eda dad i ay anes aa 7 : itm, Redebatt? i 5 nt ye un, Peer eriny a Se ee ee ane See ee Lan we kei iy wh Seg iy, THE WILTSHIRE Arrhealageal ant Batural Wratary MAGAZINE, Published under the Birectton of the Soctety FORMED IN THAT COUNTY, A.D. 1853. DEVIZES : H. F. BULL, 4, Saint Joun STREET. 1882. Tae Enprror of the Wiltshire Magazine desires that it should be distinctly understood that neither he nor the Committee of the Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History Society hold themselves in any way answerable for any statements or opinions expressed in the Magazine; for all of which the Authors of the several papers and communications are alone responsible. CONTENTS OF VOL. XxX. No. LVIII. Account of the Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting, at Bradford-on-Avon The Ethnology of Wiltshire, as illustrated in the Place-Names: By J. EAMONN ISG 5 Hee mee. vetscacaddhsne thet viv anieh cadidccbeecdatacsreneseesaceess The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History”: By the Rev. Canon J. E. MPA GHBON) Hi Sule trcederevercsrcssicefasesercovee socuduaecscusbendnassesorsssnesces Notes on Wiltshire Geology and Paleontology: By CHartes Moors, PER Sicccodh rede nivalcens cases akpsdaaPica vacua ssSpuai ine gasoovitderdoncassingeuseese Some Notes on Gainsborough and his connection with Bradford : By WREDERICK SHUM, B.S.Ac....0.sccsesssssasccssonnsevsccesssssensececenessneses Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh: By Sir CHARLEs HEOBHOUSE,, Bart: o:ch...0ca-csccescvscnssorenssaccceouascnecvcsnsvesosnsseneees The Rising in the West, A.D. 1655: By W. W. RavEnuILL, Esq....... No. LIX. Some Early Features of Stockton Church, Wilts: By the Rev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., Rector of Upton Scudamore, Wilts...............cecseeneeees On the Church of St. Peter, Manningford Bruce, Wiltshire: By the Rev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., Rector of Upton Scudamore, Wilts...... “Sculptured Stone at Codford St. Peter, and Heraldic Stone at War- minster: By the Rev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., Rector of Upton RMITGAINOVOs|. WALLS... Sc svenesardatame can eves sone soavccs dasapeeressntsicescdeee scene “arly Heraldry in Boyton Church, Wilts: Recovery of a Missing Link”: By the Rev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., Rector of Upton Scuda- HATO AV VILUR Cs caieecncececs dart etettect ree caoae ace want idedsseiesvens@odweseacees On the Occurrence of some of the Rarer Species of Birds in the Neigh- bourhood of Salisbury (Continued) : By the Rev. AnTHUR P. MorREs, Beer asE ESPACE socsenncaistetdeweusavcnoregaivacicsescceasadccscasastaovoasnseusen Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh (Continued): By Sir CHARLES HOBHOUSE, Barte....sccccsecsesesesevecnenseeees seccncesatacusan 66 106 107 122 138 145 154 185 lv CONTENTS OF VOL. XX. No. LX. “Tetter from the Author of ‘ Nenia Britannica’ to Archdeacon Coxe, on the Original Design of Stonehenge and the Neighbouring Barrows”: Communicated by, WO. Ea Swawne, Hisqe .....<.....commasas.scsacsoeeane Edingdon Monastery: By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. ...... A Stroll through Bradford-on-Avon: By Canon W. H. Jonzs, M.A., IHS SAG. VACHE: pay sete cet eren amid se Sak yogi ow ce Tapio ool eins ania a WoO eee Extracts from the Records of the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions : Communi- cated by R. W. Merriman, Clerk of the Peace ..............60ccs0sccenes Description of a Barrow recently opened on Overton Hill: By C. Pontine, TOEG Ee senor toa gaeeatee Coated Ook oae abr ie abeeBtne mommenaoeny cetee tamer dec AS iyo: The Opening’of a Bazrow on Overton Hill. ......c.....cccssncopempveamemneel Extracts from the Register in Christian Malford Church ...............46. [llustrations. 237 241 Monkton Farleigh Priory, Fragment of the Priory, 73. Monkton Farleigh Priory, Plan of a Portion of the Site, 74. Interior of Stockton Church, Wilts, 107. Ground-plan of St. Peter’s Church, Manningford Bruce, Wilts, 123. Ground-plan of St. Edmund’s Church, Fritton, Suffolk, 125. Ground-plan of Church of St. Mellon, Rouen, 127. Ground-plan of Kilpeck Church, Herefordshire, 129. South doorway and chancel arch, Manningford Bruce Church, Wilts, 130. Sculptured Stone in Codford St. Peter Church, Wilts, 138. Sculptured Stone, Warminster Athene- um, Wilts, 140, Edingdon Church, Wilts (south side), 241. Edingdon Church, Wilts (west end), 295. Fac-simile of an entry by the Clerk of the Peace, 1579, 340. Noes i No. LVIII. DECEMBER, 1881, Vou, XX. WILTSHIRE Arehwological ont Botwral Wistory MAGAZINE, Published unver the Birection OF THE SOCIETY FORMED IN THAT COUNTY, A.D, 1863. f , DEVIZES: _ || Patnren and Sotp ror tHe Soctery sy H. F, Bort, Saint JoHN STREET. Price 5s. 6d.—Members Gratis. “the current year, are requested to remit the same forthwith to" he Financial Secretary, Mr. Wiit1am Nort, 15, High Street, ae) OF Magazines" should be addressed, and of whom most of the oe es Numbers may be had. 1 other communications to be addressed to the Honorary Secre- taries: the Rev. A. C. Sura, car Rectory, Calne ; =. t ev. 52-0. Sure: will be ash obliged in obecrvars of bina all parts of the county, to forward to him notices of rare ij currences, early arrivals of migrants, or any remarkable facts _ ee THE WILTSHIRE Arrheological ant Botural Wistory MAGAZINE. No. LVIII. DECEMBER, 1881. Vou. XX. ‘Contents, PAGE Account oF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING, aT Brap- FOBD-ON-AVON iicsecseseeeneeses Ralston Nas dus awe swale eps esesun ese ianasisaaert 1 Tue ETHNOLOGY OF WILTSHIRE, AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE PLACE- Wamwms: By J. Bicton, Hsq., B-ScA. oc iccsecscecocssscsusescvcsvetcocvascsees 16 “Tae Eminent Laprzes or WILTsHirE History”: By the Rev. Canon ephrOACKSONs WS Ae acwccicececetasascecdsd adel sovcaiaavsakoseueasedee 26 Nores on WILTSHIRE GEOLOGY AND Patzontotoay: By Charles Neato Neo Mami eta raretiacasmarcasitaaeelivatoaisves setuesvess soveecdvaenagvonsa cote 45 Some Notes oN GAINSBOROUGH AND HIS CONNECTION WITH BrapD- FORD: By Frederick Shum, F.S.A. ......cccsscsecsescceeeeeeceveuseevevensees 55 Some Account oF THE Parish oF Monxton Farueian: By Sir Wharlos HObMOUsAy DANG: vaccaareiseceuvesccusscasdceversscecenercetsceansecvenas 66 Tue Rising 1n THE West, A.D. 1655: By W. W. Ravenhill, Esq. 106 ILLUSTRATIONS. Monkton Farleigh Priory, Fragment of the Priory ... 73 Monkton Farleigh Priory, Plan of a Portion of the Site 74 DEVIZES : H. F. Bott, 4, Saint JOHN STREET. 78 WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE. “ MULTORUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATUR ONUS.’—Ovid, THE TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE Wiltshire Archeological & Patural History Society, HELD AT BRADFORD-ON-AVON, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, August 9th, 10th, and 11th, 1881]. PRESIDENT OF THE MEETING, Str Cuartes Hosuouse, Bart. (E=ZHE Annual Meeting! of the Society was this year held at ‘ Bradford-on-Avon, an interval of twenty-four years having elapsed since its last visit to that town. The meeting was eminently successful, and the welcome and hospitality shown by the inhabitants of Bradford and its neighbourhood left nothing in that respect to be desired. The proceedings were opened at the Town Hall, at Wels o’clock, by the Secretary, Rev. A. C. Suiru, who regretted to say that the President of the Society was not able to be with them as he had intended, owing to circumstances which had not been foreseen when the time for holding the meeting was fixed. The Irish Land Bill—they were aware—was to be considered by the House of Commons on its return from the Upper House, that very afternoon ; and, owing to the very active part which he had taken in the discussion of that measure, it was impossible for Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice to be absent from his place: he was therefore re- luctantly compelled to forego the pleasure of presiding over the Society at Bradford. Mr. Smith read a letter from Lord Edmond 1In preparing the following account of the Bradford Meeting the Editor desires to acknowledge the assistance he has derived from the columns of the Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette, The Trowbridge Chronicle, and the Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser. VOL, XX.—NO. LVIII. H B 2 The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. explaining these circumstances, and added that though disappointed at the absence of the President of the Society, they had been happy in finding an excellent substitute as President of the Meeting in Sir Charles Hobhouse. No sooner was the dilemma in which the Society found itself explained to Sir Charles, when he at once— though at very short notice indeed—most kindly acceded to their request, and consented to occupy the chair and deliver an address : and consequently they were all very deeply indebted to him. Sir Cuartes Hosnouse then took the chair, and at once called upon the Secretary to read the Report for the past year. REPORT. “The Committee of the Wiltshire Archexological and Natural History Society, in presenting a brief report of last year’s pro- ceedings, desires again to congratulate the Members on the continued prosperity of the Society, and on the general interest evinced throughout the county in its work. “The Committee at the same time regrets to add that the past twelvemonth has been a year of heavy loss in old and valued Members of the Society. Of original Members we have to deplore the deaths of Mr. John Noyes, of Chippenham, who was a most constant at- tendant at our annual gatherings, and always took a lively interest in the proceedings; of Mr. John Spencer, of Buckhill, who was also an active supporter, and a contributor to the pages of the Magazine; of Mr. Stephen Moulton, the owner of the beautiful Kingston House, in this town; and very recently, of Mr. George Brown, of Abury, who has from the first shown a warm interest in the work of the Society, and in accordance with a promise to that effect which he made to the Dean of Hereford in 1849, has had a watchful eye for the preservation of the remaining stones in the great circle at Abury.! Of other old, though not original Members, whose loss within the past twelvemonths we regret, special mention should be made of Mr. Brackstone, of Bath, Mr. Joseph Parry, of Allington, Mr. Charles Phipps, of Chalcot, and the Rev. 1 See Proceedings of the Royal Archeological Institute of Great Britain, Salis- bury, 1849. Report. 3 Henry Ward, all of whom joined the Society above twenty years ago; and there are other honoured names of some who have more - recently been enrolled among our Subscribers. New Members have, ‘ a however, been elected to supply the place of those we have lost, so that the number on our books is very nearly the same as last year, namely 387. “ As regards the financial position of the Society, our balance in hand is slightly increased during the last year, from £133 14s. 9d, at its commencement to £176 5s. 4d. at its close, as will be seen by the balance-sheet just published, and placed in the hands of the members in the course of the last few days. “Of the Magazine, two numbers have been published during the past year, of whose merits the Committee leaves the Society to judge. The last number, just now issued, completes the nineteenth volume. “The Museum and Library have been slightly increased by the contributions of various donors; the museum more especially con- tinues to be enriched by further additions of Roman-British pottery, and metal vases and implements dug out at Westbury, and secured to the Society by the exertions of the obliging manager, Mr. Anderson. “The attention of the Committee has been especially directed during the past year to the state of Stonehenge ; and in conjunction with the Secretary of the British Archzological Association a repre- sentation has been made to the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Archzological Institute of Great Britain, calling their im- mediate attention to the insecure condition of certain stones in the outer circle, and their imminent danger of falling, in the opinion of several of the officers of this Society, unless steps are speedily taken to re-adjust them. At the same time the question of re-erecting the great trilithon which fell in 1797, which has been so often ad- vocated by archeologists, was again pressed upon the consideration of the parent Societies. The result has been that the Society of Antiquaries appointed a Committee, consisting of H. S. Milman, Esq. (Director of that Society), G. T. Clark, Esq., J. T. Mickle- thwaite, Esq., Sir John Lubbock, Bart., and the Rev. W. C. Lukis, who visited Stonehenge during last month, and carefully examined B 2 4 The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. the stones to which their attention had been directed ; and though their report has not yet been presented to the Society, and therefore cannot now be made public, the fact has been communicated to the Wiltshire Archeological Society that the whole question is to be submitted to a general meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in November next, with a view to such action as may then be deter- mined on. Your Committee earnestly hope that immediate steps will then be taken both to secure such stones as are now in danger of falling, and to raise the great trilithon which fell almost within the memory of living man, and whose original position can be exactly determined. Should such a course be pronounced advisable, it will then remain to approach the owner of Stonehenge, with the view of obtaining his sanction to carry out the work recommended in such a manner as to meet his wishes, and to obtain such help and the loan of such appliances from the dockyards or elsewhere as may be deemed most advisable. “Tn conclusion, the Committee repeats the exhortation it has frequently addressed to its members scattered over the length and breadth of the county, and earnestly invites the co-operation of all who take any interest in the Antiquities or the Natural History of the County of Wilts, as by such co-operation alone can its best interests be promoted.” The Rev. W. C. Luxts moved the adoption of the report, and said he did so with great pleasure, because two statements which it contained were very satisfactory, viz., that the financial position of the society remained good, and that the Members did not diminish. In some further remarks, Mr. Lukis alluded to the leaning stones at Stonehenge and the fallen trilithon mentioned in the report. The attention of the Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, of which he was a member, had been directed to two of the leaning stones of the outer circle, but they did not think they were sufficiently out of the perpendicular to make their position insecure. The trilithon had fallen, and could not fall further, and might there- fore be considered in a secure position, but the point to which the attention of the Committee was directed was the leaning stone, which was a remarkable feature in that monument. It was leaning a a ee ee The Inaugural Address. 5 at a considerable angle, 60 degrees he thought, and was evidently moving. If some effectual measure was not adopted to make it secure, it would fall and damage the building very much. Mr. T. B. Saunpers said he had great pleasure in seconding the adoption of the report. He gathered from it that it was in- tended to do something at Stonehenge: but he ventured to express a hope that a complete restoration to its original condition was not in contemplation. The report having been adopted, the President proposed the re- election of the officers of the Society, but said he was sorry to have to announce that amongst them they should not in future be able to reckon Mr. Charles Talbot as one of their General Secretaries ; for that gentleman had felt compelled from ill-health to resign the office he had s0 efficiently held. He need scarcely remind them of the great services which Mr. Talbot had rendered to the Society, more especially on the subject of architecture. His place would be very difficult to fill; but he had great satisfaction in proposing as his successor Mr. Henry Medlicott, a name well known and honoured in the county. This motion having been unanimously agreed to, the President proceeded to deliver THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. He remarked that though, owing to Lord Edmond’s absence, which they very much regretted, he had consented to make an address, he hoped it would not be said of him that “ fools rushed in where angels feared to tread,” or rather, where angels were not able to tread. Yet he was bound to say he had had extreme difficulty in accepting the responsible position of Chairman in Lord Edmond’s place. In the first place it was necessary for the Chairman to give an inaugural address. Well, to his innocent and unsophisticated, and perhaps ignorant mind, an inaugural address seemed a very solemn thing, and he must say, when, on the previous morning he sat down to the work he hardly knew where to begin, though he need hardly say he had no difficulty as to where he ought to end, for that came very soon indeed. However he had no doubt that having 6 The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. accepted a post which he admitted could have been so much more worthily filled, and having done so with very short notice, they would be kind enough to extend to him that indulgence which he believed’ was usually extended on such oceasions. Another special reason for asking their indulgence was because, as a matter of fact, he was almost an absolute tyro in archeology. He had spent the greater part of his life in India, and had come home only a few years ago, but had he not come into that neighbournood and come across such men as Canon Jones, Mr. Powell, formerly a Curate of Monkton Farleigh, Canon Jackson and others, he should never have had the hardihood to stand before them at that time. Having had many agreeable communications with those gentlemen the result was that he took it into his head that he would endeavour to find out something at all events of the archeology of his own particular parish and neighbourhood. The first thing, Sir Charles went on, after I have been poring over the parish registers or some old terriers of the days of Elizabeth, or the Monasticon or what not, I ask myself, and I am asked by others, Cui bono, what is the good of it all? Well, I suppose I need not argue that question before an assembly such as this, but still it seems to me that if the enemies of the study of archeology will consider a little, they will find out that, unconsciously, they themselves live a great part of their ex- istence in the midst of that very study which they affect to despise. Our life is obviously passed in three different worlds, as it were— the past, the present, and the future, and every hour that we spend in so much of the past as is not personal, especially in the more distant past, in history, biography, and the like, is, in fact, an hour spent in the study of archeology. How necessary also this study is to the daily wants of life we do not perhaps sufficiently consider. I will not suppose that any of us desire to build a house, because, as the saying is, “ Fools build houses that wise men may live in them,” but at least we all desire to have houses to live in. Of course if we live in a town we take the house that is most commodious, the least expensive, the best situated for our purposes, and have done with it. But if we live in the suburbs of a town or in the country, and have any choice of our own, we don’t choose the modern style of The Inaugural Address. 7 house to dwell in. Let anyone go to Norwood, or Anerley, or Wimbledon, or Richmond, and inspect the modern style of house there and see what he will find. A square door in the centre, two square windows on either side of the door, and three square windows above, and, by way of ornamentation, a sort of curvature of different colored bricks, giving the outside of the house very much the ap- pearance of a man’s face, the nose quite flat and spectacles on the eyes. If you have any choice you don’t elect a house of this kind ; you rather go to the study of archeology for your model, and whilst you will have all the appliances of modern warmth and comfort in- side, you will go, say, to the days of the Tudors, or the earlier Hanoverians, for your outside’ building and architecture. So it is not to modern times, but to the times of comparative antiquity, that you resort for your domestic architecture, and it is the same in the matter of Church architecture, and it is, or ought to be, the same in the matter of public buildings. Put any average parish Church side by side with any average meeting-house of fifty years ago, and you see at once why, in the better development of public taste, there is (I do not mean to speak profanely) at least one worship in common between the meeting-house of to-day and the Church of England—the worship, namely, of archeology. Or compare some of our public buildings with similar buildings, the produce, it may be, of very remote antiquity, and see if we have not even yet very much to learn from the Ancients. Some years ago, when I was travelling in the South of India and in Ceylon, I was very much struck with the enormous stone tanks used for the storage of large bodies of water. In one place in particular I found that the sides of these tanks were made up of huge blocks of stone, laid one on the top of the other, without cement and without clamps. No repairs, I was informed, were ever needed. Yet these tanks had received into their bosoms for centuries floods of water such as we do not dream of in England, and had retained the rain for the necessities of large populations, dependent upon them for health and cleanliness and food—their very life in short. We constantly hear—I read only the other day, of the disastrous failure of modern _ reservoirs, and of the vast destruction of life and property which 8 The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. accompanies such failure. Why is it that we do not in such con- structions profit more thoroughly by the lessons of antiquity? And who that has visited the Pont du Gard would not take that as his ideal of what a conduit should be? Again, in India I visited the Mausoleum of the Taj Mahal at Agra, the Kutb Column and the Mosque at Delhi, some of the rock-cut temples of Western India, and the "site of the great Akbar’s Camp at Futtehpore-Sikri. The impressions made by these marvellous buildings are as fresh now as if I saw them before me. You approach the Taj through a garden with groves of trees on either side, and marble fountains running down its centre, and suddenly there break upon you the marble terraces, the white marble dome inlaid with precious stones, and set as it were in its turrets of red sandstone. It is by the way a debated point whether the design and the details of this mausoleum are of European or of native manufacture. There are in the Christian graveyard at Agra the tombstones of many Italians who lived and died at Akbar’s court, but my impression is that the whole is the work of native talent, a talent which has still numbers of living representatives. Then see what could be more emblematic of royalty than Akbar’s Camp at Futtehpore-Sikri? Windsor Castle indeed is a noble building, royally and proudly conspicuous, but it stands alone, whereas at Akbar’s Camp there were the whole paraphernalia of a king’s residence; the palace in which he himself dwelt, the hall in which he gave public audience, the place of private business, the Mosque in which he prayed, the minor palaces of his greater ministers, his gardens, his baths and his promenades. All these, thanks to a wonderful climate, are almost in as good preservation now as when Akbar dwelt in them, and although I do not say that we need in our day to imitate them, yet at least they give us lessons, not only in the science of architecture, but in that of good government also. Consider again the subject of some of the rock- cut temples of Western India—take that of Karli in the neighbour- hood of Bombay. The rocks there run north and south, and the temple, or crypt as you may call it, cut out of the solid rock, runs east and west, the entrance being at the west and the shrine at the east end. The interior is of great length and height, and is made The Inaugural Address. 9 up of a nave and two aisles. The sole light is by an aperture con- cealed from the spectator without, and high up at the west end. It is not of any great size, but it is so constructed as, on the day I visited it at least, to light up the whole interior without the aid of any artificial means. This temple is supposed to have been in ex- istence many years before the Christian era, and though we do not in these peaceful times in quiet England need a crypt for our temple, nor one inaccessible and outwardly invisible light for such crypt, yet these are examples, if and when they are needed, and the ex- istence of crypts in our own churches shows that such needs there have been. I have ventured to dwell on these far distant structures because, after all, the consideration of them does, I think, appertain properly to my subject, and because, if you will allow me to say so, I find it easier to myself to dwell on matters which have formed the subjects of personal travel and inspection, rather than on such as are subjects of mere speculation to me. But I turn to things that are probably more familiar to us all, and I will dwell fora moment upon that very familiar thing, our roadways. They are serious matters to some of us, and especially to those of us who dwell in this immediate neighbourhood. We are blessed with a traffic in freestone which is profitable to a few outsiders, which gives an ex- cellent finish say to law courts some hundred miles away from us, but which, so far from being of any benefit to us, is the cause at once of a very heavy taxation, of very bad roads, and of much rough and expensive journeying. In the parish of Monkton Farleigh, in the very direction in which this traffic is principally earried on, there are still to be seen the traces of a Roman road. This was laid down some sixteen hundred years ago, and this, in spite of wind and weather, plough and neglect, is still in some parts almost perfect. The materials are slabs of stone and eoncrete. Is there no lesson to be learnt from the use of such materials which have, under adverse circumstances, endured so long, when the modern system of Macadam has proved such a complete failure? I pass on to a more speculative topic, and I will speak briefly of the archeology, call it the history, of any one of our rural parishes ; and I think I can show how, from its earliest traceable 10 The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. period, it is in miniature a history of the progress of the whole country. I have been ferretting out, with the aid of far more skilful workmen than I am myself, the history of my own parish, and I give it because it is the only such history I am acquainted with, and because I have no doubt it is in its way typical of other such histories. I find that we had neither a local habitation nor a name until the time of Domesday, A.D. 1086. Then we were the property of a King’s Thane, a Saxon nobleman, and we had a popu- lation made up of so many servi, dordarii, and villani, perhaps seventy souls in all, reckoning five to each family. I suppose that at this time the whole community was practically in a state of personal servitude to the lord, but still there were elements of freedom in the status of the v2//ani and the Jordarii, who held their lands and tenements subject only to certain customary services. Our Saxon nobleman, however, soon fell a victim to what we may now call the land-hunger of certain of the Conqueror’s barons and our lands passed to the trusted family of the Bohuns, and they, for the repose of their only too rapacious souls, transferred them to the Priory of St. Pancras at Lewes, who founded upon them the Clugniac Priory, which was long established amongst us. Then some two hundred years later, or in the year 1294, we hear once more of our progress, and under the evidently gentle and industrious rule of the Priory we have materially thriven. The Servi, or actual Slave element, have entirely disappeared, their places are now oc- cupied by families of libere tenentes, the villains are still flourishing, the population is about the same, but the number of acres under cultivation has greatly increased, especially in the matter of pasture lands. In 1535, or some two hundred and forty years later still, we hear of ourselves again, and there is happily the same tale of progress in freedom and prosperity. We have a chief house and curtilage, a garden and a pigeonry; we have an addition of no less than twenty-one coterelli or cottagers to our population, and our Priory is possessed, in a home farm, of herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, of horses, mules, pigs, wheat, barley, oats, hay, and other dead stock in the shape of agricultural implements. But our very progress rang the knell of our master’s ruin. By the returns of The Inaugural Address. 