The situation of St. Martin’s church is another reason for fixing the original centre of Birmingham at the Old Cross.  Christianity made an early and a swift progress in this kingdom; persecution, as might be expected, followed her footsteps, increased her votaries, and, as was ever the case, in all new religions, her proselytes were very devout.

The religious fervor of the christians displayed itself in building churches.  Most of those in England are of Saxon original, and were erected between the fourth and the tenth century; that of St. Martin’s is ancient beyond the reach of historical knowledge, and probably rose in the early reigns of the Saxon kings.

It was the custom of those times, to place the church, if there was but one, out of the precincts of the town; this is visible at the present day in those places which have received no increase.

Perhaps it will not be an unreasonable supposition to fix the erection of St. Martin’s, in the eighth century; and if the inquisitive reader chooses to traverse the town a second time, he may find its boundaries something like the following.  We cannot allow its extension northward beyond the east end of New-street; that it included the narrow parts of Philip street, Bell street, Spiceal street, Moor street, and Park street.  That the houses at this period were more compact than heretofore; that Digbeth and Deritend, lying in the road to Stratford, Warwick, and Coventry, all places of antiquity, were now formed.  Thus the church stood in the environs of the town, unincumbered with buildings.  Possibly this famous nursery of arts might, by this time, produce six hundred houses.  A town must increase before its appendages are formed; those appendages also must increase before there is a necessity for an additional chapel, and after that increase, the inhabitants may wait long before that necessity is removed.  Deritend is an appendage to Birmingham; the inhabitants of this hamlet having long laboured under the inconveniency of being remote from the parish church of Aston, and too numerous for admission into that of Birmingham, procured a grant in 1381 to erect a chapel of their own.  If we, therefore, allow three hundred years for the infancy of Deritend, three hundred more for her maturity, and four hundred since the erection of her chapel, which is a very reasonable allowance.  It will bring us to the time I mentioned.

It does not appear that Deritend was attended with any considerable augmentation, from the Norman conquest to the year 1767, when a turnpike-road was opened to Alcester, and when Henry Bradford publicly offered a freehold to the man who should first build upon his estate; since which time Deritend has made a rapid progress:  and this dusky offspring of Birmingham is now travelling apace along her new formed road.

I must again recline upon Dugdale.—­In 1309, William de Birmingham, Lord of the Manor, took a distress of the inhabitants of Bromsgrove and King’s-norton, for refusing to pay the customary tolls of the market.  The inhabitants, therefore, brought their action and recovered damage, because it was said, their lands being the ancient demesne of the crown, they had a right to sell their produce in any market in the King’s dominions.