obtained unto William Erwood the elder and Roger Erwood their heirs and assigns, to the use nevertheless of the Mayor and Burgesses: whereas the same or any part thereof was never concealed, but ever in charge before the Auditor of the County and a chief-rent of £10 yearly was paid to the Crown for the same and for the others plucked away. Wherefore the Queen's grant was void by a proviso mentioned in the said grant, the letters patent of which still remain [1628] in the Council House of this Borough.

Mr. Kent's Ledger-Book also furnishes us with the following history of proceedings.

The Mayor and Burgesses at the time whereof the memory of man is not to the contrary held the bailiwick of the Borough consisting of the lawday and view of Frank-pledge, the profits of of fairs, markets, fines, issues, perquisites, and profits of Court-leets, amerciaments, waifs, strays, heriots, goods and chattels of felons, tolls, pickage, passage, pye-powder [Court] customs, liberties, authorities, and other advantages whatsoever to the said Courts belonging, (under 40 shillings in each case) in fee-farm to them and their successors for ever (as was conceived) by the yearly rent of 100 shillings payable half-yearly to the Crown,— until about the 32nd. of Henry VIII. at which time the Manor and Borough of Devizes was parcel of the Queen's jointure:-And upon a survey taken by the Queen's commissoners, for that the Mayor and Burgesses could make no other title to the said bailiwick than by prescription, which could not hold against the Crown, they were urged to take a lease thereof from the Queen, which they did, at the same rent; and afterwards they held it by lease from Queen Elizabeth under the great scal of England from one and twenty years to one and twenty years, till 26 June in the 7th of King James, at which time they still having eighteen years to run to complete a lease, Edward Wardour of St. Martin's in the fields, esquire and afterwards knight, obtained a lease from King James by letters patent for forty years in reversion of the aforesaid lease then in being; which reversionary lease of 40 years was assigned and set over to the Mayor and burgesses for the sum of £300.--But to prevent in future such like leases to be obtained over their heads, they in the 19th of King James petitioned his Highness for a grant of the fee farm of the said bailiwick on its former footing of 100 shillings rent yearly paid to the Crown; which, his Majesty most graciously received; and after many references and much attendance, labour and charge taken and distributed in and about the obtaining of the said grant, it pleased his most excellent Majesty of his gracious favour, afterwards by letters patent dated 31st July in the 22nd of his reign, for a further sum of £120, to give back the aforesaid bailiwick with its appurtenances, which was their lawful right;-except as before to be holden as of the Manor of East Greenwich, by fealty, as in free and common socage, and not by knight's service or in capite; and for 100 shillings yearly rent to be paid at the Exchequer or to his High

ness's Bailiff, at St. Michael's feast and at the Annunciation of the Virgin."

Then follows James's grant, the original of which is stated to be in the office of the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer in the Exchequer, and is a recapitulation of the issues of the manor of Devizes, heretofore parcel of the possessions of Thomas late Lord Seymour of Sudeley attainted.

"A survey made of the fee farm of the Borough by James Symes, Auditor, 14 January, 1651, made by virtue of the Act 12 March, 1650, for the sale of fee farm rents, tenths, or rents reserved, dry-rents and others. The survey speaks of it as "parcel of the lands and possessions of Thomas late Lord Seymour of Sudeley, and says it includes--The fee farm of the whole Borough and the rent of assize of divers burgages, worth altogether £10. Also an annual rent of £5 payable to the Crown by James's charter, arising from the courts [recapitulating the items] except advowsons, knight's fees, wards, marriages, and all mines of gold and silver and prerogatives of the same: granted unto William Scriven and Philip Eden, Esquires, and their assigns for ever by letters patent dated 11 February, 11th of King Charles reign, and held as of the Manor of East Greenwich by half-yearly payment of £15 per annum. Scriven and Eden conveyed it to Edward Northey jun., Robert Drew, Robert Nicholas, John Drew, Edward Lewes, Thomas Kent, John Pierce, Matthew Allen, and William Thurman, by indenture dated 7 April, 12th of Charles I., by which they covenanted to collect such rents arising out of the Manor of Devizes as were due to the King and pay them into the Exchequer, which rents amounted to £18 12s. 5 d. besides the fee farm rent of £15 above mentioned." [These rents have remained with little change to our own day. In 1835 they were £30 4s. 2d. paid to Mrs. Eleanor Sutton and Wadham Locke, including the small sum of £5 2s. called "rents on Chippenham lands."]

State of the Borough at the death of Queen Elizabeth.

