14 
on 
George Webbe did not long remain a widower, for on 
October 27th, 1618, he married Elizabeth Browne, the 
daughter of Clement Browne, Gentleman of Avington, Berks, 
but whether the ceremony took place at Steeple Ashton is 
doubtful, as entries connected with persons of importance are 
often recorded in the Registers of the parish in which they 
lived. 
Avington is a small village about two miles from Hunger- 
ford. : 
By his second wife he had six children, born at Steeple 
Ashton. Elizabeth, born November 23rd, 1619 ; Philadelphia, 
March 7th, 1623 ; Elizabeth, May, 1625 ; William, June 12th, 
1627 ; Ezekiel, March 29th, 1629 ; Edward, April 7th, 1631. 
From this it would appear that he continued to be resident 
in Steeple Ashton, although he was presented to the living 
of the Abbey Church, Bath, in 1621. 
From 1605 to 1619 the Steeple Ashton registers are in what 
we may fairly consider to be Webbe’s handwriting. After 
this date they are in different hands, but we learn from the 
Churchwarden’s accounts that he was present at the Easter 
Vestry in 1631, 1632, 1633 and 1634. He may have attended 
other meetings, but the minutes do not record the names of 
those present, neither are they attested. The Bath Corporation 
presented him to the Rectory of the Abbey Church, but no 
notice of the fact exists in the City records. Webbe, how- 
ever, must have made himself popular, as in the Chamberlain’s 
Accounts for 1622, 22nd year of James I., we find that £3 6s. 8d. 
was given to Mr. Webbe at his going to Oxford to take his 
Doctor’s degree, a title of which he was proud, as in every 
entry in the register, concerning the birth of his children after 
this date, he is styled Doctor of Divinitie. 
The Court appear to have been in Bath in 1622, as there are 
notices of gifts to the King’s Trumpeters and other persons, 
and the new Rector therefore probably had another oppor- 
tunity of attracting the Royal notice, as he was considered 
to be the best preacher of his time, and his pure and elegant 
style was as great a contrast to the dogmatic and uncharitable 
expressions then so common both in the pulpit and the world, 
as his strict life and conversation were to the clownish and lax 
habits of the end of James's reign. 
“The arrangement of an unruly tongue, its danger dis- 
covered and remedies prescribed, 1619.” 
