76 Some Western Circuit Assize Records 
have such matters before them. And what would the Court of 
Chancery or the Charity Commissioners say ? 
The Judges at Winchester, 1664, July 28th—Sir Matthew Hale 
one of them—are informed that Mr. Cromwell, lord of the manor 
of Merdon, Hants, upon the apprehension of one Rd. Wasteridge, 
seized some of his goods and ehattels. As Wasteridge is going to 
foreign plantations, Cromwell is ordered to give them up to him. 
This may be the quondam Lord Protector Richard Cromwell. 
In Devon, at St. Thomas the Apostle (Exeter ?), the ale-house 
of John Mountstephen is suppressed, as Richard Penstone was 
convicted at the Assize, for the manslaughter of one Gilbert, the 
death occasioned by wrestling, the challenge for it made whilst they 
sat drinking there. 
At the Summer Assize, Salisbury, July 8th, 1665, the High 
Sheriff is ordered to seize a black mare for the use of the King as 
a waif upon the flight of felony, Samuell Hooker and Charles 
Howe having been acquitted of the charge of highway robbery in 
stealing from John Harris the mare and 9s. Perhaps the mare was 
Harris’s after all! He might re-purchase it of the King! Now-a- 
days, on good cause shewn, the undivided half part might go to 
both Hooker and Howe! 
At Wells two men are sent to gaol until they provide themselves 
with masters, or procure themselves to be sent to Jamaica! 
Then appears again that dire calamity of those times—“ the 
Plague.” I have previously alluded to its occurrence in 1646, when 
it was at Salisbury and other places. An entry of 8th March, 
1666, Winchester Assize, tells us that “Sir John Keelinge and 
Sir John Archer (complaint being made of the inhabitants of 
Alverstoke and Borough of Gosport being visited with it are unable 
to relieve the poor infected persons and others and are now fallen 
into great want by means thereof) do therefore desire Sir Thos Budd 
and Sir Humfrey Bennett Knights, Richard Norton, Bartholomew 
Price, John Stewkley, and William Collins, the Mayor and Justices 
of the Borough of Portsmouth or any two or more of them, forthwth 
to take care for their reliefe by rating the adjacent inhabitants 
according to the statute in that case made and provided. And also to 
