the extensive, the straggling, and loosely-knit parish of Wolverhampton.
In Wolverhampton, three miles away, was located the mother church, to
which it owed spiritual allegiance, and there was situated the Vestry for
parochial assemblies, and all else that stood for self-government
throughout the centuries. And those were the centuries when Church and
State were indissolubly bound together; when a dominant church claimed,
and was recognised as having an inalienable share in the government of
the people. Hence it will transpire in these pages that for centuries
the story of Willenhall was involved in the ecclesiastical history of
Wolverhampton.

The ancient parish of Wolverhampton lies widely dispersed and very
detached, containing no less than 17 townships and hamlets, all subject
to the collegiate church in matters ecclesiastical, though in many cases
being distinct in matters secular. How broken the area is may be noted
in the case of Pelsall, which is cut off from the mother parish by
Bloxwich, a hamlet in Walsall parish.

Willenhall is one among several other neighbouring places that, from the
earliest period of England's acceptance of Christianity, had its fate
inseparably linked with that of Wolverhampton. In the giving way of
paganism before the steady advances of the new religion, progress in this
immediate part of the kingdom was marked by the founding of Tettenhall
Church (A.D. 966), followed thirty years afterwards by Lady Wulfruna's
further efforts at evangelisation in the setting up at Hampton (or High
Town) of another Christian church.

This was in the reign of Ethelred the Unrede, which was a period sadly
troubled by the aggressions of the Danes; and it is believed that
Wulfruna (or Wulfrun) had designed to found a monastery, though as early
as the time of Edward the Confessor, or within a century of its
institution, her establishment is found to be a Collegiate Church.

With this accession of dignity, and in grateful recognition of the lady's
pious munificence, the town became known as Wulfrun's Hampton, now
modified in Wolverhampton.

Of Wulfruna herself but little is known. Whether she was sister of King
Edgar, as some suppose, or the widow of Aldhelm, Duke of Northumberland,
cannot be decided. It is known, however, that she was a lady of rank,
and was captured when Olaf, in command of a Viking host, took Tamworth by
storm. Hampton did not bear her name until some years after her death.

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