a gentleman, and grew up to be a Tory squire.

The Trial of William, Lord Russell, in 1683 by Sir George Hayter, painted in 1825

Engraving attributed to Jan Luyken depicting the execution of Sir Thomas Armstrong in 1684.

Student discontent was the least of Woodhouse’s problems. He was sucked into the whirlpool of spying and rumour that stemmed from the discovery of the Rye House Plot in June 1683. In early July he was questioned on his activities of the two previous years. Subsequently an informer reported arms purchases by William Forester, the MP for Much Wenlock, Leveson Gower, Lord Brandon and others, claiming Woodhouse was the most likely to know about any planned uprising. George Plaxton’s unhelpful letter followed. The consequence was a series of court appearances and imprisonments. He was served with a capias writ, an arrest warrant sent to the King's Bench ordering detention in cases of excommunication. He successfully appealed against this in November 1683 but in the following year another capias led to his imprisonment at Shrewsbury. After the Monmouth Rebellion against James VII and II began in June 1685, Woodhouse was one a number of dissenting ministers rounded up and imprisoned at Chester Castle.

Woodhouse’s circumstances later eased, especially in the reign of William III and Mary II, when the Toleration Act removed legal penalties from Protestant nonconformists. The parish register records the marriage of his daughter, Mary, to a minister named Oliver Cromwell on 3 June 1691 and does not mention the family again. Woodhouse closed the academy in 1697 because of deteriorating health. According to Calamy Revised he then preached at Little St Helen's Church, London as successor to Samuel Annesley, although the same publication places Annesley's preaching post at a meeting house in what became St Helen's Place. Woodhouse died in 1700.

18th and 19th Centuries

Clergy, 1690—1823

The clergy who served at Sheriffhales in this period are generally named, with basic details, in Arthur Tompson Michell's list in the published parish register.

Samuel Collier

Samuel Collier was presented to vicarage of Sheriffhales on 10 July 1690 by Sir William Leveson Gower. Collier was probably born in 1658, the son of Thomas Collier of Witney. The Collier family were among the most important clothiers in the town, which specialised in the manufacture of blankets. The trade went back to the middle ages and Colliers had been selling blankets in Blackwell Hall, London, since the 1560s. Samuel’s father was possibly a Thomas Collier, who died in 1685, and was listed as a gentleman, reflecting the social status and confidence of what was by this time a merchant elite. He was one of the clothiers who issued his own trading tokens.

The sons of wealthy merchants and manufacturers and of the local gentry generally attended the grammar school in Witney, which was founded in 1660 by Henry Box, and aimed to prepare them for university, following a traditional classical curriculum. It was strongly Anglican in ethos and later much criticised for failing to respond to the needs of the numerous nonconformist tradesmen. Collier matriculated as a pleb or non-noble entrant at Trinity College, Oxford on 21 March, 1673, aged 15. As he was under 16, he would not have been required to subscribe to the principles of the Church of England at this point. He graduated B.A. in 1676. He subscribed to the 39 Articles with a view to being ordained to the priesthood by John Pritchett, Bishop of Gloucester on 5 December 1677, but there is no evidence the ordination took place. There is then a long gap before Collier appears at Sheriffhales in 1690. For part of it he must have been a student, as an MA from Trinity College, Dublin was noted when he subscribed before his institution at Sheriffhales. This subscription is marked as connected to an ordination, so it may be that Collier had postponed becoming a priest for more than a decade while following some other occupation.

Despite early hesitancy, Collier's patron, Sir William Leveson Gower had welcomed the Glorious Revolution and was elected to the Convention Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme as a supporter of William and Mary. He was an active MP on the Whig side and had always sympathised with nonconformists but was himself strongly Anglican. Looking to the future he favoured Princess Anne as a future successor to the throne. When the next parliament convened in February 1690, he entered it as a Tory, although he died the following year.

