One mile farther east is _Coleshill-hall_, vested in the crown before,
and after the conquest; purchased, perhaps, of William Rufus, by
Geoffrey de Clinton, ancestor to the present Duke of Newcastle. In 1352,
an heiress of the house of Clinton, gave it, with herself, to Sir John
de Mountfort, of the same family with Simon, the great Earl of
Leicester, who fell, in 1265, at Evesham, in that remarkable contest
with Henry the Third.
With them it continued till 1497, when Sir Simon Mountfort, charged, but
perhaps unjustly, with assisting Perkin Warbeck with 30_l_. was brought
to trial at Guildhall, condemned as a traitor, executed at Tyburn, his
large fortune confiscated, and his family ruined. Some of his
descendants I well know in Birmingham; and _they_ are well known to
poverty, and the vice.
In the reign of Henry the Seventh, it was almost dangerous, particularly
for a rich man, even to _think_ against a crafty and avaricious
monarch.--What is singular, the man who accused Sir Simon at the bar,
succeeded him in his estate.
Simon Digby procured a grant of the place, in whose line it still
continues. The hall is inhabited, but has been left about thirty years
by the family; was probably erected by the Mountforts, is extensive, and
its antique aspect without, gives a venerable pleasure to the beholder,
like the half admitted light diffused within. Every spot of the park is
delightful, except that in which the hall stands: our ancestors built in
the vallies, for the sake of water; their successors on the hills, for
the sake of air.
From this uncouth swamp sprung the philosopher, the statesman, and
tradition says, the gunpowder-plot.