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of Butcombe, and also a Manor (Butcombe proper?) within this 
parish. A.D. 1358, when William Topsley was master of the said 
hospital, the Rectory and Manor continued vested in the brethren 
and sisters of Saint John, of the Order of Saint Augustine, 
Redcliffe Putte, Bristol, and so continued even till the fatal 
Statute of Dissolution. At that time on the resignation of 
Richard Broomfield, the last Abbot, King Henry the Eighth 
seized the Manor and Advowson ; and soon after, on the 29th of 
April, in the thirty-six year of his reign, A.D. 1545, he gave 
them to George Owen his physician. Owen, on the 3rd of June, 
1547, sold them to John Bush, of Dulton in Wiltshire, whose 
brother Paul Bush, through the influence of Owen, King Henry 
made first Bishop of Bristol. The widow of John Bush married 
William Mann, of London, and so conveyed the Manor and 
Advowson to the family of the Manns. Francis, the grandson 
of William Mann, of Kidlington in Oxfordshire, sold both on 
the 29th of September, 1735, to Mr. Richard Plaister, whose 
grandson John Plaister, of Wrington, disposed of it to John 
Curtis, of Bristol, Esquire ; whose son John, when member for the 
City of Wells, sold it to John Savery, Esquire, of South Devon, 
who was originally seated at Shelston in that County, and there 
married Sarah Butler Clark, daughter and co-heiress of Peter 
Clark, merchant of Exeter; and after her decease, married, at 
Walthamstow in Essex, Mary Towgood, on the 27th September, 
1779, daughter of Matthew Towgood of the City of London 
banker. They then passed rapidly by purchase till in the early 
part of this century the Manor and Advowson seem to have been 
separated. The Manor still passed on by purchase till it became 
the property of Charles Gordon Ashley, Esquire, from whose 
estate it was purchased by George Coles, Esquire, merchant of 
Bristol, the present proprietor. 
The Manor House, called Butcombe Court, which was burnt in 
_the great rebellion, and was afterwards rebuilt, is a large square 
capacious mansion, with some fine rooms—some of which, how- 
