The public structures devoted to the service of Religion are among the
first objects that excite the attention, whilst by many they are not
unfrequently looked upon with peculiar feelings of veneration and regard.
If the source of this feeling were traced, it would be found connected
with those principles and associations which every one who acknowledges
an all-bountiful Creator, or wishes well to his country, would desire to
cherish.
Shrewsbury, we learn, did not receive much improvement from its original
inhabitants, the Britons; yet what it lost in nominal consequence as the
metropolis of a kingdom it ultimately gained in external splendour and
real importance: this is evinced, among other proofs, by the erection of
five ecclesiastical foundations, all of which were anterior to the Norman
conquest, and originated in Saxon piety.
Among the earliest of these may be mentioned SAINT CHAD’S, which is
ascribed to one of the Mercian kings, who is said to have converted the
palace of the kings of Powis into a church, about 780.
A dean and ten prebendaries or secular canons, with two vicars choral,
under the patronage of the Bishop of Lichfield, are stated to have been
placed here at a very remote period.
Under the Anglo-Saxon monarchs this college possessed twelve hides of
arable land, or as much as paid for 1440 acres to what would be now
called the land-tax; which, by proper cultivation, appears from the
Survey of Domesday to have increased more than double. Other estates
were subsequently added, which form now only insulated districts of the
parish.
By the act of 1 Edward VI. 1547, the College was dissolved, the tythes
and profits at that time being of the clear yearly value of about £50.
The buildings and estates were leased out, reserving only the small
stipend of £4. 6s. 8d. for the parish minister, charged on the dean’s
prebendal estate at Onslow.
Although a lease was granted of the tythes, yet only two years afterwards
the greater portion of them were appropriated by Edward VI. in aid of the
Free Grammar School.
In 1579 Queen Elizabeth granted the remaining possessions of the deanery
to Sir Christopher Hatton; but the corporation and parish seem to have
presented to the living from 1583 until 1658–9, from which time the
patronage has rested with the crown.
SAINT ALKMUND’S CHURCH owes its foundation to the piety of Ethelfleda,
daughter of Alfred the Great, soon after she succeeded to the sovereignty
of the Mercian territory in 912.
Her great nephew, King Edgar, being of the race of the Northumbrian
Prince Alkmund, increased the original endowment, and (under the
direction of Archbishop Dunstan) appointed a dean and ten prebends.
In the reign of Edward the Confessor, this College possessed eleven
manors, nine of which, containing upwards of 4000 acres, it retained at
the Norman survey.
After experiencing many of the fluctuations common to property, sacred or
otherwise, during the dark ages and under lawless government, these
estates were at length alienated in 1147, at the particular request of
the Dean, Richard de Belemis, and with the consent of King Stephen and
Pope Eugenius III. to the monastery of Lilleshull, which the dean’s
brother, Philip de Belemis, had just commenced, the Prebendaries however
taking care to reserve to themselves a life interest in their several
stipends.
The college being thus early dissolved and deprived of its valuable
estates, fell into a humble vicarage, which remained in the patronage of
the monks of Lilleshull until the dissolution, when it lapsed to the
crown, in whose hands it continued until 1628, when Rowland Heylin, Esq.
{23} of Pentreheylin, Montgomeryshire, purchased the advowson for the
“feoffees of St. Antholines,” a society instituted for founding
lectureships and augmenting small livings in populous towns.
This society having been publicly denounced, and the orthodoxy of its
principles questioned, the ministers of King James, in 1663, directed its
suppression, when the living again reverted to the crown.
THE COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST. MARY is considered to have been founded by
King Edgar, about the year 980; although, from the extensive limits of
the parish, it is probable this was only the renovation of an older
church destroyed by the ravages of the Danes, who, in revenging the
slaughter of their predecessors, not only exercised their warfare against
mankind, but even those works of ingenuity and labour which were
consecrated to devotion did not escape their desolating hand.
In the time of Edward the Confessor, this college possessed an estate of
nearly 1300 acres, “for the maintenance of a dean, seven prebendaries,
and a parish priest,” which appears to have diminished in point of
cultivation and consequent value at the survey of Domesday, in which,
however, the “vill of Chorleton,” held in conjunction with the church of
St. Juliana, is unnoticed, having probably been acquired afterwards.
At the suppression of colleges the revenue was £42, when Edward VI.
appropriated the greater part of the tithes of this, as he had done those
of St. Chad’s parish, to the bailiffs and burgesses, for the foundation
of a free school.
