It is entertaining to contemplate the generations of fashion, which not
only influences our dress and manner of living, but most of the common
actions of life, and even the modes of thinking. Some of these fashions,
not meeting with the taste of the day, are of short duration, and
retreat out of life as soon as they are well brought in; others take a
longer space; but whatever fashions predominate, though ever so absurd,
they carry an imaginary beauty, which pleases the fancy, 'till they
become ridiculous with age, are succeeded by others, when their very
memory becomes disgusting.
Custom gives a sanction to fashion, and reconciles us even to its
inconveniency. The fashion of this year is laughed at the next.
There are fashions of every date, from five hundred years, even to one
day; of the first, was that of erecting religious houses; of the last,
was that of destroying them.
Our ancestors, the Saxons, after their conversion to christianity,
displayed their zeal in building churches: though the kingdom in a few
centuries was amply supplied, yet that zeal was no way abated; it
therefore exerted itself in the abbey.--When a man of fortune had nearly
done with time, he began to peep into eternity through the windows of an
abbey; or, if a villian had committed a piece of butchery, or had
cheated the world for sixty years, there was no doubt but he could
burrow his way to glory through the foundations of an abbey.
In 1383, the sixth of Richard the Second, before the religious fervor
subsided that had erected Deritend-chapel, Thomas de Sheldon, John
Coleshill, John Goldsmith, and William att Slowe, all of Birmingham,
obtained a patent from the crown to erect a building upon the spot where
the Free School now stands in New-street, to be called _The Gild of the
Holy Cross_; to endow it with lands in Birmingham and Edgbaston, of the
annual value of twenty marks, for the maintenance of two priests, who
were to perform divine service to the honor of God, our blessed Lady his
Mother, the Holy Cross, St. Thomas, and St. Catharine.
The fashion seemed to take with the inhabitants, many of whom wished to
join the four happy men, who had obtained the patent for so pious a
work; so that, in 1393, a second patent was procured by the bailiff and
inhabitants of Birmingham, for confirming the gild, and making the
addition of a brotherhood in honor of the Holy Cross, consisting of both
sexes, with power to constitute a master and wardens, and also to erect
a chantry of priests to celebrate divine service in the chapel of the
gild, for the souls of the founders, and all the fraternity; for whose
support there were given, by divers persons, eighteen messuages, three
tofts, (pieces of ground) six acres of land, and forty shillings rent,
lying in Birmingham and Edgbaston aforesaid.
But, in the 27th of Henry the Eighth, 1536, when it was the fashion of
that day, to multiply destruction against the religious, and their
habitations, the annual income of the gild was valued, by the King's
random visitors, at the sum of 31_l_. 2s. 10d. out of which, three
priests who sung mass, had 5_l_. 6s. 8d. each; an organist, 3_l_. 13s.
4d. the common midwife, 4s. the bell-man, 6s. 8d. with other salaries of
inferior note.
These lands continued in the crown 'till 1552, the fifth of Edward the
Sixth, when, at the humble suit of the inhabitants, they were
assigned to
William Symmons, _gent_.
Richard Smallbrook, _bailiff of the town_,
John Shilton,
William Colmore,
Henry Foxall,
William Bogee,
Thomas Cooper,
Richard Swifte,
Thomas Marshall,
John Veysy,
John King,
John Wylles,
William Paynton,
William Aschrig,
Robert Rastall,
Thomas Snowden,
John Eyliat,
William Colmore, _jun_.
AND
William Mychell,
all inhabitants of Birmingham, and their successors, to be chosen upon
death or removal, by the appellation of the Bailiff and Governors of the
Free Grammar School of King Edward the Sixth, for the instruction of
children in grammar; to be held of the crown in common soccage, paying
for ever twenty shillings per annum. Over this seminary of learning were
to preside a master and usher, whose united income seems to have been
only twenty pounds per annum. Both are of the clergy. The hall of the
gild was used for a school-room. In the glass of the windows was
painted the figure of Edmund Lord Ferrers; who, marrying, about 350
years ago, the heiress of the house of Birmingham, resided upon the
manor, and seems to have been a benefactor to the gild, with his arms,
empaling Belknap; and also, those of Stafford, of Grafton, of
Birmingham, and Bryon.
The gild stood at that time at a distance from the town, surrounded with
inclosures; the highway to Hales Owen, now New-street, running by the
north. No house could be nearer than those in the High-street.
The first erection, wood and plaister, which had stood about 320 years,
was taken down in 1707, to make way for the present flat building. In
1756, a set of urns were placed upon the parapet, which give relief to
that stiff air, so hurtful to the view: at the same time, the front was
_intended_ to have been decorated, by erecting half a dozen dreadful
pillars, like so many over-grown giants marshalled in battalia, to guard
the entrance, which the boys wish to shun; and, being sufficiently
tarnished with Birmingham smoak, may become dangerous to pregnancy. Had
the wings of this building fallen two or three yards back, and the line
of the street been preserved by a light palisade, it would have risen in
the scale of beauty, and removed the gloomy aspect of the area.
The tower is in a good taste, except being rather too narrow in the
base, and is ornamented with a sleepy figure of the donor, Edward the
Sixth, dressed in a royal mantle, with the ensigns of the Garter;
holding a bible and sceptre.
The lands that support this foundation, and were in the reign of Henry
the Eighth, valued at thirty-one pounds per annum, are now, by the
advance of landed property, the reduction of money, and the increase of
commerce, about 600_l_.