ging to them.

About this time the Dean and Prebendaries successfully resisted an
attempt of the Archbishop of Canterbury to hold a visitation within the
"peculiar"--the church's jurisdiction within itself.

After the Civil War the Prebendaries found that they had suffered
considerable losses by the acts of their predecessors; so it was
determined by Thomas Wren, LL.D. (son of the aforementioned Rev. Matthew
Wren, Bishop of Ely, whose literary remains include "A Brief History of
the Parish and Jurisdiction of Wolverhampton, from the Time of King
Edgar") prebendary of Willenhall, and Caesar Callendine, B.D., prebendary
of Hatherton, to file a bill in Chancery against Robert Leveson for a
discovery of the lands he held which anciently belonged to the
prebendaries of Wolverhampton, and that he might show by what title he
held them.

The hearing was before the great Lord Chancellor of that day, Lord
Clarendon, who dismissed the bill, though without costs.

The Leveson family consequently continued in the undisturbed enjoyment of
the church property, granted to them in fee farm by six prebendaries, as
well as of divers other freehold estates in the parish of Wolverhampton.

The Leveson property in Wolverhampton became much implicated in the
numerous family settlements till, in 1702, Frances, Earl of Bradford,
purchased it of Robert Leveson for 22,000 pounds. Lord Bradford also
acquired, three years later, the estate of the Dean and Prebends of
Wolverhampton which had been leased to the Earl of Windsor; so that the
entire property of the Collegiate Church (except the prebendal houses and
some property which had been set aside for the use of the Sacrist),
passed into the hands of one and the same proprietor.

In the same year, however, the Dean, Prebendaries, and Sacrist filed a
bill in Chancery against Leveson and the Earl for the recovery of the
property. The plaintiffs were Gregory Hascard, D.D., dean; Prebendaries
John Hinton (Willenhall), Richard Redding (Kinvaston), Thomas Allestree
(Hilton), John Plimley (Fetherstone), John Hilman (Hatherton), Richard
Ames (Monmore), Walter Ashley (Wobaston), and Henry Wood, sacrist.

They contended they were all clerks, constituted one entire body, and
rector or parson incorporate, of the whole parish of Wolverhampton, which
was of very great extent, consisting of 16 or 17 hamlets or villages
besides the large town of Wolverhampton, being in circuit about thirty
miles, in thre