The
same Lord Furnival granted a charter to the town, the provisions of which
were of great liberality and importance at that period, viz., that a fixed
annual payment should be substituted for the base, uncertain services by
which they had previously held their lands and tenements, that Courts Baron
should be held every three weeks for the administration of justice, and that
the inhabitants of Sheffield should be free from the exaction of toll
throughout the entire district of Hallamshire, whether they were vendors or
purchasers."
About this time Sheffield began to be famous for the manufacture of falchion
heads, arrows, files, and whittles. Chaucer tells us of the miller that
"A Sheffield thwytle bare he in his hose,
Round was his face, and camysed was his nose."
The ample water-power, the supply of iron ore close at hand, and in after
times, when its value for smelting was discovered, the fields of coal--all
helped Sheffield.
"Another only daughter, and another Maud, transferred by her marriage the
lordship of Sheffield to the more noble family of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
William Lord Furnival died 12th April 1383, in his house in Holborn, where
now stands Furnival's Inn, leaving an only daughter, who married Sir Thomas
Nevil, and he in 1406 died, leaving an only daughter, Maud, who married John
Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
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