11 their prosperity they signed their own death-warrant, and the family of the Somersets, the universal land-hungerers of this part of the country, ate us up, as the Zulus say. We were, before the Somersets devoured us, a community of customary tenants holding under one landlord, the Priory. We afterwards passed to the See of Salisbury, and were lorded over by a succession of tenants of that see, until about ten years ago, when our lands were converted into the freehold tenure on which they are now held. The customary tenants lingered on until quite recent times, and there is still just a trace of them ; but, speaking generally, the lands are all freehold and the cottagers tenants at will. This is shortly the history of eight hundred years of the existence of one particular parish, and surely there may be traced in it the history of all England. The comparative indepen- dence of the Saxon Thane, paying only his geld and his personal service—the rapacity, mixed with a certain religious superstition, of the followers of the Conqueror, taking without scruple on the one hand from the Saxon proprietor and giving without stint on the other hand to the Church for the benefit of their souls. The mild and industrious rule of the monks, turning the waste lands to profit, rearing flocks and herds, creating new industries, and gradually emancipating the agricultural tenant from a state of servitude to one of freedom and of even more substantiality than he enjoys at present. The spoliation of the industrious community of the monks, which in our case at least, had not even the allegation of corruption to justify it, and the absorption of their lands and goods for purposes of family and personal greed and aggrandisement. And finally the creation of the class of great landholders, absolutely free of their properties so long only as they are faithful subjects of the State. Surely here by the study of the archeology of one parish you find a type of the history of the country. Ladies and gentlemen, I have finished, and I trust that you will not have found the remarks I have made either inappropriate or too long. I have felt, I can assure you, throughout, very much in the position in which the celebrated Dr. Dodd once found himself. One day, at one of the universities, when he was innocently taking his walks abroad, he found himself pursued by a troop of undergraduates, who, to phrase 12 The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. it mildly, had been dining. He sought refuge up a tree, and from thence he was compelled, before he was released, to deliver a sermon. That, ladies and gentlemen, has been exactly my case. I was an innocent man, coming to day to enjoy, as we all shall shortly, the fruits of others’ learning, when I was captured by our Secretary here and others, was driven up this tree, and was compelled, as a condition of release, to deliver this address. The subject, if I may modestly so say has been some of the uses of antiquity, and, whatever you may think of my address, I am sure you will say with me, as has been said of adversity, that sweet are those uses. The Rry. Canon Jackson did not think Sir Charles was such a tyro in archzology as he professed to be. On the contrary, he had given them a very good specimen of his ability, and he hoped he would in future years pursue it and give them some more of the results on another occasion. He hoped, should he ever go back to India, that he would take particular notice of the monuments which they were told existed, but which they never found anyone able to give them any information about. Some said those monuments were connected with that at Stonehenge. As to Stonehenge, if anybody proposed to meddle with any of the stones, except just to lift them up—if anybody attempted to restore it, as some people had restored parish Churches, he would be the first to take a hammer and knock him on the head. There was a great difference between restoring and merely hoisting up a stone and setting it where they knew it really ought to stand. He had great pleasure in moving a vote of thanks to Sir Charles Hobhouse for his able address. The Rev. Canon Jones then proceeded to give a descriptive account of the principal objects of interest to be seen in the town of Bradford, and subsequently conducted a large party through the town, pointing out all that was most worthy of notice, beginning with the Parish Church ; then the Saxon Church; Church House; the Shambles; the Old Market Place; the site of St. Olave’s Chapel; Kingston House; Chapel on the Town Bridge; Chapel and Almshouses of St. Katharine ; Tithe Barn; St. Mary Chapel, Tory; and ending with Christ Church ; all of which we pass over —— The Dinner. 13 now without farther comment, as we hope to print Canon Jones’ short description of each of them at a future page of this Magazine. THE DINNER took place at the Swan Hotel, the President of the Meeting in the chair; when the usual loyal and complimentary toasts were given. The Rev. Canon Jonss, in returning thanks for the Bishop and Clergy, observed that it was twenty-four years ago since he first took part in the work of the Society, on the occasion of its first visit to Bradford, and he hoped he had contributed to its advancement ever since; he trusted, moreover, that those who came after the archeologists of the present day would .continue to carry on the study and promote the work of the Society. The Ruy. A. C. Surry, in returning thanks for the General Secretaries, expressed his sincere regret that his colleague—Mr. Charles Talbot, had felt compelled from ill-health to resign office. All those who had taken part in our Annual Meetings of late years would recollect how much Mr. Talbot had contributed by his architectural and archeological knowledge to the edification of the Members, more especially by his judicious remarks on the various Churches they visited. Mr. Talbot had also been a contributor to the pages of the Magazine, and had taken an active part in the working of the Society. It was a source of satisfaction, however, to be assured (and Mr. Talbot had written to him to that effect) that he would still continue to take a warm interest in the work of the Society, and would gladly do all in his power to aid it. The Society was happy, too, in securing as Mr. Talbot’s successor a gentleman so highly esteemed throughout the county as Mr. Medlicott, one who had long been an active member of the Com- mittee, and for many years had evinced a keen interest in the antiquities of Wiltshire. . The Local Secretary, Dr. Highmore, and his colleagues, Rev. F. Whitehead and Rev. W. N. C. Wheeler, were duly thanked for their indefatigable exertions in making preparations for the Meeting; and the toast of The Ladies was not forgotten by the President, a toast to which Sir Jon Hannaw replied in graceful terms. 14 The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. THE CONVERSAZIONE was held at the Town Hall, the President of the Meeting in the chair: when Mr. Cuartes Moors, F.G.S., gave a very able ad- dress, entitled “ Notes on Wiltshire Paleontology ”; and then Canon Jackson, F.S.A., in his happiest vein, read an excellent paper on “The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History.” As both these papers will appear in the Magazine, no farther mention need be here made of them, but to add that at their conclusion a vote of thanks was moved from the chair, and heartily responded to by the audience. SECOND DAY, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1oru. The archxologists, under the guidance of Canon Jonzs, left Bradford at ten o’clock in a long line of carriages, and first drove to Westwood Church and Manor House; then to Stowford Manor House, and then to Beckington Church, at all of which places Canon Jones pointed out the most noticeable features, and gave short epitomes of their respective histories, as will be seen in his notes farther on. At this point of the programme the Society was hospitably entertained by the Local Committee at a luncheon spread in the School-room. At its conclusion the Cuarrman (Sir C. Hobhouse) proposed the health of the Rev. 8. L. Sainsbury, the Rector of Beckington, and congratulated him on the very happy restoration of his Church, lately completed. The Rev. A. C. Smitu, on behalf of the Society, offered his best thanks to the Local Com- mittee of Bradford for the hospitable entertaimment given them that day. The Society had been very kindly received in many parts of the county, but in no place had they met with a warmer re- ception or a truer welcome than at Bradford. Dr. Hicumore having suitably responded, the company left the School-room, and turned their attention to the many interesting old houses of which Beckington seems full, more especially to the charming old buildings known as Beckington Castle, and the Grange. Thence to Seymour’s Court, Road Church, and North Bradley Church; all of which are merely enumerated here, as they will be severally described in Canon Jones’ notes, mentioned above. Third Day, Thursday, August, 11th. 15 THE CONVERSAZIONE took place at the Town Hall, at 8 o’clock, at which Sir Cuarizs Hosuovsz again presided. ‘The first paper was by the PresipEnt, entitled ‘Some account of Monkton Farleigh.” At its conclusion a vote of thanks to the author was moved by the Szcrzrary, and earried by acclamation. Then Mr. Freprricx Suu, F.S.A., read a paper, “ On Some notes of Gainsborough and his connection with Bradford,” for which the PresipEnT tendered him the thanks of the audience. Both of these interesting papers will appear in the Magazine in due course. As this was the last occasion of the assembling of the Society at Bradford during its present Meeting, the Rnv. A. C. Smrra begged to express, on the part of the Society, towards the close of a most happy and successful Meeting, cordial thanks, first to the town and neighbourhood of Bradford for the hearty welcome given to it: then to the Local Secretaries for the labour they had undergone in its behalf, and the arrangements they had so happily made: and last, though not least, to Sir Charles Hobhouse, who so kindly and so admirably discharged the duties of President of the Meeting at almost a moment’s notice. Srr Cuaxxes, in reply, proposed a vote of thanks to Canon Jones for the large amount of information he had conveyed to them, and for the pains he had taken in pointing out all that was best worth notice. THIRD DAY, THURSDAY, AUGUST llrn. The excursionists assembled at the Town Hall, at ten o’clock, and again under the able guidance of Canon Jonxs, first visited Holt Church; then Monkton Manor House; then Broughton Gifford Church. From hence they drove to Great Chalfield Manor House, which, of all the many excellent specimens’ inspected during the three days’ meeting, was incomparably the finest domestic building they had seen: and here they wandered up and down, inside and outside the house, never tired of admiring this splendid specimen of fifteenth century work. Then, by invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Fuller, the archeologists—by this time numbering about one hun- dred and twenty-five—were most hospitably entertained at luncheon 16 The Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting. in a large marquee. At its conclusion the PrusipenT expressed the hearty thanks of the Society to Mr. and Mrs. Fuller for the mag- nificent way in which they had entertained them ; while Mr. FutuEr, in reply, cordially welcomed the Society to Chalfield, and assured the company that he had been delighted so to receive them. Thence a drive to the old house at Wraxall; then to the Manor House and Chapel of St. Audoen: then to Chapel Plaister; and then to Monkton Farleigh, where tea and coffee were hospitably provided by the President, closed the excursion, and with it one of the most successful meetings which the Society has ever held. The Ethnology of Giltshive, as illustrated in the Blace-alames. By J. Picton, Esq., F.S.A. (Read before the British Archeological Association, at Devizes, August, 1880.) GAT the Congress of the British Archeological Association at Se Ky Yarmouth and Norwich last year I read a paper on “ Place Names in Norfolk,” which has since been published in the Journal. The subject is full of interest both to the antiquary and the philologist. Each county has its own peculiarities as to the origin and application of its local nomenclature, and I propose in the few following pages to enquire, as far as the brief space will permit, what light can be thrown by the study of the place-names in Wiltshire on the condition of the district, and the races by whom it has been successively occupied. These inquiries have always been attractive, but down to a very recent period they have been pursued in a very empirical fashion, By J. Picton, Esq., PSA. 17 calculated rather to throw ridicule on the study, than to lead to any satisfactory conclusions. Chronology, race, and language have been set at nought, and the most astounding guesses have been indulged in to bring together from any source, names and words between which there appeared any likeness, however superficial. Thus the common Anglo-Saxon name of Brimham has been derived from Hebrew Beth-Rimmon; and the Saxon Barrow or Bury from Hebrew Barruo, pit of lamentation. It is only of very recent years that the subject has been taken up with any regard to the principles of systematic or scientific inquiry. _ Camden published his “ Remaines concerning Britaine” in 1614. Verstegan’s “ Restitution of Decayed Intelligence” was issued in 1628. Both of these contain information of a very judicious character on English names. During the interval of more than two centuries, almost to the present day, little or nothing was added to our information, but more recently attention has been called to the subject by the publication of such works as “ Taylor’s Names and Places” (1864) ; Edmunds’s “ Traces of History in the Names of Places” (1869) ; Fergusson’s “Teutonic Name System” (1864) ; Joyce’s “Origin and History of Irish Names of Places” (1869) ; besides the works of Mr. Lower and Miss Young on Christian and Surnames indirectly bearing on the same subject. These works are of a general kind, and do not attempt to illustrate any particular district. There are also difficulties, to which I will presently allude, connected with the inquiry, which are hardly, if at all, noticed by the writers in question. The names of places scattered over the surface of our country may be compared to the geological stratification of the same surface, one layer overlying another until we arrive at the primitive formation ; and the prevalence of one or other of these gives its character to the mame system in the one case as to the physical aspect in the other. Thus in Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and Lincolnshire, a large pro- portion of the place-names are derived from a Danish source; in Durham and Cumberland a Scandinavian element is found, but most probably of Norwegian origin. In Cornwall the main element is formed by the Celtic of the old Cornish stock, In Wales and VOL. XX.—NO. LYIIL. c 18 The Bthnology of Wiltshire, as illnstrated in the Place-Names. the counties bordering thereon the basis of the place-names may be expected to be Cymric, whilst in many, probably the most of the others, the Celtic and Norse elements almost entirely disappear, and are replaced by nearly pure Anglo-Saxon. Amongst these latter Wiltshire stands conspicuous. Of course a large proportion of the place-names in every county are of comparatively modern origin, and present no difficulty. With these I do not propose to deal. My present subject is the names which are found in Domesday Book or a century or two later. If we take even a cursory glance at a map of the county, we find most of the names composed of a prefix and suffix, such as Salis-bury, Winter-bourne, Brad-ford, &. Now these suffixes, which constitute the substance of the names, qualified by the prefix, are in the great majority of cases perfectly intelligible in modern English. on, Ford, Burn or Bourne, Cot, Ham (home), Bridge, Brook, &c., are part and parcel of our daily speech. Many others which are now somewhat obsolete are easily explicable from the old forms of our Language. Such are Holt, Hurst, Shaw, Don, Bury, Worth, &e. The qualifying portion of the name is the prefix. Many of these prefixes are pure Saxon and easy to understand, such as Nor-ion, Easton, Sutton, or south town, taken from their relative position. Some from the surroundings, such as Hazle-bury, Alder-bury, Wood- borough, Hill-marton, Mil-ton, and others from various circumstances to which I shall presently refer. When every allowance is made for these, there remain a large number which cannot be thus resolved, and the question is, where are we to look for the solution? Some of the writers on the subject—and there are not many who have entered upon it at all—make very short work of it. If there is any difficulty they have only to invent a personal name, and the thing is done. Thus Chat-ham and Chat-moss are supposed to be derived from a person bearing the name of Chat. Frensham from one Fren or Frene. In other cases circumstances of the most un- likely character are assumed if the name happens to fit. Thus Keele, in Staffordshire—nearly in the centre of England—has been held to be so called from Keel a north-country word for a barge or ship, with which the place could not have the slightest connexion. By J. Picton, Esq., FSA. £9 Partney is said to be from pera-tun-ey, pear town by the water. It is scarcely worth while to waste time in examining absurdities of this kind. Where we cannot discover a clear and definite meaning within our reach, the best mode of solving the enigma is to confess our ignorance and seek for means of better information. There cannot be much doubt that a large number of the prefixes in English place-names are of Celtic origin, most probably of the Cymric variety ; but the Janguage from which they are derived has greatly changed in the course of ages, and is only very imperfectly represented by the modern Welsh. It is very unlikely and would be contrary to all history to suppose that when the Saxons conquered England by degrees and effected the settlement of the country they exterminated all the inhabitants. Such a circumstance has hardly happened in the history of the world. There was no break of con- tinuity. The conquerors in taking possession would naturally adopt the native appellations, modifying them to suit their own purposes. This is precisely what the Romans had done before them. Venta Belgarum and Sorbidunum are simply Cymric names with Latin suffixes. Nay, we may go further back than this. What took place both at the Roman and Saxon conquests would equally occur at the previous Celtic invasion, We are not to suppose that those we call the ancient Britons were the aboriginal inhabitants of this island. The Belgz and Atrebates, who occupied the present Wiltshire and Hampshire, were immigrants of no long standing. Both Cesar and Tacitus bear testimony to this, Czsar says, * Britannia pars interior ab iis incolitur quos natos in insul4 memoria proditum est. Maritima pars ab lis, qui prede ac belli inferendi causa, ex Belgis transierant.” (De Bell. Gall., Lib. vy.) Tacitus states “ Britanniam qui mortales initio coluerunt indigenz an advecti, parum compertum; in universum tamen estimanti, Gallos vicinum solum occupasse, credibile est.” (Vit Agricol.) ? 1 The interior of Britain is inhabited by native races as it is handed down by tradition ; the maritime parts by those who have passed over from Belgium for the sake of plunder or war. 2 Whether the people who first inhabited Britain were indigenous or immigrants, it-is hard to ascertain, but it is generally believed that the Gauls occupied the nearest coasts. c 2 20 The Ethnology of Wiltshire, as illustrated in the Place-Names. M. Littré, the great French philologist, speaking of the Celtic invasion of Western Europe, says “ parmi ces noms celtiques, il en est sans doute, qui n’ appartiennent pas a la langue des Celtes. Leur établissement dans la Gaule, si ancien 4 un point de vue, est moderne a un autre; ils y trouvérent des populations d’un developp- ment inférieur, et lon peut croire qu’ ils n’en expulsérent ni tous les hommes, ni tous les noms.” ! Modern investigation has pretty clearly established the fact that long preceding the Celtic immigration, the west of Europe was in- habited by a race of inferior development, probably of Euskarian or Esquimo affinity. The name of Britain, which is certainly not Celtic, has been traced to this source, and many names of places in Spain and the south of France bear testimony to the existence of a race which has, long ages ago, entirely passed away as a separate people. Let us now endeavour to apply these principles to the an- tiquities and nomenclature of Wiltshire. No county in the kingdom is richer, if so abundant, in prehistoric remains. They are dis- tributed over the surface, of all classes and periods, from the earliest rude attempts at habitations at Pen Pits, near Stourton, on the borders of Somerset, through the various descriptions of barrows, tumuli, ditches, and earthworks up to the noble relics of Avebury and Silbury and the magnificent structure of Stonehenge. The earliest pits and earthworks bear all the marks of an extremely rude and primitive people; that these people were conquered and driven westwards by the advancing Celt has every confirmation short of written records. Even at the present day the pits, the remains of primitive habitations which are found in abundance in Wales, bear traditionally the name of “ Cyttiau Gwyddelod,”’ the huts of the wild men or savages. The description of the Fenni given to us by Tacitus exactly describes a people of this class, and the name Fenni may without much violence be applied to the occupants of the Pen Pits. He 1“ Amongst these Celtic names, without doubt there are some which do not belong to the Celtic language. Their establishment in Gaul, so ancient from one point of view, is modern from another. They found there a population of an inferior development, and it may be believed that they neither exterminated all the people nor all the names.” By J. Picton, Esq., F.8.A. 21 says “Fennis mira feritas, faeda paupertas; non arma, non equi, non penates; victui herba, vestitui pelles, cubile humus; sola in sagittis spes, quas inopid ferri, ossibus asperant.” “ Nothing can equal the ferocity of the Fenni, nor is there any thing so disgusting as their filth and poverty. Without arms, without horses, and without a fixed place of abode, they lead a vagrant life; their food the common herbage, the skins of beasts their only clothing; and the bare earth their resting-place. For their chief support they depend on their arrows; to which for want of iron, they prefix a pointed bone.” This is an exact description of all savages of the stone age, whose relics are continually found under tumuli of the earliest construc- tion. Now what I maintain is this: that taking all analogy and history for our guide, it is scarcely possible that there should not be some remains of the language of this primitive people embedded in the nomenclature of the country. This is a question which has attracted some notice, and future investigation may throw some light upon it. The names of the prominent features of a country, the hills, valleys and rivers are usually the most ancient. We find most of them in Wiltshire may be referred to a Cymric origin. There are no high hills demanding to be specially noticed in the nomenclature. Ingpen, near the junction of the three counties of Wiltshire, Hamp- shire and Berkshire, 1011 feet high, is the most prominent. Its name in Cymric—“ the head of the narrow valley ”—is sufficiently explanatory. Hack Pen Hill may also be traced to a Celtic source. Combe, Cym, Cwm (a hollow), is the suffix to many place-names, Hall-combe, Hippens-combe, Stitch-combe, &c. Some of the rivers bear Cymric names: the Churn (swift), the two Avons (flowing water), the Frome (fuming), the Wiley, probably from Gwy (water). Some are Anglo-Saxon, such as the Bourne, Og-bourne Ald-bourne, Flagham Brook, Swill Brook. There are others of which the origin is at present insoluble, as Key, Cole, Kennet, or Chenete, Nadder, Stour. There are some names unmistakeably Celtic, such as Pen, Penridge, Penglewood, Calne (anciently Cawna), Cym. Cawn (reeds) ; 22 The Ethnology of Wiltshire, as illustrated in the Place-Names. Huish (Domesday Hiwi), Cym. Hwch (swine) ; Chiltern (Domesday Cheltre), Cym. Cel-tre (a place of refuge). To the Celts, whether Cymry or Belgas, succeeded the Romans, who have left their marks unmistakably on the surface of the land. That they conquered and colonized the district is certain, but they have not left behind them the magnificent works constructed in other quarters. There are no grand casfra such as Pevensey; in Sussex, Richborough, in Kent, and Burgh Castle, in Suffolk. The camps of Vespasian and Constantius Chlorus are merely earthen entrenchments. The Romans appear to have utilised the earthworks they found in the country, of which they were many, the land having been very populous before their arrival. The names they gave their stations were Cymric with Latin terminations Corinium (now Ciren- cester), probably from its circular form cér; Sorbiodunum, Sarum,or Salisbury (Saresbury) ; Cym. siriaw-din, the pleasant hill ; Durnovaria (Dorchester), Cym. Dwr-novion, the flowing water. There were six Roman roads crossing the county. Ist, a road from Bath (Aqua Solis), along the western side to Cirencester (Corinium), forming part of the great Fossway extending across the island from the English Channel to the German Ocean; 2nd, a voad from Salisbury westward, to Wells (ad Aquas) ; 3rd, a road ealled Julian Street, running due east from Bath, passing the base _of Silbury Hill, and continuing by Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) by what is called the Devil’s Causeway, to the passage over the Thames at Staines ; 4th, two roads running eastward from Salisbury, one N.E, to. Silchester, the other S.W. to Winchester (Venta Belgarum), Cym. Caer-gwent; 5th, a road 8.W. from Salisbury to Dorchester; 6th, Ermin Street, running from Cirencester, S.E. to Spine (Speen) and Silchester. The Roman roads (strata) were called by the Saxons streets from the fact of their being paved, and thus they can usually be traced by the names of the towns on their lines. In Wiltshire, several of the roads besides those mentioned have preserved the name of séreet, as Long Street, Short Street, Broad Street, High Street, &. There are several Strat-ford, Strat-ton, and several Stantons, but except the stations already mentioned the Roman camps seem to have been By J. Picton, Esq., F.S.A. 23 mere earthworks. Old Sarum, which was no doubt occupied and strengthened by the Romans, was originally a British stronghold, as its formation indicates. To the Romans in their influence on the nomenclature succeeded the Saxons. They arrived in Wiltshire about fifty years after the first landing in Kent, and founded the kingdom of the West Saxons by the victory of Cerdic, A,D. 508. Under his successors, Cynric and Ceawlin, this kingdom was greatly extended. Wiltshire is honoured hy having been the scene of the struggles of the great Alfred and of his final victory over the Danish invaders at Edington, The Danes never obtained a settlement in Wiltshire. There is an almost utter absence of Danish names. The termination Jy, so very numerous in Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and wherever the Danes obtained a permanent footing, is here altogether wanting. There are no tofts, thorpes, nesses, thwaites, hoes. The basis of the names is almost entirely Saxon. There is also another difference from the nomenclature of the eastern counties. When the Saxons first invaded England they came in tribes and families, headed by their patriarchal leaders. Each tribe was called by their leader’s name with the termination ing, signifying family ; and where they settled they gave their patriarchal name to the maré or central point round which they ‘clustered, frequently adding the suffix tom, or town. Hence the prevalence of such names as Billinge, Billington, Wellington, Darlington, Allington, &c. Now this class of names is not entirely wanting in Wiltshire, but it prevails only to a limited extent; the reason I apprehend is this, that during the time which had elapsed hefore they crossed the country and reached Wiltshire, the tribal organisation had been to a great extent lost. One feature which would strike the invaders is the numerous earthworks which are scattered in such profusion over the surface of the county. These were very freely made use of and occupied for purposes of defence. The Saxon term durh was applied generally to any earthen entrenchments. Many of these had been thrown up previously, either by the Britons or their predecessors. Some had been constructed or adopted and improved by the Romans. 