This church from very remote times has been a “royal free chapel,” and
thereby exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop.
THE CHURCH OF ST. JULIANA.—Little is known of this, further than its
origin was Saxon, and that it held in the Norman survey “half a hide of
land in the city.” Soon after this period it became distinguished as a
rectory and royal free chapel, and was early united to the church of St.
Michael within the Castle, now destroyed. {24}
In 1410, Henry IV. annexed both of these churches to his college at
Battlefield; and being thus deprived of its property, St. Julian’s became
no better than a curacy.
THE CHURCH OF ST. PETER, called “_The Parish of the City_,” was a small
structure of wood, built about Edward the Confessor’s time, by Siward, a
Saxon nobleman, and stood on the site where Earl Roger de Montgomery
founded a large Benedictine Abbey in 1083, which was re-dedicated to St.
Peter, and endowed with a small portion of the vast possessions granted
by the Conqueror to the first Earl of Shrewsbury.
This venerable warrior being seized with illness while residing in the
castle he had lately built here,—apprehensive, too, that his dissolution
might not be far distant,—and “to be sure of paradise,”—determined, with
the consent of his countess Adelissa, to retire from the world, and
become a monk within the confines of his own monastery.
This resolution he acted upon July 14th, 1094: and dying three days
afterwards, obtained honourable interment in the “Lady Chapel” of that
pile he had zealously commenced, and,
“By skill of earthly architect,”
nearly completed, to the service and honour of his Maker.
Hugh, his second son, surnamed Probus for his courage, and Goch (or the
Red) by the Welshmen from his complexion, succeeded to the earldom, and
in filial affection came with his barons to the abbey, to visit his
father’s tomb; when he confirmed all former endowments, and gave many
additional privileges, to which several of his barons added estates. {26}
Scarcely a century had elapsed from its foundation, before the monastery
possessed “seventy-one distinct grants of manors or lands, twenty-four
churches, the tithes of thirty-seven parishes or vills,” besides many
extensive immunities of various descriptions, and an almost matchless
collection of unique relics, in addition to the remains of that popular
“martyr,” St. Wenefreda, which the monks procured, after many tedious
negociations, from the priests and inhabitants of Gwytherin, in the
county of Denbigh, in order to increase the celebrity of their house.
After their translation hither, they were enshrined with much pomp near
the high altar, and attracted multitudes of pilgrims, whose benefactions
greatly contributed to the emolument of the church.
The abbot of this monastery had the honour of a seat in Parliament, and
the authority of a bishop within his house. Of the 608 monasteries that
existed in this kingdom at the time of the dissolution, it is recorded
“the Abbey of Shrewsbury was 34th in opulence.”
According to the valor of 26th Henry VIII. the annual income was £572.
15s. 5d. a revenue considered equal to about £4750 of modern currency.
The surrender of this abbey took place 24th January, 1539–40, when the
estates and buildings immediately passed into lay hands.
ST. GILES’S CHURCH was built early in the reign of Henry I. for the
service of a hospital of lepers, which stood at the west end of the
present edifice.
It is supposed to have become parochial about the middle of the fifteenth
century, on being united with the parish of Holy Cross within the
monastery, the abbot and convent, no doubt, having previously possessed
the patronage and appointment of master.
Subsequent to these, were erected three large conventual churches and
eight smaller chapels, all of which shared the fate of the dissolution;
and of their remains the ceaseless operations of time and the hand of man
have spared but few traces.
Several chantries, altars, &c. were also maintained by private donations
in these churches; and whether we consider the munificence, the piety, or
the superstition which raised them, we must respect the fervency towards
a good cause, and regret that so much zeal was blessed with such little
knowledge of the truths which, under our reformed religion, we now so
happily enjoy.
From this cursory view of the piety of our forefathers, it may be justly
asserted, that in the present day there is no provincial town in the
kingdom, considering its extent, where so much has been done to promote
the cause of religion, and to give a suitable effect to buildings set
apart for Divine Worship, as in Shrewsbury. Those individuals,
therefore, whose taste and liberality have mainly contributed to the
accomplishment of this praiseworthy object, are deserving of the best
thanks of their cotemporaries; and to them posterity will owe a debt of
admiring gratitude, in those pleasing feelings of awe which insensibly
steal o’er the mind while contemplating the architectural beauties of
temples dedicated to HIM, whose greatness as far exceeds the capacity of
human thought as doth the immensity of space the smallest atom.
Our survey of these interesting buildings will commence, in chronological
arrangement, with