Knightlow Hill - The Wroth Stone

There is also a certain rent due unto the Lord of this hundred [Knightlow], called Wroth money, or Warth money, or Swarff peny, probably the same with Ward penny. Denarii vicecomiti vel aliis castellanis persoluti ob castrorum praefidium, vel excubias agendas, says Sir H. Spelm. in his Gloss. fol. 565, 566. This rent must be paid every Martinmas day in the morning, at Knightlowe Cross, before the sun riseth; the party paying it must go thrice about the cross, and say The Wrath money, and then lay it in the hole of the said cross before good witness, for if it be not duly performed, the forfeiture is thirty shillings and a white bull. The towns that pay this Wrath money are as follow: [...]

A word or two now of the place, whence it takes the name, which is a tumulus, or little heap, of earth, standing on the brow of the hill upon the great roadway leading from Coventre towards London, as you enter upon Dunsmore heath, commonly called Knightlow hill, or Knightlow cross, the latter syllable Lowe (as we now pronounce it) but anciently and more truly Lawe, signifying a little hill; and so Mr. Cambden in his Remains observes, that the Scots who border nearest to England do use the word in that sense to this day.