A Presbyterian survey, conducted around the time of Collier’s appointment in 1690, recorded the dissenting ministers who served in Sheriffhales at that time. Woodhouse was still working at his academy in the manor house and it was recorded that he "preached to his pupils and some few neighbours but never was a publick minister." He was assisted by John Doughty, who was possibly the son of Samuel Doughty, the ejected Rector of Sibson, Leicestershire. Another who preached for Woodhouse occasionally was Samuel Beresford, a Shrewsbury man who had been ejected from his living at St Werburgh's, Derby, in 1662 and had since lived at Shifnal and with Sir Thomas Wilbraham at Weston under Lizard.

Samuel Collier was vicar of Sheriffhales for more than thirty years. There are no entries in the register to suggest he ever married or had children: his name appears most years in March, with those of the churchwardens, to validate the previous years’ records. From 1701 to 1705 the records are instead independently audited by a John Yapp. This is probably related to the Marriage Duty Act 1694, which sought to raise funds for war with France. Yapp is named as a surveyor, so he would have been responsible for extracting the information required to impose levies on births, marriages and deaths, as well as bachelors over 25 years of age and childless widowers, all of which were chargeable at graduated rates. At some point towards the end of Collier’s life, probably in 1717, the church tower collapsed. Samuel Collier was buried, on 24 January 1721, long after the fees were dispensed with as unworkable, but with the fallen tower still in ruins.

Thomas Birch

Thomas Birch was appointed curate at Sheriffhales on 28 May 1719. He was a Shropshire man, educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1706 and graduated BA in 1710. He was soon after ordained a deacon in London but not priested until three years later, on 20 September 1713, at Eccleshall by the Bishop of Lichfield, John Hough. He was living at Sheriffhales well before he was appointed curate. He married Jane Whittle at St Mary’s on 24 June 1715. The baptism of their son first son Samuel was registered at Sheriffhales in June 1718. and another son Thomas was baptised early in 1720. Birch would have been useful to Samuel Collier, who was possibly ailing by this time. Tompson Michell's list of curates suggests Birch stayed until 1738, when he was replaced by Samuel Birch, his son.

John Leveson-Gower, 2nd Baron Gower From 1746 1st Earl Gower. He presented three successive vicars to St Mary's.

Robert Fowler

Robert Fowler took the subscription oath on his induction to the vicarage of Sheriffhales on 28 June 1721 He was presented by John Leveson-Gower, 2nd Baron Gower. At this time Leveson-Gower was a leading Tory politician, able to get his candidates elected as MPs for the boroughs of Stafford and Newcastle-under-Lyme and in the county seats of Staffordshire. He did not brook opposition: at Newcastle he leased 60 cottages from the tame corporation at nominal rents and evicted any occupants who did not vote for his candidates..

Robert Fowler was from Staffordshire, the son of Charles Fowler of Pendeford Hall, near Wolverhampton. Although of minor gentry background, Charles had married Sarah Leveson, granddaughter of Colonel Thomas Leveson of Wolverhampton, and through her acquired a considerable range of estates, for example the lordship and lands at Cheslyn Hay. Robert must have been a younger son, as his brother Richard was to inherit the estates. He was baptized at St Michael and All Angels, Tettenhall, on 13 October 1695. He matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford on 1 March 1714 and graduated BA on 17 November 1717, for some reason under the name Thomas.. He was ordained deacon at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, to which his college was attached, in September 1719 and ordained a priest in London in March 1721.

Fowler signed the parish register for the first time in spring 1723, together with the churchwardens, Thomas Whittle and Andrew Penson, but even before this their initials and those of the curate, Thomas Birch, had been placed on a plaque on the south side of the church, beneath the new tower, probably to celebrate its completion. In 1722 five bells were installed in the tower, financed mainly by Leveson-Gower, the patron. Fowler seems to have built a close relationship with Leveson-Gower, who was a fairly remote kinsman. In 1732 Leveson-Gower made him perpetual curate of Trentham parish church, St Mary and All Saints’. He held Trentham, alongside Sheriffhales and his subsequent post, until his death. Thomas Birch was working at Sheriffhales throughout the period Fowler was vicar, and Fowler must have been absent fairly regularly if he gave Trentham due attention. In July 1738 Fowler accepted the Rectory of Donington, where Leveson-Gower held the advowson, and resigned his vicarage at Sheriffhales, following the example of George Plaxton before him. He became domestic chaplain to Leveson Gower in 1749. He continued to live at Donington, a short distance from Sheriffhales, until his death in September 1770.

