Birmingham: JOSIAH ALLEN AND SON, Printers, 3, Colmore Row.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HON. LORD LYTTELTON,

Lord Lieutenant

OF THE

COUNTY OF WORCESTER,

A NOBLEMAN NOT MORE DISTINGUISHED BY THE HONOURS OF HIGH BIRTH THAN IN

THE EXTENT OF HIS OWN ATTAINMENTS AND THE CONSTANT EXERCISE

As to the sandy desert fountains are,
With palm-groves shaded at wide intervals,
Whose fruit around the sun-burnt native falls,

Of roving tired or desultory war;

Such to this British isle her Christian fanes,

Each link'd to each for kindred services;

Her spires, her steeple towers with glittering vanes,
Far-kenn'd, her chapels lurking among trees.

WORDSWORTH.

Preface.

HIS little volume-the fruit of hours snatched from a

laborious professional occupation-is at length presented to the public. The objects of the writer in undertaking the work were-to beget a desire and a taste for the study of ecclesiastical antiquities; to promote the fitting and appropriate restoration of those venerable fabrics which the piety and munificence of our ancestors have left as a legacy to us; to render more decent the celebration of divine worship in all our churches; to impress a due sense of the mutual responsibilities attaching both to the clergy and their congregations; and to hand down to posterity an historical and topographical book of reference, which, though necessarily imperfect and being entirely of a popular character, he nevertheless hopes may prove useful. In the pursuit of these objects his endeavour has been to avoid the lofty and chilling altitude of what is termed "high Churchism on the one hand and the broad highway of dissent on the other, and so to keep faithfully to

the via media laid down by our Church, the basis of which was established at the Reformation. If he has succeeded in accomplishing any part of his aim, or in imparting an allurement to the study of ecclesiological lore, he will be abundantly repaid for what has proved to himself to be a most fascinating pursuit-a labour of love, undertaken and carried out with the single desire to effect good, and without a view to personal gain or emolument.

To the numerous friends who have welcomed to their hospitable homes, and kindly assisted the writer in his work, he begs to offer the warmest acknowledgments, and doubts not that this little volume will be the means, in days to come, of reviving to them-as it will abundantly to himself-the reminiscences of many a pleasant hour.