24 The Ethnology of Wiltshire, as illustrated in the Place-Names. Some were no doubt formed by the Saxons themselves, but they were all included under the general term of Bury, of which the examples are very numerous as suffixes to the place-names. The prefixes are sometimes proper names not always of a prehistoric character. Malms-bury is said to take its name either from a British king Malmutius, or the Scottish monk Maidulph, who founded the monastic community afterwards developed into the celebrated abbey. Amesbury is supposed, with considerable show of reason, to have been the head-quarters of Ambre or Ambrosius, a British king who dis- played considerable gallantry in resisting the Saxon invaders. In Domesday Book it is called Ambresberie. Wan-borough and Wans- dyke are no doubt connected with the traditions of the hero Woden, or Odin, so celebrated in the Saxon and Norse legends. His name is connected with many localities in various parts of the kingdom, such as Wednesbury, Wednesfield, Wensley, &c. The most frequent suffix in the place-names of Wiltshire is fon, indicating the thoroughly Saxon predominance in the county. Ton originally meant a simple enclosure, and in this sense it is still used dialectically in Scotland. It was then extended to a cluster of houses, and finally to a town in the modern sense. The Saxon towns usually stood at the intersection of cross-roads, or at the fork formed by the junction of three, The tons in Wiltshire are very numerous, with all sorts of prefixes, some Saxon, some Cymric, some of which the meaning is not obvious, some descriptive, others patronymic. Ham is another Saxon suffix, common in the county, though not so numerous as the fons. The Saxon Ham, corresponding with Ger. Heim, primarily meant the homestead, the cluster of buildings constituting the farm and is the origin of the endearing associations connected with the English ome. The prefixes are, of course, various. Chippenham (in Domesday Chepeham) indicates that it was a market or trade-mart. J/e/késham has been explained to mean the milk or dairy farm, but it is more likely to have been adopted from a personal name. The number of streams which water the county, sufficiently ex- plain the frequency of the suffixes Bourne and Ford. There were ‘several Winter-bournes; small streams, dry in summer, but forming By J. Picton, Esq., PSA. 25 torrents by the winter rains. Swill-Brook, the main source of the Thames, takes its name from the abundance of its waters, Don, which forms the termination of a few place-names, means an undulating surface, in modern English, Downs. The suffix cot, in such names as Hilcot, Wilcot, Westcott, &c,, scarcely needs any explanation. . _ There are a few names terminating in Zow, such as Winterslow, Chedglow. This termination is very common in the Northern Mercian counties, and signifies a tumulus or Saxon barrow, usually thrown up on a low hill, but seeing that these /ows are given in Domesday as /ei or Jey, it does not appear that the word was ever so applied in Wiltshire. Lade, an artificial watercourse, is found in Cricklade and Lechlade, the latter on the edge of Gloucestershire. Worth, in Anglo-Saxon has several meanings, but is generally applied to a farm or land fronting a public way. The number of these in Wiltshire is small, Winkworth, Chelworth, Brinkworth, and one or two others. Wick, as a village, is common in some counties, but is very sparse in Wiltshire. Barwick, Wadswick, and Berwick are almost the only instances. There are many other Saxon terms used which are still quite familiar, such as Field, Mere, Hill, Head, Cliff, Ridge, Wood, Bridge, Brook, Edge, Well; and others, equally good English, but now somewhat obsolete, as Stead, still preserved in home-stead; Holt, a wood; Shaw, a grove; Stock, a wooden structure; Hurst, another term for a wood ; Cock, a diminutive—little. There a few place-names which are somewhat Danish in their aspect, such as Neston, Costoe, Keynes, but these are not in Domes- day, and are of comparatively modern introduction. Near Cricklade ‘there is a stream called Dance or Danes Brook, and a locality near is called Godby Stalls. These may possibly have some traditional eonnection with the irruptions of the Danes. The termination ey is attached to many names. It might have been the Danish ey, for island, or the Saxon ea, water, but scarcely any of them are found in Domesday, and are not of very ancient date. 26 The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. The Norman conquest effected little in the introduction of new place-names, but it added further suffixes, in many cases derived from the Norman lords of the soil, such as Wootton Basset, Compton Basset, Shipton Moyne, Easton Grey, Yatton Keynell, Compton Chamberlain, Upton Scudamore. Devizes is supposed to have de- rived its name Devise from a supposed division of the manor between the Crown and the Bishop of Salisbury, but history does not bear out this statement. The first charter was granted by the Empress Matilda about 1136, under the name of “ De Divisis,” at a time when certainly no division had or could have taken place. It is called in ancient records, Divisis, Diyise, De Vies. Leland calls it The Vies. The true solution appears to be the fact that the castle was built at the exact point of division between the three manors of Rowde, Cannings, and Pottern. Hence the appellations Castrum de Divisis, or ad Divisis, or simply Divise. The above short notes may serve to direct attention to a subject connected with the history of our country which will probably im- part additional interest to the topographical notices of the county and of the places visited, The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A.* Say R. Thomas Fuller, the Church Historian, in one of his works SS i called “ England’s Worthies,” has preserved short memoirs of the. most remarkable individuals, or those whom he considered to be such, in English history generally. These are arranged under * This paper was prepared for, and read at, an Evening Conversazione of the Wiltshire Archeo- logical Society, at Bradford-on-Avon, 9th of August, 1881. By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.8.A. 27 the different counties. In most of the counties by far the greater number of his “ Worthies” are men: and in Wiltshire he appears to have been able to find only three ladies deserving of being noticed in his book. It was published in 1662. Time has made some additions to that very small number : and there are also a few names belonging to earlier periods which he might have mentioned, but did not. There are several works that record the history of English ladies. We have Mrs. Green’s “ Lives of the most distinguished in rank, the Queens and Princesses.” There is also “ Ballard’s Memoirs of Learned Ladies”; also plenty of memoirs of, or by, others who have been conspicuous in Society. But the names selected for notice in the present paper will only be those of Wiltshire ladies who either were born in the county, or belonged to it by lifelong residence and connexion. Also, only those whose names are to be found here and there in different printed works relating to Wiltshire, and are therefore, so far as that goes, historical. Of course there must have been at all times ladies who were ornaments to Society, clever, witty, and otherwise eminent in their day. But that is quitea different thing from being eminent after their day. If you wish to be, I will not say, eminent, but even named at all in time to come, you must bequeath to posterity somes thing more than merely your name. There is a story somewhere of a gentleman who was going on his travels to the Hast, whose friends loaded him with all sorts of commissions. For one he was to get this; for another that. Some supplied him with money for the purpose; others forgot to do so. As he was steaming along the Mediterranean, and near the end of his voyage, he began to think it time to put his commissions in order, and, if possible, reduce the number of them. So one day he took out all the papers and laid them in a row on the taffrail of the ship, On those papers that had come to him with money enclosed he laid the money ; but the unprepaid commissions, having nothing to keep them down, were blown away by the first breeze. That is very much the case with ourselves and our chances of future reputation. We may fill our part in life very creditably, be clever, popular, perhaps famous, in 28 The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. our day; but if we have done nothing that shall, as it were, fasten our name and provide for its enduring; in short, if we are not weighted, we shall be, like those light papers, mercilessly and un- ceremoniously puffed away into oblivion. Hamlet allows but a very short time even for a great man to be remembered ; and, even then, not without a certain expense on his own part. “QO heavens! dead two months and not forgotten yet! Then there’s hope a great man’s memory may outlive his life half-a- year. But, by our lady, he must build churches then; or else he shall suffer not thinking on.” So true it is that people whose names are in everybody’s mouth one year almost cease to be talked of in the next. “The present eye praises the present object.” “ After one well-graced actor leaves the stage, all eyes are bent on him that enters next.” The ladies must please to observe that this applies to them as well as to men, because “ All the world’s a stage, and all the men—and women—merely players.” But now about this eminence we are speaking of, How is it to be obtained by the ladies? One of the Roman historians, commonly read at schools, tells us that eminence is to be acquired in two ways, either in Peace or in War. Two courses open to the ladies. Among those who have done us the honour of attending here this evening, there may possibly be some resolute and ambitious spirits who ad- mire, and not only admire, but would like to take part in the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war. It is more likely that most of them would be quite satisfied to bind their brow with the olive of peace rather than the laurel of battle. But there have been times and may be again, when ladies have had to face great personal danger, and how they acquitted themselves in this county you shall hear in the course of my story. Among the ways of Peace, none in former times helped more to bring ladies into an enduring celebrity, than works of Piety and Religion; not merely by their leading such lives themselves, but by providing Institutions for the maintenance of Religion for (as they fondly hoped) all time to come. Of this we have several cases in Wiltshire. The Monastery of Wilton, for an Abbess and nuns, was founded EE eGVOv—e— ee By the Rev. Canon J. EB. Jackson, F.8.A. 29 through the influence of a lady, Atrripa, Dowager, Queen of the Anglo-Saxon King Edgar. The Monastery for ladies at Ambresbury was founded and en- dowed by another Royal lady, AtBurea, sister of King Egbert. The Monastery of Lacock, for an Abbess and nuns, was founded by Eta, Countess Dowager of Salisbury, who also founded another at Hinton Charterhouse. There were other Nunneries at Maiden Bradley and St. Mary’s, Kington St. Michael. Now let me call attention to this. Wilton House and most of the lands there formerly the property of the Abbess, now belong to the Earl of Pembroke ; Ambresbury to Sir E. Antrobus; Lacock to Mr. Talbot. Whatever territorial influence now attaches to those gentle- men, attached in former times to the lady owners. These lady-heads of Religious Houses were landowners of many thousand acres. At this very place at which we are meeting, the Manor of Bradford, with a good deal of land, and the appointment to six or seven neighbouring Churches then included in it, belonged to the Abbess of Shaftesbury. But consider the true character of these places. These famous monasteries were not merely the abodes of a few contemplative nuns, as is often supposed, but they were first-class places of education, to which were sent, not only from the immediate neighbourhood, but from all parts, young ladies of the very first families, even of the Blood Royal, It is on record that Mary, sixth daughter of Edward I., Isabella of Lancaster, and others were brought up at Ambresbury ; _ Matilda, Queen of Henry I., at Wilton. The lists that remain to --us show that most truly “ Kings’ daughters were among their honourable women.” There they and hundreds of young persons of good family were trained up to learn not merely female accomplish- ments, but various useful domestic arts, solid practical work. They were taught what so many young persons now-a-days, when their education is called finished, begin to learn for themselves, medicine, surgery, confectionery, cookery, the general management of house- holds, and the duties of the rich to the poor; all this under the orderly superintendence of piety and religion. Now when itis recol- lected that this training was undergone, not at a boarding-school in a _ town, but at the very houses of the richest and largest land-owners, : 30 The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. we must come to this conclusion: that these Lady Ahbbesses, being Mistresses of the soil, and having the control over the young female mind, were largely responsible for giving the right tone to the female character, and consequently for the result and effect upon English society, which depends so much upon that character. We have, fairly preserved, if not quite complete, lists of the names of the influential and important ladies who ruled these establishments, but whether their names had come down to us or not, speaking of them in a general way and as an order or class, I hold that it was one of real eminence, and well deserving not only the notice but the emphatic commendation of history. Of one only among them, a few words. The Earldom of Salisbury (i.e., not of the present city, but the older Salisbury, Old Sarum) was a title held by two or three families in succession ; the first being that of Devernvx, in the reign of King Stephen. There had been two Earls, when the title fell to an only daughter, Ena. She married William Longespee, who in her right became Earl. Upon his death she reigned alone in her castle of Old Sarum ; and in fact ruled the county, for she filled the office of High Sheriff for seven or eight years. At last, being weary of feudal dignity and its burdens, she retired to one of the monasteries she had built, and became Abbess of Lacock, where she died, as it is said, at nearly 100 years of age. Of Wilton and Ambresbury monasteries no part even of the building remains; but Lacock Abbey still stands a witness to the memory and good deeds of this eminent lady of Wiltshire history. So much of the land, so many of the parishes, having belonged to these ladies, we are no doubt indebted to them for some of our parish Churches; those, for instance, that stand on the estates for- | merly theirs. That spirit is by no means yet extinct. We have in our own day ladies still living who at their own sole cost have built or re-built Churches; and it is but just and fair to the ladies in general to say that in all good works of that kind they are almost always found to take the greatest interest and an active part. Under the head of Religious Foundations we must include Alms- houses, places of refuge for the worn out and feeble. In the village By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.8.A | 31 of Heytesbury, just beyond Warminster, there still stands, occupied and flourishing, a fine old house founded and very richly endowed in the reign of King Edward IV., by Marcarer Lapy HuncErrorp and BorrEavx, widow of Robert, second Lord Hungerford, of Farley Castle, near this town. She was the wealthy heiress of the old Cornish family, the Lords Botreaux. Her husband and son being, during the Wars of the Roses, on the Lancastrian, that is the losing side, her life was full of trouble. There is a great deal about her in Hoare’s History of South Wilts; and among other curious documents is one attached to her will, in which she very sorrowfully recapitulates all the ‘expense and loss with the causes and oceasions of the same which she had borne in this great season of adversities which have befallen in this land to herself, her children and her friends; especially in ransoming those who had been taken prisoners, and in redeeming: estates that had been forfeited. Also when she had been sent for safety by order of the King to the Abbey of Ambresbury, all her costly goods and furniture were destroyed by a fire.” In shorta very lamentable story. She left considerable estates for the endow- ment of the Hospital, which it has enjoyed for above five hundred years. At Corsham there is another fine old Almshouse, close to the gates of Lord Methuen’s park, founded by another Margaret Lady Hun- gerford, three hundred years later than the first. She was by birth daughter and co-heiress of William Halliday, a wealthy Alderman of London, and Corsham estate was part of her share. Her husband was a Sir Edward Hungerford, also of Farley Castle. To another lady this county is indebted for a much larger and more general gift, the almshouse at Froxfield, near Mar)borough, for fifty widows ; twenty of them being widows of clergymen, and thirty, of laymen. The foundress was Saran, Ducuess or Somerset, widow of John, 4th Duke, who died 1675. His family at that time were owners of Tottenham and Savernake. The Duchess’s own name had been Alston. She died in 1692, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. She also founded another charity called the “ Broad Town Charity”; under which a certain number of Wiltshire boys are ap- prenticed to trades. ‘There is a very fine full-length i of her in the dining-hall of Brasenose College, Oxford. 32 The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. I had the curiosity, for the purpose of this paper, to go through a volume of Wiltshire charities, and it appears that beside these larger foundations just mentioned, there are about one hundred and forty charitable bequests, of various amounts, all made by ladies. The next case to be mentioned is one which cannot be placed under any particular head, because it is of a peculiar kind, and in this county certainly unique. It is a charity very well known in the neighbourhood of Chippenham and Calne; a charity on a very good foundation, and known by the name of “ Maud Heath’s Causeway.” ! In the reign of King Edward IV. one Mrs. Marixpa or Mavp Heath, said by tradition to have begun life as a market-woman, being sore hindered from getting her eggs to market, left certain houses and lands, the rents of which were to make and maintain a pitched causeway across what was then a very swampy district, for about four miles, from Chippenham to Wick Hill, near Bremhill. A column on that hill was erected some years ago, by the Marquis of Lansdowne and Mr. Bowles, the poet, in memory of this usefully benevolent old dame. For surely this is a most useful and rational sort of benevolence. May it not be called a defect in our highway system, that, whilst the roads are maintained, as they are, in excellent condition for the more pleasant travelling of those who keep carriages and horses, footpaths are very much forgotten, and the poor market- wives of the present day are left, in bad winter weather, to struggle along through the mud as they best can? So far at least as North Wilts is concerned, where sometimes the soil is very wet and sticky, it is what the people call “ desperate bad travelling ” for humble folk who use their own legs for the purpose. And so, as in my winter’s walks I often sigh for Maud Heath’s Causeway, I take this opportunity of reckoning her among the eminent ladies in Wiltshire history ; which indeed, in one sense, she certainly is; for there she sits, a figure in stone, as large as life, with her basket on her lap, and in the costume of her period, 56 feet up in the air, on the top of the column alluded to. Of the ladies next to be named, as having earned eminence in 1See Wilts Archeological Magazine, vol. i., p. 251. ee —— Ts = By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jachson, F-8.A. 83 the ways of Peace, some have been conspicuous by the accident of high birth and position, some by their literary merit, some for the rather romantic incidents of their career. It is most convenient to name them in chronological order ; and please to bear in mind that we are speaking only of those who belong to our county. We begin at the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Everybody has heard those celebrated verses (written, not by Ben Jonson, but by William Browne, author of the Pastorals) ' upon Mary Stpvzy, sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and by marriage CounrEss or Pemsroxsg, and mother of the Earl of Pembroke of that day :— “Underneath this sable herse Lies the subject of all verse, Sidney’s sister, Pembroke’s mother: Death, ere thou hast slain another Learn’d and wise and fair as she, Time will throw a dart at thee. Marble piles let no man raise To her name; for, after days, Some kind woman, born as she, Reading this, like Niobe, Shall turn marble, and become Both her mourner and her tomb.” This lady is spoken of by contemporaries (by the poet Spenser among others) as a model of excellence, resembling in form and spirit her brother Philip; but as to her learning, it turns out that she was rather a patroness of poets and scholars than much of a performer herself in that line. She is said to have assisted her brother Philip in his Arcadia, a long wearisome kind of novel, such as novels then were, but nevertheless written in good wholesome sterling old English, and containing many beautiful ideas and passages. Some of the verses in it are said to have been written by her. If so, there is no particular reason for regretting that she did not write more. The epitaph just recited is very pretty, but without wishing to detract in the least from merit justly due, it may be observed that one rather mistrusts praise extravagantly bestowed ; 1The epitaph is found in the MS. volume of poems by W. Browne in the Lansdowne MS., No. 777. VOL, XX.—=NO. LVIIL. D 34 Lhe Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. and that this famous epitaph when sifted does seem rather extrava- gant, for the plain English of it is, that so long as the world shall last the like of her shall never again be seen, and that there was no oceasion to erect a stone memorial to her, because some other lady would, reading those lines, like Niobe, be so very accommodating as to turn into stone and so provide one.! The world has probably produced since this amiable Countess’s time many as “ learn’d and fair and wise as she,’ but the memory of them has perished for want of a few pretty lines. QureEN Jane SEymour was born at Wulfhall, an old manor house (of which a portion still remains near the Savernake Station), the home of her father, Sir John Seymour. There you may also still see a very long and curious old barn in which the people danced at her wedding. The hooks from which the tapestry was hung are still in the walls. She was sister of the Protector Somerset. The Protector’s second wife is next to be named, the Lapy ANNE SranuHore, not a native, but an adopted lady of the county, mistress for the time of the Seymour house at Savernake and Wulfhall. This lady was the cause of great domestic trouble and partly of her husband’s downfall. The Protector had a younger brother Thomas, Lord Sudeley, who married Katherine Parr, the Dowager Queen of Henry VIII. Here arose a difficulty. Anne Stanhope was wife of the elder brother, who was virtually King of England, and she refused to carry the train of the Queen Dowager, wife of the younger brother. -So from the ladies’ quarrel as to which should walk out first, the schism spread to the two husbands. Jealousies and dislike ensued ; and Thomas was sent to the block. In a very little time the Protector followed him : so, (as Dr. Fuller in his quaint way says) “ what with this jostling for precedence, and what between the train of the Queen and the long gown of the Duchess, they raised so much dust at the Court, as at last to put out the eyes of both husbands. Women’s brawls men’s thralls.” Wulfhall supplies us with another lady who was rather remarkable, ? It is fair to add (what the writer was not aware of at the time of reading this paper) that Gifford the critic had pronounced the second stanza to be a “ paltry addition.” See Notes and Queries, 6th S., iv., 258. eS SS ee = SEE ror ——s- = By the Rev. Canon J, HE. Jackson, F.S.A. 35 After the Protector’s death his son, the Earl of Hertford, married for his first wife poor Lady Catharine Grey, sister of Lady Jane Grey. The marriage displeased Queen Elizabeth, who sent them to the Tower, where Lady Catharine very soon died. The Earl then married a widow, Frances Howard, of the Bindon Branch of that old aristocratic family. The history of Frances Howard, before the Earl of Hertford met with her, is curious. Notwithstanding her fine pedigree, she had married first a vintner or wine seller’s son, one Mr. Prannell. This gentleman had been so awe-struck at marrying so grand a lady, that he actually wrote a letter to Secretary Walsingham, apologising for his own audacity. However this first husband died very early, and left her all his money. She then listened to the addresses of Sir George Rodney, of Somersetshire ; but before anything came of that, she had met with the Earl of Hertford, just a widower, where- upon she left Sir George Rodney out in the cold. Sir George was really in love with her: and not being able to bear up against his disappointment, he went to Ambresbury, where the Earl and Countess of Hertford then lived, stopped at the village inn, wrote to her a paper of verses in his own blood, and then ran himself through with his sword. During her married life with the Earl of Hertford, Frances Howard used often to indulge in discourse about her own family, and talk in a rather ostentatious way about her two grandfathers, the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Buckingham ; how the one had done this and the other that. Sometimes when she was in this humour, the Earl, her husband, would stop her with something of this kind—“ Ah, Frances, Frances, but how long is it since thou didst marry the vintner’s son?” The Earl died, leaving her a large jointure of £5,000 a year. She then married again, and, mounting a step higher in the world, became the wife of the Duke of Richmond and Lenox. He also died before her, when she determined to fly at still higher game. King James I. was then a widower, and she gave out in society, in order that it might reach the King’s ears, that she had made up her mind never to eat again at the table of a subject. But this bait did not catch the old King, so that she D2 36 The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. missed her aim; but she nevertheless kept her word, and observed her vow to the last. There is a fine portrait of this singularly eminent Duchess of Richmond, late Hertford, late Prannell, at Longleat—a full-length, in black dress with a starched ruff, and a long staff in her hand. Her air is somewhat domineering and imperious, quite corresponding with her biography. Next, in our show, comes a very different personage, a native, I believe, of Fonthill, Lapy Erzanor Avp.ey, wife of Sir John Davizs, of Tisbury. She was simply a half-crazy enthusiast, who followed the dangerous business of prophesying. Her rank and connexion made her notorious, and her denunciations against men in power in the days of the Commonwealth created some confusion and brought her into trouble. The title of the first of her two printed books is, Eleanor Audley’s Prophesies. Amend, Amend, Amend. Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.” This is in verse and an extraordinary rhapsody. The other book is called “ Strange and Wonderful Prophecies by the Lady Eleanor Audley, who is yet alive and lodgeth in Whitehall : which she prophesied 16 years ago, for which she was confined in the Tower and Bedlam: with Notes on the prophecies and how far they are fulfilled concerning the late King’s Government, armies and people of England. 1649.” She suffered a rigorous imprison- ment, and died in 1652.! She is followed, after a long interval of one hundred years, by another literary lady, but of a better stamp—the CountTEss oF Hertrorp, known by three volumes of correspondence with the Countess of Pomfret. She was by birth a Thynne of Longleat, granddaughter of Thomas, first Viscount Weymouth, and wife of Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford, who in 1748 became (the seventh) Duke of Somerset. They lived at the Castle at Marl- borough, afterwards the Inn, now the College. She patronized Thomson of the Seasons, and Shenstone, and is mentioned under certain fictitious names in the works of Dr. Watts and Mrs. Rowe. 1 The following letter to this lady, lately discovered, presents a rather ungentle portrait of her, by some aggrieved contemporary :— ‘©1626, May. Brooke to Lady Eleanor Davies. Reproaches her for abuse of his wife aud inno- cent child. Declares she has abandoned all goodness and modesty, is mad, ugly, blinded with pride of birth, &c. Threatens to scratch a mince-pie out of her, and wishes her, as the most horrible of curses, to remain just what she is,’”’—(Domestic Calendar, State Papers, James I.) By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.8.A. 87 It was through this Countess of Hertford’s influence with Queen Caroline, that the Poet Savage was saved from the gallows for having killed a man. Southey, in his book called ‘“ The Doctor,” has an interesting chapter upon this amiable lady, who died in 1754. Another literary lady lived about the same time, Miss JANE Coutinr. She was one of the daughters of the Rev. Arthur Collier, Rector of Langford, near Salisbury, a clergyman of much celebrity in his day, whose life has been written in a separate volume. Miss Jane was a quick-witted observant young lady, and a good Latin and Greek scholar; and the use to which she turned her scholarship and shrewdness was to write a satirical little book called “ The Art of ingeniously Tormenting”; containing “ (1) Rules for the Husband, &e.; (2) Rules for the wife, &e.; and (3) General Rules, for plaguing a// your acquaintance.” In 1777 died a lady of much celebrity in her day, the Ducnzss oF Qurensperry. She was, by birth, Lady Catharine Hyde, second daughter of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, and was born at their family: place, Purton, near Swindon. Her husband, the Duke of Queens- berry, was at that time owner of, and lived at, Ambresbury. Her beauty and wit are mentioned by some of the poets of the day, especially Gay and Prior, the latter of whom wrote a rather famous ballad about her, beginning “Fair Kitty, beautiful and young.” She corresponded with Horace Walpole and Dean Swift, and judging from some of her letters, she appears to have been rather an original. Gay passed much of his time at Ambresbury, before the Duchess of Queensberry was acquainted with Swift; but the Duchess wishing to know him desired Gay to write from her house an invitation to Swift, which Gay did. To this she added a postscript :— I would fain have you come to Ambresbury. I can’t say you'll be welcome, for I don’t know, and perhaps shall not like you; but if I do not, you shall know my thoughts as soon as I do myself.” Swift did not make his appearance, so Gay writes a more pressing invitation, in which he says :—“I think her so often in the right that you will have great difficulty in persuading me that she is in the wrong. The lady of the house is not given to show civility to those she does not like. She speaks her mind and loves truth. But I say no 38 The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. more, till I know whether her Grace will fill up the rest of the paper.” Her Grace did fill it up, and in this way :—-“ Write I must, particularly now I have an opportunity to indulge my predominant spirit.of contradiction. I do in the first place contradict most things Mr. Gay says of me to deter you from coming here; which if you do, I hereby assure you that unless I like my way better, you shall have yours, and in all disputes you shall convince me, if you can. Pray come, that I may find out something wrong, for I, and I believe most women, have an inconceivable pleasure in finding out any fault, except their own.” It does not appear that Dean Swift ever ventured to encounter this lively antagonist. There is an engraved portrait of the Duchess of Queensberry in Sir Richard Hoare’s Modern Wilts,” which seems to have been taken when she fully deserved the description with which Prior’s ballad begins, “ Fair Kitty, beautiful and young.” She died in 1757. In the following year, 1788, died another lady, a native of -of Devonshire, but by her marriage connected with this town of Bradford. This was the famous Miss CuuptEicH, whose career was a very extraordinary one, and the talk of the whole country. I do not exactly reckon her among the Worthies of Wilts, but she was certainly eminent in one sense. She had a place at Court as Maid of Honour to the then Princess of Wales, and when very young she married privately a Mr. Hervey, brother of the Earl of Bristol. From him she separated very soon, and after twenty-five years, still remaining at Court, and Mr. Hervey being still alive, she married the Duke of Kingston, from whom the fine old house in this town takes its name. The Duke dying, left her all his estates for her life; but all his money absolutely for her own. The relatives of the Duke of course did not like this, and contested it. They procured proof of her first marriage with Mr. Hervey, which had never been legally dissolved, and then brought against her an action for bigamy, intending to shew that she could not lawfully be the wife of the Duke, and so to defeat the will. The trial took place before the House of Lords, and for five days was the great sight in London, being attended by enormous crowds in-doors and out. She had been very beautiful, but by this time there was not much of ee ee EEE EEE eee es LL UU mm By the Rev. Canon J, E. Jackson, F.S.A. 39 that left. She came dressed in deep mourning, attended by four young ladies in white, as maids of honour. The end of it was that she was found guilty; but it so happened that, after all, this had no effect upon her fortune, for it was found that the Duke’s will had been so carefully worded that they could not disturb it. The magazines of the day record many of her doings, which do not at all appear to have been of a vicious kind, but rather those of a very wealthy lady, who was at the same time very eccentric and very fond of publicity. The village of Box, about the end of the last century, was the home of the Bowptrr family. Thomas Bowdler, the father, was the editor of a work now out of print, but one that ought to be re- printed, “The Family Shakespeare,’ in which the vulgar rubbish stuffed in by the players or even by the author himself, to please the ears of the groundlings,” is cut out, and the work rendered more capable of being read out aloud in families. Mr. Bowdler had two daughters, Janz and Henrietta Maria, both of a literary turn. One of them wrote “ Poems,” which reached a sixteenth edition, the other some religious works and biography. About the same time lived a lady of popular reputation, Mrs. Detany, born at Coulston, near Earlstoke. She was of the family of Granville, Lord Lansdown, and married Mr. Delany, an Irish clergyman. She was literary and accomplished, corresponded with Dean Swift, and was an intimate friend of Margaret Cavendish Harley, Duchess of Portland (celebrated by Prior as “ my noble, lovely little Peggy ”). Being left in very reduced circumstances, her case was mentioned to King George III. and Queen Charlotte, who not only invited her to reside near them at Windsor, but allowed her a pension of £300 a year. She was skilful in painting, em- broidery, and shell-work, but what she was most remarkable for was an invention called “ Paper Mosaic,” a mode of imitating the forms and colours of plants and flowers by means of variously-tinted papers. The description of the process is too long to be given now.! There is a good deal about this lady in the Memoirs of the Granville 1See Britton’s Beauties of Wilts, vol. iii., p. 320. 40 The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. Family, published a few years ago ; particularly her letters, in which she gives an interesting description of the domestic ways of Windsor Castle in the time of George III. She died in 1788, at a great age and blind. There is a portrait of her in the collection at Hampton Court. I come now to our own times in naming a scientific lady of this neighbourhood, who did good service in—a cause which ladies do not often undertake—the Science of Geology. I mean the late Miss ErHELRED Benet, of Norton Bavent, near Warminster. She studied Geology in its very early days, before it had been taken up and had reached the very important position which it occupies now.- She formed a very large and fine collection of the fossil organic remains of that neighbourhood, especially of what is called the Green Sand formation, a complete list of which is printed in Sir R. C. Hoare’s “ History of the Hundred of Warminster.” I believe her collection has been disposed of since her death. I used, when a student at Oxford, to attend the lectures of the well-known Dr. Buckland, who brought that science so prominently into notice, and I recollect very well his speaking most highly of this geological lady, and how her merits met with rather a curious reward. She had sent a set of Wiltshire fossils as a present to the Museum at St. Petersburg. The Emperor of Russia, wishing to acknowledge the gift by an Imperial compliment, supposing from the Anglo-Saxon name of Ethelred that the donor must be a gentleman, caused to be sent to her a very grand diploma, conferring on Miss Ethelred the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Civil Law in the University of St. Petersburg. There are a few other notices of ladies belonging to this county in modern times, who have indulged in the luxury of writing books; but I must quit these peaceful associations and pass to that other mode of obtaining eminence which is open to ladies—the Art of War. What Heroines have we in Wiltshire history? If under this head we may include a case not precisely of military valour, but of courageous spirit in very horrible and tragic circumstances, it will enable me to mention a noble old lady, who lived some centuries ago indeed, but was born within three miles of Bradford, at Farley = By the Rev. Canon J. KE. Jackson, F.S.A. 41 Castle, I had occasion to mention before, that during the Wars of the Roses, the Hungerfords of that place being on the losing side, forfeited their estates. When King Edward IV. came to the throne he granted Farley Castle to his brother George, Duke of Clarence, of Malmesey butt celebrity. The Duke of Clarence had an only daughter, Maregaret PLANTAGENET, created Countess of Salisbury. She lived to old age, and became the last representative of the White Rose or Yorkist party. When Henry VIII was king, he was led to suspect that the White Rose party was hatching a conspiracy to renew a contest for the Succession to the throne. A charge, which she declared to be totally unfounded, was got up against her, and she was sentenced to be beheaded for treason. Being ordered to lie down and lay her head upon the block, the proud old lady declared that she was no traitor, and would never submit to prostrate herself as one; and that if the executioner wanted her head, he might fetch it off as he could. It is stated in the history that the man laid hold of her grey hairs and pursued her round the scaffold, till, by dint of chopping and mangling, he succeeded in despatching her. But we come now to a real heroine in actual warfare, BLaNcHE Somerset, Lapy ARuUNDELL, the gallant defender of Wardour Castle against the Parliament army in 1643. Wardour is in South Wilts, near Fonthill. The old Castle is still to be seen in its battered state, and being surrounded by fine cedar trees is a very picturesque object well worth visiting. Wardour House, where the present Arundell family live, is a modern building about a mile from it. Blanche Somerset was a daughter of the Earl of Worcester, an ancestor of the Duke of Beaufort. She marriéd Thomas, second Lord Arundell of Wardour. In 1643, Lord Arundell had left his castle in order to attend King Charles I. at Oxford. During his absence a body of thirteen hundred men, under command of two Parliamentary officers, Sir Edward Hungerford and Colonel Strode, came up to the castle with orders to seize it for the Parliament. The garrison consisted only of Blanche, Lady Arundell, and her ehildren, another lady, some maid-servants, and twenty-five men. The enemy, thirteen hundred men and artillery, summoned her to surrender. It is for you, ladies, to imagine yourselves in that very 42 The Eminent ladies of Wiltshire History. disagreeable situation, and to determine what you would have done. You would have had various similar examples to enable you tc come to some conclusion. There was Blechington House, in Oxfordshire, commanded by Colonel Windebank, the governor, attacked by Cromwell. The governor’s wife, a young and beautiful bride, per- suaded her husband to give up at once without a blow, which he did: for which afterwards a council of war condemned him to lose his head. On the other hand, there was Corfe Castle, in Dorsetshire, defended by Lavy Banxzs for several weeks successfully. There was Lathom House, in Lancashire, defended by the CounrgEss oF Dersy, who sent back by the summoner this intrepid reply, “ Vl neither give it up nor desert it. Ill set fire to it first and burn it and myself in it.” Then there is for further encouragement to the valiant, that fine old French General, who was besieged in the Castle of Vincennes, close to Paris, and who had lost a leg in the siege, One more chance was offered him, but his answer was, “ Je vous rendrai le fort, quand vous me rendrez ma jambe.”’ [I'll give you up the castle when you give me back my leg.] Well, our Wiltshire heroine’s reply, when summoned to give up Wardour, was this :— “T have a command from my husband to keep it, and I shall obey his command.” She stood out for five days most bravely; but having so few people, the very maid-servants being obliged to help in loading the guns, a great part of the castle having been blown up by a mine, and another mine being ready to blow up the rest, it was hopeless to continue the struggle, but she still refused to sur- render, unless upon written conditions, that all lives should be spared, and no damage done. The original document so written is still preserved at Wardour. The first condition was observed, but not the second. Lady Arundell was 60 years of age at the time of this event. There is a portrait of her at the Duke of Beaufort’s house at Badminton. We have in this county a partial claim to another heroine, who has earned undying memory in the history of England, the lady who, as Miss Jane Lanz, risked her life in assisting King Charles II. in his escape from Boscobel, after the battle of Worcester. The king, in disguise as her servant, rode on horseback with Miss Janz _ . . , : By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, P.8.A. 43 sitting behind him on a pillion, after the style of those days, all the way from Staffordshire to Lyme Regis in Dorsetshire. They had many very narrow escapes. She afterwards married Mr. Edward Nicholas, one of a very old Wilts family, and lived and died at Manningford Braose, beyond Devizes, where there is in that Church a@ monument with an inscription recording this event. Akin to female bravery is female audacity ; and of this there are two or three cases on record, relating, as might be expected, to persons of a lower class of life than those which have been mentioned. But the spirit is the same; though the circumstances less dignified. In military history there are several instances of women having contrived to pass themselves as men and serve as soldiers in the army. About one hundred years ago, a young Wiltshire woman, having dressed herself in man’s clothes, was taken by a press-gang at Salisbury to serve in the fleet, at the beginning of the American War. She remained in the service till August, 1780, when she was taken up for a street row as one of the principals in a pugilistic combat, and discovered. She had assumed the name of John Davis, alias something else. Now all this is low enough, but had this woman been born under a more fortunate star, Nature had qualified her to be a Joan of Are. About the same date, one Mary ABranam, alias Mary SANDAL, of Baverstock, near Salisbury, actually assumed the dress and equip- ment of a mounted highwayman. She practised the “stand and deliver” business in that neighbourhood once too often, and was tried at the assizes in 1779. What rendered her daring the more remarkable was, that she took up the calling of a highway-woman _ just after the execution of the notorious Thomas Boulter, of Poulshot, who had been the terror of the county, and whose exploits are not quite forgotten yet. A third instance of female audacity—or rather, this time, of impudence—is that of Annz Simms, of Studley Green, near Bremhill. She was a most noted poacher, and till past the age of a hundred years often used to boast of having sold at gentlemen’s kitchen- doors fish taken out of their own ponds. Almost to the last she would walk to and from Bowood, about three miles from Studley 44, The Eminent Ladies of Wiltshire History. Green. Her coffin and shroud she had kept in her apartment for more than twenty years. To these instances of audacity is to be added one of eccentricity. In 1776 died Julian Pobjoy. She was born at Warminster, or the neighbourhood, and used to boast that she was related to the Beckfords of Fonthill. She was a woman of “ strong mind,” and, in the days of Beau Nash mingled in the fashionable and dissipated society of Bath. In later life she returned to Warminster, and lived—with a little dog—in a hollow tree! How that was managed, and how a lady who had moved in Bath drawing-rooms contrived to lodge in such a place, she only could tell. One would say it was a case of eminent insanity ; but it does not appear to have been so. She was always scrupulously clean and neatly dressed, and never went abroad without her dog under her arnt. She got her livelihood as general errand-bearer, and used to walk many miles a day col- lecting herbs for the apothecaries. She was the chief medium of communication between Longleat and Warminster. Glancing back over the list of names that have been mentioned, I can only say that these are really all I have been able to meet with in books about Wiltshire; so that we have some eminent for their piety, some for their valour, and some—for their oddity. You naturally say—Surely there must have been many more? About that there can be no doubt; but if you would know the reason why we do not hear of them, you shall have it in the words of the author of “ Curiosities of Literature,’ Mr. Isaac Disraeli, father of the late Lord Beaconsfield :— “The nation has lost many a noble example of men and women acting a great part on great occasions; and we may be confident that many a name has not been inscribed on the roll of national glory, only from wanting a few drops of ink. Such domestic annals may yet be viewed in the family records at Appleby Castle, in Westmoreland. Awnneg, Countgss or PemBROKE”’ (a Wiltshire lady for a short time by residence) “ was a glorious woman, the descendant of two potent northern families, the Veteriponts and the Cliffords. She lived in a state of regal magnificence and independence, in- habiting five or seven castles; yet though her magnificent spirit eo SS ee —— —— << = Notes on Wiltshire Geology and Palaontolgy. 45 poured itself out in her extended charities, and though her indepen- dence equalled that of monarchs, yet she herself, in her domestic habits, lived as a hermit in her own castles. Though only acquainted with her native language, she had cultivated her mind in many parts of learning; and as Dr. Donne, in his way, observes, she knew how to converse of every thing; from predestination down to slea-silk. Her favourite design was to have materials collected for the history of those two potent northern families to whom she was allied ; and at a considerable expense she employed learned persons to make collections for this purpose from the records in the Tower, the Rolls and other depositories of manuscripts. She had three large volumes fairly transcribed. Anecdotes of a great variety of characters, who had exerted themselves on very important occasions, compose these family records, and induce one to wish that the public were in pos- session of such annals of the domestic life of heroes and of sages who have only failed in obtaining an historian.” Alotes on Wiltshire Geology and Palwontology. By Caries Moozz, F.G:S. HAVE selected the above as a suitable title for my address to you at this meeting, not that I am a Wiltshire geologist, or that my experience of the district is sufficient to make me master of the subject; but now that there is such a multiplicity of kindred societies, papers should, as far as possible, have a local bearing upon their respective areas. But if anyone may be permitted to break through this reservation it may be allowed to the geologist, as he _ has a wide field of observation ; and physical conditions but feebly represented in one locality may necessitate references to similar phenomena in which they may be more devoloped in others by which it is surrounded. 46 Notes on Wiltshire Geology and Palaeontology. I have had more than forty years’ experience in my native county of Somerset, and still doubt if another lifetime would exhaust the marvellous history which, when minutely studied, is to be read within its borders; for, with few exceptions, there are to be found the representatives of almost every geological formation. Occasional rambles’across its borders into Wiltshire have, however, enabled me to refer to a few points that may be of interest. Meeting your Society in the town of Bradford-on-Avon, I ought not to forget making a reference to a former townsman, the Jate Mr. Channing Pearce. He was one who as a geologist was far in advance of his time, and blessed as he was, in addition to acute geological observation, with ample means to forward his tastes, had assembled before his death one of the most interesting geological collections out of London ; and, had he lived, would probably have been the historian of Wiltshire geology and paleontology. He was my first geological friend, and for some time we corresponded without having had a meeting. When it came it was a curious one. The little town of Ilminster—where I lived—before the advent of railways, was the high road for travellers into the West of England. Without any notice or introduction an individual, throwing open the doors of the room where I was sitting, rushed in, out of breath and bespattered with mud, asking hurriedly, “ Are you Charles Moore?” My first conviction was that he was an escaped lunatic, but the explanation came that he was Channing Pearce, of Bradford, who, whilst the coach-horses were being changed, had found his way to me, but had lost his equilibrium in turning a corner on the way. The great variety found in Somersetshire geology, and many of its peculiar physical characters are chiefly due to the uplift of the Mendip range. There is no doubt that the paleozoic rocks of which these hills are composed where they disappear, near Frome, pass beneath the secondary beds of Wiltshire, and continuing under London, where their presence has been proved by a boring of 1050 feet, come again to the surface on the other side of the channel ; the carboniferous limestone and the coal measures being found in the Boulonnais, and there is, therefore, every reason to believe that the By Charles Moore, F.G.S8. 47 rocks forming the eastern edge of the Somersetshire coal basin in its passage to the north lie under the secondary rocks of this district. _ The basement limestone beds, but without any superimposed coal, _ were found in a sinking at Batheaston, and they reach the surface in a small uplift, under Lansdowne, and at Wick, clearly indicating the eastern outline of the basin; it is therefore quite possible that in the foldings of these beds, the coal measures may be somewhere present under Wiltshire. Within my recollection several ill-advised _ and abortive attempts to find coal have been made. In two instances shafts were commenced in the Oxford Clay, one of the upper beds of the oolites, and were all the beds between it and the carboniferous series present in their normal thicknesses, it is probable several thousand feet would have to be passed through before the latter could have been reached. The experimental boring put down at _ Netherfield, near Battle, Sussex, proved that at that spot the q Oxford and Kimmeridge Clays were nearly 2000 feet in thickness, _ though this was probably an exceptional thickness. At Kimmeridge the latter are about 600 feet thick. The palzozoic rocks under Wiltshire are hidden by a wide-spread development of secondary formations, which, in ascending order, include the following :— Upper Lias é Kimmeridge Clay Inferior Oolite Portland Oolite Fuller’s Earth Purbeck Beds Stonesfield Slate? Lower Green Sand Great Oolite Gault Bradford Clay Upper Green Sand Forest Marble Chalk Cornbrash Tertiary Beds a Oxford Clay Post Pliocene Drifts and Coral Rag Brick Earth. s. Some of these, especially the Bradford Clay, the Cornbrash, and Forest Marble, are but thin and local, and though useful as divisions, do not exercise the same influence on the general physical characters of the county as the bold escarpments of the chalk, or the level plains of the Oxford and Kimmeridge Clays. This may be said 48 Notes on Wiltshire Geology and Paleontology. also of the Inferior Oolite and the Upper Lias, which, in this part of the county, are only seen at Limpley Stoke and Freshford. For this reason, although the latter are, when well exposed, crowded with organic remains, some of them of much interest, no reference is needed to them here, and the same may be said of the Fuller’s Earth, The Great Oolite above has the first claim to our attention, more especially as its freestone forms one of the staple trades of Bradford and its neighbourhood. Its beds are composed either of minute calcareous egg-like non-organic concretions, or of comminuted shells, reunited by a calcareous paste; included in which are various forms of contemporary mollusca, occasional teeth of fishes, whose carti- lagenous skeletons have altogether perished, with a mixture of corals, bryozoa, &e. Although these remains are repeatedly to be observed in the beds of this district, they are not to be compared in richness with those of the Gloucestershire Cotteswolds, which have yielded more than four hundred species. But the paleontological character of the Great Oolite at Bradford is redeemed by one most interesting organism, the Apiocrinus rotundus, or Pear Encrinite. Whilst the Great Oolite was being deposited, or rather at a period of rest after deposition, there lived at Bradford a colony of these interesting creatures. They are chiefly confined to the upper surface of the beds, to which they were attached by a broad or sucker-like base ; from this sprang a stem composed of a number of disc-like plates, on which the pear-shaped body was superimposed, and in the centre of which the mouth of the animal was placed. On its outer edge a series of flexible many-jointed arms was arranged, ever ready to seize and convey to its mouth any unwary creatures that came within their reach. This colony of gracefully-waving organisms would have been an interesting one, when living, for a naturalist to have looked down upon, especially as very few of the family now exist. After living as I have described, a change came and they were all destroyed by an irruption of mud into the sea, the deposit being geologically known as the Bradford Clay. It is very local, and scarcely to be recognized elsewhere, even at Hampton Down, near Bath, although a few scattered encrinital plates are found, the a By Charles Moore, F.G.8. 