Trowbridge in the days of Edward the Confessor.

213 the Confessor as an ambassador to the court of Baldwin, Count of Flanders. The latter had a daughter, Matilda by name, who, it is said, formed a deep and romantic affection for Brictric, and, what was a worse mistake on her part, betrayed herself. Unhappily for her, and as the event turned out, unluckily for Brictric too, our English thane did not reciprocate the tender feelings. Then as chroniclers tell usthough we must be a little careful in believing everything we read— "the hatred wherewith she hated him was greater than the love wherewith she had loved him." And unfortunately she had before very long an opportunity of displaying it.

For in a few years afterwards she married William of Normandy, who in due time became King of England, and so the self-same lady that Brictric politely declined as a wife he was obliged to accept as a Queen. And then (to use Thierry's words) "Matilda herself asked the new King, her husband, to place at her disposal, with all his possessions, the Englishman who had disdained her. She gratified her revenge and cupidity at once, by appropriating the possessions to herself, and causing Brictric to be shut up in a fortress." So no doubt say some of the chroniclers, but literally true it is not. For example, the Domesday Record is brought down to the year 1087, and at that time Brictric was possessed of these manors; whereas the Queen Matilda died in 1083, four years before. No doubt some of Brictric's estates were apportioned to her, and with them she endowed monasteries at Bec in Normandy, and elsewhere. Still there is a grim touch of irony in the entry that we meet with in one part of Domesday Book-"Infra-scriptas terras tenuit Brictric et post Regina Matilda"-that looks as though there were some truth in the tale, and as if it was not by a simple accident that the said manors fell to Matilda's share. It is certain, that though possibly Brictric may have been permitted to enjoy these manors of which we are now speaking for life, the estates soon passed away from his family. Though he inherited them from his father, the King or Queen, as the case may have been, and that too probably with no unnecessary legal formalities, promptly cut off the entail.

In A.D. 1100, just thirteen years after the completion of the Domesday Record, Trowbridge (Trobregc) and Staverton are recorded as

being in the possession of Edward of Salisbury, a great Norman noble, who was Vice Comes, or Sheriff of Wiltshire, and had no less than 38 manors in this county. How he acquired this manor, whether by grant from the crown, or by purchase, I have not been able to ascertain. In a document of the date A.D. 1120-1130 it is enumerated amongst those estates which were of his own acquisition in contradistinction to those which he enjoyed by inheritance, and this looks rather as though he had purchased it.

Edward of Salisbury left two children, a son, WALTER OF SALISBURY, who founded the Priory of Bradenstoke and subsequently himself assumed the tonsure and habit of the canons there, and a daughter, MATILDA, who married Humphrey de Bohun, and with her husband, in the year 1125, founded the Priory of Monkton Farleigh. Through this marriage the Bohun family became possessed of considerable property at Trowbridge and elsewhere in Wilts. The Lordship of the manor however still vested in the family of Edward of Salisbury.1

The descent of the manor from that time to the present can be easily traced. The lordship of the manor has been held by not a few distinguished personages. After three or four immediate descendants of Edward of Salisbury, it came to the celebrated ELA, in her own right Countess of Salisbury, the foundress in one day of the abbeys of Lacock and Hinton Charterhouse. By her marriage with William de Longespée, son of King Henry II. by Rosamond Clifford, it came ultimately to Margaret de Longespée, who, by her marriage with Henry Earl of Lincoln, took the manor into her husband's family. Their only daughter Alice Lacy married Thomas Earl of Lancaster, and he became consequently possessed of the manor of Trowbridge. This Earl was beheaded at Pontefract in 1521, and all his honors forfeited. After some temporary grants

We have a similar instance of the Lordship of the Manor being retained in the family of Edward of Salisbury, though much of the property originally appertaining to it was alienated, in the case of "Bishopstrow." The Church at Bishopstrow and a hide of land in that village, together with other property, is particularly specified among the gifts of Matilda de Bohun to the Priory of Monkton Farleigh. The Manor of Bishopstrow, which was one of those belonging to Edward of Salisbury at the Domesday Survey, descended in the male line to the Countess Ela, and was employed by her in the foundation of the nunnery of Lacock.

N.B, The Names of those who are known or believed to have held the Lordship of the Manor are printed in large capitals.

of the manor, about which I need not trouble you, it descended to no less a personage than John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the friend and protector of Wiclif. His son, Henry of Bolingbroke, succeeded to it, and when he became King Henry IV., the Duchy of Lancaster, to which the manor of Trowbridge then belonged, was merged in the crown.

It is very remarkable that by the marriage of Henry of Bolingbroke, afterwards King Henry IV., with Mary de Bohun daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, tenth Earl of Hereford, the manor and the estates at Trowbridge, which were severed as early as the commencement of the twelfth century, were again held by one and the same person-in this case King Henry IV.

The Manor remained in the crown as part of the Duchy of Lancaster for some 136 years. It was then granted in 1536 by King Henry VIII. to Edward Seymour, afterwards the Protector Somerset. On his attainder in 1552, it reverted to the Crown for a time, but was soon afterwards granted to his son Edward Seymour, created Earl of Hertford and Baron Beauchamp in 1559. It descended through the Seymour family, one of whom was created Baron Seymour of Trowbridge. In 1748 it came to Algernon, seventh Duke of Somerset and fifth Baron Seymour of Trowbridge. He died without male issue in 1750, and his barony became extinct. His sister Frances married John, first Duke of Rutland, and carried the manor into that noble family. In the year 1809, it became by purchase the possession of Thomas Timbrell, Esq., the patronage of the rectory being then severed from it and retained by the Duke of Rutland. The present Lord of the Manor is W. Stancomb, Esq., of Blount's Court, Potterne, who purchased it in June, 1851, from the representatives of Mr. Timbrell.

But we must now return to the BOHUN family, who seem to have been the principal owners of property here. They obtained it through the marriage of Humphrey de Bohun (surnamed the Great) with Matilda, daughter of Edward of Salisbury. Amongst the endowments of Monkton Farleigh, which was founded by them, were "ten shillings from the church of Trowbridge, and the tithes of the lordship of Staverton." It was most probably this nobleman that