William Ward

William Ward became vicar of Sheriffhales on 1 August 1738. Like Fowler, he was presented by John Leveson-Gower, second Baron Gower. His entire career was determined by his family's status and connections.

Ward’s father was also William Ward, of Willingsworth Hall, then in the large parsh of Sedgley: today the Willingsworth area is in Gospel Oak, between Wednesbury and Tipton. The older William was an MP for Staffordshire 1710–1713 and 1715–1720. A moderate who voted sometimes with the Whigs and at other times a Tory, he was firm in his support for the House of Hanover.

William Ward went off to Pembroke College, Cambridge at the age of 18 in 1724. and graduated LLB in 1729. In September of that year he was ordained deacon by Edward Chandler, the bishop of Lichfield and on 5 September 1730 Chandler ordained him priest. This was just in time, as Ward had already been instituted Vicar of Sedgley by the bishop two days earlier, presented by John Ward, his own brother. This coincided with the announcement of a vacancy caused by the death of the previous vicar, Richard Ames, who had died after only a year in the post.

While William was at university, his brother John Ward had become in 1727 Tory MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, a borough completely controlled by John Leveson-Gower, along with Baptist Leveson-Gower, Lord Gower’s brother and he remained so until 1734. It was eight years after Ward acquired Sedgley parish that he was presented at Sheriffhales, by Lord Gower, his brother’s political patron, and he was vicar for just three years, keeping his Sedgley benefice throughout. He appears to have signed the Sheriffhales parish register only once. The benefice was declared vacant because of Ward’s resignation on 25 September 1741. Ward's period of office at Sheriffhales was the shortest known with certainty. By this time he had already taken on the more convenient parish of Kingswinford, where his brother John, who had in 1740 become Baron Ward, was the patron.

Ward hung on to Sedgley parish until 1745, when he gave it up for Himley, again presented by his brother John. He died on 20 July 1758. A note made by Rev Edward Best in the burial register of Bilston described him as "a Gentleman of good learning and also of being of a very sedentary disposition & using little exercise of any kind’." He was buried at Himley.

Samuel Birch

Samuel Birch, the son of the curate Thomas, grew up in Sheriffhales and acquired his education firstly at Adams’ Grammar School in Newport. He was admitted as a sizar, probably reflecting a curate’s low income, at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in June 1737, matriculated the following year and graduated BA in 1741. About the same time he was ordained deacon. Thompson Michell thought he succeeded his father as curate in 1738. The dating seems unlikely but Samuel certainly returned to Sheriffhales after university, only to die in January 1742. There is no record of his being appointed curate, but his burial record refers to his title of Reverend, to which he was entitled as a deacon.

William Fox

William Fox was instituted vicar of Sheriffhales on 25 September 1741 by Bishop Richard Smalbroke. He was inducted by the patron, again John Leveson-Gower, and read out his assent and consent to the 39 articles on 5 October. Fox is described in both Thompson Michell’s list and Alumni Oxonienses, the list of Oxford University's former students, as the son of a William Fox of Whiston, Staffordshire. Whiston was and still is part of Penkridge parish. Alumni Oxonienses also includes a William Foxe, son of George Foxe of Whiston, who became Vicar of Wombourne in 1696. The younger William Fox is likely have been born at Wombourne as his birth year works out as 1697 or 1698. He was admitted to Pembroke College, Oxford in 1712 at the age of 14 and graduated BA in 1715 and MA in 1718. He was ordained deacon in May 1719 by Edward Chandler but did not become a priest until September 1721. His father died at Wombourne in 1725. The clergy database suggests that William might have been a curate at Kingswinford from 1732

