Then that feeble monarch, Edward the Second, governed the kingdom; the amorous Isabella, his wife, governed the king, and the gallant Mortimer governed the queen.

The parishes of King’s-norton, Solihull, Yardley, uniting in this wood, and enjoying a right of commons, the inhabitants conceived themselves injured by the inclosure, assembled in a body, threw down the fence, and murdered the Earl’s bailiff.

Mortimer, in revenge, procured a special writ from the Court of Common Pleas, and caused the matter to be tried at Bromsgrove, where the affrighted inhabitants, over-awed with power, durst not appear in their own vindication.  The Earl, therefore, recovered a verdict, and the enormous sum of 300_l_. damage.  A sum nearly equal, at that time, to the fee-simple of the three parishes.

The confusion of the times, and the poverty of the people, protracted payment, till the unhappy Mortimer, overpowered by his enemies, was seized as a criminal in Nottingham-castle; and, without being heard, executed at Tyburn, in 1328.

The distressed inhabitants of our three parishes humbly petitioned the crown, for a reduction of the fine; when Edward the Third was pleased to remit about 260_l_.

We can assign no reason for this imprudent step of inclosing the wood, unless the Earl intended to procure a grant of the manor, then in the crown, for his family.  But what he could not accomplish by family, was accomplished by fortune; for George the Third, King of Great Britain, is lord of the manor of King’s-norton, and a descendant from the house of Mortimer.

F I N I S.