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“Taken 14 March, 1710. Jeremy Taylor, vicar. John Stringer and William Wood, churchwardens.”

It would appear from this that the dead were sometimes buried without a coffin, in which case a coarse cloth was, we believe substituted. The “smoke penny” was a penny collected for every chimney emitting smoke, or rather a tithe paid to the vicar upon the wood burnt. A dispute having arisen in the earlier part of the last century between the vicar and impropriator, respecting the right of the former to tithe on woods, a parish meeting was called and a case got up by the vicar and churchwardens for the opinion of counsel, in which the payment of the smoke-penny was quoted to establish the vicar’s claim. We give the queries put and counsel’s replies in the Appendix.

Tithe and Easter offerings were occasionally paid in kind, as appears from the churchwardens’ accounts. In one case two heifers are mentioned, which it is added, produced forty shillings.

In the churchwarden’s accounts of Easter offerings to the vicar of Madeley, in 1693, we get an insight of the household of the Court. The sums given are not stated, but the entry is as follows:—