particular; and, having in our first chapter written perhaps more than enough in reference to its history in the British and Roman periods, shall more cursorily proceed through the subsequent stages, by which the Borough has arrived at its present extensive population and commercial importance. * It is not necessary, except for the information of strangers, to state, that solely to the manufacture of EARTHENWARE, for which this District has been immemorially celebrated, does it owe its advancement. Some intelligent persons have thought that the Potteries established here have existed from the time of the Romans; and discoveries have been made of very ancient foundations of ovens and buildings, which establish the fact of their having been of very remote erection. The Romans were celebrated for their figuline productions; and some of the soldiers, or settlers at the neighbouring Station of Mediolanum, may first have introduced the Potters' Art into this neighbourhood. Upon this, however, we are not prepared to insist: but we shall contend for the fact of the Tilewright's (or Potters') Art being established here during the Saxon period, as a certain inference, from the name of Tellwright (formerly written Tylright), being here located in the most ancient period to which our provincial researches have gone; a name that must have originated before the word Potter was introduced by the Normans, and whilst their Saxon predecessors exercised the figuline art, which they called " TigelwyrtenaCraft."† 66 There is nothing in any public record, or ancient historical document, which gives prominence to the District, as the seat of this manufacture; and, until the time when Dr. Plott wrote his Natural History of the county (published in 1686), the Potteries established here remained alto * Aikins's Manchester, p. 524. + Vide Saxon Gospels, Matt. xxvii. v. 10. PARLIAMENTARY UNION OF TOWNS. 25 gether unnoticed. He mentions BURSLEM as being the seat of the greatest Pottery then carried on in the county; but does not say, whether other neighbouring Potteries then existed, though he speaks of tobacco-pipes being manufactured at Newcastle, and that three sorts of clay were procured from between Shelton and Hanley Green.* But, to proceed with our intended geographical and historical sketch of the Borough as before defined; we notice, that it occupies a tract of about seven miles and a half from north to south, and of unequal breadth from one to three miles, and contains an area of more than twelve square miles. In latitude 53° N. and 2° 10" W. longitude from Greenwich. The elevation of the surface, which at Stoke is level with the banks of the Trent, does not rise more than about 250 feet above it, at the highest eminences of Penkhull, Hanley Hill, and Tunstall. The climate is not, therefore, liable to any great deviations from the ordinary temperature of the inland counties in the same latitude; but is, in some degree, mitigated by the great combustion of coals which the manufactories and habitations require. A great portion of this District, comprising the manors of Wolstanton, Penkhull, and Shelton, was, at and before the Conquest,† part of the possessions of the Crown; and had, probably, continued such from the early partition of the country, by the Saxon invaders ; when, having subdued the Britons, each monarch of the Octarchy assumed to himself the Lion's share of his conquered territory. The contiguous district of Wolstanton, Penkhull, and Shelton, which probably extended further than those townships do at present, and certainly included the present town and territory of Newcastle, united with many other adjoining or neighbouring possessions of the Crown, formed a very extensive domain, and would be worthy of a royal castle or seat, for the use of the Sovereign, or his representative: but * Plott, pp. 121, 122. E + Domesday, 246, h. we are not prepared to say, that any such was maintained nearer than that at Bury Bank, within one mile of Stone, where Wolferus, King of Mercia, (circa A. D. 666), had a palatial residence, according to the general testimony of ancient authors.* We may, however, hazard a bare conjecture, that in the name of Penkhull, the last syllable contains a corrupted memorial of the Hall of some Saxon Thane, who, prior to the conquest, may have been the represensative of his royal master in those parts of his Mercian domains. The earldom or dukedom of Mercia, (one of the largest kingdoms which arose out of the Saxon domination, and in which Staffordshire was included), remained an office of the first rank, after the union of the whole monarchy, by Egbert, (A. D. 827). During a great part of the reign of Edward the Confessor, this title was held by the wise and patriotic Leofric, the husband of Godiva, whose equestrian progress through Coventry has immortalized her memory for