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Old 28th April 2017, 15.11:46   #335-0 (permalink)
eastsussexred
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Default Re: The sad case of a founding members and player of Wrexham Football Club

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Originally Posted by eastsussexred View Post
In the attachment of my previous post, William Lewis is a Corvisor (another term for a cordwainer/shoemaker) who's shop was situated at the base of Town Hill, and who was associated with The Cordwainers Arms in 1666. It is also known that there were areas in Medieval Wrexham known as Shoemaker’s Mound and Shoemaker’s Hollow, and that there was another tavern in the town, known as The Shoemaker’s.
Additionally, there was a Crispin Inn at Lower Stansty (now known as Plas Coch) and Wrexham historian A.N. Palmer had hypothesized that an ancient guild of shoemakers may have been responsible for the existence of The Crispin Inn, as St Crispin was the patron Saint of Shoemakers. The Crispin Inn, which was still in existence in the mid 1700’s, also lent its name to the Crispin Field’s, on which, The Racecourse was later built. I have found no specific records relating to a date when The Crispin Inn may have been built, but it is known that Plas Coch (meaning Red Hall) was built around 1580/90 for Sir William Meredith of Stansty, who was The High Sheriff of Stansty and who was the treasurer and paymaster for the British army in the campaigns in The Netherlands, during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. In 1608, Sir William issued a contract to his brother- Edward Meredith (a draper and trader in London) to supply the uniforms and footwear for the soldiers of the army, although Sir William died later that same year and Plas Coch was passed to his family, with Edward Meredith holding the lease. Edward Meredith would also become The High Sheriff of Stansty in 1629, and it may well be, that if A.N. Palmer’s hypothesis regarding a guild of shoemakers is correct, then a possible date range for the construction of The Crispin Inn, would be the first few decades of the 1600’s, due to Edward Meredith’s trade associations. From this point, the area on which the Racecourse was later built, would become known as Crispins Fields, with Crispin Lane running through its lower boundaries.
There is, though, another possibility regarding the origins of The Crispin Inn, in Stansty

At the end of Owain Glyndwr’s war against Henry IV (1400-1415) Wales was left devastated. Extensive destruction of towns, villages and agricultural land took decades to repair, and industry and commerce in Wales all but ground to a halt; moreover, politically, the country ceased to exist in its own right.

When King Henry IV died in 1413, he was succeeded to the throne by his son- Henry, Lord of Monmouth and Brecon (crowned King Henry V at Westminster Abbey on 9th April 1413) and almost immediately, Henry V offered pardons to the remaining Welsh rebels. In 1415, as Henry prepared for War in France, he also offered a pardon to Owain Glyndwr, but never received a response and Owain Glyndwr was never seen again.
Henry then assembled a force of 10,500 men (including 500 Welsh Archers and 23 men-at arms) and sailed to France, although there was no recruiting for any fighting men in North Wales, as the region was still not trusted by the English at that time, and so the Welsh contingent were recruited almost entirely of men from Monmouth and Brecon.
In France, the forces laid siege to the port of Harfleur, in Normandy, which surrendered after five weeks, but Henry had lost many of his soldiers to disease and battle injuries, and so he planned to march to Calais, where he would meet up with his ships and sail back to England. At Agincourt, however, his route was blocked by a French army, 20,000 strong, and at 11am on 25th October, French knights, weighed down by heavy armor, began a slow advance across the muddy battlefield.
Outnumbered three to one, Henry’s army stood their ground and his longbow archers (many of whome were Welsh) let leash a hail of arrows, which stopped the French in their tracks. As more and more French soldiers tried to advance, they too became clogged down in mud and were also slain by the archers. Around 6,000 Frenchmen lost their lives at Agincourt, including 40% of the French nobility, while English and Welsh losses amounted to just over 400. The news of victory spurred a period of celebrations across England and parts of Wales, and the 25th of October 1415- St Crispin’s day, became etched into the national psyche, as the day that The Battle of Agincourt was won against overwhelming odds. The victory also gave rise to the name of St Crispin specifically being used for taverns and inns, with a number of new ‘Crispin Inns’ first appearing in records from the early 15th Century. History of the Crispin Inn
Prior to his French campaign, Henry V had placed himself under the spiritual protection of the 7th-century Welsh virgin martyr- St Winefride, and after his return, he visited Shrewsbury Abbey, where the relics of the saint were enshrined, before continuing his pilgrimage 60 miles to St Winefride’s Well (Holywell, Flintshire) the place where she was allegedly beheaded before being miraculously restored to life. There is no record of the route that Henry V took from Shrewsbury to Holywell, and so it does open the possibility that he also passed through Wrexham en route.

Last edited by eastsussexred; 28th April 2017 at 15.23:16..
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