the Charter that was granted 21 Richard II., it was immediately after the attainder was reversed, and his heirs restored in blood, and to all the family possessions, by Act of Parliament, 1 Henry IV.

Mr. Justice Richardson then took a review of the whole evidence, and left it to the jury to say whether the tolls collected were the same as those collected by the Earl of Arundel, and whether they had been collected from time immemorial; and the jury, in a few minutes, found a verdict for the plaintiff,

The fate of the defendant was a sad one. The taxed costs of the trial amounted to £639, and the plaintiff remitted £150, although, as his solicitor remarked," the opposition to his lordship's rights had been very persistent and vexatious." Subscriptions were asked for, to be paid to Mr. Henry Hughes, at the Town Clerk's office. How much was raised we cannot say, but Rogers was compelled to sell his farming stock, which realized £386, and a two-years' unexpired lease. His growing corn, and household furniture fetched £140, and he was much helped by a son-in-law, Richard Bennet, a gamekeeper at Boreatton. Thus Rogers, at sixty years of age, and with a wife, and eight children. dependent on him, was left a sadder and a wiser man. He had "built too confidently" as was said at the time, "upon the promises and assurances of others, which, when the day of necessity arrived, were either broken or forgotten."

How far the law-suit expedited the settlement of the question we have no means of knowing, for our Corporation books about that time are singularly defective. Nor have we any intimation as to when the agitation commenced. Mr. Stanley Leighton, in his chapter on "Fairs, Markets, and Trade," refers to a Corporation minute of 1813, which states that an offer had been made by the devisees of the late Earl of Powis to sell the Gate and Market Tolls of the town. The terms were based on twenty-five years' purchase on the value of the Tolls, to wit, Gate Tolls £5, Market Tolls £28. The purchase money was to be £800. The Town Council agreed to treat for the same as soon as a subscription to the amount of £600 should be raised. Two

years later this resolution had come to nothing, for it is stated in Price's History, published in September, 1815. that "it is in contemplation to shake off this imposition, in consequence of the decisions of the Judges of the Courts of King's-Bench and Exchequer, in favour of the abolition of tolls. (Tolls cannot be taken without a good consideration be alleged; the reason is, because it is to deprive the subject of his common right and inheritance to pass through the King's highway, which right of passage was before all prescription. Courts are exceeding careful and jealous of these claims of right to levy money upon the subject; these tolls began and were established by the power of great men) (2nd Wilson, 296). The Committee for the management of the Oswestry Toll Case gave the above citation in one of their circulars; observing at the same time, that as no consideration is given by the lord of the manor of Oswestry for the tolls demanded by him, upon the authority of the above-cited case, such demand. cannot be supported: and, as such demands are highly prejudicial to the interests of the town and country, they informed him that they were ready to meet him to try the merits of the question, in the proper place."

If the inhabitants held these views in 1815 no wonder that the subscription suggested for the redemption of the tolls in 1813 should have been a failure, and that instead one for resisting what was deemed an imposition should be substituted. We have told the fate of the opposition, and the question has more than once been asked, "When were these tolls abolished?" A writer in one of the Shrewsbury papers in 1836 intimated that the tolls were redeemed soon after the trial of 1819; the subscription for purchasing them being taken in hand by a patriotic townsman. To an application made at the Powis Castle Office, we have received the following memorandum :

The Tolls of Oswestry Market, also Beatrice Gate, Black Gate, Willow Gate, and New Gate, were sold by Lord Powis at Michaelmas,

1888, to the Corporation of Oswestry for £800. Mr. Longueville conducted the trial and also the sale of them.'

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On receipt of this we got a friend to search the files of the Shrewsbury Chronicle and the Salopian Journal for the year 1833; and in reply have been informed that there is not a word on the subject in either of them! The dates here are definite, and it is surprising that a matter of such vital importance to a town like Oswestry should be thus ignored by the local papers. The account preserved at Powis Castle shews that the terms of 1813 were finally accepted, and the original suggestion as to subscription carried out.

In reply to a query in Bye-gones last December we were informed that the " patriotic townsman " referred to was the late Mr. Peploe Cartwright-who was Mayor in 1829-and that it was only recently that the subscription lists were destroyed. So we may take it that there is no record extant to shew to whom Oswestry is chiefly indebted for the redemption of its tolls.

1 Mr. Longueville [Jones] who conducted the trial in 1819, died in 1831. He took the surname of Longueville in 1825. The Mr. Longueville referred to as completing the sale was, of course, his son