tions who might choose to make it a
point of common agreement.

From Nash's "History of Worcestershire" we learn that on a monument on
the south wall of the south aisle of St. Martin's church, Worcester, it
was set forth:--

Under these seats lies interred the body of the Rev. Thomas Badland,
a faithful and profitable preacher of the Gospel in this city for the
space of thirty-five years. He rested from his labours, May 5th, A.D
1698, aet. 64.

Mors mihi vita nova.

When St. Martin's Church was pulled down in 1768 this marble tablet was
carelessly thrown aside, and soon got broken into fragments. Happily the
pieces were rescued and put together again with loving care for erection
in the vestibule of Angel Street Chapel, at the expense of the
congregation worshipping there. In the new Independent Chapel, which has
taken the place of that older building (registered at Quarter Sessions in
1689 as a Presbyterian place of worship), the memorial has been placed
near the pulpit.

From a MS. history of Angel Street Church, written by Samuel Blackwell in
1841, it would appear that Mr. Badland had as one of his assistants a Mr.
Hand, who had been ordained at Oldbury. At Fish Street Chapel (the site
of which was occupied in later times by Dent's Glove Factory), there were
120 Communicants in February, 1687; and the Declaration of Faith drawn up
and signed by the church members that year bears first the name of Thomas
Badland, pastor, and among many others that follow is that of "Elizab.
Badland," presumably his wife. Such, briefly, is the life history of the
good man who relinquished the living of Willenhall, and repudiated its
"idolatrous steeple-house," at the Black Bartholomew of 1662, rather than
stifle the dictates of his conscience.

In Palmer's "Nonconformist' Memorials" the Rev. Thomas Badland has been
confused with the Rev. Thomas Baldwin, who was ejected (1662) from the
Vicarage of Chaddesley Corbett, and who died at Kidderminster in 1693,
his funeral sermon being preached by a conforming clergyman there, named
White. There was also a Thomas Baldwin, junior, who had been expelled
from the Vicarage of Clent, and died at Birmingham; but notwithstanding
such common mispronunciations as "Badlam" for "Badland," it seems clear
that the facts of the Rev. Mr. Badland's life are as given here, thanks
to the careful researches of Mr. A. A. Rollason, of Dudley.

XIII.