Middlemore appears among the few in this county who objected to do so,
and most likely his descendants would do the same. The first twenty-five
of our borough magistrates were appointed about nine weeks after the
date of the Charter of Incorporation, 1839. In 1841, 1849, 1856, and
1859, other gentlemen were placed on the roll, and in April, 1880, ten
more names were added to the list, having been sent up to the Lord
Chancellor a few days before he vacated office, by some knowing
gentlemen who had conceived a notion that the Conservative element was
hardly strong enough among the occupants of the Bench. There are now 52,
in addition to the Stipendiary Magistrate and the Recorder, and as
politics _must_ enter into every matter connected with public life in
Birmingham, we record the interesting fact that 31 of these gentlemen
are Liberals and 21 Conservatives. Mr. T.C.S. Kynnersley first acted as
Stipendiary, April 19, 1856.

~Magazines.~--See "_Newspapers and Periodicals_."

~Manor House.~--How few of the thousands who pass Smithfield every day
know that they are treading upon ground where once the Barons of
Birmingham kept house in feudal grandeur. Whether the ancient Castle,
destroyed in the time of Stephen, pre-occupied the site of the Manor
House (or, as it was of late years called--the Moat House), is more than
antiquarians have yet found out, any more than they can tell us when the
latter building was erected, or when it was demolished. Hutton says:
"The first certain account we meet of the moat (which surrounded the
island on which the erections were built) is in the reign of Henry the
Second, 1154, when Peter de Bermingham, then lord of the fee, had a
castle here, and lived in splendour. All the succeeding lords resided
upon the same island till their cruel expulsion by John, Duke of
Northumberland, in 1537. The old castle followed its lords, and is