51 



and another is known to have been found neav the house.* The 

 statement about Charles I. naust he only derived from an obscure 

 tradition utterly contrary to the facts, as the King was at that 

 time at Oxford, and how Sii" Edward Hungerford hapjDened to be 

 there at the time the house was occupied by a detachment of the 

 Royalists is very strange, as he was about the same time harrying 

 the King's friends near Swindon, as Commander of the Parlia- 

 mentary forces in Wilts ! 



Anyone reading this account, unaccompanied as it is by any 

 reference to the fight, might conclude that it was only a mis- 

 chievous shot fired to annoy or to frighten some Eoyalist gentle- 

 man who was entertauiing his personal friends. But farther 

 on, when he is describing the Church and churchyard, CoUinson 

 states : "In the parish register is the following : — ' Upon the 

 30th day of June (old style?), 1643, there were buried under the 

 west wall in the churchyard three soldiers killed of the Parlia- 

 mentary party, and one of the Eoyal party in an unhappy civil 

 war (meaning skirmish or battle), at the river side in the plain 

 meadow at Claverton."t 



* la an old poem entitled "Bath and its Environs" is a curious version of 

 t he Bombardment of Claverton : — 



As Basset, Cla'erton's lord, at his fire sat, 



Safe (as he thought) from harm in friendly chat, 



Old Noll a cannon-ball fired from this place, % 



Which whizzed around his head and pierced ye chimney piece. 



The chimney piece e'en now this mark retains 



Of Heaven's protection and of War's remains. 



t In ye old register of Claverton in the handwriting of Richard Graves is 

 the following. N. B. — The skeletons of these men were digged up when the 

 ground was dug for Mr. Allen's Mausoleum. N.B. — The battle on Lansdown 

 in which .Sir Beville Granville was slain was on July the 5th, 1643, and Lord 

 Clarendon (in the own life> mentions a party of the King's forces that marched 

 from Bradford and passed the ford at Claverton, probably with intent to join 

 the Marquis of Hertford. 



{ jy.B.— iarleighUill. 



