238 



way, he was resiiited until the Chief Justice's chimnoys wore fiuished, after which 

 he was hung duly. 



Mr. Parker, in his work on domestic architecture, ascribes the building of 

 the hall to the time of Henry VIII,, subsequent alterations having lieen made in 

 that of Elizabeth. He says that the house, on a smaller scale, follows the design 

 of that of Compton Wynyeate, in Warwickshire, the licence for erecting which 

 latter was granted in 1520. It would seem not improbable, therefore, that the 

 building was begun by William Leighton the elder on his wife's accession to the 

 property, and completed by the Chief Justice, his son. I do not know whether 

 the following fact observed by me may throw any light on the question of date of 

 building, but it is not an uninteresting one. In his book on the four alibeys of 

 Shropshire, the late Prebendary Mackenzie Walcott, describing the Abbey of 

 Buildwas, situated about nine or ten miles hence, says that the rooms over the 

 infirmary were occupied as the Abbot's chambers. The ceilings of these rooms, he 

 goes on to say, were of the 1.5th century, were in fretwork, and "one bore the 

 portcullis, three ostrich feathers, and a heart inscribed ' Jesu.' " You will notice 

 this identical ornament on the ceiling of the present dining-room, and it has 

 occurred to me to surmise that, at the dissolution of the Monastery of Buildwas 

 (which took place in 1539), or soon after that time, the cornice work in question 

 might have been brought from thence to adorn the mansion which Mr. Leighton 

 was then engaged in raising. Saxton's map, published about 1575-80, shows 

 a park surrounding the hall, trace of which, however, does not now remain ; and 

 there appears from the following record to have been a chapel here in the middle 

 of the I'Jth century, attached, I suppose, to the man.sion. Where this chapel 

 e.xactly stood it is difficult to point out, but the meadow adjacent bears the name 

 of the Chapel-yard, and the Parish Clerk of Cardington says that his father 

 assisted to remove the ruins of it some 70 or 80 years ago from somewhere at the 

 back of the hall. 



One Sir Thomas Botelar was the last of the mitred Abbots of the Bene- 

 dictine Monastery of SS. Peter and Paul of Buildwas, to which I have already 

 referred. After the surrender of the house to the King's Commissioners in 1539, 

 the said Sir Thomas retired to the Vicarage of Much Wenlock with a pension of 

 ±.'80 a year — equivalent to about £'600 of our money. From this post he exercised 

 over the parishes which now constitute the Rural Deanery of Wenlock, some 

 shadow of the authority which he had wielded as Abbot over these same parishes 

 then under the jurisdiction of the Abbey, and he has left behind him a very 

 detailed register of ecclesiastical events and doings in them. In this register there 

 is the following, under date of July 2nd, 1542:— "Tho. son of Wm Taylor and 

 Margt. daur of Jno. Byll of this town were mard. at Plaish in Cardinton parish 

 in the Chapell of St Margaret there by licence of Sr. Wm. Hall, Vicar of 

 Cardinton, and me Sr. Tho. Butlar, of Wenlock, forasmuch as by reason of sick- 

 ness the sd. Tho. Taylor was not able to come to Wenlock. Sr. Rogr. Dyke 

 Priest Stipendiar of the Church of S. James, Cardinton, mard. them."— 

 {Transactions of Shropshire Archaological Society, 1883). I take it as not by any 

 means improbable that the dispersion of the Monastic orders may have resulted in 