There is a considerable gap in Fox’s career before his arrival at Sheriffhales. Once inducted, however, he was committed to the parish for the rest of his life. There is no record of his holding any other parishes. At various points in his ministry he was assisted by curates. From 1747 to 1750 John Power appears as a curate in the parish register. By August 1777 Fox was being assisted by Thomas Spencer, who conducted most of the marriage services between then and Fox’s death. A separate marriage register had commenced in 1754 and it recorded the officiant on every occasion. Fox presided almost consistently until his last two years. He was buried at Sheriffhales on 17 July, 1779 aged 83.

John Power

John Power was a curate at Sheriffhales during the 1740s. He was born about 1723 in Cheadle, Staffordshire and schooled at Chebsey, near Eccleshall. Aged 16, he was admitted as a sizar at Trinity College, Cambridge, and graduated BA in 1743. He was ordained deacon by Richard Smalbroke at Ettingshall in September 1745 and priested almost exactly a year later in the same place, having served as curate at Blymhill. He appears in Sheriffhales parish register, signing it as curate, in place of the vicar, William Fox, in 1747. In January 1750 he signs an amendment making clear that the father of a baptizand was not a parish resident. After serving at Sheriffhales for about three years, nothing more is known of him.

Thomas Spencer

Thomas Spencer was a curate at Sheriffhales under the vicars William Fox and Sambrooke Higgins. His relatively common name makes it less certain to trace his life story but geographical links are fairly clear. A Thomas Spencer who entered Magdalene College, Cambridge as a sizar, aged 19, in 1771 had been educated at Shrewsbury School, although his origins were traceable over the Welsh border to Guilsfield in Montgomeryshire, now part of Powys. He graduated BA in 1775 and his university record notes his ordination as a deacon at Peterborough on 18 December 1774. However, although he was ordained by John Hinchliffe, the bishop of Peterborough, the event took place in Cambridge at Trinity College Chapel.. He was ordained a priest at St George's, Bloomsbury in September 1776 in connection with his licensing as a stipendiary curate at Lilleshall. His first appearance in the Lilleshall comes on 10 August 1777, when he conducted a marriage between Frances Bray, a local woman, and Thomas Walford from Wiltshire. Thereafter he appears regularly until mid-1785.

Sambrooke Higgins, English clergyman and estate manager, c.1734-1823. By John Young, after Thomas Barber mezzotint, 1813-1825 NPG D35764. © National Portrait Gallery, London

Sambrooke Higgins

When Sambrooke Higgins was instituted vicar of Sheriffhales by Bishop Richard Hurd on 14 September I779, he had already been Rector of Norbury for almost twenty years. His entry in Alumni Oxonienses does not mention Sheriffhales, but nor does it mention his many other offices: just Norbury. So it barely hints at the breadth and wealth of his career as an ecclesiastical businessman.

Sambrooke Higgins was the son of Christopher Higgins of Loynton, where the family had built Loynton Hall around 1671, although they had held the estate since 1649. Christopher’s father was also called Christopher and his mother was Rachel Sambrooke, whose surname came from the village of Sambrook, Shropshire, close to Norbury and Loynton. It was thereafter regularly used as a forename in the family. The younger Christopher was presumably a lawyer, since he belonged to Barnard's Inn, one of the now defunct Inns of Chancery, attached to Gray's Inn. His wife, and Sambrooke's mother, was Mary Blower, co-heiress of Norfolk landowner and lawyer Richard Blower. Her fortune probably enabled Christopher to pay off considerable debts and give their children a secure financial foundation. Sambrooke had an older brother, Richard, who inherited the estate but who predeceased him in 1780, leaving him a very wealthy landowner, as well as three sisters, Catherine, Rachel and Dorothy.