49 clay deposit is wanting, and in its stead succeed the Great Oolite ragey beds, composed almost entirely of corals and sponges, whilst clustering amongst them were many interesting forms of Oolitic Brachiopoda. These are to be met with—though not so abundantly —at Box, and in the quarry openings at Monkton Farleigh and elsewhere. They have yielded to myself a rich harvest, including many forms new to science. This important family has in past geological time yielded in the aggregate many thousand species, whilst in the present seas only about one hundred species are known. Some of them contain in their interiors a wonderfully delicate spire or loop, which served during the life of the animal to support its softer parts. All genera have their special animal forms and the processes differing internally in each genus—though in the same species they are usually alike. A curious variation from this law, however, occurs in the Zerebratella Buckmani. In dissecting this shell, which occurs in the Great Oolite of this district, for its in- ternal structure, I found that the calcareous processes differed materially, apparently altering in form, during its several stages of growth, a fact not hitherto noticed in any other member of this family. Another of this group—the Zhecidium—was a few years back only represented by two species, one in the Green Sand, and another in the chalk, whilst only one species was known in our recent seas—recently, however, increased to two or three. It had its largest life development in the secondary deposits of which I am speaking, and I have been fortunate enough to obtain from our Oolitic beds alone as many as twelve new species. The Forest Marble, which succeeds the Bradford Clay, was for- merly raised at Wormwood and Atford for roofing tiles, but has since been almost superseded by lighter material. For palonto- logical reasons this seems a pity, for they yielded the enamelled tecth of many fishes whose cartilagenous skeletons have perished, and with them occasionally the teeth of reptilia, including Teleosaurus and Megalosaurus. The Cornbrash is usually a persistent rock-bed in succession, and has its characteristic fossils. It is found atCorsham and near Malmesbury. The Kelloway Rock, which follows, occurs at the village of that name, _ VOL, XX,—NO. LVIII. E 50 Notes on Wiltshire Geology and Palaontology. The Oxford Clay, next in order, is continuous from the Dorsetshire coast all the way to Scarborough ; and extended through Wiltshire as a level belt, occasionally five or six miles broad, and having a thick- ness of about 600 feet. It consists chiefly of thinly laminated marls, which are seldom opened up, except in pits for brick-making. Owing to this much is lost to the paleontologist, as the beds are crowded with organic remains, many of which are of high interest, and include Ichthyosaurus, Pliosaurus, and Steneosaurus, many of large size. But the harvest times as regarded this formation were in the days of my friend Pearce, for then the Great Western Railway was in course of construction, and on either side of the line between Chippenham and Wootton Bassett pits may be seen—now mostly filled with water—from which the laminated marls were extracted be- low a covering of mammal drift gravels. These marls were crowded with Ammonites, the shells of which still possessed their perfect terminations, a feature rarely seen in other formations. Belemnites —the internal shells of an animal allied to the cuttle fish—abounded, and the cuttle fish also, so perfect that its cuttle bone remains, its original fluid ink is preserved, and on its extended arms are still arrayed the horny hooks and suckers used in capturing its prey. Another unique specimen, from Christian Malford, was a colony of barnacles, that still remained attached to its stalk. Crustacex of peculiar form and fish were also plentiful. Had I been a landowner on the Oxford Clay I should long since have been tempted to open some pits for the ancient natural history they would have revealed. In most of the beds containing Ammonites a curious triangular bivalve body is found called Trigonellites. It occurs in the Oxford Clay, but more plentifully in the Kimmeridge beds. They are more often found free, but occasionally in the outer chamber of the Am- monite itself. No organism, probably, has been a greater puzzle to palzontologists. By some authors they have been supposed to be bivalve shells, and named Aptychus, Munsteria, and Cirripedes—by others the gizzards of the Ammonite, or the operculum of that shell, the last view being that now generally adopted, though I have some reasons for believing that eventually this will not be found correct. By Charles Moore, F.G.S. 51 Between the Oxford and the Kimmeridge Clays there are inter- posed beds of lower and upper calcareous grits, separated by a deposit known as the Coral Rag, typical examples of which are to be found near Farringdon, and at Lyneham, Wootton Bassett, and Steeple Ashton. The latter represents a true coral reef of the secondary period. Some of the corals are in beautiful preservation. At Steeple Ashton good collecting ground may be found in the arable fields, the plough sometimes touching the surface of the reef, and thereby bringing the corals to light. Calne, which is on this formativn, was formerly a celebrated locality for Echini. It is not usual for the long spines of this family to be still found in a fossil state attached to their shells, but this used to be the case at Calne, and indicated that they had a very quiet entombment. Examples in this condition are now more rarely found. Lyneham has been to myself an interesting locality, as I have found there three species of Thecidide, the 7. ornatum, Moore, and the TZ. pygmaeum, Moore, being hitherto confined to that locality. There are also examples of the minute but exceedingly beautiful shells of Foraminifera, one of which, an Jnvolutina, is probably a new species. Carpenteria, another of the family, is worth notice. Until lately it was only known as a recent marine organism. I have recently found it in the Green Sand brought up from the Meux well boring, 1000 feet under London, and since then at Lyneham, but its life-history has yet to be traced through intervening deposits to the present time. Like others of this family it obtained its food by means of minute openings in its shell, through which its pseudopodia were projected, which appear to have seized everything within their reach. In some recent specimens minute silicious spines, which must have proved very indigestible morsels, have been found in their chambers. The Kimmeridge Clays which follow are interesting in connection with Wiltshire geology. They extend throughout the county to the hamlet of Kimmeridge, on the Dorsetshire coast, whence they take their name. I have before remarked on their great thickness im the Sussex boring. Some beds are so mineralized and bituminous as to be used by the villagers on the coast for fuel. They contain large quantities of oil, which it has been hoped might eventually be } E2 52 Notes on Wiltshire Geology and Paleontology. extracted, and more than one company has been formed for utilizing it for gas manufacture and for paraffine. Hitherto one difficulty is insuperable, arising from the fetid odour it emits when heated. Ship-loads of it were sent to some London gas works, and to France, the stench soon made itself perceptible in the neighbourhood of the works, and the proprietors were compelled to cease using it and would have been only too glad to have paid return freights to have got rid of the material. Could this difficulty be overcome its commercial value may be seen when it is stated that whilst New- castle coal gives 8,000 feet of gas per ton, with an illuminating power equal to twelve candles, Kimmeridge Shale gives 12,000 cubic feet of gas per ton, with an illuminating power of eighteen candles. At Swindon these clays are used for brick-making. They contain an abundance of organic remains, though of but few species and those usually much crushed and distorted. The shells of the Ammonites still retain all the nacreous colours of the rainbow. The liassic period has usually been called the “age of reptiles,” but if the Kimmeridge Clays were as extensively worked they would vie with it for this designation. Some of the genera living at the period must have been formidable creatures. Not long since remains of a new genus, named by Professor Owen, Omosaurus armatus were found at Swindon. Great care was exercised in the removal of the septarian-like stone in which they lay and in their after development. It contained the pelvic portion of the animal with limb bones and some of its vertebra, and so far as it goes it is a grand specimen, the femur alone is 34 feet in length. The lower jaw of another genus, Pliosaurus, was for a long time stowed away undeveloped at the Swindon works, until stumbled upon by Mr. Cunnington. I have found part of a jaw near Melksham, and the genus is found also at Kimmeridge. A tooth of this creature has been found a foot long. Bothriospondylus, Cetiosaurus, Ichthyosaurus, Plesiosaurus, Teleo- saurus, and Steneosaurus also occur in this formation. The Portland and Purbeck beds, which overlie the Kimmeridge Clay, are the upper members of the Oolitic series, and present a re- markable contrast with the latter. The physical conditions under which they were deposited must have been very different, for the By Charles Moore, F.G.S. 53 Kimmeridge Clay is almost entirely argillaceous, whilst the Portland Sands are as distinctly arenaceous. These pass into the limestones of the series, and all are marine. But the Purbeck beds above are ’ either brackish or have been deposited by fresh water. The con- sequence of this has been an almost entire change in organic life, which could only have been brought about by a great lapse of time in their formation. They have but small development in Wiltshire, occurring as outliers at Bourton and Swindon, and again at Chicks- grove and Tisbury. At Portland, and on the coast at Swanage, they have their chief development, the Purbeck beds alone—which at Swindon are but about 10 feet thick—being there estimated at 300 feet. These beds, including those of the Wealden above, with which they are intimately associated, have in their full development a thickness of 2500 feet, and Professor Ramsay suggests that they are the lagoon or delta of an immense river then continuous through a continent as large as Asia, rivalling in size the Ganges or the Mississippi. That it was bounded by dry land, which now seems to have entirely disappeared, is evidenced by the fact that its in- significant representative at Swindon has yielded to me the remains of terrestrial marsupial mammals, reptiles, insects, and vegetation, that were caught up and re-deposited by its waters. On the Dorsetshire coasts the Purbeck beds have yielded not less than ten genera and and twenty-five species of land animals. How interesting it would be if we could go back and stand upon the banks of this mighty river and realize all the physical changes it would indicate ! I need scarcely say that crowded as are the Chalk beds of this country with organic remains, there is still good work to be done with them. Warminster and its neighbourhood has always repaid examination. As I have not worked in these beds I must pass on and shall only refer to conditions immediately preceding or contem- poraneous with the dawn of our own era. At this time, though no 4 doubt there have been some modifications in the outlines of our hills and valleys, their forms were generally what they now present. But their climatic conditions were altogether different; periods of ex- _ treme cold, with alternating intervals of higher temperature. These are included in the Glacial Period, within which were deposited our 54 Notes on Wiltshire Geology and Palaontology. river gravels, and cave earths, and the brick clays and loams, in all of which are found abundantly the remains of mammalia, now ex- tinct. Within a mile-and-a-half of Bradford T have found in the gravels near the railway Hlephas primigenius, Ovibos moschatus, now known only within the Arctic circle, Rhinoceros, &c., whilst in the illustrative Blackmore Museum, at Salisbury, Reindeer, Marmot, Lemming, and other Arctic genera may be seen. The works of man indicate his advent at this period, but we still desire a fuller know- ledge of early man himself. This will, without doubt, come. But I have detained you too long, and will conclude by saying that the Oolitic table-lands of this district indicate the very latest periods of intense cold which this county experienced. Fresh water deposits oc- cupied the summits of the hills around. This is only to be accounted for by periodic accumulations of frozen snow in the long winters. As these melted the water passed down through the numerous fissures to be found in the great Oolite, filling them, as is often the case, with an ochreous muddy deposit, carrying with it the bones of animals of a more recent period than those previously referred to, whilst large glaciers were also detached from the sides of the valleys to melt in the lower levels, carrying with them moraine materials derived from the higher grounds. The fissures referred to often contain the bones of animals of this later period. Thus at least 200 feet above our present rivers I have repeatedly found Arvico/a or Water Rat. At Monkton Farleigh at one spot I found about half a cart-load of the dismembered bones of Frogs. At Combe Down I found the entire skeleton of two horses, and at Box, 60 feet below the surface, the limb bones and vertebre of Bison, which, though now extinct, lived on to these later times. 55 Some Alotes on Gainsborough and his connection | - with Bradford. By Freperick Suvm, F.S.A. T was not until the year 1829, in the city of Rome, that the \ first archeological institute was formed. Since then nearly every country in Europe has followed suit, and in England almost every county has a society, the main object of which is the study of antiquity in connection with local researches. These provincial associations have directly and indirectly accom- plished much good, not only in giving a zest to archeological pursuits, and in promoting topographical inquiries, but by recording the relics of the past in accurate memoirs and faithful drawings, as well as by affording pecuniary assistance to preserve these relics from material decay, and in some instances offering friendly remon- strances to save them from ruthless destruction. : Foremost among these is the Wiltshire Archeological Society. _ This county is rich in the possession of antiquarian objects of pre- ° eminent interest, and is equally celebrated for a succession of distinguished antiquaries, who, since the days of Aubrey, have been connected with it. Many localities in England, formerly unnoticed, and apparently devoid of interest, have become famous, and, in not a few of them, remains of great value have been discovered, and secured for the interest and instruction of future generations. The stimulus thus given may, in some cases, have been abused ; the zealous archzologist is sometimes wont to invest his own par- ticular neighbourhood with fictitious interest and exaggerated im- portance. Visitors’ guides and strangers’ handbooks afford abundant evidence of what I mean—to read them is often a trial of great patience; what little interest there may be in the natural history, geology, or antiquity of the place is so magnified, and the reference to any historical incidents or personages connected with it so far- fetched, as to excite only ridicule and contempt. Fortunately, there 56 Some Notes on Gainsborough and his connection with Bradford. is no visitors’ guide-book to Bradford-on-Avon, and so long as Canon Jones remains the vicar it will be unnecessary ; every stranger may find in him, not only a safe and accurate guide, but one always ready to impart information relating to objects of interest in this quaint and picturesque town. It may, however, be objected] that in occupying your time and attention with a paper on recollections of Gainsborough in Bradford, I am myself guilty of claiming for this locality an interest in the great modern artist to which it is not entitled. The question may be asked, “‘ What connection is there between Bradford and Gainsborough,a man of mark, who was neither born nor buried here?” The few notes now submitted will be my answer, and if it can be shown that there resided in Bradford a man whose force of character and remarkable physiognomy attracted the notice and secured the friendship of Gainsborough, and that in this place he executed a work that has ever since been regarded as an example of the highest style of portraiture, and is still considered by the best judges to be Gainsborough’s masterpiece—if, moreover, it is found that the singular beauty of this valley brought Gainsborough from time to time to Bradford, to make sketches for some of his most charming landscapes, I think this town may not unfairly claim some connection with the great master—a connection more noteworthy than the circumstance, even if it could be affirmed, that he was either born or buried here. The memoirs of Gainsborough are full of interest, on account of his residence in Bath when that city was in the heyday of its prosperity, and from the fact that he was—apart from his works— a notable character, a musician as well as an artist, possessing many admirable qualities with not a few eccentricities. But it is not my present purpose to give a recital of his life, only to refer you to a few passages in his history. It will be in your recollection that Gainsborough was a native of Sudbury, in Suffolk, a town about the size of Bradford-on-Avon, and somewhat similar in character; memorable for its antiquity and early ecclesiastical remains, rich in picturesque old buildings, and surrounded by scenery of more than ordinary beauty. Both places By Frederick Shum, F.8.A. 57 were celebrated for the manufacture of woollen cloth, before its in- troduction into other parts of England; Sudbury, however, has ceased to be a manufacturing town, while Bradford maintains, to some extent, its wonted reputation. He was born in 1727, thirty years after Hogarth, who is entitled to rank as the first great English artist ; for—unlike his predecessors and contemporaries—Hogarth ignored and despised the convention- alities of foreign art; thoroughly original and independent, he was free from all trammells, and, in theory and practice, he persistently resisted a servile imitation of the “Black Masters.” In the characters of these two distinguished masters there was little in common, still less in their works. Englishmen were only just be- ginning to know something about art and to appreciate its value. Hogarth and Gainsborough were both pioneers in the struggle for the emancipation of art from the thraldom of an artificial and debased foreign style. Their one aim and endeavour was to depict objects as they really appear, and to portray Nature simply and truthfully. Strange to say, the lapse of one hundred and fifty years has brought us to the opposite extreme; and just as Foote, in his comedy of “Taste,” performed at Drury Lane in 1752, ridiculed the affected mannerism and artificialities of art then prevalent; so now, at the present time, the play-writers of the day, Burnand and Gilbert, are satirising, with merciless severity, the aestheticism now in fashion, which treats the simplest object in Nature as almost divine and worthy of devout admiration ; introducing into the very dress and conversation of everyday life, a style and jargon that every manly intellect cannot but despise as repugnant alike to common sense and good taste. It is a source of consolation, however, that there is this difference between the past and the present. Jn the former, all the patrons and professors of art were under the baneful influence; whereas, now that the knowledge and culture of art is so widely ex- tended, the number of those who render themselves and their works grotesque, by caricaturing the simplicity of Nature, is limited to a few morbid and conceited artists, who, hankering after notoriety, are bringing true art into contempt, by apeing simplicity and distorting - truth, under the pretence of realism, Of course they have their 58 Some Notes on Gainsborough and his connection with Bradford. following—young men about town, assuming the function of art- critics—strong minded ladies, with ample courage to pose in very little or in any, even the most fantastic costume, who “ soulfully intense,” converse in words and phrases too “ unutterably utter” to describe; and last, although not the least important, the newly- created professors of the nineteenth century—the art decorators. Early in life Gainsborough manifested a genius for drawing, and of him, as of many other precocious painters, well-known anecdotes are current. Perhaps the most characteristic, and the only one I need repeat, is connected with his school-life, showing, that his love of Nature at an early age was stronger than his reverence for truth. When a boy he loved to sketch from Nature, and one bright morning his anxiety to go sketching tempted him to forge a note from his father, in the customary form, to his school-master, ‘ Please give Tom a holiday.” The request was granted, and young Gainsborough, rejoicing in the glorious sunshine, fled to the fields and lanes with his drawing-book, but, on returning, found that his father having required his services at home had sent for him, when the forgery was detected. His father angrily exclaimed, “Tom will one day be hanged,” but no sooner had his mother exhibited the clever sketches of her truant son than old Gainsborough, with mollified tone, declared that “'Tom would one day be a genius.” In his fifteenth year he was sent to London, and we learn from his biographer, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, that he received in- structions from Gravelot, the engraver, who procured his admission to the academy in St. Martin’s Lane. He afterwards studied under Hayman, and at the end of three years ventured upon a studio for himself, in Hatton Garden, where he painted landscapes and portraits for the dealers. The deplorable state of art in the schools at that period exercised its pernicious influence upon him, and his earliest works showed little genius or skill. Fortunately for his future reputation the London studio was not a success. After twelve months’ trial he returned to his native county, and for fifteen years carefully, conscientiously, and devotedly, studied Nature amid the pleasant scenery of Suffolk, under every possible variety of aspect ; realising a moderate income without gaining more than a provincial By Frederick Shum, P.8.A. 59 reputation. Shortly after his return from London, in 1745, at the early age of eighteen, he married a young lady scarcely sixteen. Allan Cunningham, in his pleasant stories of the English painters, gives a romantic account of their first acquaintance, which Fulcher, in his biography, cruelly mars by a prosaic explanation. After careful inquiries, I believe the more poetical version to be equally accurate. However, the union wasa happy one. Miss Margaret Burr, in addition to her beauty and £200 a year, possessed many estimable qualities, and among them caution, forbearance, and judg- ment: characteristics of inestimable value in after life, for Gains- borough lacked them all. She was of Scottish extraction, and is generally believed to have been the natural daughter of an English prince ; this was admitted by Mrs. Gainsborough, after her husband had attained fame and position. An enthusiastic lover of Nature, a clever musician, warm-hearted and impulsive, full of wit and humour, with intelligence and con- siderable conversational powers, handsome presence, genial manners and unaffected simplicity, he was welcomed in all circles. He became a general favourite with his fellow-townsmen in Ipswich, as well as with the neighbouring gentry. But he was a student and a lover of his art; conscious of his power and determined to excel, for he had much to learn and not a little of his London art to unlearn. Towards the close of his residence in Ipswich he made the ac- quaintance of an extraordinary character, Ralph Thicknesse, Governor of Landguard Fort, who, on the title-page of his singular production styled himself late Lieutenant-Governor of Landguard Fort, “ un- fortunately,” father of George Touchet, Baron Audley. During the winter season Thicknesse resided in Bath at St. Catherine’s Hermitage, in a picturesque dell, facetiously named by his friend, ‘Lord Thurlow, Gully Hall. Here in his garden, where Saxon and Roman remains have been found, he erected a monument in memory of Chatterton, and beneath it interred the remains of his own daughter; hard by, with strange incongruity, he placed the body of his old travelling carriage, in which he had traversed the continent of Europe. There it remained many years, a curious memento of his vagaries and eccentricity. He was a man of great notoriety 60 Some Notes on Gainsborough and his connection with Bradford. in his day; descended from an ancient family, and with high con- nections, he had a wide circle of acquaintances in every part of England, to a great number of whom he introduced his friend and protegé, Gainsborough. With much of the Napier eccentricity he lacked the Napier ability; in his slandering propensities he resembled Walter Savage Landor in his dotage, but compared with him in intellect he was an ignorant coxcomb. He was a great traveller but a scurrilous author; cacoethes scribendi his besetting weak- ness. He toadied to the rich and patronised the poor. He was insufferably egotistical, vain, ambitious, poor and proud, affected, fussy, and quarrelsome ; with a commanding presence and good natural abilities, he was cursed with so evil a temper, that, bereft of friends, beloved by none, and detested by not a few, he died a miserable and disappointed man. This was the singular character under whose early auspices Gainsborough became celebrated. Enough has been said of Gains- borough’s history to show, not only that he had appreciative friends, but that he had confidence in his own powers ; having thrown aside the conventional ideas and practice of his contemporaries, he painted in a style peculiarly his own. So far his life had not been un- successful, and although he had not realised high prices for his works, he had secured a fair income and made great proficiency in his drawing, color, and execution. Thicknesse, however, gave him good advice when he recommended him to migrate to the “ Queen of the West,” and Gainsborough’s acquiescence was wise and politic. If he had declined, and contented himself with the position of an artist in a quiet country town, the name of Gainsborough would never have ranked as one of the great modern painters. His landscapes would undoubtedly have secured for him the reputation of a true English artist, but he would never have produced those marvellous portraits that worthily compare with the greatest works of Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1760 Gainsborough arrived in Bath, where he spent the next fourteen years of his life. During this period the celebrity of Bath reached its acmé. Rank and fashion, wealth and royalty assembled there as in no