The Grevises

As armigers the main line of this yeoman family thenceforward described themselves as 'gentry'. Their home stood back from the highway between Birmingham and Alcester at the north end of Moseley Village ; on the evidence of two poor sketches of 1802 and '30 it was a medieval hall flanked by later gabled wings, all in close studding with some herringbone timber. No brick whatever was used in its construction. There were three stone chimney clusters above the tiled roofs. Outbuildings lay between house and highway. The old Swan Inn stood opposite. Behind the Hall the ground fell away to Moseley Brook's steep valley, in which fishponds had been made.

The Grevises did well out of the purchase of cheap church land after the Dissolution. Sir Richard Grevis was knighted and gifted by James I who approved his Presbyterian views ; he owned land in eight manors and free warrens in Yardley and Solihull, was High Sheriff of Worcestershire in 1616 and sometime Deputy-Lieutenant of Wales. In Moseley Yield, out of five tax divisions in the royal manor of King's Norton, he was chief magistrate. It seems most likely to have been Sir Richard who built a new hall on or near the site of the present one and enclosed a park about it. No trace of the building and no illustration of it survives, but it is reasonable to suppose that it was rather like Castle Bromwich Hall. The making of the park confined growth of Moseley Village to the east side of Alcester Road.

The 'religious and valiant knight' died in 1632. His fine altar-tomb, originally in the chancel of St. Nicholas's Church at King's Norton, is now beneath the tower. Effigies of himself and his wife Anne Leighton lie upon it in alabaster, and small kneeling figures on the wall. above represent his four sons and four daughters. The inscribed eulogy includes the lines

His mind was nobly balanct not to sell
His smile for wealth yet used his tallant well

Cryptic, if not positively snide ! Sir Richard's eldest son had died in childhood. The third and fourth sons were provided for with estates in Yardley and Solihull, but most of the property went to the second son, Thomas. He was married to Mary Ward of Norfolk. Thomas was no friend of royalty. Though he was High Sheriff of loyal Wigorn, he refused a knighthood at Charles I's coronation, for which discourtesy he was fined œ10. He and others battled with Queen Henrietta Maria, lord of Norton, over the income from land she had enclosed. When the Civil War began, he chose to support Parliament : this was ultimately to lead to his falling foul of Cromwell like his younger brother.

This amateur soldier, whose life was written up so that we know more about him than about most of his line, called himself Richard Graves. He was in command of a Parliamentary cavalry troop in Birmingham on Easter Monday 1643 when Prince Rupert's army approached the town en route to raise the siege of Lichfield. Barricades had been erected at Deritend and elsewhere to deny the Prince, whose promise of clemency for the town's 'hearty, wilful, affected disloyalty' was not believed. The reputation of his German dragoons had preceded them ! After some skirmishing at the barricades, Rupert ordered them to be outflanked : the Rea was forded and the battle was lost. Seeing this, Graves promptly retreated along New Street and Dudley Road, hotly pursued by the Earl of Denbigh and his dragoons.

The chase continued up Cape Hill Smethwick where 'between two woods' Grave's men suddenly turned about and charged down upon the Earl : he was mortally wounded and his troop routed, being chased back nearly to the town. Rupert was enraged by the death of his commander, and permitted his men to plunder freely and to fire the upper town before he moved on to Lichfield next day. Colonel Graves raised the Lord General's Own Regiment of Hose in '44. He was in charge of Charles I at Holmby House in Northants, and planning to place him in Parliamentary custody, when Cromwell sent troops to arrest the King.

As a supporter of Parliament against the New Model Army, Graves incurred the Lord Protector's wrath and was obliged to flee to Holland. There he joined Charles II, landed with him in Scotland, and fought in the Battle of Worcester. Captured and sent to the Tower, he was later released to a restricted zone about Moseley Hall. Until his death in 1681 he lived in comfortable seclusion, serving as a magistrate in a Moseley inn. He succeeded Thomas in '76 as owner of the estates, which were entailed. His wife was Anne Henshaw of London. His son Richard outlived him by seven years only, willing the sale of land and standing timber to pay his debts. Elianor Winford was left a widow after only five years of marriage to him.

The Grevises were thenceforth in decline, every heir having less and losing more. Benjamin, Col. Graves's third son, had married twice : after Jane Hunt's death he unwisely chose Elizabeth, Booth Allestrey's widow, In his will he left to his 'dear and loving wife' only œ20 and the furniture she had brought with her. He cared even less for his weak son, Richard, cutting him off with the proverbial shilling. After Benjamin's death in 1733 his daughter and heiress Jane made over to Richard the executorship : his bad management took him increasingly into debt. His 'calm, universal benevolence' did not extend to his eldest son.

When Richard died in '59, provision for his termagant wife Ann and a second son left the residual heir without home, land or money. This was Henshaw Grevis, last of his line, brought up as a country gentleman without profession. His father had mortgaged the last of the property. Repayments and litigation left Henshaw in poverty, reduced to living in a back house in Edgbaston Street and labouring in a gravel pit. When years later he appeared before William Hutton in the Debtors' Court to answer for a son-in-law's debt, the magistrate/historian was appalled to see the prematurely agent Henshaw whom he had known as a gilded youth brought so low.

Hutton obtained for him the job of distributing Aris's Birmingham Gazette in rural areas. When Henshaw died in '88 the Gazette's editor wrote that he had suffered thus 'through the dissipation and extravagance of his parents'. His only son had died in infancy and his five married daughters all pre-deceased him. So the main line of a family which claimed descent from the Holy Roman Emperors and residence in England 'nearly from the Conquest' came to an end. There was no fine tomb for Henshaw Grevis, only a pauper's grave in the churchyard of St. Nicholas. Other branches of the family continued in the parish, and beside the church porch is a crowded corner of Grevis and related family memorials.