142 ELDERSFIELD.

De Elderfields, who held of the Earls of Gloucester by the very queer service of offering a pair of red stockings to the lord every Christmas Day! At Dobs Hill was born Dr. Henry Savage, who became chaplain to Charles II, and was the author of many works. Thomas Hayward and Thomas Browne, both of this parish, were fined, the former £10 and the latter £12, by Charles I, for not accepting the dignity of knighthood. Another native of Eldersfield must not be omitted here - namely Thomas of Eldersfield, a fighting-man, who, we are told in "The Monastery and Cathedral of Worcester," being, in the year 1221, blinded and emasculated in a pugilistic encounter in a field called Kingsham, near the aforesaid monastery, miraculously received his sight and was restored to virility by tha agency of St. Wulstan, which so wrought upon his convictions that he at once took the habit in the monastery, and there lived honourably; whence, says the chronicler, this verse was written on him:

"Sexu privatus fit vir; videt exoculatus."

Little Malvern convent held the church of Eldersfield in fee farm of the abbot of Lyra, but at the Dissolution it fell into private hands. Rev. R. Holmes is now both vicar and patron; value of living, £290; church accommodation, 320; free seats, 206. Perhaps no church in the diocese was in so disgraceful a state as this when the present incumbent came to the living, and set about the restoration in the face of difficulties of no ordinary character. The building is an interesting one, with chancel, south transept, nave, north aisle, tower, and spire. Norman doorways, windows, and arches, are remains of the old church, but there are specimens of almost every succeeding style in the structure. There was a poorly endowed school here, which is now combined with the new National Schools, erected in 1859. Principal crops grown, wheat and beans. A large tract of land at Eldersfield and Longdon is undergoing enclosure and drainage, to which I shall more specially refer under the head of Longdon.