other place; except the metropolis, and since those days no other fashionable resort By Frederick Shum, F.8.A. 61 has ever acquired such a monoply of distinguished and aristocratic visitors. Through the introduction of Thicknesse, Gainsborough soon ob- tained commissions, and the comparatively unknown Suffolk painter at once became famous; his studio was the centre of attraction ; there, might be seen dukes, generals, philosophers, and statesmen: He had more than he could do, and rapidly advanced his prices from five guineas to a hundred guineas. In an account of Gainsborough, recently published in the series of “Small Books on the Great Artists,” written by Mr. Brock- Arnold in an appreciative spirit, with great judgment and discrimi- nation, it is stated that on his arrival in Bath he rented a house in the Cireus. This, however, is incorrect ; his first residence was in the centre of the city, afterwards he. lived in Ainslie’s Belvedere, where he had a studio commanding a beautiful view of Hampton Rocks, and subsequently he occupied a house in the Circus, not many doors from the Earl of Chatham ; here his rooms were crowded with unsold landscapes, which the fashionable visitors at Bath could not appreciate. Numerous are the anecdotes recorded of Gains- borough in Bath—of the rebuffs he administered to the vain and wealthy people who came to him for their portraits, and desired to be decked out in all their finery ; of his quarrels with the irascible Governor of Landguard Fort, of his friendship and association with the actors and musical celebrities, of his passion for music, and of his versatile genius in playing all sorts of musical instruments, Bath at that time was noted for its love of music, and its patronage of the stage. The first musicians of the day were constantly. there, and as Gainsborough loved music no less’passionately than painting, he invited them to his house, painted their portraits, and treated them with the most genial hospitality. Among them was Fischer, the hautboy player, who married his daughter, and whose portrait is in Hampton Court; Mrs. Siddons, whose portrait is now in the National Gallery; Abel, Miss Linley, Quin, and Garrick, who again and again refused to sit until one morning Mr. Wiltshire beguiled him into his house at Bath, and there held guard over him while Gainsborough commenced a sketch for that noble picture, 62 Some Notes on Gainsborough and his connection with Bradford. which is generally admitted to be superior to Reynolds’ far-famed portrait of the inimitable mimic and actor. Of all the portraits Gainsborough painted, whether in Bath or elsewhere, there is not one of greater power and excellence than that of Orpen, the parish clerk of Bradford ; and lest I should detain you too long, I must quit the gay scenes at Bath. Notwithstanding his popularity in the artistic circles of Bath, and the extraordinary “number of commissions for portraits pressed on him by wealthy visitors, landscape painting was his delight; his passion for Nature revived, and the varied scenery of hill and dale around Bath and Bradford became as familiar to him as the Suffolk woods. I just now mentioned that his house in Ainslie’s Belvedere com- manded a view of Hampton Rocks, which are situated at the entrance of the beautiful valley down which the Avon winds its sluggish course from Bradford, flowing through the charming meadows lying at the base of the Hampton Cliff. This valley had a rare fascination for Gainsborough. On the heights above he was often seen sketching, and one of the crags yet bears the name of “ Gainsborough’s Pallett.” From the opposite side of the valley he could see the mansion of his friend, Mr. Wiltshire, the great London carrier to the West of England, whose name will always be remem- bered in connection with Gainsborough, who spent many pleasant days at his beautiful country seat, and often walked from thence with his drawing materials to Bradford, or rode the grey pony Mr. Wiltshire had given him, through the interesting village of Monkton Farleigh to Bradford. Wiltshire’s appreciation of his painting, and regard for the man, would not allow him to receive payment for the carriage of his pictures to and from the London exhibitions. Gainsborough handsomely reciprocated his friend’s kindness by presenting him with examples of his finest works, now of inestimable value. The one best known, from its being the property of the nation, and placed in the National Gallery, is the portrait of “ The Parish Clerk.’’ This picture was the result of Gainsborough’s pilgrimages to the picturesque and flourishing little town of Bradford, whither he wandered after leaving his sketching ground on Hampton Down, By Frederick Shum, F.8.A. 63 or when he rode over from Mr. Wiltshire’s seat at Shockerwick. Weary of the excitement of Bath Society, and impatient of the jealous and exacting patronage of Thicknesse, he was only too glad of an excuse to come to Bradford ; whether it was to have a chat and another sitting from Orpen, or to sketch the romantic dells at Beleombe and Farleigh, mattered little. In Orpen, he had a capital study ; intelligence, reverence, and simplicity were there, and nobly has he depicted these qualities. It was a labour of love, he reckoned not on the prestige or the pecuniary reward that he derived when painting the portraits of statesmen, or country squires, at Bath. Upon this old man’s head he bestowed as much labour and care as on the Lord Chancellor or Royalty itself. It is exquisitely and carefully painted, the color perfect, the light and shade equal to Rembrandt, while the force and character in the features and ex- pression is not excelled in any of Velasquez’s charming portraits. No one can look upon this admirable likeness without the conviction that the subject was a man of singular ability ; but he was more than this, he was a man of generous instincts, for although by no means rich, he bequeathed his house in perpetuity to his successors in office. The family of Orpen was humble but respectable, and in an old map, now extant, is represented a row of cottages that stood near the centre of the town, called after their name, showing that they were here in the sixteenth century ; they were also owners of some land in the neighbourhood of Farley Castle. Within a stone’s throw of that interesting and unique relic of Saxon architecture, of which Bradford is not a little proud, may be seen this house in which Orpen lived, and where Gainsborough _ painted his portrait ; although small, it has some architectural pretension. It was built by Orpen, but has been somewhat increased in size by the present Vicar; a singular feature marks the front wall of the cottage; two nearly square lights of glass, about 12 inches by 18, are to be seen on either side of the centre window in the first story. What can be the meaning of them? Canon Jones not infrequently puzzles his visitors with this riddle, but they invariably -“oive it up,” and wait for his solution. It will be remembered that in the early part of the present century, when England’s 64 Some Notes on Gainsborough and his connection with Bradford. necessities had well-nigh exhausted the ingenuity of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, a grievous tax was laid on our windows. Now, as there were all sorts and sizes of window-lights, disputes arose as to what a window really was ; finally it was decided that all lights at a certain distance from each other were liable to be taxed as separate windows. Orpen was equal to the occasion, and by placing these two small loop-hole lights on either side of the centre window, thus reducing the distance, he was rated for one window instead of three; in reality having five lights and paying for one. The cottage overlooks the parish churchyard, and immedi- ately in front of it, underneath a plain stone slab, lie the remains of him whose memory has been long cherished for his intelligence, generosity,and moral worth,and who will still be remembered formany generations yet to come, through the genius and skill of his friend, who has left to posterity so true a likeness of his manly features, In the National Gallery this picture is named “ The Parish Clerk.” Now, as there are parish clerks and parish clerks, I must take ex- ception to this slight on Orpen, which ignores his identity, and I would suggest a friendly remonstrance be tendered to the trustees from this Association, with a request that Gainsborough’s portrait may be catalogued “ Orpen, the Parish Clerk.” For one moment I must call your attention to another picture, presented by Gainsborough to Mr. Wiltshire, and said to have been painted from a sketch made in this neighbourhood. Of this painting Gainsborough said, that “it pleased him more than any he had ever executed.” It is called “ The Return from Harvest,” and represents a picturesque-looking waggon, with its driver, returning home at the close of the day. Two of the figures are portraits of his daughters, and one of the horses is a drawing of the grey pony given to the artist by Mr. Wiltshire. This picture is a charming bit of Nature, beautiful in color, and one of Gainsborough’s most characteristic works. At the death of Mr. Wiltshire’s grandson, about twenty years ago, it was purchased for Her Majesty at £3500, The circumstances, however, that led to the purchase are not generally known. The Queen, when visiting Bath as Princess Victoria, on the occasion of her opening the Royal Victoria Park in By Frederick Shum, F.8.A. 65 that city, was taken by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, to view the pictures at Shockerwick. Here it was Her Majesty first saw the picture now in her possession. In recording this fact I am only paying a just tribute to the Queen’s good taste and discrimination, in selecting for purchase a work of so much excellence, seen by her when only a girl many years before. Necessarily imperfect and fragmentary as these notes have proved, for the reasons, first, that the information sought has been difficult to obtain ; secondly, because I considered it undesirable to reproduce —however interesting—incidents concerning Gainsborough, which it is presumed you are familiar with, especially, those details of his later life—of his successful career at Schomberg House, Pall Mall, whither he removed from Bath in 1774, of the singular and melan- choly premonition of his decease, and of that last touching scene, when, anxious to die at peace with all, he sent for Reynolds, with whom he had quarrelled, and who generously came, and bending over him listened to his last whispers, “ We are all going to Heaven -and Vandyck is one of the party”; nevertheless, it has also been my aim to gather a few local remembrances of a notable man in humble life, the subject of one of our finest national portraits, as — well as to claim for the painter the position of an English artist, second to none of his predecessors or contemporaries, either in portrait or landscape painting, while in the practice of both he was unequalled. In support of this view let me cite two or three sen- tences from the writings of the greatest art-critic of ancient or modern times :—‘ Gainsborough’s power of colour is capable of taking rank beside that of Rubens, he is the purest colourist, Sir Joshua Reynolds not excepted, of the whole English school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in Europe. . . . I hesitate not to say that in the management and quality of single and particular tints, in the purely technical part of painting, Turner is a child to Gainsborough. Gainsboroagh’s hand is light as the sweep of a cloud—as swift as the flash of a beam. Gainsborough’s masses are as broad as the first division in heaven of light from darkness. Gainsborough’s forms are grand, ‘simple, and ideal. In a word Gainsborough is an immortal painter.” VOL, XX.—NO. LYIII. F 66 Some Account of the Parish of Atoukton faurleigh. By Siz Cuarrtes Hosyovssz, Bart. CHAPTER I. SrtuaTIon—CLimaTE—PRODUCTIONS. = Ke > BX RBXQRaxar REGS BXSprEX > 2 q WHE, OF SITE. A PORTION OF PLAN ———————s ee le = , 10 FEET don Whiteman&Bass, Atho Ion By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 75 centuries in date; and slabs, one with part of an inscription on it, as of tombstones or screens. It is well known that certain excavations were made round and about the manor house by Lord Webb Seymour in 1744, and certain others by Mr. Wade Browne in 1844, but I have ascertained, from persons present in 1$44, that the excavations then made were on a different site to those I have described, and neither do these latter at all correspond with those made in 1744, But there can, I think, be no sort of doubt that the foundations now uncovered appertained to some one part or other of the ecclesi- astical buildings of the Priory. It was, we know, by the monks of St. Pancras, Lewes, that our Priory was built. It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude, that in building they would follow the lines of their mother Priory. It is, I believe the fact, that the various orders of monks usually built on plans peculiar to the particular order. I have a plan of the Lewes buildings, and I find that the ecclesiastical buildings stood to the north, that directly east of these was the churchyard and that west and at a right angle to them stood the domestic buildings. I have explained in another part of my paper by what means I have discovered the exact sites of the churchyard and of the domestic buildings of the Priory and, these sites ascertained, I should have expected to find the ecclesiastical buildings exactly where the ex- cavations now open would shew them to be. My judgment is that the foundations I have uncovered are cloisters, leading either to the chapter house, of which Layton, in his letter to Cromwell, speaks, or to a mortuary chapel, but I hardly like to venture on any con- jecture, and I submit the various plans which Mr. Adye has kindly drawn of the excavations, and his note thereon, for the consideration of persons better able to judge. CHAPTER III. Tur History or our Manor. Our first appearance as a manor is in Domesday,! where I find the following entries :— Jones’s Domesday for Wiltshire p. 231. 76 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. “Terra Odonis et aliorum Tainorum Regis.” (Land of Odo and other of the King’s Thanes.) Brictric tenet Farlege et frater Brictric holds Farlege and his ejus de eo, Tempore Regi Ed- brother holds it of him. In the wardi geldabat pro 5 hidis. time of King Edward it paid Terra est 4 carucate. In do- geld for 5 hides. The land is 4 minio est 1 carucata et 4 servi; carucates. In demesne is one et 5 villani, et 3 bordariicum 3 carucate and 4 serfs, and there carucatis. Ibi 20 acre pasture are 5 villans and 3 bordars and et 3 acre silvee. Valet 70 solidos. 3 carucates. There are 20 acres of pasture and 3 acres of wood. It is worth 70 shillings. The first recorded ancestor of Brictric was one Alyward, or Aylward Mere, or Meau, a Saxon nobleman of royal lineage, who founded the monastery of Cranbourne in Dorset. To him succeeded filfghar, or Algar, who completed the foundation and Brictric is mentioned as his grandson and a benefactor. According to Domesday Brictric’s father held upwards of five thousand acres of land in Wiltshire only, whilst Brictric himself held upwards of six thousand eight hundred acres under the Con- queror besides some five thousand three hundred acres more, which he had held under Edward the Confessor. He is said to have had manors also in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucester, and Worces- ter. He was one of the king’s thanes, 7.e., he served the king in some place ‘of eminency either in the Court or Commonwealth,”? and was a possessor of land in this capacity, and for these services. He was so far, however, more fortunate than his co-temporary thanes in that he had his “‘ Vates sacer.” According to this authority, he was sent by Edward the Confessor to the Court of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, in the matter of Earl Godwin. Here he had the misfortune to please the eye of Matilda, 1 Jones’s Domesday, p. 41. * Jones’s Domesday, p. 4. By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 17 Baldwin’s daughter, and the following quaint ballad thus records the disastrous result of the lady’s wooing :— “A lui la pucele envela messager Pur sa amur a lui procurer ; Meis Brictrich Maude refusa, Dunt elle mult se coruga; Hastivement mer passa E 4 William Bastard se maria.” So Matilda woo’d and was refused, and thereafter, when she became Queen of England, smarting, no doubt, under the “ sprete injuria forme,” she is said to have appropriated Brictric’s possessions, and to have thrown him into prison.’ One of his possessions, still called after him, Brixton (or Bricticis- ton)-Deverel, passed undoubtedly to Matilda, but inasmuch as she died before Domesday was compiled, and inasmuch as we still find him, according to Domesday, described as a king’s thane, in pos- session of the largest part at least of the Wiltshire manors which he had held before the Conquest, it cannot be true that Matilda absolutely despoiled him or that she deprived him permanently of either his liberty or his position. What were the further fcrtunes of Brictric and his family I do not know, but I imagine that he and they were eaten up, as the Zulus say, by that great land-hungerer—Edward of Salisbury. Certainly this individual, whether in his capacity of sheriff of the county, or by private purchase, had in A.D. 1100—or only fourteen years after the record in Domesday—eaten up Brictric’s manor of Trowbridge and Staverton,’ and as certainly, in the year 1125, our manor had passed first into the hands of Humphrey Bohun the second, and from him into those of Humphrey Bohun the third, and had by them been conveyed to the Priory of St. Pancras, Lewes, for the purpose of founding a daughter Cluniac priory in our parish.’ 1 Sussex Archeological Coll., v. 28, p. 121. Jones’s Annals of Trowbridge, pp. 5, 6. 2 Jones’s Annals of Trowbridge, pp. 6, 7. 3 Monasticon. Jones’s Annals of Trowbridge, p. 7. Jackson’s History of the Priory and Wiltshire Domesday, p. 64. 78 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. Now the first Humphrey Bohun married Matilda, sole daughter of Edward of Salisbury, and she, on her father’s death, shared his estates with her only brother. Thereafter the manors of Trowbridge and Staverton, as well as that of Farley, pass through her to the priory. It is only, therefore, reasonable to conjecture that they all passed from Brictrie to Edward of Salisbury, and so to our Priory. There has been a difference of opinion as to whether it was the second or the third Humphrey Bohun who founded our Priory, but my judgment is that the first commenced and the second concluded the foundation. The charter is styled “Carta Humfridi de Bohun, Regis Dapi- feri, de fundatione Prioratus de Farleighe.” This is evidently the third Humphry Bohun, for the second was never “‘ Regis Dapifer,” but the charter goes on, sometimes absolutely to give and sometimes only to confirm, the gift of properties, and in the case of our parish the gift is only confirmed ; confirmed therefore, I conclude, as the previous gift of the father, Humphrey the second. There is something very characteristic of the times in this charter, a terseness, brevity and precision, appropriate to the military life of the grantor, and in marked contrast to our manorial deeds of later date and quieter times. Humphrey and his wife (Margaret, daughter of’ Milo of Gloucester, Earl of Hereford), with consent of their barons and men, give, concede, and confirm (donamus et concedimus et confirmamus) to God and the Holy Mary Magdalen and the monks at Monkton Farleigh, certain properties, for the salvation of their souls and of the souls of those belonging to them. Then follows a concise enu- meration, as thus in the case of our parish :—“ The whole manor of Farley with the Park and every other thing belonging to the same village [villam], save one hide of land which William de IIe holds.” (This hide, by the way, was conveyed in a subsequent charter.) Contrast this with the conveyance of messuages, hereditaments, tenements, and so on, which I shall have to refer to later on, as made some four hundred years afterwards, and we shall have to -~ at Se By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 79 conclude that the advantage, except to the scribe! is not with the more modern deed. Our manor, thus conveyed to the monks, remained in their possession until the dissolution of the Priory, in 1535—a period of four hundred years. The first spelling of the name is Farlege, then Farley, Farleigh, Monketon-Farley (Leland, 1538), and (valuation of Henry VIII.) Farleigh-Monachorium, a name still given to it in the parish register of October, 5th, 1679. The affix of Monkton was, no doubt, given by the monks, partly perhaps to distinguish it from the neighbouring parish of Farley- Hungerford, and from that other Farley in Wiltshire, near Salisbury, but principally, no doubt, to mark their proprietorship—as at Monketon in Broughton-Gifford, Chippenham, and other places. Our monks were large farmers, and our manor was their home farm. There they kept a goodly stock of cattle, sheep, pigs, mules, asses, horses, pigeons, carts, ploughs, wheat, barley, oats, hay, &c., and were served by a considerable number of cottagers, free and customary tenants, and so on. I have the means of comparing the state of our manor at four distinct periods, viz., in 1086, 1294, 1535, and at the present time, respectively, and I think that such comparison is not without its lessons. : In 1086 the manor is assessed at five hides, and these, at 160 acres ! to the hide, I will take at 800 acres. To these are to be added, wood 3 ,, and pasture 20 ,, In all 823 ,, The valuation was seventy solidi, equivalent in weight to about two hundred and ten shillings of our standard. Attached to these lands were four servi, five villani, and three bordarii, or twelve families in addition to that of the lord, making 1 Canon Jackson’s estimate, Aubrey. 80 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. up, at five to each family of tenants, and ten to the lord, a popu- lation of perhaps seventy souls. The servi, or serfs, were little, if at all, better than slaves, towards whom the lord’s only obligation was to provide food. The villani were customary tenants, of the nature of copyholders, paying rent for their lands, but also supplying the Lord with a certain amount of food and labor. The bordarii were cottagers, whose cottages, furniture, and im- plements were found by the lord, and were resumable on the tenant’s death, and who held a certain quantity of land of the lord, paying rent in kind, in the shape of food for his table. Our community, therefore, in A.D. 1086 was made up of the lord, as sole proprietor, paying a geld or quit rent to the king; of certain families absolutely slaves to the lord, and of certain other families practically dependent upon him but with a leaven of freedom in the villani, who held subject only to certain customary services. The second period of which I have any record is the twenty-second Edward I.—A.D, 1294—when I find the following detailed descrip- tion of the manor, viz. :— Jardino et Columbas, valued at 20/- 6 Liberi tenentes [freehold] 64/4 3 Villani, who pay per annum, 8/- and whose labor, festivals excluded, is worth 13/- 7724 acres of arable land at 34 Vie On ka 364 ,, of meadow-prati at 2/- 73/- 384 ,, of woodlands valued at 40)- Total 847 acres and the above items valued at £20.11.5. This valuation was made when Edward I. was casting about for money, and when he was absorbing alien Priories, such as our own, on the pretext of their paying substantial allegiance to foreign houses in countries with which he was at war. 1 Jones’s Domesday, introduction, p. 1x1. By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 81 It was the king’s commissioners who made the valuation, and on this account and from its approximation in many respects to the valuation of Domesday, it was most probably sufficiently accurate. It is remarkable that, after a lapse of over two hundred years, there should have been so little variation in the arable cultivation and in the population of the manor and parish. The arable land is somewhere about twenty-eight acres less in extent than it was. The number of families is three less, but as a community of thirteen monks would probably be within itself a larger family than that of the lord of a manor, the population would still be about equal to the seventy souls of 1086. On the other hand the pasture land has risen from three to thirty- six acres, and the woodlands from twenty to thirty-cight acres, whilst the status of the population has materially altered for the better. The servi have entirely disappeared, absorbed perhaps in the domestic servants of the priory; and the bordarii and villani have become, probably under the peculiarly beneficent rule of the monks, practically freeholders, paying rent in money or in labor for the lands and tenements they hold. Of any oppressive feudal tenure there is no sign, and on the con- trary there is every sign of industry and progress in the improved social position of the population, and in the addition, in so compara- tively short an interval, of a considerable acreage of land to the cultivated area. The third period is A.D. 1535, when a return of assets and out- goings was made by the last Prior, just before and in order to the dissolution, and we can imagine the feelings of the worthy com- munity, for worthy they had proved to be, when made to sign, as it were, their own death-warrant. The following are the particulars :— Curia, with garden, pigeonry, and curtilage, valued at£1.0. 0. 6 Libere tenentium As 38.4.4, 21 Coterelli ps Ay. ohn Se, 8 Villani and their labor, festivals excluded 1.0. 0. VOL, XX.—NO. LVIII, G 82 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. 762 acres of arable land at 34 an acre 9°. LO0P 8: 364 =, of pasture ,, at2/ ,, 8 18 70: 38 _,, of woodland valued at 2. Oe Total 8364 acres of land and the above is £24 .16 . 0. Here the interval is two hundred and forty years, and the fol- lowing changes are to be remarked, viz., a small decrease in the area of cultivated land, a small increase in the value of the income, and a very large increase in the population and in the nature of it, the twenty-one coterelli, or cottagers, being a new element. I imagine that in 1294 the limits of cultivable lands in the manor had been reached, and I conjecture that the ten acres less of arable land in 1535 had been swallowed up in the gardens and cottages of the twenty-one coterelli. The creation of this new and considerable body of villagers was due principally to these facts, that our manor, together with the (then) hamlet of Wraxhall (two hundred:and twelve acres), was the home farm of the Priory, and that the monks had become large proprietors of live and dead stock.' 1Tt is appropriate to our parish history, and it may interest some to know something of the number, the value, and the kind of stock that was in use upon a farm of about 1049 acres in those days—two hundred and fifty years ago—and I therefore append a tabular statement of it :— Description. Number or Quantity. Value ofeach. £ 8s. d. £s. 4d, Oxen 69 6/8 23 6 8 Cows 17 5/- 4 5 0 Bulls 1 5/- 0 5 0 Yearlings 11 3/- 113 0 Calves 9 1/- 09 0 Mules 9 5/- 25 0 Asses 5 2/- 010 0 Ewes 100 [6 210 0 Lambs 24 /6 012 0 Porkers 36 [6 018 O Pigs 30 1/- 110 0 * Horses 4 3.8 4 315 41 12 0 Carts 1 3/- 0 3 0 Ploughs 6 6/8 2 0 0 Wheat 69 quarters 5]- 17 5 0 Barley 59 p 3/- 817 0 Oats 100 op 1/4 613 4 —— eee ee By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 83 Assuming the community at the Priory to be perhaps twenty souls in all, and the thirty families in the village to be made up of about five souls to each family, I take the population in 1535 to have been about two hundred and seventy souls, and the cottages to have been about thirty in number, or one to each family. We now make another leap of two hundred and fifty years and find ourselves in the present day. The parish is now made up as follows :— ra Sir Charles Parry Hobhouse, the manor house, &. 