y everything he could lay his hands upon and
carry away.

Twenty years later John Wilson (probably the same prosecutor) charged
John Wilkes, of Darlaston, with stealing two of his oxen, though no
violence is alleged on this occasion.

Two Willenhall men, William Colyns, and William Stokes, were, in 1399,
arrested, and charged with cutting down trees and underwood at Bentley.
Force and violence were used on that occasion; and it must be remembered
that timber was then in much greater demand for building purposes than
now, while underwood was in constant requisition as fuel and for the
repair of fences and shelters.

Sixteen years later (1415) John Pype and a number of other Bilston men
were prosecuted by Sir Hugh Burnell, Knt., for breaking into his closes
at Willenhall, trespassing on his land, and treading down his grass with
their cattle, committing damage to a grievous extent, and all in
undisguised defiance to the law.

Enough has been quoted to illustrate, by incidents common to the social
life of so simple a community as that of Willenhall, the gradual decay of
feudalism, and the steady growth of English liberty by the vindication of
constitutional law.

IX.--The Levesons and other old Willenhall families.

From the same sources, namely from the records of the ancient Law Courts,
as transcribed, translated, and published in the volumes of the Salt
Society, we are enabled to gain a knowledge of the most prominent
families in this locality during the Middle Ages. There seem to have
been lawsuits ever since there were landowners.

The principal family in Willenhall were the Levesons or Leusons, who are
said to have been connected with this place and the neighbouring parishes
of Wednesbury and Wolverhampton, almost from the time of the Norman
Conquest, eking out a living from the soil, of which their tenure was at
first a very precarious one.

Their pedigree, given by the county historian, Shaw (II. p. 169), shows
the founder to be one Richard Leveson, settled in Willenhall in the reign
of Edward I. But we find that in the year before this king's accession,
namely, in 1271, Richard Levison paid a fine of 2s. 3d. in the Forest
Court for being permitted to retain in cultivation an assart of half an
acre, lying in Willenhall; that is, to be allowed to continue under the
plough a piece of land on which he had grubbed up all the trees and
bushes by the roots, to the detriment of the covert within the Kin