The original may be regarded as one proof that Welsh was commonly understood in our parish as late as the time of King Henry VIII. The house which Sir Thomas built was battered down in the civil wars of Charles I., when every place which had garden wall and courtyards was liable to be held as a position.1 Another was afterwards built on the same site, which I took down myself, turning the offices into a farm, not seeing the use of having two manor-houses at Bettisfield and at Hanmer in sight of each other. Sir Thomas Hanmer, who had been distinguished by the favour of King Henry in the field in France, was one day disturbed by finding himself run in the suspicion of his sovereign upon the following formidable communication:

ACTS OF PRIVY COUNCIL, 33 Hen. VIII., 1541.

Upon certayne informations exhibited ageynst S'. Thomas Hanmer, knight, a letter was directed to the President of the Cownsell 2 in the marches of Wales for

1 This is an intelligible reason why so many gentlemen's houses which were not embattled, and not even built of stone, are mentioned in the records of the Civil War as held for King or Parliament. The story of the battle of Waterloo shows what use was made at Hougoumont of the same sort of place, even against the armaments of that period.

2 Rowland Lee, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, was at this time President of the March, and the fourth who had held

the triall of the truth thereof, with comawndement that in case th'information sholde be fownde trew, he sholde apprehende him, and sende him uppe to the Counsell.

And in case the matter sholde be founde forgid, yett for disobeying a precept the sayde Hanmer had to appere here, the sayde President sholde take sureties of him, for his appearance, the first day of next terme.

At Westminster, 24th February, 1542 (33 Henry VIII.):

S'. Thomas Hanmer, knight, having bene accused of sondry things, whereoff soom war no less than high treason, for that itt both appered the same to have been committed rather by ignorance than malice, and yett before the general pardon, was, after a good exhortation, discharged.

Thus it appears that we did not escape the surveillance of King Henry VIII.; but though more than one act of his Highness's Grace may have evoked speeches in country houses capable of unfavourable representation unless explained, he was

that office since the time of its institution by King Henry VII. A.D. 1502. He was President from 1535 to 1543, when, as I find in vol. iii. of Mr. Gough Nichols's "Herald and Genealogist," he died, and was buried at Shrewsbury. Mr. Froude attributes to him a great part in the pacification of the Marches; one of his most active agents, not to say delators, is said to have been one Walker, priest of Prees, on the other side of the Fens, and of Whixall Moss.

not hard on Welshmen. His pacification of Wales occurred without any trouble in Hanmer parish: on the whole it is one of the most remarkable works of government that English history has to show.

Three years afterwards, 10th Feb. 1545, this Sir Thomas Hanmer died, as I find it stated in the pedigree drawn up with much research and particularity by John Charles Brooke, Somerset Herald, in my grandfather's time. He married twice; his first wife, from whose daughter we descend, was Jane, daughter of Sir Randall Brereton of Malpas, Knt.; the second, who left no issue, was Matilda, daughter of Sir Piers Newton, Knt. By the first his son and successor was Sir Thomas Hanmer, knighted at Musselburgh in Scotland. He married Katherine Saltier1 of Oswestry, a very considerable heiress. With him we may pass into the comfortable region of parish registers, where his death, as I shall afterwards note, is recorded in 1583.

1 I have lately found the contracts for each of these marriages, framed like that of William and Eleanor Hanmer, already given; that with Jane Brereton is dated 7th November, 5th King Henry VII., referring to a previous contract in 1486, the first year of the king; the other, with Margaret Saltier, bears date 15th April, 1518 (9th King Henry VIII.).

2 Her estate evaporated in Charles the First's civil war.

K

We did not profit by the spoils of the religious houses, as many did, including bishops,' holding out lay hands. Such of the possessions of the Abbey of Haughmond as came to us were bought in the market from the grantees, and, except the rectorial tithes of the parish, held by that house since the time of King Henry III., they were of small account. The monks had a rectorial house in the meadow below the bank on which the present farm of Hanmer Hall stands;2 and in Bronington there are some lands called the Abbey Field. A tradition also connects with

1 I possess a deed by which the then Bishop of Lichfield makes Sir Thomas Hanmer, Knt., John Hanmer, Esq., and Thomas Kynaston, gentleman, trustees for himself and his heirs of a large grant of abbey and convent lands; among them those of the Augustine Friars at Stafford.

2 I find it mentioned in a memorandum, 5th January, 1614, caused by a dispute about the site of the ancient rectory between the families of Hanmer and the Fens, each of which had purchased it, that many years before Sir Thomas Hanmer lent the house to one Randolph Phillips, priest, vicar of Hanmer, which occasioned the meadow where it stands to be called the Vicarage Meadow; and that it never belonged to the vicar, but he was tenant thereunto under Sir Thomas Hanmer. Afterwards Sir Thomas gave the materials of the house to his brother John Hanmer of Bradenheath, who pulled it down and built with it on his own land. Sir Thomas bought it about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth.

monks of some sort the wild ground called the Usk Bank, on the borders of the Fens Moss; and, if that were so, it is likely that part of their business was to tend the cattle pasturing in the wood. I have seen some thus occupied before now among the hills in Italy.

The parish registers, however they may have been kept at first, perhaps disappeared in the grim reign of Queen Mary. I do not know how we accommodated ourselves to the new state of things which they represented, nor whether the treason imputed to old Sir Thomas had anything to do with doubts about the king's supremacy. The registers were all carefully repaired and rebound a few years since, and begin with us in 1563, the 5th year of Elizabeth, when William Hanmer, afterwards Sir William of the Fens, was christened, and among the entries afterwards, in 1570, is the burial of old William Hanmer of the Fens, grandfather of the foregoing, and in 1583 of his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Hanmer, each of them mentioned as "worthy gentlemen, the succour and comfort of the countrye." This second Sir Thomas, whom I will call of Musselborough Field,' to distinguish him among the others, was

1 He was knighted at that fight, as I have previously mentioned.