685 3 21 Henry Spackman, Esq., lands and quarries 602 1 26 Henry Hancock, Esq., lands 549 1 26 Glebe of the Rector (The Rev, T. H. Tooke) 22 0 8 H. D. Skrine, Esq. (Warleigh, Somerset) 6 0 22 H. Batten, Esq. 4 3 24 Messrs. Antrobus, & Co., brewers 8 0 29 Mr. James Cottle, yeoman, of Farley Wick 2 38 27 Mrs. Whyatt Cottle, widow of Whyatt 0 115 Life-renters under H. Hancock, Esq. 0 2 26 Total acreage 1877 3 24 Whether the lands which in 1535 were situated in (the then hamlet of) South Wraxall became permanently attached to that or to our own parish respectively, I do not know; but it is noteworthy, that, whereas in 1535 there were one thousand and forty-nine acres which were in dominio (in demesne) of the Priory in that year, there is EI-F—E——————— ESS an Hay a 4-8 —— 38 6 0 Total valuation of “ Bonis et Catallis ” £79 18 O £s. d * Chestnut 110 0 Bay 100 Black 013 4 White 0 0 5 N.B.—The mark was 63. 8d,, and was evidently the standard of valuation in large transactions, T imagine that the novices, at least, and some of the monks, and all the villagers, assisted in the manual labor, and the total number of laborers would therefore be about forty. G2 84 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. still very nearly that acreage computed as in demesne or tithe-free. ! This is, as briefly as possible, the history of our parish, extending over a period of eight hundred years, and this it seems to me is very much the history of many such parishes in England. The comparative independence of the Saxon thane, paying only his geld and his personal services to the sovereign; the state of servitude, almost amounting to slavery, of the villagers, with yet some elements of freedom to be worked out in the future. The rapacity, mixed with a certain religious superstition, of the followers of the Conqueror, taking without scruple, on the one hand, from the Saxon proprietor, and giving without stint, on the other hand, to the Church, for the benefit of the souls, that, even to their perverted consciences, seemed so urgently to require some expiation. The mild and industrious rule of the monks, turning the waste lands to profit, rearing flocks and herds, creating new industries, promoting learning and charitable deeds, and gradually emancipating the agricultural laborer from his state of servitude and ignorance to a state of freedom and comparative knowledge. The spoliation of the industrious community of the monks, with- out sometimes—as in our case—even the allegation of corruption to justify it, and the absorption of their lands and goods for purposes of family and personal greed and aggrandisement.? 1T am unable to account for the difference plus, but I am bound to remark that, this acreage does not correspond with that made for the purpose of the tithe-rent charge commutation on the 26th January, 1842. According to this computation the total acreage was as follows :— Demesne lands (tithe free) 1034 1 25 Glebe (tithe free if in hand) 25 3 10 Subject to tithes 750 1 25 Total 1810 2 20 2T think it would be useful, as evidence of the motives which led to the dissolution of the monasteries, if enquiry were to be made, perhaps it has been made, into the number of charitable trusts that were absorbed and discontinued when the monasteries were dissolved. The following is the list in our own case :— Distributed to the poor on the anniversary of Humphrey de la Bound £2 0 0 Distributed to the poor, four days in the year, on the foundation and gift of Barthei Bygote, per annum 013 4 Total 213 4 Not an insignificant sum 350 years ago. eee ee By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 85 And, finally, the disappearance not only of the small freeholder but even of the customary tenant, and the creation of the class of great landowners, absolutely free of their properties, subject only to the burdens deemed requisite for the maintenance of the general commonwealth. Before quitting this subject of the comparative status of the manor at the various periods mentioned, I cannot pass over one most remarkable fact, viz., the great increase in the acreage of pasture as compared with arable lands. I take it that the eight hundred and thirty-six acres of land that composed the home farm in 1535 in our parish, were all within a ring-fence of the Priory, very much as are now the lands which are attached to the manor house. Yet in 1535, notwithstanding that the monks had a goodly stock of beasts, sheep, and pigs, the pasture lands were in proportion of only thirty-eight to seven hundred and sixty-two acres of arable. At the present time, in the manor house division of six hundred and eighty-six acres, the proportion is two hundred and forty-one acres of pasture to two hundred and eighty-seven‘acres of arable land. I presume that the small quantity of hay and the few acres of pasture were kept for the use of the monks’ horses, mules, &c., and that the rest of their live-stock was maintained upon the produce of the arable land. : But as labor became dearer, and arable produce of more value, this must have been found to be an extravagant practice ; and when to this was added the obvious fact, that the capriciousness of the climate rendered it more suitable to the profitable culture of pasture rather than of arable lands, the process of conversion from arable : into pasture must have proceeded in an ever increasing ratio. That this process should at this moment be proceeding more rapidly than ever is natural enough, a decrease in the value of cereals having been superadded to the other motive causes above-mentioned, but it seems to me to be obvious that it is mainly to the capricious- ness of the climate, rather than to any outside competition for prices, that we owe the so great conversion of arable into pasture land. _ To return to the year 1535-6. It was in this year that the dissolution of our Priory was brought about. The monks were 86 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. dispersed, their ecclesiastical buildings were pulled down, their manor, their farmsteads, and probably their domestic buildings, were made over to the Earl of Hertford, afterwards the Protector Somerset. The history of the manor thereafter merges into that of the manor house, and this will form the subject of my next chapter. In appendices A. to F. will be found some further details of the manor and its people in Clugniac times which perhaps may be of interest. CHAPTER IV. Tue Manor Hovsz. Our manor house, like most other buildings of equal antiquity, bears, upon the face of it, the signs of various ages and many changes, but I am persuaded that it stands upon the exact site and to some extent upon the very foundations of the domestic buildings of the Priory. The stone of which it is built was brought, I have ascertained, out of the now disused quarries on Farleigh Down, and corresponds in that respect with the stone of which the Priory was built. Fur- thermore the position of the house relatively to what was the position of the ecclesiastical buildings of the Priory, places it, as I have elsewhere explained, exactly where the domestic buildings of the Priory might be expected to be. And, again, the west side of the main body of the house belongs, according to Mr. Talbot, undoubtedly to the Elizabethan period. These facts would not, of course, be at all conclusive, nor would they take us necessarily to the Priory times, but, through the kind- ness of Mr. Henry Hancock, I have had access to the records of the manor, and amongst them is a lease of A.D. 1638, which recites in detail a previous lease of the year 1547-48. By this deed the then Bishop of Salisbury leased our manor house to one Henry Breton, styling it “the house, sight, circuit, premises and grounds of the late dissolved monastery of Monkton Farleigh.” Now it was in 1535-36 that the bill for the dissolution of the lesser monasteries, 7.¢., of monasteries where “ the congregation of + 33 relygyous persones is under the number of xij,” and where the By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 87 properties are not above the clere yerely value of two hundredth poundes,” passed the Houses of Parliament, and that the properties of the said monasteries were “ gyven to the King’s Highnes, his heires and successores.”’* And it was not until St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1535, that Dr. Layton, Cromwell’s Commissary, held his enquiry at our Priory. Therefore at that time the Priory and all its buildings were still standing in their integrity. But five years later Leland speaks of it in the past tense. Here, he says, “ by the village there was a priorie, standinge on a little hille, sumtyme having blak monkes, a prior and a convent of 12,” and further on he adds that “‘ Monke- ton Farley was a late gyven to the Erle of Hertford.’ ? So the Priory and all its buildings were in existence in the latter end of the year 1535, but in 1540 the Priory itself was gone. It does not follow, however, that all its buildings, secular as well as ecclesiastical, were gone, for the custom of the king’s commission- ers was only to destroy the ecclesiastical or so-called useless buildings, and to sell or give away the estates with the secular part of the buildings intact. Thus, in the case of the mother Priory of St. Pancras, John Portinari writes to Cromwell, 24th March, 1537, describing how he took with him from London no less than thirty-four artizans of various trades, and in a few days utterly pulled down and destroyed all the ecclesiastical buildings, leaving the secular buildings standing. Obviously too, the objects being on the one hand dstensibly the suppression of useless and corrupt religious bodies, and on the other hand lust of property, the ecclesiastical buildings would go, as no ‘longer wanted, and the secular buildings would stand to maintain the value of the secular property. Thus, amongst the records “of the manner of suppressing the monasteries after they were surrendered,” I find in the list of “ Houses and Buildings assigned to remain undefaced,” “ the abbots 127, Henry VIII., cap. 28. The clear value of our Priory was £153, and the number of monks twelve and a prior.—Monastican and Leland. ? Leland’s Itinerary. Jackson, p. 14. 5 Letters relating to the Suppression of the Monasteries. Camden Society, 1843. 88 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. lodgings with buttery, pantry, cellar, kitching, larder and pantry thereto attached,” also “ the hostelry, the great gate entering into the court with the lodging over the same, the abbot’s stable, bake- house, brew-house, and slaughter-house, the almry, barn, dairy- house, the great barn, the malting-house, the ox-house, the barton- gate.” And, on the other hand, amongst “ buildings deemed to be super- fluous,” I find “the church, with chappels, cloister, chapter-house, misericord, the two dormitories, the infirmary, with chappells and lodgings within the same, the convent-kitching, the library, the old hostelry, the chamberer’s lodging, the new hall, the old parlor, the cellarer’s lodging, the poultry-house, and all other houses not re- served,” 1 So, whatever other buildings might or might not be reserved, all ecclesiastical buildings were at least condemned to destruction. Following “this manner of suppression” our ecclesiastical buil- dings would be, and were, I think, totally uprooted, whilst the secular buildings were retained and, judging by the description in the lease of 1548, they must have been numerous, and, in the case of the house, of considerable size. The manor was, as we have seen, bestowed in the first instance upon the Earl of Hertford, afterwards the Protector Somerset, but it would seem that he very soon found other manors, those of Rams- bury, Baydon, &e., more to his liking, and so, not without some degree of gentle violence it would seem, he gave our manor house and property in exchange to John Salcot, a/ias Capon, then Bishop of Salisbury.? I have already quoted so much of the deed of A.D. 1638, as was material for establishing the site of the manor house, but there are other parts of the deed which are worthy of preservation, because they shew the size of the house, and the exact properties of which within ten years of the dissolution the manor was made up, and. are curious as evidence of the monkish verbiage, which had taken the 1 Burnet’s Records, No. 5, Pt. I, Book IIL, p. lxvii.. 2 Fasti Ecclesie Sarisberiensis——Jones, p. 107. : ; . : ; By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 89 place of Humphrey de Bohun’s terseness and brevity, since the first conveyance in A.D. 1125. The recital of the lease of 1548 is to be found in a subsequent lease “‘ of the last day of December, 1638,” and runs thus : Whereas “John sumtyme Bishop of Sarum did demyse, grant and to farm lett to Henry Breton of Monkton-ffarleigh in the county of Wiltes, gent, all that his mannor or lordship of Monkton-ffarleigh and Comerwell with the appurtenances within the said county and all and singular messuages, lands, tenements, buildings, barns, stables, heaths, marishes, woods, underwoods, rents, reversions, services, views of frankpledge, waistes, strayes, warrens, and other the rights, jurisdictions, privileges, liberties, profits, commodities, emoluments and hereditaments whatsoever to the manner aforesaid appertaining to have and to hold to the said Henry Breton his heirs, adminis- trators and assigns, from the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel then last past [1547] unto the end and term of fourscore and nine- teen years [ninety-nine] then next ensueing and under the yerely rent of £38 16s. 2d. payable at the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Blessed Lady St. Mary the Virgin and of St. Michael.” Therefore, the indenture goes on to say, by reason of the surrender of the said lease, and also in consideration of a certain sum of money paid, the then bishop (Davenant) leases to Thomas Cornwallis, of Wandsworth, in the county of Surrey, and William Lynsey, the above manors, &c., “ from the Feast Day of our Lord God last past {Christmas Day, 1638] to the full end and time of one and twentie years yielding the yerely rent of four and forty pounds.” And then follows this curious condition, that “if the Bishop or any of his successors shal! be willing to live and abide in the said house of Monkton-Farleigh for the space of three months together during the said tenure hereby demysed, he and his suite shall have within the said house one hall or parlor, one buttery, one pantry, one cellar, one kitchen, one larder, one stable and ten convenient lodging chambers,” and ‘“ may also fell, cut down, take and carry away yerely so many trees or wood as are or may be growing upon - any of the said premises as the said Lord Bishop or his successors shall or may conveniently expend in fuel in three months in any 90 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. one year when any of them may be abiding in the said house.” The house which in 1547 could provide so great accommodation, suitable to the bishop of the diocese, in addition to the accommodation re- quired by the family of the lessee, must have been a considerable and large house, and this particular condition is not only curious but it is probably unique in the annals of episcopacy, and it explains how it was that Bishop Jewel, in 1570, when taken ill at Lacock, did not there remain, but came to our manor house and there died, as is in his life recorded. The Bretons, and after them the Cornwallises, had, by the con- ditions of their respective leases, the presentation to the rectory, which vests now, as from 1548, in the Bishops of Salisbury, but, from the time of William Watson (1661), at least, the bishops re- served to themselves “ the donation, advowson and patronage of the rectory and parsonage.” At first, also, the bishops were acquitted by the leases, “‘ from all quitt rents, pensions, portions and other charges leviable for the said premises,” “the tenths and subsidies only excepted”; but as time rolled on they relieved their tenants of “ all leases, grants, rents, rent-charges, annuities, fees, tithes, troubles, and incumbrances whatever made or done by them,” and further agreed to leave “ sufficient timber trees standing or growing for the necessary repairs of the premises,” and for “ Fire-boot, Hedge-boot, Plough-boot, and Cart-boot, according to the custom of the country.”* On the other hand the rent was raised from £38 16s. 2d., in 1548, to £44, in 1638, and to £50, in 1697, in which was included a sum of £10 “as an augmentation to the parsonage of Monkton Farleigh”; “the customary tenants” were to be allowed by the lessee sufficient timber for the reparation and maintenance of their customary tene- ments,” the same to be growing on their premises. The bishops were to have the right of “cutting down and carrying away such timber trees as according to the custom of the country were fit to 1 Fire-boot, wood for house-firing ; Plough- and Cart-boot, wood for repairing implements of husbandry ; Hedge-boot, wood for hedge and fence repairs.— Stephens’ Commentaries, v. i., p. 254, Ed. viii. Boot or bote, synonymous with “estovers’’ from estoffer to furnish.—Jones’s Domesday Introduction. By Sir Charles Hobhouse, bart. 91 be cut and felled (pollard trees excepted) ” [1792] ; the lessees were prohibited from making any assignment of the premises, “ otherwise than by mortgage, or marriage settlement, or will,” and even then previous intimation was to be given to the bishops (1805) and the leases, though ostensibly made to run for twenty-one years, were practically renewed, on considerations made, every seven years. The lessees of the manor house were :— The Bretons, 1547 to 1638—with sub-tenants in William Bromfield, d. 1582, and the Cornwallises. The Cornwallises and William Whitwell 1638—1654. William Watson 1654—1695. Daniel Webb 1695—1731. John Thresher 1731—1737. Sir Edward Seymour, 8th Duke of Somerset 1737—1757. Lord Webb Seymour, 10th Duke of Somerset 1758—1792. Anna Maria, Dowager Duchess of Somerset and her heirs 1799—1804. William Cass, of the Poultry, London 1805—1812. John Long, the Elder 1812—1838. John Long, the Younger The Rev. Walter Long, Kelloes House 1835—1842. Catherine Elizabeth Mary Long Wade Browne and his heirs 1842—57,. Mrs. Wade Browne and her lessees—Edward Pennefather and the Rev. E. R. Eardly Wilmot 1857—1863. H. B. Caldwell, Esq. 1864—1870. It is probable that the Bretons, or Brittons, were connected with the manor before they came to reside here, for I find a certain William Britton recorded as auditor to the Priory, in the return of the temporalia in 1535, on a yearly fee of 40s. Thereafter in 1570 (twelfth of Elizabeth), a Henry Britten, probably the lessee of 1547—48, pays a quit rent of 46s. 8d. to the crown for the manor, and presents to the rectory ; and in 1576—77, respectively, are baptized Henry and George, the sons of George Britton. 92 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. In 1595 Henry Brittaine again presents to the rectory, but in 1606 the Lady Catharine Cornwallis so presents, by permission of Henry Brittaine and by assignment of George Brittaine, grandsons of the first Henry. The family perhaps originally had a settlement in the parish of Batheaston, or else migrated there. There was a strip of land called “ Briton’s land under Banner- down,” in 1605; one Thomas Britton is recorded as customary tenant of thirty-three acres in Bathford Manor in the same year ; one George Britton, temp. Elizabeth, sued W. Cavel for surrender of part of the manors of Shockerwick and Batheaston, and Collinson records that the manor of Shockerwick descended to the Briens (Brittons ?), and that they were also lords of Batheaston. If “ William Bromfeld, late of Lewisham, in the county of Kent, Esquire, who deceased—as his tablet in the chancel of our Church records—“ thé twentie day of November, 1582,” was their sub- tenant, they must have left the manor house before that date, and perhaps it was because the Cornwallises had succeeded Bromfeld as sub-tenants that they presented to the living in 1606. The next lessee of whom I have any record is “ Mr. William Watson, Esquire,” and the following is the account of the family, as given in the parish registers :— William em d. 1695. ] Mr. Rowland,=Mrs. Elizabeth, Francis, b. 1654. d. 27 Feb., 1700. b. 1656. William, b. 1682. The tenancy died out with William, the Elder, and Mrs. Elizabeth, his son’s wife, died at Whitcomb, in Somerset. To him succeeded Daniel Webb, described as of Seend, in the county of Wilts, gentleman, He it was who is said to have planted the manor generally, and especially that avenue in front of the house, a mile-and-a-quarter in length, which is the chief beauty of the place. By Sir Charies Hobhouse, Bart. 93 The name, at least, was of some consequence in the neighbour- hood. There was a Webb, a freeholder, holding (curiously enough) under Sir Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, at Great Sherston, in 1585. Thomas Webbe, of Clyford, Beckington, Somerset, bought the manor of St. Maur from that family in 1604—5. (Hoare’s Wilts, p. 39.) A Webb of Ashwick, near Marshfield, who presented to Box rectory in 1613, and another who presented to Rudlow, in Box parish, in 1720. The parish register would appear to assign the death of our Webb to the year 1731, but the entry is torn and interpolated, and for 1731 I would read 1730, as the year in which the manor was transferred to the Threshers. The John Thresher. who was our lessee from 1730 to 1737 was, perhaps, that John who is entered on the pedigree of the Long family in Walker’s History of the manor house at South Wraxall. If so, the following is his pedigree :-— - Edward.=Dyonisia, second daughter of Richard Long, of Collingbourne, ec. 1680. John.=Ellen d. of Henry Long, of Melksham, died at Bradford, 1741, xt. 52. If it was by the exercise of violence that the Seymour family rid themselves of our manor in 1547, there was a Nemesis in the fact of their returning to live here, in the inferior position of tenants only, from 1737 to 1805. In the year 1716 Edward Seymour, of Weide Bradley, Esquire, is recorded as marrying Mrs. Mary Webb, sole child and heiress of our Daniel Webb. Burke gives an incomplete pedigree, and is, I think, in error when he states that this Seymour succeeded to our manor in right of his wife. When Daniel Webb’s lease was up, in 1730, the see of Salisbury was quite at liberty to seek, and did seek and obtain, a tenant outside the Webb family, and when the Seymours took the lease in 1737 they must have done so out of love, either for the place, or for the profits of it. The family pedigree, as it appears partly in Burke and partly in our registers, is as follows :— 94 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh, Edward Seymour, of Maiden Bradley, =Mrs. Mary Webb, 1716. (eighth Duke of Somerset, d. 1757.) | Webb, second son,=Anna Maria, d. and sole heiress of b. 1718; 4.1793. John Bennell, Esq., of Stanton Tenth Duke. Harcourt, Oxford, d. August 6th, 1802. | | | | Edward, b. Webb, b. Edward Adolphus. Webb John, 1771; d. 1772; d. Eleventh Duke, b. 1777. 1774. 1774. b. 1775 ; d. 1793. Edward Adolphus. Twelfth and pre- sent Duke, b. 1804. The marriage of the eighth duke, the births of all the tenth duke’s sons, and the burial of the Duchess Anna Maria, are all re- corded in our registers, and so, no doubt, the family of the tenth duke resided here permanently, but as his own death is not so recorded I suppose, that, on his succession to the title in 1792, he left us. The initials W.S., and the date, 1764, would seem to shew that it was he who in that year added to the house at its extreme southern end. If so it was probably he also who re-faced the whole front of the house. The work is evidently of one and the same date, and is of the style of the Georges. It was, probably, he too who built the tower which, up to 1873, stood in the southern angle of the house-front. This went by the name of “ the Duke’s Tower,” and it was here that tradition has it the Duke, who is handed down as a precise and hard man, collected his rents to the last farthing. The dowager duchess, Anna Maria, certainly resided here from at least 1799 to her death, in 1802. It is known that she was buried exactly 20 feet each way from the extreme south-east corner of the churchyard, and 15 feet deep in the earth. By her own directions no monument was put up to her memory, she having lived in mortal fear that the French should invade England and disturb the bones of the dead. But the exact spot in which she was buried was marked by Rector Cozens (1824) by shrubs. Service, it is said, was never commenced in the parish Church By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 95 until she arrived, and at its conclusion all stood up in their places until she had left the Church. She planted the clump of trees still known as “The Duchess’s Clump,” and the villagers paid a humble tribute to her sway by christening their children Anna Maria after her—a name which then appears for the first time on the register. To the duchess succeeded as lessee Mr. William Cass, of the Poultry, London, but beyond the lease from 1805 to 1512 I can find no record of this family. To them succeeded Mr. John Long, the elder, and the following is, I believe, a correct pedigree, so far as it relates to our manor :— RichardjLong, Hsq., of Rood Ashton. John Long, the elder, =Lucy Anne Warneford. second son, b. 1768; d. 20th October, 1833. | John Long, the younger,=Mary, d. of Edward Daniel, b. 1793; d. April 30th, Barrister, d. May 22nd, 1849. 1861. | John, Walker Chatles Daniel Catharina Edvard Two ae b.1822; Henry,b. Daniel,b. Edwin,b. Eugenia,b. Morton,b. Francis Stan- d.1840. 1823;d. &d.1825. 1827; d. & d. 1830. 1833; d. hope,b.1835. 1857. 1830. 1835. There is some confusion amongst the elders of the parish as to the residence of the Longs. Old Thomas Sweetland (b. 1801) says that Mr. John Long, the elder, did not remain here uninterruptedly. He came from 1812 to 1818, or thereabouts. There was then an interim during which Mr. Daniel Jones afterwards called Mr. Jones Long, hailing from Farley Castle, in Somerset, lived here. He died in 1824, and was buried at Whaddon. Then Mr. John Long, the elder, returned, and he and his descendants resided here until 1542 ? It was one of the Longs who planted what is now known as the “ Kingsdown Plantation” (described by Sir Richard Hoare in 1819 as newly-planted), and the Yew or Primrose Walk, to the south of and parallel with the Monks’ Walk. In their time the lawn sloped away from the east front of the house, to the hedge which divides 96 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. the Italian Garden from the Conigree. The carriage-drive from Kingsdown in those days entered just below Ford’s Farm from the Bath and Melksham road. It then passed by the stone stile above the Kingsdown Plantation, along the present drive, through the gates by the gardener’s cottage, turned thence to the left, and passed round to the front of the house by the Rockery, the Italian Garden and the Wilderness. The fountain stood under the group of trees south of the house and north of the orchard. The Long family, like that of the Seymours, were connected with our manor centuries before they came to live here. South Wraxall, where the family originally set up, was, we have seen, originally a hamlet of our parish, and up to the dissolution of the Priory was a part of its home farm. The first Sir Henry Long, 1st May, 1490, bequeathed certain money legacies to our prior and each priest and novice of the Priory. The second Sir Henry, 1520, presented Ludovick Brecknock, Prior of Farleigh, to the living of Biddeston St. Peter’s, “ per concess’ Prioris de Farleigh” (an awkward-looking transaction), and this same Sir Henry is recorded as senior steward of the Priory in 15385, ata fee of 40s. a year. To the Longs succeeded the late Mr. Wade Browne. The family was originally of Chapel Allerton, Co. York, and Mr. Wade Browne was grandson of John Browne by the heiress of Wade of Moor Town, and son of Wade Browne by Rhoda, daughter and sole heiress of Jacob Smith, of Horsington, Co. Worcester. The tablet to him in the aisle, for once in a way truthful, des- cribes his life as one “ of active benevolence and conscientious dis- charge of Christian duty.” He improved the parish roads, making especially the straight road by Farley Wick Green to the villa. He utilized for the villagers the bountiful supply of spring water, which, issuing out of Ash Well, above the King’s Arms inn, is conducted by pipes to the village pump, and thence from one end of the street to the other. He built (1848) the observatory on Farleigh Down. He established a school and left, under conditions which have since un- fortunaely lapsed, an endowment for it. He presented in 1841 to By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 97 the Church the barrel-organ, which now (1881), however, stands neglected and useless in the gallery. He also beautified and planted the house and grounds. He level- led the slope in front into the present lawn. He placed the fountain on its present site, and he laid out the French, now called the Italian Garden. It was in laying out this garden that, as the villagers say, “a terrible sight”? of human bones was carted away and buried in the ehurehyard. It was no doubt, as the situation of two stone coffins, lately unearthed, shows, somewhere in this direction that the Priory churchyard was situated, but from the great quantity of bones un- eovered, and from the way in which they were found heaped to- gether, it was conjectured at the time that they were the remains, not of ordinary churchyard burial, but of human bodies heaped. together, as after some great fight or pestilence. Mr. Wade Browne married first, Ann, daughter of the Rt. Hon. Edward Pennefather, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. She died in 1837, and Mr. Browne married secondly, Selina Matilda Caroline, daughter of Sir John Eardley Wilmot, of Berkswell Hall, Co. Warwick. On Mr. Wade Browne’s death, in 1851, his widow continued to live on in the house. She is now Mrs. Abbott, of Wrentham Rectory, Wangford, Suffolk, and has been good enough to give me many particulars of the place, of which I now make use. The slips (or cupboards as they now are), in the older part of house are supposed to have been servants’ bed-rooms. They are vile holes, and Mrs. Wade Browne worthily supplied their places by building the upper bed-rooms over the east front. The pigeon house, by the side of the Monks’ Walk, used to pro- duce in former days a rent in kind of so many pigeons to the manor house. This was, no doubt, a remnant of the old Columbaria of the Priory. The sun-dial in the Italian Garden was erected in memory of a younger brother of Mr. Wade Browne, who was killed in the Caffre War. The inscription runs thus :— “To vado et vengo ogni giorno Ma tu andrai senza ritorno.” VOL. XX.