Mayor, John Kent, gentlemen.

Chief Burgesses or Councillors

Burgesses called "The Twelve," or Common Council.

The Devizes charter of 1605 states that a guild of merchants within the borough had been famous as being inhabited by divers artificers who made woollen cloths, whereby the poorer inhabitants got themselves a laudable and honest livelihood, who are now reduced to poverty, because certain foreigners, not inhabitants of the borough, brought to the weekly market, wares and merchandizes other than corn, victual, cattle, wool, and yarn; and sold them by retail and not in gross, to the prejudice of the resident dealers. To prevent therefore such injury in future, his Majesty's charter prohibits all such strangers from exhibiting their wares within the borough except in gross or at the fairs.

This prohibition, we may be sure, was put in force; for, so recently as the year 1773, the hawkers' trade having become unbearably intrusive, the editor of the Salisbury Journal invited the public to imitate the example of the people of Devizes in their treatment, on a recent occasion, of a travelling hosier and linen draper. The itinerant merchant [our forefathers would have called him a foreigner] having entered the town, began to distribute his hand-bills, when the popu

lace serenaded him with cleavers and marrow-bones, and quitted him not till he drew off from the precints of the borough as heavily laden as when he entered.

King James's charter manifestly indicates a new era in the history of the borough; the governmental department is elaborated and systematised; a weekly court is established for deciding actions of debt not exceeding £40; and laws are instituted for punishing recusants, that is, Romanists, though their numbers in and around Devizes we cannot suppose to have been considerable. The usual test for discovering their principles was absence from the parish church.

Evidence exists of at least three of King James's visits to Devizes or Bromham Hall, viz. in 1613, 1618 and 1623. In the first of these years £20 15s. is paid by the borough as fees to his officers, and in the succeeding year £22 for his Majesty's benevolence towards the borough; in addition to a contribution of £77 made in 1608 by twenty-three of the principal inhabitants in aid of a subsidy granted by the Parliament. It was in 1618 apparently that the "entertainment" recorded by Aubrey was given to his Majesty on Coate-field, to be presently noticed, as that was the year in which he knighted Sir Rawlyn Bussey at Bromham. Hunting in the neighbourhood of Bromham one day, it is recorded of James that he slew a stag so near to the water in Lackham park, that the owner, Sir Robert Baynard, challenged from his Majesty the benefit of a custom attached to the estate, viz., that if the King killed a deer so near to the Avon that a horn might be thrown into the water, the owner of Lackham might claim the deer. "On my soul" said James, "he was a wise King that made such a grant."

King James's "benevolences" or forced loans were extracted from the gentry as well as the boroughs. See the lists in the Wilts Magazine, vol. ii. 183. Open war to one of them, viz. that levied in 1615 towards marrying the Lady Elizabeth, was at last declared by a Wiltshire gentleman named Oliver

St. John, and the case was argued in the Star-chamber. The county Justices who appear to have held their sittings in the principal towns when engaged in assessing the neighbourhood, were holding a meeting for that purpose in Marlborough, when a member of the distinguished family of St. John resolved to record his protest against the entire system in the most unmistakeable manner. The Mayor being anxious to get together as loyal a meeting as possible, and knowing Mr. St. John to be a man of influence, repaired to his house beforehand in order "to deal with him in private." But Mr. St. John was not to be thus hoodwinked: he dismissed Mr. Mayor and told him to expect his answer in public when all might hear. Accordingly the next day when the Justices met, St. John absented himself and sent a letter addressed to the Mayor which he desired might be read out. The letter which was couched in very bold language, argued the unlawfulness of forced loans made upon the subject; and, as might naturally be expected led to an immediate impeachment in the Star-chamber, where Sir Francis Bacon as Attorney General conducted the prosecution.

It has been usual to suppose that the subject of this prosecution was no other than the celebrated Solicitor General Oliver St. John, who afterwards became so conspicuous for his opposition to King Charles. Mr. Foss on the contrary regards him as an Oliver St. John seated at Lediard Tregose; but as the prosecutor distinctly describes the defendant as a dweller in the town of Marlborough, the difficulty attending the case is not altogether removed. Still, it is perilous to be at war with so accurate and painstaking an historian as Mr. Foss, and his correction of the error must therefore suffice. Speaking of Mr. Solicitor St. John, he states that he was born about the year 1598, and educated at Queen's College Cambridge. He was then seventeen years of age; and Lord Campbell [in his 'Lives of the Chancellors'] supposes that he had already taken a trip to Holland, and by seeing with