126 DROITWICH.

window. He got a warrant to distrain the Friend's gooda, under the pretence that there was a meeting there; but as he came back with the warrant he fell off his horse and broke his neck."

Considerable Roman remains hare been found at Droitwich and the neighbourhood, including a tesselated pavement in Bay's Meadow, on the north bank of the Salwarpe; pottery, spear-heads, skeletons, coins, urns, and so forth. Vines were no doubt cultivated here in the middle ages, as there is a place still known by that name, being a high ridge on the northern side of the Salwarpe, well exposed to the sun, and very suitable for a vineyard. Among the other old names here and at Dodderhill and Elmbridge are Kit-pit, Caternshil], Holbro-ground, Thumb's Close, Cob's Close, Dane's Meadow, Carpel Meadow, Piper's Hill, Upper Street Sling, Ridgeway Field, Sutnal, Trimnel's Dole, Falsam Fields, Singer's Hill, Masgundry Field, Lozelle Field, Belfry Lozelles, Camp Furlong, &c.

The Bishop of Chichester in 1245 was a native of Droitwich. He was a man of such extraordinary learning and good life as to be canonised by the Pope; and there was a tradition that the principal salt spring, which had failed in his time, by his intercession was restored, in token of which the salt makers formerly held revels and games once a year at the spring. John Lowe, Bishop of Rochester in the fifteenth century, a great bookmonger and preserver of MSS-, was an Augustine Friar at Droitwich. The Wilde family, too, some of them learned in the law, and one of whom in 1641 drew up the impeachment against the Bishops in the House of Lords, first saw .the light in this ancient town. G. Wheeler, T. Gower, J. Wheeler, and E. Barrett, were gentlemen of Droitwich fined by Charles I for not accepting the order of knighthood; and among the tradesmen who have left their tokens (coins) behind them were Stephen Alien, apothecary in the seventeenth century, and George Oldback, The clothing trade was carried on here in the time of Henry VIII,