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Tutbury (St. Mary)

TUTBURY (St. Mary), a parish, and formerly a market-town, in the union of Burton-upon-Trent, N. division of the hundred of Offlow and of the county of Stafford, 4¼ miles (N. W. by N.) from Burton; containing 1835 inhabitants. On the division of lands after the Conquest, Tutbury, anciently Tuttesbury, was included in the domain allotted to Henry de Ferrers, a Norman nobleman, who rebuilt and enlarged the castle of this place. His descendant Robert, joining the Earl of Leicester in rebellion against Henry III., was fined £50,000, and being unable to pay so large a sum, forfeited the castle to the king, who granted it to his son, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. After the attainder of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who, with the Earl of Hereford, had attempted the dethronement of Edward II., this fortress was suffered to fall to ruin, and so remained till the year 1350, when John of Gaunt, becoming its possessor, rebuilt the greater part of it, with the gatehouse, and surrounded it on three sides by a wall, the precipitous declivity on the fourth rendering further security unnecessary. Mary, Queen of Scots, was for some time imprisoned here. At the commencement of the civil war it was garrisoned for the king, but was surrendered to the parliament in April 1646, and by its order nearly demolished in July the following year. The ruins, however, are still sufficient to indicate its former extent and magnificence, and exhibit good specimens of the early and later English styles. On the declivity of the commanding eminence upon which the castle stood, a Benedictine priory in honour of the Blessed Virgin was established in 1080 by Henry de Ferrers, which, though a cell to the abbey of St. Peter super Divam, in Normandy, survived till the general Dissolution, when its revenue was £242. 15. 3.

The town occupies a finely wooded elevation on the west bank of the Dove, which is crossed by a stone bridge of five arches, built in 1815-16, a little lower down the river than a former one, of the date of Henry VI. It was at a very early period erected into a free borough, and possessed many valuable privileges. On a branch of the river are some corn and cotton mills, and there is also a considerable cut-glass manufactory in the town: the country between Tutbury and Needwood Forest abounds with gypsum, used for agricultural and architectural purposes. Fairs for horses and cattle are held on Feb. 14th, Aug. 15th, and Dec. 1st. The manor of Tutbury belongs to the crown, in right of the duchy of Lancaster: the jurisdiction of the honour extends over a great portion of Staffordshire, and into several of the neighbouring counties, and in Her Majesty's name, a court leet is held here once a year, at Michaelmas; also a court of pleas every third Tuesday, for all debts under 40s. contracted within the honour. The living is a discharged vicarage, valued in the king's books at £7; patron, the Vicar of Bakewell; impropriator, John Spencer Stone, Esq. The great tithes have been commuted for £400. 10., and the vicarial for £37; there is a small parsonage-house, and the glebe contains 83¼ acres. The church, which was annexed to the priory, is a fine specimen of the Norman style, and was enlarged and greatly improved in 1829, at an expense of nearly £2000, whereof £250 were contributed by the Incorporated Society. There are places of worship for Wesleyans, Independents, and Primitive Methodists. A free school was founded by Richard Wakefield, who, about 1730, endowed it with lands producing about £40 per annum; the school-house was rebuilt in 1789. The same person, by his will in 1773, devised land and tithes now producing about £450, to trustees, for charitable uses.

In 1831, some workmen, while digging a quantity of gravel out of the bed of the river, discovered, thirty yards below the bridge, and from four to five feet under the surface of the gravel, about 100,000 valuable coins, chiefly sterlings of the empire of Brabant, Lorraine, and Hainault. Among them were several Scottish coins of Alexander III., John Balliol, and Robert Bruce; coins of Edward I., Henry III., and Edward II.; specimens of all the prelatical coins of the reigns of Edward I. and II.; of Beck, Keller, and Beaumont, bishops of Durham; some others, supposed to have been struck by the abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, bearing the inscription "Rob. de Hadley;" and a few of the archiepiscopal see of York. These coins were the contents of the military chest of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, deposited at Tutbury Castle previously to his retreat from that place, before the army of Edward II., to his castle of Pontefract, in the county of York; and which, with baggage entrusted to his treasurer, was lost in the river Dove, on his attempting to cross it at high flood, in the darkness of the night and with a panic-struck guard. Among the curious customs that formerly prevailed here, was a minstrel fête given by the Duke of Lancaster on Assumption-day, to which all the itinerant musicians of the neighbourhood were invited. There was also a sport called "Bullrunning," which consisted in chasing a bull with a soaped tail; if caught in the county, he was conducted to the market-place and there baited, otherwise he remained the property of the Duke of Devonshire, who held the priory on condition of furnishing a bull annually for the purpose. Ann Moore, who professed the ability to live without food, resided here during the period of her imposture.


Transcribed from A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858.

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