—NO,. LYVIII. H 98 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. After Mr. Wade Browne left, first Mr. Hume and afterwards Mr. Smith occupied the house, and it then fell in hand to Bishop Hamilton, who let it to Mr. H. B. Caldwell. Thereafter the Ec- clesiastical Commissioners made a freehold of the whole manor, and on Mr. Caldwell’s death, in 1873, that part which was attached to the manor house and the house itself passed to the present proprietor, Sir Charles Parry Hobhouse. He has made many alterations in the old house, one, alas! the removal of the Duke’s tower, made under a misconception, and an irreparable loss. What are now a passage, the master’s room, and the lower school-room, were before the kitchens and the housekeeper’s room. The present kitchen was part ofa stable and coal cellar. The offices adjoining are new. ‘The back staircase was opened out after so many years of seclusion that its very existence was unknown. The present library was the dining room. The present dining room was created out of the old library and a part of the chief staircase, and so the dressing room overhead. The front corridor was raised, and the staircase and upper landing are new. The billiard room was made up partly of an entrance hall and partly of what was formerly the master’s room—part of the cellars being lowered. The parish is now pretty equally divided between Sir Charles Hobhouse and Henry Hancock and Henry Spackman, Esquires. The names of Hancock and Spackman are not new to the parish. There is a Hancock first mentioned in 1777, and there is still in the parish a piece of land called “ Hancock’s Piece.” A curious token of the family was also found by me in a garden, where was once a cottage, immediately opposite the lodge gates. It is a copper coin of date A.D. 1610. On one side is a hand out-spread, and the words “in Westbury 1610”—on the other is a cock exultant, and the name “Thomas Handcock.” It is very well cut. The name of Spackman is associated with the parish at a still earlier period, John Spakeman, senior and junior, being mentioned as churchwardens in 1372, Of the family of Hobhouse it does not beseem me to make any record beyond what may be said to be already public property. i —_— By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 99 They came originally from either Devon or Somerset, and there ~ are at Drewsteighnton, near Exeter, two hamlets or farms which still bear their name. They were settled at Minehead, in Somerset, and a lease of A.D. 1706, given by the Luttrells, of Dunster Castle, is still called Hobhouse’s Lease. It is for land with wharfage, and was perhaps taken up with the view to engaging in the Irish fishery business, which was then a stirring trade. From Minehead the family migrated to Bristol, and there set up as merchants on a more extensive and general scale, purchasing and for some time residing at Westbury Cottage, Westbury-on-Trym, and afterwards at Redlands. Thereafter the family divided, and one branch settled at Hadspen House, Castle Carey, Somerset, where it has been ever since, and is still worthily represented by a succession of Henrys of the name. The other branch shot out in the person of Sir Benjamin, created - first baronet in 1812. His first marriage was with a daughter of Mr. Cam, a clothier of Bradford-on-Avon, in Wiltshire, and through her he succeeded to Chantry House, Barton Farm, and other farms and lands near that town, whilst in 1777 he purchased the manor and certain lands in Broughton Gifford. He never, however, acquired a local habitation of his own, but lived at Hartham Park and Cottles, in this neighbourhood, and at Whitton Park, near Hounslow (since pulled down), renting at the same time a house in London. _ He was a friend of the then Lord Sidmouth, was Under Secretary of State at the India House, and obtained his baronetcy for services rendered in the settlement of the debts of the Nawab of Arcot. He was president of the first friendly society that was established in Wiltshire, and life-president of the Bath and West of England Agricultural Society, in whose rooms at Bath an admirable bust of him, by Chantry, may still be seen. His eldest son was Sir John Cam Hobhouse, Baron Broughton de Gyfford. It was he who was imprisoned in the Fleet for words spoken against the Constitution, which perhaps in these days might be watchwords of Toryism. Thereafter he was for the rest of his life a member of one or other H 2 100 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. House of Parliament, and for many years a Cabinet Minister under the Whig party. But, if remembered at all by posterity, it will probably be rather in connection with literature than with politics, as the friend and fellow-traveller of the poet Byron, and the spirited annotator of that poet’s best work. To him in the baronetcy succeeded (1869) Sir Charles Parry Hobhouse, the present proprietor of our manor house and lands. He was for twenty-six years in the Civil Service, first of the East India Company, and then of the Crown in India, and after holding various offices of some importance there—the last as a judge of Her Majesty’s High Court of Judicature at Calcutta, he devotes such leisure and health as he has left to the ordinary duties of a country gentleman and magistrate. CHAPTER V. ParisH NOTABLES. Here terminates the history of the manor house and of the families connected therewith, but we have had other notable families in the parish, and I proceed to give some account of the most remarkable amongst them. I begin with the Cottles, and although I cannot attempt to con- nect our parish with the early founders of the family yet I shall put together, for the benefit of any future writer, something like an historical account of them. The first mention that I find is of one Beranger Cotel, who, ac- cording to the Exon Domesday (c. 1086), held one hide of land at Fontel, now Fonthill Gifford, in Dunworth Hundred. Then appears a certain Sir Richard Cotell, who (ce. 1100) is settled by the then Abbot of Glastonbury on a manor at Camerton, in Somerset. This manor, on Sir Richard’s death (¢. 1120), reverted to Glaston- bury, and a serics of Cottels remained in tenancy, viz., Richard (ec. 1166); after him, Sir William; and after him, Sir Elias, or Elleys. He, A.D. 1289, seventeenth Edward I., is entered in the list of © Chevaliers et Homme du Mark,” in Co. Somerset, and in 1336 he presented to the living of Camerton. By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 101 Then the scene changes to Wiltshire, and a member of the same family, I would presume, because still under the egis of the Abbot of Glastonbury, one Jordan Cotele (c. 1251—61) is found to be Rector of Kington St. Michael, covenanting with the abbot and convent of Glastonbury, that certain lands in that parish are feud _ of the abbey and that therefore neither he nor his heirs will ever part with an acre of them. Thereafter, c. 1275, a Sir Roger de Cotele, Knight, is named in an inquisition held at Melksham. ‘The transition to Atworth is easy, and one Richard Cotell is found to be Lord of Cotels-Atworth. His daughter, Isande (1267—80) married Philip, son of Henry Tropenell of Chalfield. He is probably that Cotell mentioned by Aubrey as having had an estate at Biddes- ton St. Peter, for this estate passed to the Tropenells, and through them, it may be mentioned, to our Priory. These Cotels continued to present to Atworth Chapel, until A.D. 1809, when the presentation passed to the Selymans. There are notices too of a Richard Cotel, his wife Isabel and children, 1307; of a William Cotel, owner of fifty acres of land in Chelworth, 1327 ; of a family of Cotel dying out at Frampton Cot- terel (or Cotel), about the same period; of a Stephen Cotele, Rector of Castle Combe, 1397; and lastly of a Mark Cottell who (c. 1500) built a house at North Tawton, Devon; of a Cottle, of Samford Peverell, who registered the same arms as Sir Elias in 1580 ;,and_of a Cottle, of Cricklade, registering arms, 1623, From the above facts it is clear that the Cottle family was one of very ancient descent and weight in the counties of Wilts and Somerset, but that they passed away from our neighbourhood at Atworth, as persons of eminence, many centuries back (perhaps in 1309) is clear from Aubrey’s statement, that “ Atworth called Cotels Atward or Coteles Atworth antiently belonged to Coteles who had great possessions in these parts but now there are only some few people left of this name in the county.” This statement was made circa 1660, but Atworth is only two miles from us, and the William Cottle who was born in our parish in 1659 is described as ‘‘Gentleman,” and so was a descendant, 102 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. Jeremiah, in 1785, and the family tree shews that this title has, in fact, never left the family, and still abides in it. The passage from gentleman to yeoman carries with it no degra- dation, and the representative of the family, James Jeremiah Cottle, still in the parish, is a fitting type of the straightforward independent yeoman of the period, cultivating and living upon his own freehold at Farley-Wick. Curiously enough his wife was a Selman, perhaps a descendant of those very Selymans who succeeded the Cotels at Atworth. The manor house at Cottles-Atworth is still called after the family. Next in order of date is the family of the Grants. They were yeomen, and from the Christian names and the proximity of the place I think they must have come from Bradford. There in 1585, 1596, and 1600 were certain Daniel, Walter and Francis Grants, , who were considerable copyholders and freeholders. The following is the family tree, as appearing in our own registers. There were apparently three families, and several offshoots :— Famity I. J pat oan, who d. a widow, 1639. George, b. 1577. | | ‘Walter, Ann, George, gis tap Catharine, Edmund, b b b i . - I b. b. 1619 1610. 1613. 1616. 1616. 1617. d. 1644. Cybill, Ann Baker, J oan, d. d. 1622. 1649. widow, 1669. | . | | ; | Henry, d. 1665. Joan,=Mr. William Edmund, George, Richmond, of Prior of Bradford, d. Stanton, 1651. b. 1641. 1726. Famity II. ik Ve d. 1609. | Walt, b. 1586. i id b. 1609. Joan, b, 1628. Francis, d. 1669. By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 103 Famity III. John, yeoman, d. 1662. | | George, b. 1653. John, b. 1662. | | Hannah, d. 1701. George, b. 1686. Ellinor, d. 1688. Ellinor,=George Fry, 1611. Mary, of Bradford Liegh, d. 1680. Mr. Edward, of Trowbridge, clothier,=Mrs. John Randell, of Beckington, 1698. Martha, of Bath,=Richard Thomas, yeoman, 1699. Mrs. Deborah, of Trowbridge,=Mr. Abel, of Bristol, 1709. Frances,=James Poyner, both of Hinton Charterhouse, 1744. Mrs. Sara Grant, the heroine of the family, is not recorded in the registers, but a tablet to her memory is still to be found in the chancel of our parish Church. It runs thus :— “Hore lieth buried the body of Sara Grant deceased xxvii. die Novembris Anno Domini 1602. Five pounds she gave unto the poore William King gave so much more Imploy the increase keep stocke in store.” This tablet was, of cource, not put up until after the death of William King, and the Latinity, terseness, and general ring of it, point to some clerkly person as the author of it—probably the rector. - There was a William King in the parish who, in 1611, is recorded as of sufficient substance to have lent £20 to King James by way of Privy Seal. He died in 1650, and I take this to be the date of the tablet, and Parson Allambrigge, perhaps, to have been the author of it. A gentleman learned in the law once affirmed in my hearing that the inscription contained the most complete legal bequest in the fewest lines that were possible, directing, of course, the £10 of eapital to be funded and the interest accruing thereon to be paid to the poor. The benefaction, however, has entirely disappeared, but it is re- membered that some sixty years ago, in the days of Clerk Tutton, 104 Some Account of the Parish of Monkton Farleigh. bread was distributed from the chancel to the poor at Easter, “the people being always thankful to the good lady who gave it.” The family of the Kings stood probably upon about the same footing as that of the Grants and the following is the parish record of them :— William, d. oem d. 1667. | | | | | | Sarah, Arnold, Mr. Robert, George, Mr. John, Francis, b. 1621. b. 1624; b. 1626. b. 1627. b. 1627. b. 1629 ; d. 1697. d. ate | | Mary, Harmond, George, b. 1651. Joan, b. 1656. Elizabeth, b. 1652; —b. 1662. d. 1669. d. 1684. The name, at least, was still perpetuated in the parish up to 1880 in the person of Mr. John King, of “ The Villa.” The Butler family may next be mentioned. The name was, per- haps, at one time a badge of servitude at the Priory. Tempore Edward I. (1272—1307), one John le Botyler is witness to a deed securing certain privileges to the said Prior and convent of Farley. Then (1372) a William le Boteler appears as churchwarden, taking oath to the yearly value of the rectory. Later on, first Henry V. (1418), William Botyler (the article dropped) figures as a clerk in holy orders, confirming to one Richard Slade certain rents in land in Farleyghes-Wyke (called in Ed. II., 1321, the Bailliage of the Bedeley Court of Farleigh), and thereafter we have a succession of John Butlers, churchwardens in the parish, till the family dies out in the person of Thomas Butler, yeoman (1713). The name is still in the parish in the person of Mr. Hancock’s bailiff. Roger Huggitt was also, Mr. Powell eonsiders, one of our notables. A writer in the Gentleman’s Magazine, August, 4th, 1800, signing himself A. S. (absit omen!) mentions that he copied the following inscription from a square stone in the aisle of the parish Church of Farley in Wiltshire :-— Rogerus Huggitt. Qui eximo statu ad summos honores emergens. Natus Pastor-Miles obiit. Ait. By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart. 105 Hic situsest Huggitt qui numquam prelia fugit. Hune agris natum, perduxit in atria fatum. Linquens pastores magnos acquirit honores. Impavidus miles solitus contemnere viles Multa manu sorti dedit acer copia decrat Quem miseris dando Salvatoremque precando Ut careat avo vivebat purus in xvo Dives, Honoratus, magn& cum.stirpe beatus Humilis in pectus tandem est per sidera vectus. “The above leonine verses,” says the writer, “ are written in old English characters, and were made out with some difficulty, owing to the ravages of time. It is remarkable that it was not possible by any trace that is left to form the slightest conjecture as to the. antiquity of the monument.” Mr. Powell ascertained that the monument did not belong to the other Wiltshire Farley, and old Mrs. Moore, of the “ Dry Arch Cottage,” since dead, informed him (and old Thomas Sweetland confirms this) that she remembered the monument, and thought that it had either been destroyed or else placed in a vault under the Church with other monuments at the re-building of the Church. Mr. Powell adds, on the authority of the Edinburgh Review, April, 1861, p. 400, that about the year 1750 there was a Roger Huggit, Chaplain or Conduct of the College at Eton, an antiquarian whose collections, in nine vols., were in 1769 bequeathed to the British Museum. The Blinman family must not be forgotten. Joseph, the first of the name, is mentioned in the tablet in the chancel as “ Gentleman of this parish.” He died in 1811, aged eighty-four. Joseph, the younger, also “of this parish, gentleman,” died 24th June, 1843, aged seventy-two. He it was who, as recorded on the tablet over the Church doorway, left two sums of £300 and £250 respectively for the benefit of the poor. These sums are now invested in consols, in the name of the Charity Commissioners, and the dividends are paid every year to the parish churchwardens at the Capital and Counties Bank, Bradford-on-Avon. They remain at interest in de- posit until St. Thomas’s Day, and then the dividend on £300 is expended on-coal for distribution amongst the deserving poor of the 106 The Rising in the West, A.D. 1655. parish generally, and that on £250 is distributed in cash amongst forty of the deserving poor. It is remarkable that all that is remembered of this family is that they lived at what is now Mr. Sydney Hancock’s farm, at Farley- Wick, and that the younger kept a pack of beagles. It has to be admitted that, although we have been connected with the Bohuns, the De I’ Isles, the Dunstanvilles, the Seymours, the Longs, and others, yet, unless it be the mysterious Roger Huggitt, we have not produced persons of any other than of village note ; on the other hand we present a remarkable instance of a purely village community, unchanging and little affected by the times, the names and families still abiding amongst us being those that have so abided from the earliest recorded times. [Zo be continued.] The Bising in the West, B.D. 1655. To the Editor of the Wiltshire Archeological Magazine. Dear Sir, To-day, for the first time, my attention has been directed to a paper by Sir George Duckett, in the 55th Number of the Wilts Archeological Magazine, on the Rising in the West, A.D. 1655. Whilst thanking him for his, I fear, too complimentary observations, I would beg to observe that he is in error in assuming that I omitted to notice the informations (excipe Richard Rowe) which he gives in detail. If reference be made to Wiltshire Archeological Magazine, vol. xiii., pp. 173, 178, and 186, it will be found that substantially they are utilised. As I mentioned in Wiltshire Archeological Magazine, vol. xv. p. 236, Mr. Birch’s edition of the Thurloe Papers was constantly with me; and there all the papers mentioned by Sir George Duckett will be found. Rowe’s and Batchelor’s information, vol. 3, p. 630; Carter's p. 634; Hely’s, p. 655, and the rest, p. 648 of the same volume. I am, Your’s faithfully, W. W. RAVENHILL. The Temple, London, E.C., August 15th, 1881. H. F, BULL, Printer and Publisher, 4, Saint John Street, Devizes, TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE SUMMER OF. 1882. MAP OF A HUNDRED SQUARE MILES ROUND ABURY: With a Key to the British and Roman Antiquities occurring there. BY: THE “REV. A. O.-SMERE Rector of Yatesbury, and Hon. Secretary of the Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History Society. HIS work, the materials of which have been accumulating for twenty-five years, is the result of innumerable rides and rambles over the Downs of North Wilts; and deals with one of the most important archeological Districts : ‘ in Europe. It will be published and issued to subscribers by the Marlborough ks * College Natural History Society, and it will consist of two parts :— First—The Great Map—78 inches by 48 inches, on the scale'of 6 linear inches, or 36 square inches, to the mile; it comprises 100 square miles round Abury, and includes the great plateau of the Downs of North Wilts, extending from Oliver's Camp, on Roundway Hill, on the west, to Mildenhall on the east; and from Broad Hinton on the north, to the Pewsey Vale on the south. The district thus mapped measures 13 miles from west to east, and 8 miles from north __ to south. Every square mile, marked off with faint lines, lettered with a capital letter and numbered, will show the Barrows, Camps, Roads, Dykes, Enclosures, Cromlechs, Circles, and other British and Roman Stone- and Earth-works of that district ; every such relic, being lettered with a small letter in its own square, is readily found and easily referred to. The Map will be printed in six colours, viz., the Antiquities in red, the Roads in brown, the Lanes and Down Tracks in green, the Sarsen Stones in yellow, and the Streams and Ponds in blue. Second.—The Key to the Great Map,—which is by far the most important part of the work and will form a general “ Guide to the British and Roman An-— tiquities of North Wilts,”—will be a volume of large quarto size, and will contain the whole of the large Map in fifteen sections, measuring 18 inches by 12, and four supplementary sections, each measuring 6 inches by 12. The Letterpress will contain some account of each of the Antiquities, with references to and extracts from the best authorities, as well as figures of various Urns and other ~ objects found in the Barrows, views of the Cromlechs, plans of the Camps, &c. ~ An Index Map, on the scale of 1 inch to the mile, coloured, numbered, lettered, and divided like the Great Map, will accompany the volume ; and the whole will . be a general account of the Antiquities of North Wilts, inasmuch as the district thus delineated embraces nearly all the remains of earliest times which exist in the northern portion of the County. Subscribers’ names and addresses (a list of which will be published with the _ Index) will be received by the Rev. T. A. Preston, The Green, Marlborough. _ The cost of the Large Map and Key complete will be, to Subscribers, One Guinea. Any copies which remain (after all the Subscribers have been served) will be _ offered to the public at an advanced price, viz., for the sheets of the Great Map ~ only, 10s.; for the Key only, 20s.; or, for the whole, 28s. ve ie EA IS Seg tm Hee é PO Fs SO eee ray A aur “ty ms : Gee et oN r AGENTS FOR THE SALE OP THR WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE, LO Se SES oe R. E. Pzacu, Bridge Street. Bradford-on-Avon. G. J, Farrinetoy, Old Market Place. i Es ee James Fawn & Son., 18, Queen’s Road, PR cathe civax C. T, Jerrertes & Sons, Redcliffe Street, TIE day atrgin ance A. Heata & Son, Market Place. Chippenham ,..... R. F. Hovtston, High Street. Cirencester ...,..... Keyworth & Everarp, Stamp Office. MIOUBZGE: cacccxyssves H. F. Butt, St. John Street. Marlborough ...... E. & R. A. Lucy, Post Office. Melksham ......0+ A. Cocurane, Bank Street. a Jas. Parker & Co., Broad St. Salisbury ....00.+ Brown & Co., Canal. Warminster ...... B, W. Coatss, Market Place. H. F. BULL, PRINTER, DEVIZES. r= Sey WORD JUNE, 1882, THE WILTSHIRE Archeological ont Batueal Wistacy MAGAZINE, Publighed unter the Birection OF THE SOCIETY FORMED IN THAT COUNTY, A.D. 1858. , DEVIZES: | p PRINTED AND SoLp For THE Socrery sy H. F. Burt, Satnr Joun Sreeer. -Price 5s. 6d.—Members Gratis. NOTICE TO MEMBERS. THE ANNUAL MEETING for 1882 will be held at MALmEsBury, on August 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Lorp Epmunp Fitzmaurice, M.P., President. \ Members who have not paid their Subscriptions to the Society for the current year, are requested to remit the same forthwith to the Financial Secretary, Mr. Witt1am Nort, 15, High Street, Devizes, to whom also all communications as to the supply of Magazines should be addressed, and of whom most of the ’ back Numbers may be had. The Numbers of this Magazine will not be delivered, as issued, to Members who are in arrear of their Annual Subscriptions, and who on being applied to for payment of such arrears, have taken no notice of the application. All other communications to be addressed to the Honorary Secre- taries: the Rev. A. C. Smrru, Yatesbury Rectory, Calne; and H. E. Mepricorr, Esq., Sandfield, Potterne, Devizes. The Rev. A. ©. Smirn will be much obliged to observers of birds in all parts of the county, to forward to him notices of rare occurrences, early arrivals of migrants, or any remarkable facts connected with birds, which may come under their notice. To be published by the Wiltshire Archeological and Natural History Society, by Subscription. fat FLORA OF WILTS BY THE REV. T. A. PRESTON, M.A; Ge Farther particulars will shortly be sent by circular to Members of the Society. The Author will be glad if any who could assist him with a list of plants in their several localities would kindly communicate with him. As the Flea will probably be published at the end of this year, early information is par- ticularly desired. Address—Rev. T. A. Preston, Lhe Green, Marlborough. P « WILTSHIRE Archeological ant Batural Wistory MAGAZINE. No. LIX. JUNE, 1882. Vout. XX. Contents, PAGE Some Earty Features oF Stockton Cuurcy, Wits: By the Rev. j J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., Rector of Upton Scudamore, Wilts ............ 107 On THE CuuURCH oF St. Perer, MANNINGFORD Bruce, WILTSHIRE: By the Rev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., Rector of Upton Scudamore, Wilts 122 “ScuLPrureD Stone at CopForD St. PETER, AND HERALDIC STonE at Warminster”: By the Rev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., Rector of PROT SHUM AM OLE MANVALGS: hats ee ose sVastonasea sce da sesvties cevieeaiveouswese peau ; 138 “HaktyY HeRaLpRy IN Boyton CuurcH, Witts: RECOVERY OF A Missine Link”: By the Rev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A., Rector of Pea CHO AIMNOT A VWALES s,s Sac snniccsdasteassedseits icdtanasencaacccnscisoureaces 145 On THE OccURRENCE OF SOME OF THE RareER SPECIES oF BIRDS IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF SALIsBURY (Continued) : By the Rev. Arnau, Morres® Vicar of Britford .....5..i...ss0ccceccsseccavesaverecesseos 154 Some Account oF THE ParisH oF MongToNn Farueren (Continued): Bp isin Charles -EOUROMRE;, BIG... ciicssescccesscatnavveseuvedevessessessaceees ; 185 ILLUSTRATIONS. Interior of Stockton Church, Wilts ...........c.ccseeseenes 107 Ground-plan of St. Peter’s Church, Manningford Bruce, SAV Lisih, ana aS MR TS ico ooh cv cata ate cela nantondmanoeaceomeGasnans 123 Ground-plan of St. Edmund’s Church, Fritton, Suffolk 125 Ground-plan of Church of St. Mellon, Rouen ............ 127 Ground-plan of Kilpeck Church, Herefordshire............ 129 South doorway and chancel arch, Manningford Bruce MELTING: \VVINGRY Meme Reese oun « deeknuciecuecaancnsnvescsolelses’ 130 Sculptured Stone in Codford St. Peter Church, Wilts ... 138 Sculptured Stone, Warminster Atheneum, Wilts......... 140 DEVIZES : H. F. Bunt, 4, Saint JoHn STREET. ain is bene ISOM” THe t STV MCE e & ise, biesit fo 6 o =. a ta ~ 45 : ed sf ; a a= * ee | ; : f i 3 _* : fa? ? f = Ln F : . * Pr. ‘SITIM ‘HOUNHD NOLMOOLS 40 HOIHAINI “MOpUoy OYPT ‘ss¥gry Ue MAITY Tr ipo. Rg — WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE “ MULTORUM MANIBUS GRANDE LEVATUR oNUS.”—Ovid. Some Early featuees of Stockton Church, Wilts. By the Rev. J. Baron, D.D., F.S.A,, Rector of Upton Scudamore, Wilts. =