on the right bank, or follows it in fertile meadows along the low lands of Worthenbury. At Bangor it is crossed out of Denbighshire by a bridge more picturesque than convenient, constructed in ancient days

By some wise architect whose country wiles
Challenged the floods with his tall ashlar stone,
And fame knew not, but still was John or Giles.

And at Overton a modern bridge, skirted by the small inn of the Cross Foxes, shows the reaches of the river amidst scenery worthy to have been painted, though it never was, by our Flintshire master, Richard Wilson. The roads carried by these bridges converge in Hanmer parish near Eglwys Cross, and lead to the manorial and market town of Whitchurch in Shropshire, once the patrimony of the Talbots, who inherited the barony of Strange of Blackmere near that place. Blackmere'

omnium tenentium suorum, et per illud verbum Sac cognitionem placitorum que ad curiam Baronis pertinent." Thus it appears that the free-services incident to the local administration of justice were all that were intended by socage, in which, shown by the inquisition I have cited, the freeholds in

this hundred were originally held.

1 Blackmere is said in some accounts of it to have been so called from the colour of the water, but there is nothing black about it, any more than in the land adjacent, which is called

is now nearly filled up by the earthworks of the Crewe and Shrewsbury line over the ground originally occupied by its pools. They seem to have extended nearly to Whitchurch, where the Cambrian Railway joins the other, and traverses the parish of Hanmer, through Bronington and Bettisfield, in safety, over what was in parliamentary committee vehemently characterized as the impracticable Fens Moss. I must breathe a word with the wind as I pass on, in favour of its wild spaces, where the grey-hen and the fern-owl and the curlew may be seen among the turf-stacks by travellers entering Wales. I remember the brown broad-winged kites; but these beautiful birds, whose flight is not unlike an eagle's, have long been poisoned by gamekeepers, and are no more to be gazed at above the firs. Foxes prowl about the turbary and may grow old upon it if they will, for no huntsman can follow there. Lord Chancellor Thurlow was once with difficulty extricated from it, putting to proof by induction, though he was warned, that it was dangerous to man and horse. The fir-woods by which it is bordered reproduce themselves from the cones

the Black Park. The true name was Blancmere, from Blancminster or Whitchurch, in which parish and lordship it lies.

wherever they are fallen; and, though the timber is not of any great size, it is sound and tenacious, and very useful in the never-ending work of new buildings and cottages. Far across the moss, on the borders of Whixal in Shropshire, there is a place called the Oafs' or Elves' Orchard, but the "little people" have not lately been seen. Bishop Corbet said long since,

But since of late Elizabeth,

And later James came in,
They never danced on any heath
As when the time hath bin;

and now, a presumptuous improver solicits me to let him grow potatoes in the direction of their boundaries. These are full of wild fowl in the winter, metaphorical as well as real; and then when the wind from the westward comes down with its snow-clouds and its curtains, and the flakes like the Scythian feathers whirl over the brown heath-tops, the good folks of Bronington unconsciously repeat the figure of the Father of History, and tell their children by the fireside that the Welshmen are plucking their geese. The high road from Whitchurch, leading from Redbrook past this place, where the name of Clayley still remains upon a portion of the land, appears to

have been made within our limits by virtue of the following writ, dated the year before the establishment of Flintshire, when the Shropshire Sheriff, who, nevertheless, had no jurisdiction in the March, was the nearest one at hand.

WELSH ROLL, 10 Edward I., memb. 6 in dorso.

Cum Rex constituerit Willielmus Le Botiler de Wemme capitaneum municionis sue in partibus de Albo Monasterio Warenn1 et injunxerit eidem quod passus de La Rede Broc et Batebruggemore et de Cleley succindi faceret prout Rex ei dixit viva voce, mandatum est Vicecomiti Salopiæ quod eidem Willielmo consulens sit et auxilians ad premissa facienda. Et quod faciat habere eidem Willielmo de probioribus et fortioribus hominibus de hundredis de Bradeford et de Pimmenhull qui passus

1 I do not understand what is meant by the word Warenn (unless it was Whittington, then belonging to the Fitzwarrens, and lying between Album Monasterium at Whitchurch and Album Monasterium at Oswestry), all which country is called in an old and fabulous French romance given me by Sir Thomas Hardy "La Blanche Lande." It seems to me that the writ must have been drawn by some one who did not well know the border limits, and must have depended on the personal orders of the king, given, as it is said, vivâ voce to William le Boteler, whose near adjacent lordship of Wem was in Shropshire. Batebrugge I suppose to mean a wooden bridge.

illos succindere possint ut predictum est, et quod hominibus de hundredis firmiter injungat ex parte Regis quod eidem Willielmo ad passus illos succindendos et ad alia facienda que eis injunget ex parte Regis intendentes sint et respondentes quociens opus fuerit et per ipsum moniti fuerint et ea diligenter faciant et expleant que ipse eis injunget ex parte Regis, et hoc sicut dampnum suum vitare voluerint non omittant. Teste Rege apud Cestriam viij die Junii.

No minerals have been found within our parish. If there are any, as has been supposed on the side of Tybroughton, and about the neighbouring salt springs in Iscoyd, they are possibly veins of coal, thin and of no value, deeply hidden by sand and clay, belonging to what, by a geological term farfetched from Perm in Russia, is now called in books the Permian formation. The country generally is a rolling upland containing one of the two divisions of the watershed which exist in Flintshire; oaks grow well upon it, as well befits a portion of the ancient territory of Argoed, the forest land, one of the names of Powis, in which principality it was included; the seasons are tempered by the southwestern winds, which come up out of Cardigan Bay across the hills, but there is cold weather in the spring, and at the time of damson blossoms; it is expected when they appear. The soil is best

D