Diary of Thomas Smith, Esq. 83 



esting. Some few illustrative remarks have been appended, but 

 had they been extended to a verification of the pedigrees involved, 

 or an explanation of matters slightly touched upon, the labor of 

 such investigations would have far exceeded any satisfaction 

 obtained; and indeed, on many points, would have been labor 

 altogether fruitless ; from the years which have elapsed ; the 

 obliterations of monumental inscriptions ; the transfers of property ; 

 and the difficulty of tracing descents where not only the same 

 Christian names in one family are perpetually recurring, but distinct 

 families of the same surname, and that surname Smith, are found 

 at the same date, in the same places, as is the case with the ancestors 

 of the diary writer. 



Every endeavour has been made, but without that success which 

 would justify any degree of confidence, to prove the descent of 

 Thomas Smith from Robert Smith of Corsham, to whose pedigree 

 in the Visitation of 1623 this entry is appended, as explaining why 

 no arms are assigned to the family under the herald's hand. " The 

 coat produced, is an old seal, as it is said, 200 years old." In the 

 third descent from that Robert Smith, we find in 1623 an elder 

 son Robert, then married to Hester, daughter of ... . Gastrell, of 

 East Garston, co. Berks, but no issue named. He may have been the 

 Robert Smith, clothier, who bought Norwood Park, Glastonbury, 

 in 1654, a property which is named in the diary as belonging to 

 the writer, and which we know passed through him in his des- 

 cendants to the Neale family, Sir Harry Burrard Neale (husband 

 of Grace Elizabeth Neale, heiress of the Smiths and Neales) 

 having sold Norwood Park to Lord Ashburton in 1836. When 

 the Smith family first settled at Melksham is uncertain ; Robert 

 Smith, clothier, the purchaser of Norwood Park, had a son Thomas 

 of Frome Selwood, presumed to have been the diarist's father. 

 In Melksham Church is a blue slab, with cyphers T. S. 1698, T. S. 

 1699, over them the arms of Smith ; on the same stone A. S. 1714, 

 with the arms of Smith on a lozenge, and in 1685 we find in the 

 Register, Isaac Selfe married to Ann Smith. No doubt this is the 

 "Brother Selfe" mentioned so often in the diary. Thomas Smith 

 himself was born 1673 ; married at Melksham June 4th, 1694, 



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