CITY OF WORCESTER. 359

Church at Yardley Wood, and a chapel-of-ease at Hall Green (a donative), erected and endowed with funds left by Job Marston, a wealthy bachelor, in 1701. The Independents and Wesleyans have chapels at Acock's Green, and the former have a college at Moseley Wake Green. Endowed schools are well administered in the parish, which also abounds with charities and benefactions for the poor, for the schools, repairing church and bridges, &c. A Cottagers' Institute has been in successful operation for some years.

City of Worcester.

NOTHING authentic is recorded of the foundation or occupation of Worcester by either Britons or Romans, but there is scarcely any doubt that there was a Roman fort here as a link in the chain of military defences of the eastern bank of the Severn, from Uriconium, near Shrewsbury, to Glevum, or Gloucester. In the seventh century it was a fortified city, included in the Saxon kingdom of Mercia and became the head of one of its five sees, which had not long been formed out of heathendom. Its bishops were powerful territorial lords, whose authority extended from Warwickshire to Bristol.

The Danes twice destroyed the city - once in revenge for the inhabitants having killed two of their tax-collectors. The Norman dynasty - initiated here by Urso, who built a castle near the Cathedral, which was afterwards occupied by the hereditary Sheriffs of the county, till the attainder of the Earl of Warwidk - brought with it a series of troubles to the inhabitants, especially in the contests between Stephen and Matilda, and within less than a century Worcester was six times burnt more or less. The Welsh rebels and the barons in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries frequently took it.