of Alton.  But for what purpose did I add them?  To display the folly of a successor.”—­A dejected spectre would seem to step forward, whose face carried the wrinkles of eighty-four, and the shadow of tear; “I, in 1611, brought the title of baronet among us, first tarnished by you; which, if your own imbecility could not procure issue to support, you ought to have supported it by purchase.  I also, in 1620, erected the mansion at Afton, then, and even now, the most superb in that neighbourhood, fit to grace the leading title of nobility; but you forbad my successors to enter.  I joined, in 1647, to our vast fortune, the manor of Erdington.—­Thus the fabric we have been rearing for ages, you overthrew in one fatal moment.”—­The last angry spectre would appear in the bloom of life.  “I left you an estate which you did not deserve:  you had no more right to leave it from your successor, than I to leave it from you:  one man may ruin the family of another, but he seldom ruins his own.  We blame him who wrongs his neighbour, but what does he deserve who wrongs himself?—­You have done both, for by cutting off the succession, your name will be lost.  The ungenerous attorney, instead of making your absurd will, ought to have apprized you of our sentiments, which exactly coincide with those of the world, or how could the tale affect a stranger?  Why did not some generous friend guide your crazy vessel, and save a sinking family?  Degenerate son, he who destroys the peace of another, should forfeit his own—­we leave you to remorse, may she quickly find, and weep over you.”

SALTLEY.

A mile east of Duddeston is Saltley-hall, which, with an extensive track of ground, was, in the Saxon times, the freehold of a person whom we should now call Allen; the same who was Lord of Birmingham.  But at the conquest, when justice was laid asleep, and property possessed by him who could seize it, this manor, with many others, fell into the hands of William Fitz-Ausculf, Baron of Dudley-castle, who granted it in knight’s-service to Henry de Rokeby.

A daughter of Rokeby carried it by marriage to Sir John Goband, whose descendants, in 1332, sold it to Walter de Clodshale; an heiress of Clodshale, in 1426, brought it into the ancient family of Arden, and a daughter of this house, to that of Adderley, where it now rests.

The castle, I have reason to think, was erected by Rokeby, in which all the lords resided till the extinction of the Clodshales.—­It has been gone to ruin about three hundred years, and the solitary platform seems to mourn its loss.

WARD-END.

Three miles from Birmingham, in the same direction, is Wart-end, anciently Little Bromwich; a name derived from the plenty of broom, and is retained to this day by part of the precincts, Broomford (Bromford).

This manor was claimed by that favourite of the conqueror, Fitz-Ausculf, and granted by him to a second-hand favourite, who took its name.