16 ARELEY KINGS.

Areley Kings.

to the very modern town of Stourport the church and village of Areley look down from an eminence over the Severn and a lovely and extensive landscape. The parish is truly a fortunate one: it has excellent communications by river and rail; is near to a town where the necessaries, if not the superfluities, of life may be got; is situate amid some of the most charming scenery in the county, and possesses an estate which was left in the seventeenth century for the express purpose of keeping the parish church in repair, from which circumstance church-rates are unknown here. In fact, when the late Bishop of Worcester admitted the present incumbent to the rectory, he said, "I have instituted you to one of the nicest livings in my diocese." The addition of " Kings" or " Regis" to the name of the parish is said to have been in consequence of a part of the contents of the Royal privy purse having been at one time raised by direct taxation on its inhabitants. This Areley is not mentioned in Domesday, being at that time perhaps included in Hartley. The Mucklows first, and then the Zacharys, were lords of the manor for some centuries. Wm. Mucklow in the civil wars compounded for his estate to the Parliament in the sum of £360, and Thos. Mucklow for £45. Daniel Zachary, Esq., now owns the principal part of the parish, and resides in the ancient manor-house, where Prince Rupert is said to have slept at one period of the civil wars, and where, until some thirty or forty years ago, the ancient dais, buttery hatch, and other antiquities, remained. A considerable estate here at one time belonged to the Walsh family, but this seems to have been lost by Wm. Walsh, who died in 1702, at the age of 88, and of whom it is recorded on a