By the Rev. Canon J. EL. Jackson, F.S.A. 39 
Currey! 
Of the ill-endowed vicars of the parish we have a list for five 
hundred and fifty years, or thereabouts, but I do not see among 
them the names of any persons of what may be called national 
reputation, so that where nothing is known there is nothing to be 
told. But every one must have observed how soon, how very soon, 
names that made, perhaps, considerable noise in the country in their 
day, slip out of memory when their day is over. Unless they have 
left some abiding mark whereby posterity may be reminded of their 
having once existed, the biography is summed up in the three 
entries of a parish register—born, married, and died, if even so much 
as that. It is so (according to Hamlet) with persons of more im- 
portance than the modest vicars of acountry parish : “ There is hope 
that a great man’s memory may outlive his life half a year, but by 
our Lady he must build Churches then, or else shall he suffer not 
thinking on.” But Time which so mercilessly devours most things 
has kindly spared us a few crumbs concerning two of the older 
vicars of this parish. One was 
Puitre Hunton. 
A man of good learning and abilities, who, after being schoolmaster 
at Abury, was appointed in the Commonwealth period to be minister 
first at Devizes, then at Heytesbury, and lastly ‘at Westbury. 
Whilst he was here he was appointed one of the commissioners for 
Wilts for ejecting from their livings those of the clergy who in the 
good pleasure of the Puritanical party were considered to be “ scan- 
dalous, ignorant, and insufficient.” He afterwards published a 
treatise on monarchy, in which his views gave such offence to the 
a 
1 There is a singular entry relating to the Church property here, in Domesday 
Book, at which time the whole lay manor belonged to the Crown. The land 
belonging to the Church was nearly two hundred acres : held, says the record, by 
 * elericolus quidam.” The late Canon Rich Jones, in his edition of the Wilts 
- Domesday (p. 14), observes that “* by clericolus the scribe meant clericulus: & 
_ word explained by Ducange to mean a junior clerk or a choir-boy ’’ (both of which 
- interpretations seem highly inapplicable), “ but it is difficult to say what is the 
~ exact meaning of the word in this passage.” 
