30 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1907 
He is represented in his judge’s robes. By his side lies his wife. At 
the head is the baron’s daughter, Lady Falkland, and on the east side 
a representation of Lord Falkland in military costume. On the ground 
is a skeleton carved in marble, representing Death. In the adjoining 
Bell Founders’ Aisle is the vault of the Lenthall family, and the remains 
of Speaker Lenthall rest here. In the North Aisle is the font with the 
inscription ‘‘ Anthony Sedley, Prisoner, 1649,” pricked in it by a 
dagger. It was probably the name of one of the Levellers who was 
shot in the churchyard. In the Sylvester Aisle to the west of the 
South Porch are the tombs of the Sylvester family, dating from 1568 
to 1889. 
Mr Cheatle then led the way to the Priory (Plate III). A 
religious house existed here as early as 1291, but at the Dissolution 
was condemned. Henry VIII. granted the Priory to Edmund Harman, 
who is said to have built a house on the site of the religious establish- 
ment. Later the estate was divided between Ann Lee, Duchess 
of Somerset, and Mr Lee, after which it was passed to Sir John 
Fortescue, who sold it to Sir Laurence Tanfield. Sir Laurence built 
a large mansion in Elizabethan style, occupying more than twice 
the space of the present building, and it was in this building that Lord 
Falkland was born, and in which several generations of the Lenthalls 
lived. In 1808 the fine old building was pulled down, and a new 
structure was erected to meet the requirements of a family in the rg9th 
oR As far as possible the old building was imitated in the new. 
ER. 
After luncheon Mr Sawyer read a paper on a famous battle 
at Burford in the eighth century, and the leading historical events 
which preceded and followed it so far as they concern Gloucestershire 
history. Beginning with the battle of Dyrham in 577, which gave the 
West-Saxons command of the Cotteswold uplands and the Severn Vale, 
he traced the growth of the West-Saxon Kingdom (Wessex), and the 
settlement in what are now the counties of Gloucester and Worcester 
of a West-Saxon tribe called the Hwiccas. At the beginning of the 
seventh century, the Kingdom of Mercia adjoined Wessex on the east, 
and away in the north was the Kingdom of Northumbria. After 
a prolonged struggle, in which the Hwiccas took part, though still re- 
taining their tribal independence, the West-Saxon realm had been 
extended until it reached from the English Channel to the Warwickshire 
Avon, and from the upper tidal waters of the Thames to, the lower 
reaches of the Severn. In 626, however, a treacherous attempt 
by Cwichelm, King of Wessex, to kill Eadwine, King of Northumbria, 
changed the whole current of West-Saxon history. Recovering from 
the wound made by the assassin’s dagger, he fell upon the West- 
Saxons and inflicted a defeat so crushing that Wessex lay shattered and 
divided until the time of King Ina, seventy years later. In 628 Penda, 
King of the Mercians, invaded the West-Saxon Kingdom and forced a 
treaty of peace at Cirencester. ‘‘ The provisions of the treaty,” says 
J. R. Green, ‘‘ we may perhaps guess from what we find soon after to 
be the bounds of the Mercian rule. In the days of Penda’s son, 
