34 Westbury under the Plain. 
was compiled chiefly from something of my own writing, he has 
done me the honour to connect my name. Some people might feel 
mortified at seeing their handiwork, or rather the spinning of their 
brains, offered at such a very insignificant figure. On the contrary, 
this was exactly what I was pleased to see: because, the very object 
of our Society was from the first, and is now, not to keep our in- 
formation to ourselves, or hide it in volumes which nobody ean buy, 
but to put county history and other archeological subjects into a 
cheaper form, to popularize and diffuse it, to encourage a taste for 
it, and enable people of the humblest class to take more interest ia 
the places they live in, by knowing who had been there before them, 
who built this house or Church, what changes there have been, and 
so forth—things of which they are generally quiteignorant. I have 
told the story before, but as a specimen of popular acquaintance with 
the history of a place it will bear telling again. Visiting Glastonbury 
Abbey some years ago, though not altogether unacquainted with 
its history, I thought myself in duty bound to get all the information 
I could from the cicerone of the ruins. The regular official happening 
to be ill, or, at any rate, not forthcoming, an old post-boy (an 
animal hardly known, except by tradition, to the present generation) 
hanging about the gate offered his services, assuring me that he 
knew all about it quite well. So, in the course of our tour, I asked 
him, for fun, who was it that built up this old place? He had not 
got his lesson quite pat, so he scratched his head, and said he’d heard 
tell it wur Oliver Crummell. ‘‘ Well, then,” said I, ‘‘ who knocked 
it about in this way?” ‘Oh! [then another scratch] why that 
wur Willum Norman.” 
A cheap account, then, of Westbury being now within very easy 
reach, and other gentlemen being about to address you upon the 
Church, the geology of the district, &c., I propose to make only a 
few remarks on one or two of the more prominent points of the 
subject, with, first, a slight sketch of the general history, for the 
benefit of those who may not happen to have invested twopence in 
Mr. Michael. 
There is no other Westbury in Wiltshire, but there are several 
places of the same name in England, some of them in counties 
