44 BEWDLEY, RIBBESFORD, AND WRIBBENHALL.

it crops out at a place called Wallbrooke, several cottagers residing near there being in the habit of going on Sunday mornings to lay in a supply for the week. Mr. E. Ree and Mrs. Davis have pits of excellent coal in the Forest, but one of them has ceased working on account of the expense of clearing it from the water which ran into it from the other pits. No doubt the Forest of Wyre has been at some distant period a vast upheaval of bog and morass, and is even now in some places, and in the driest summers, little else than bog. The Far Forest is now a perpetual curacy; incumbent, Rev. J. T. Lea; value of living, £101; patrons, the rectors of Ribbesford and Rock alternately; population, 655.

Blackstone Rock, near Bewdley, contains one of those excavations or caves which are somewhat numerous in Worcestershire, and were inhabited by hermits in the middle ages. There are several apartments in it, and in Nash's time was an altar in one of them. A little hill near the town, called " The Devil's Spadeful," is worth a visit; it is the subject of a legend, in which Satan is said to have been outwitted by a drunken cobbler of Bewdley. I have nothing to add with regard to the antiquities of the town beyond the fact that the post and ring formerly used for bull-baiting are said to be buried under the pavement near the chapel; also that cock-throwing was a favourite sport among the comb-makers and water-men up to the present century.

Besides the Tombes above named, among the eminent men born at or connected with Bewdley were George Hopkins, a puritanical preacher, and assistant to the Commissioners for "ejecting scandalous ministers" in 1654; Ralph Sheldon, commonly called "The Great Sheldon," a traveller, and patron of learning; Dr. Willis, Bishop of Winchester, son of a Bewdley capper; Miles Peter Andrews, M.P. for Bewdley in 1799, and who dreamed on the night that his friend Lord Lyttelton died that his lordship walked into his room and said, " Andrews, 'tis all over with me!" Lastly, James Dalton, author of "A strange and true relation of a young