which had its foundation early in the 10th century. St. Alkmund was the
son of Alured, King of Northumberland. He was slain in the year 800 and
buried at Lilleshall. The church dedicated to him is supposed to have
been founded by Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred the Great. Her nephew,
King Edgar, a descendant of Alured, increased the original endowment.
Like St. Mary’s it was collegiate, and in the time of Edward the
Confessor had eleven manors, which, however, were transferred by King
Stephen at the request of Richard de Belemis, one of the Deans, to the
Abbey or monastery at Lilleshall. The college being thus both dissolved
and impoverished was reduced into a vicarage and lapsed to the crown, in
whose hands the living now remains. The church was destroyed in 1794
under a mistaken apprehension as to its stability, and the existing
edifice erected in 1796. In a vault beneath it lie the remains of Sir
Thomas Jones, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, who died in 1672;
and of Thomas Jones, Esq., his son, to whom reference has already been
made, who represented the town in Parliament, and died in 1715, and of
whom it is said that his “strict piety, exemplary virtue, and extensive
charity consigned him to a joyful resurrection!” A legend relates that
in 1533, on twelve successive days, and while the priest was at high
mass, the devil appeared in St. Alkmund’s Church, and that this
preternatural visitation was accompanied with great darkness and tempest.
Poor Trotty Veck in the _Chimes_ thinks that the bells are full of life,
that they are under the control of a goblin, and that innumerable little
goblins play upon them, leap and fly from them, gambol in and round about
them. Trotty is not far wrong: at least three centuries ago there was a
goblin in St. Alkmund’s bells, and he tingled the wires of the clock, and
he imprinted his claws on the fourth bell, and he carried away one of the
pinnacles coolly esconsed under his arm, and, worse than all, he for a
time stopped all the bells in Shrewsbury, so that there was no ringing,
tolling, chiming or pealing! There can be no doubt about it. Retracing
our steps through Church Street we come out upon