Sacrist. This meeting was specially called to
consider the case of the inhabitants of Willenhall and Bilston, who had
represented to the Dean the great inconveniences which arose in having to
carry their dead from these chapelries for interment at Wolverhampton;
and humbly praying that their respective chapels and chapelyards should
be consecrated for the proper burial of the dead.

The prayer was granted, but it was most carefully stipulated that the
inhabitants of the two chapelries should always pay the customary levies
to the mother church, and also the fees for burials and for the churching
of women, to the respective curates of the said chapels, as well as to
the ministers of the mother church; and that the expenses attending the
desired consecrations should be paid by the petitioners.

A subsequent Chapter, held 10 October, 1718, confirmed this, when the
Ministers and Inhabitants of the Chapelries of Bilston and Willenhall
signed an Agreement to observe and perform the said conditions. For the
carrying out of the agreement in business-like form the said Ministers
covenanted to pay the said fees half-yearly, at Lady-day and Michaelmas,
transmitting a copy of their respective Registers "without reserve or
fraud" to be transcribed into the books of the mother church.

The fees to be charged each Chapelry were fixed to a scale: tenpence for
"ye churching of every woman"; sevenpence for the burial of each body in
the churchyard, and twice that amount for the burial inside the church:
and so on.

Subsequently (some 30 years after, when St. John's Chapel, Wolverhampton,
was in contemplation) the inhabitants of the Liberties of Willenhall and
Bilston, notwithstanding the written agreement aforesaid, peremptorily
and finally refused to pay their respective fees for Christenings,
Churchings, and Burials to the Sacrist and Curates of Wolverhampton;
payments whereby the profits of their several offices were lessened more
than half, and the loss was so considerable it was no longer to be borne.

At Bilston the quarrel of 1753 was practically not settled for nearly a
century afterwards. It was ruled that whatever might be arranged in
respect of fees for other rites no marriages could be legally performed
in the Chapel except by licence of Wolverhampton, which claimed a
"Peculiar" jurisdiction; and as the inhabitants indignantly refused to
pay double marriage fees, no marriage was solemnised in the chapel from
January, 1