Queen Elizabeth is said to have visited it in 1586, and in 1643 Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I, stayed here on her way to join the King at Edgehill. The most impressive feature is the parish church, which is mounted on a higher eminence than any other in the county. It sits upon the head of the town like a crown, and from a certain distance the houses seem to pave the steep slopes down from its base, as if they were appurtenant to the structure and made for it, instead of it for them. It has been mostly rebuilt within the last fifty years; so that it does not show the venerable, furrowed face of antiquity it once presented.
Walsall has an excellent Free Grammar School, where boys may reach the high roads of a good education more cheaply than at many institutions designed and founded to impart it without charge, but which, by certain perquisites and side items, make it expensive. The town is rather distinguished by its charities, such as alms-houses and the like. In an old history there is a tradition in reference to the Moseley Dole which is interesting enough to be true. It ran to this effect: One Thomas Moseley, a benevolent citizen, was walking the streets on Epiphany evening, when he heard a child cry for bread. The good man was so touched to the heart at this low, pining voice of want on such an anniversary that he vowed that no one in
