Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/339

Rh the town, erected before Elizabeth was born, and occupied by the Levison family. They were probably of Jewish descent, bearing for centuries the Hebrew name of Ben Levi, when they Saxonized it to Levison, which meant the same thing At the time when they flourished here, they made the wool trade the great business of Wolverhampton. This was their counting-room, where they conducted their large operations. Then the district around had not begun to be a black country. Then white sheep, with fleeces unstained by smoke, fed over a green and undulating surface, now buried fathoms deep in the debris of mines, furnace, and forge. They grazed and basked with their white lambs, where now the tall gaunt wolves of flame lap the earth by night and day with their red tongues. So distinctive and extensive was the wool trade carried on here, that the town up to the present century was called Woolverhampton. I was told that in process of time, the Levison family, who owned this hall and estate, became reduced to a single representative, and that was a daughter. The accumulated property had become a fortune equal to the wealth of one of the richest peers of the realm. The trustees, therefore, thought that it ought to constitute the dowry of a peeress, and they easily found a peer's son willing to take the heiress and her fortune on that condition. She was therefore married to a Gower, but on the