benevolence and firmness of character, if not for female delicacy. Leofric died in 1057,† and was succeeded by his son Algar, who is mentioned in Domesday as having held considerable portions of the royal demesnes in this part of Staffordshire, in the reign of King Edward. Algar, however, died seven years before the Conquest, and his sons Edwin and Morcar, (Earls of Mercia and Northumberland), who both survived the battle of Hastings, (A. D. 1066), and made their submission to the Conqueror, are, for reasons unknown, not set down as exproprietors of the Staffordshire estates of their father. They were goaded to take up arms on behalf of their enslaved countrymen in the year 1071, and Edwin being betrayed into the hands of the Normans, met an untimely fate; when his estates were, of course, confiscated, and most of those in Staffordshire remained in the King's hands * Vide Plott, p. 407. + Turner's Hist. Anglo-Sax. vol. II. p. 369. Henry, vol. V. p. 22. PARLIAMENTARY UNION OF TOWNS. 27 at the Domesday survey. The devastating vengeance which William inflicted on the English revolters, may probably account for the immense tract of waste lands in Staffordshire, mentioned in Domesday,* where about thirty lordships are specified in succession, including Biddulph, Endon, Bucknall, Shelton, Cheadle, and its vicinity; to which list is appended the very laconic, but melancholy observation, "All this land of the King is waste!" There were also many lordships of other proprietors lying waste; among which was Fenton, consisting of three carucates, or plough lands, whereof one Allward was tenant in capite (or lord), and who, at the same time, held two carucates under cultivation, in Burslem, belonging to Robert de Stafford, as chief lord. He was a relative of the Con-his Father Richard was standard-bearer of Norqueror,mandy, and was descended from Malahusius, uncle of Duke Rollo. This Robert held no less than one hundred and fifty lordships at the time of Domesday, of which, more than half lay in Staffordshire, including Norton-in-the-moors, Chell, Madeley, Burslem, Hulton, and Rushton, in this immediate neighbourhood. He, with his brother Nigel, came in with the Conqueror, whose kinsmen they were, and he liberally rewarded both out of the spoils of the English proprietors.‡ After the Norman Conquest, the property of the several townships, now coupled together by Parliament for election purposes, underwent the ordinary vicissitudes to which all worldly possessions are subject, as we shall hereafter shew in the particular account we intend to give of the respective towns; and they had little connexion or community of interests, until within the last century, when the great improvement and extension of the local manufactures gradually enlarged these scattered hamlets, and drew them . P. 216, b. + Ellis's Introduction to Domesday, vol. I. p. 226. nearer in local position; and their commercial identity produced a closer bond of social union. The public roads throughout the District, like most other roads in the kingdom, not excepting some of the great thoroughfares, were in a very wretched plight,―narrow,— circuitous, miry, and inconvenient; of which fact, as well as of the general state of the Potteries in the year 1762, we have the following account, in a case or petition, preferred to Parliament by the inhabitants, in favor of an Act for making a Turnpike Road, from the Liverpool and London Road at Lawton, to Stoke-upon-Trent; there to unite with the Newcastle and Uttoxeter Turnpike Road, which had been recently improved :— "In Burslem, and its neighbourhood, are near one hundred and fifty separate Potteries, for making various kinds of stone and earthenware; which, together, find constant employment and support for near seven thousand people. The ware in these Potteries is exported in vast quantities from London, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull, and other seaports, to our several colonies in America and the West Indies, as well as to almost every port in Europe. Great quantities of flint-stones are used in making some of the ware, which are brought by sea, from different parts of the coast, to Liverpool and Hull: and the clay for making the white ware is brought from Devonshire and Cornwall, chiefly to Liverpool; the materials from whence are brought by water, up the rivers Mersey and Weaver, to Winsford, in Cheshire; those from Hull, up the Trent, to Willington; and from Winsford and Willington, the whole are brought by land-carriage to Burslem. The ware, when made, is conveyed to Liverpool and Hull, in the same manner as the materials are brought from those places. Many thousand tons of shipping, and seamen in proportion, which in summer trade to the northern seas, are employed in winter in carrying materials for the Burslem ware and, as much salt is consumed in glazing one |