7 
ford, of Bushley, seems to have been a son of the branch settled at Guyting. He 
married Margaret, daughter of the William Tracy, of Toddington and Stanway, 
who died in 1530, under strong suspicion of being a heretic. 
Margaret and her husband came to settle in Bushley, and her brother 
William Tracy, dying in 1558, left all his lands in Bushley to his sister Margaret 
Stratford, with remainder to her sons, Anthony and Giles, while his pewter 
vessels he bequeathes to her daughter. This Mra. Margaret Stratford died a 
widow, in a good old age, and was buried in Bushley in 1621. Their son Anthony 
Stratford succeeded them, and on April 22nd, 1577, married a Bushley girl named 
Margaret Heyward. The old house probably wanted doing up, but the beauti- 
fying was reserved for the bride’s own sitting-room on the ground floor of the 
eastern wing. The timber he coloured brown, leaving the plaster white, and close 
under the ceiling, on a white ground, enclosed in a frame-work of a coloured pat- 
tern, ran couplets of quaint English verses, painted in Old English character, 
which ran all round the room. This interesting decoration had been covered up 
in later years with the ordinary lath and plaster for wall papering, and only two 
of the couplets could be saved when the battening was removed. They run as 
follows, and are still in good preservation :— 
**To lyve as we shoulde always dye it were a goodly trade, 
“*To change lowe Deathe for Life so hye no better change is made : 
“* For all our worldly thynges are vayne, in them is there no truste, 
“We se all states awhyle remayne and then they turn to duste.” 
Between the couplets were two shields illuminated with the initials A.S. 
and M.S., and the date, 1574, putting it beyond all doubt that the decoration was 
executed in honour of the young bride. They had several children who were all 
baptised in Bushley Church ; William, Thomas, who succeeded his father in 1608, 
Simon, John, and Elizabeth. Mrs. Stratford must have been nearly 90 years of 
age when she died in 1648, and the respect and lave which her husband had earned 
for himself is touchingly recorded in the parish register at the time of his death. 
His son and heir, Thomas Stratford, born in 1587, married, about 1619, a Busbley 
girl named Joan Trigge. They had one son, Anthony, who was born in 1620. 
These were troublous times, and young Anthony Stratford, coming of a good old 
stock, started early with his kinsman, Mr. William Stratford, of Farmcote, to join 
King Charles’s army. He fought with great zeal and courage throughout the war, 
until compelled, when all was lost, to compound with the Parliament for his 
estates at Bushley for £40, his more wealthy cousin, at the same time, paying no 
less than £700 to retain his family estates at Farmcote. But the expenses of the 
war had far exceeded the loyal gentleman’s means, and like many another noble 
hearted servant of King Charles, he had brought upon himself utter ruin in his 
master’s cause; on the 17th August, 1676, he executed a deed by which ‘‘ All that 
“capital messuage, &c., in Bushley, at a place called Bonnett’s End, and wherein 
“the said Anthony Stratford dwelleth, called and known by the name of Payne’s 
“Place,” together with all his lands in Bushley, was sold to Mr. Richard Dowdes- 
well, of Pull Court. From that time to this, the old house has been in the same 
family, and in these quiet times has had little of interest to add to the stirring 
records of the past. The spirit of one of the old Stratfords was said to haunt the 
