nerated from the ancestor who established a mint for ready
money.

According to Domesday-Book, Shrewsbury had, in Edward the Confessor's time,
two hundred and fifty-two houses, with a resident burgess in each house, and
five churches. It was included in the Earldom of Shrewsbury, granted by
William the Conqueror to his kinsman, Roger de Montgomery, who erected a
castle on the entrance of the peninsula on which the town now stands, pulling
down fifty houses for that purpose. In the wars between Stephen and the
Empress Maude, the Castle was taken and retaken; and in the reign of John the
town was taken by the Welsh under Llewellyn the Great, who had joined the
insurgent Barons in 1215; and again attacked and the suburbs burned by the
Welsh in 1234. Shrewsbury was again taken by Simon de Montfort and his ally,
Llewellyn, grandson of Llewellyn the Great, in 1266, the year before de
Montfort fell on the field of Evesham. And here, in 1283, David, the last
Prince of Wales, was tried, condemned, and executed as a traitor. Here, too,
in 1397, in the reign of Richard II., a Parliament was held, at which the
Earl of Hereford (afterwards Henry IV.) charged the Duke of Norfolk with
treason. The charge was to have been decided by a trial of battle at
Coventry. On the appointed morning, "Hereford came forth armed at all
points, mounted on a white courser, barded with blue and green velvet,
gorgeously embroidered with swans and antelopes of goldsmiths' work. The
Duke of Norfolk rode a horse barded with crimson velvet, embroidered with
lines of silver and mulberries."

At that time it took more days to travel from Shrewsbury to Coventry than it
now does hours. The cloth of gold was as splendidly, perhaps more
splendidly, embroidered than anything we can do now; but in the matter of
shirts, shoes, stockings, and the clothing necessary for health and comfort,
and of windows and chimneys, and matters necessary for air and shelter,
mechanics and day labourers are better provided than the squires and pages of
those great noblemen. Five years after, the Harry of Hereford having become
Henry IV. of England, assembled an army at Shrewsbury to march against Owen
Glendower, and the following year he fought the battle of Shrewsbury against
Hotspur, and his ally the Douglas, which forms the subject of a scene in
Shakspeare's play of Henry IV. At that battle Percy Hotspur marched from
Stafford toward Shrewsbury, hoping to reach it before