Sambrooke Higgins had an Oxford education, matriculating at Brasenose College on 19 March 1752, at the age of 18. He went on to BA in 1755 and MA in 1758. Meanwhile he was ordained deacon by Bishop Fredrick Cornwallis in Holy Trinity Church, Eccleshall in September 1757 Higgins had clearly decided to stay on home territory in his ecclesiastical career, as his first appointment, following immediately on ordination, was as curate at Chetwynd, Shropshire, a parish that includes Sambrook. Almost exactly a year later he was priested, also by Cornwallis at Eccleshall. Higgins would have assisted the Rector of Chetwynd, William Bill Saunders, a former Head Master of Nottingham grammar school who was now aged.

Charles Boothby Skrymshire, Staffordshire landowner,patron of Sambrooke Higgins at Norbury. After Sir Joshua Reynolds mezzotint, (1766-1767) NPG D41723 © National Portrait Gallery, London

After a further year at Chetwynd, Higgins moved on to the rectory of Norbury, to which he was instituted on 31 July 1759. The advowson was in the hands of Charles Boothby Skrymsher, the son of Thomas Boothby, a Leicestershire landowner and Elizabeth Skrymsher of Norbury, coheiress of Sir Charles Skrymsher, the lord of the manor of Norbury. The Skrymshers were related to Sir Robert Walpole the Whig Prime Minister and Thomas Boothby Skrymsher, as he became after his marriage, fought two elections for the Whigs at Leicester, one successfully, although he was an MP for only a few months in 1727. His son Charles inherited his estates and advowsons when he died in 1751 and it was he who presented Sambrooke Higgins as rector. They were part of the same very local gentry circle.

Thomas Anson, 1st Viscount Anson, a major Staffordshire landowner for whom Sambrooke Higgins worked as steward of the Shugborough estate.

Later the manor and the patronage of the church at Norbury were bought by George Adams of Sambrook, who then acquired through marriage the estates of the Ansons of Shugborough Hall: he changed his name to Anson in 1773. George was a Whig MP for Lichfield and became a strong opponent of Britain’s involvement in the American Revolutionary War. Higgins became his steward of the Anson estates and continued to manage them after George's death, until 1818. George Anson successor, his son Thomas took over the estates and his father’s political work in 1789. The scope of the task undertaken Higgins is indicated by Thomas’s huge income of £16,000 a year. Higgins was clearly very active in estate management, although it seems his methods were not seen as entirely professional by younger generations. No secular responsibilities could dislodge Higgins from the rectory of Norbury: he held the position until his death in 1823 – a period of nearly 64 years.

Sir Henry Bayley, later Baron Paget and Earl of Uxbridge, for whom Sambrooke Higgins was domestic chaplain. Attributed to Giuseppe Filippo Liberati Marchi.

In 1772 Higgins became domestic chaplain to Henry, Lord Paget of Beaudesert. Paget had been Henry Bayley of Plas Newydd but was related through his mother to the Paget family, who had long held large estates around Cannock Chase. A succession problem led him to inherit these estates in 1769 and he changed his name to Paget to accommodate the new situation. The appointment had to be approved by Frederick Cornwallis, who was now Archbishop of Canterbury.

Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford, patron of Sheriffhales church at the induction of Sambrooke Higgins

Higgins now held two posts with cure of souls, so he could not be instituted vicar of Sheriffhales in 1779 without special dispensation from the Archbishop. This was granted on 8 September, with a note that the living was valued at about £90. He was presented by Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Earl Gower, who was at the peak of his political career. Although a Whig of the conservative Bloomsbury Gang, he held the post of Lord President of the Council in the mainly Tory ministry of Frederick North, Lord North during the American Revolutionary War. Higgins signed the parish register at the end of the year and continued to do so for the next four years, always with the curate, Thomas Spencer, and the churchwardens. Some volumes of the register also contain a note explaining that they were used as evidence in a case brought by Sambrooke Higgins against John Cotes and others before the four judges of the Court of Exchequer Chamber in 1786. This was the latest instalment in the centuries-long argument over the precise status of Woodcote chapel.

