rents paid to the Lord of the Manor, contrasting curiously with the rentals of to-day. For three properties ad- joining in More Street, and which were s paid until a comparatively modern date, the rents were: —
"One poune of pepper by Goldsmythe and Lench,
Two pounds of pepper by the master of the Gild,
One pound of cumin seed, one bow, and six barbed bolts, or arrow heads by John Sheldon."
Moseley.—One of the popular, and soon will be populous suburbs, connected as it is so closely to us by Balsall Heath. It is one of the old Domesday-mentioned spots, but has little history other than connected with the one or two families who chose it for their residence ages ago. It is supposed the old church was erected prior to the year 1500, a tower being added to it in Henry VIII.'s reign, but the parish register dates only from the middle of last century, possibly older entries being made at King's Norton (from which Moseley was ecclesiastically divided in 1852). Moseley does not appear to have been named from, or to have given name to, any particular family, the earliest we have any note about being Greves, or Grevis, whose tombs are in King's Norton Church, one of the epitaphs being this:—
"Ascension day on ninth of May,
Third year of King James' reine,
To end my time and steal my coin,
I Williatn Greves was slain. 1605."
Hutton says that the old custom of "heriot" was practised here; which is not improbable, as instances have occurred in neighbourhood of Bromsgrove and other parts of the county within the past few years. This relic of feudalism, or barbarism, consists of the demanding for the lord of the manor the best movable article, live or dead, that any tenant happens to be possessed of at the time of his death.
Moseley Hall.—Hutton relates that on July 21, 1786, one Henshaw Grevis came before him in the court of Requests, as a poor debtor, who, thirty years before, he had seen "completely mounted and dressed in green velvet, with a hunter's cap and girdle, at the head of the pack." This poor fellow was the last member of a family who had held the Moseley Hall estate from the time of the Conquest. In the riots of 1791 the Hall was burnt down, being rebuilt ten years after.
Mothering Sunday, or Mid-Lent Sunday, has its peculiarities according to districts. In Birmingham the good people who like to keep up old customs sit down to veal and custard. At Draycot-le-Moors they eat pies made of figs. The practice of visiting the parents' home on this day was one of those old-time customs so popular in the days of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers (but which, with many others have fallen into disuse), and this is supposed to have given rise to the " Mothering Sunday" name. Prior to the Reformation, the Catholics kept the day as a holy day, in honour of the Mother of Jesus, it being a Protestant invention to turn the fast-day into one of feasting.
Mount Misery.—At the close of the great war, which culminated at Waterloo, it was long before the blessings of peace brought comfort to the homes of the poor. The first effects of the sheathing of the sword was a collapse in prices of all kinds, and a general stagnation of trade, of which Birmingham, made prosperous through the demand for its guns, &c., felt the full force. Bad trade was followed by bad harvests, and the commercial history of the next dozen years is but one huge chronicle of disaster, shops and mills closing fast, and poverty following faster. How to employ the hundreds of able-bodied men dependent on the rates was a continual puzzle to the Overseers, until someone, wise in his generation, hit upon the plan of paying the unfor-