Otherwise, Higgins is notable by his absence from the records. The separate marriage register begun under William Fox, which records the officiant in each case, never mentions Higgins. Instead it features only the curates, Thomas Spencer until the middle of 1785, John Heptinstall until early 1788, then Robert Dean until the book was finished in 1795. A new register book was then opened and Dean continued conducting weddings until it finished at the end of 1812. It is possible that curates presided at most, if not all, services in the parish while Higgins was vicar.

It is unclear how long Higgins worked as chaplain to Lord Paget but a licence was issued to George Champagne to act as chaplain to Paget in 1784, so it is likely that Higgins had retired from the position at that point. It was in 1784 that John Wesley made his first visit to Sheriffhales, delivering a brief sermon on his way from a visit to John William Fletcher of Madeley to Stafford. On 28 March 1786 he called again on his way to Stafford, remarking in his journal: ″After calling at Sheriffhales, and giving them a short exhortation, I hastened to Stafford, and found the congregation waiting...″ ″Them″ suggests a group of sympathisers already waiting for him in Sheriffhales, as at Stafford.

Higgins took on at least two further ecclesiastical offices, although neither involved pastoral care. In January 1789 he was appointed Prebendary of Gaia Major and canon residentiary of Lichfield Cathedral by Bishop James Cornwallis, the former Bishop Frederick’s nephew. The prebend of Gaia Major was just north of the cathedral, around Gaia Lane, and consisted of 272½ acres of land. The prebends dated from the middle ages and their original purpose had been to provide an income for working members of the cathedral chapter. By this time they were often treated as tradeable assets. The income will have varied from year to year, but when the great tithes were commuted in the 1840s the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were awarded £62 8s. The residentiaries, as the name suggests, were supposed to be administrative staff actually living in the cathedral, but their lodgings had long ago been rented out. This part of the system was regulated by an Act of 1706 that had proved unworkable, so a thorough reorganisation was carried out under the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield Cathedral Act, introduced in 1796 and approved in 1797. Six new posts were created, each supported by two of the prebends. Higgins lost his residentiaryship at this point and his name does not appear in lists of residentiaries after the Act. However, he retained the prebend until his death, on 23 July 1823.

As Sambrooke Higgins was without issue, the Higgins family lands passed to great nephew, Thomas Higgins Burne, of the Woodlands, Penn, near Wolverhampton.

Robert Dean

Robert Dean was a curate who served Sheriffhales thorough most of the period in which Sambrooke Higgins was vicar and for a considerable time afterwards. The published sources do not shed much light on his background. He does not figure in the databases of the university students and few appointment documents do not mention an academic qualification. He is twice mentioned in the Tong parish register, conducting weddings 1778 and 1781. before his first appearance at Sheriffhales. Although he is described as "Curate," the context makes clear that the actual curate of Tong at that time was Charles Buckeridge. He first appears in the Sheriffhales register in 1787, conducting the wedding of a local couple, Thomas Tooth and Sarah Rudge. His name then appears consistently in the Sheriffhales marriage register until 21 December 1812. Late in this period he also conducted weddings at Tong in 1809 and 1812. This was already a long spell of duty for a curate, but Dean’s first appointment record for Sheriffhalesdoes not appear until 1811. In this he is appointed Stipendiary Curate for £52 10s. Plus surplice fees. In 1817 the Clerical Guide listed Dean, not Higgins, as the incumbent and vicar at Sheriffhales. The mistake suggests that Dean, rather than Higgins, was seen as the representative of the Church of England in Sheriffhales. In 1824, after the death of Sambrooke Higgins, Dean was again licensed as assistant curate at Sheriffhales and Woodcote on a stipend of £100 'Two mentions in the Liber Cleri on 9 June 1830 note that he was licensed to work in Woodcote chapel, which was a chapel of ease, the domestic chapel of the Cotes family. Dean served Sheriffhales for much longer than any other clergyman: a total of 51 years or more.