weet’. . 
By J. Waylen. 115 
acting committee sitting at Sadlers’ Hall to carry out this scheme ; 
he had larger work in hand just then; but he found time to come 
down to Marlborough and, in company with Mr. Mayor, to peram- 
bulate the place and offer his practical advice. The tradition may 
be at fault which attributes to him a promise that the new market- 
house should be his personal gift to the town, seeing that in the 
subsequent allotment of the national fund a thousand pounds was 
expressly devoted to that object. But tradition has not falsified the 
light in which he was generally regarded by the Marlborough 
commonalty at that crisis; nor need we doubt that before his de- 
parture he utilised the occasion more Gladstoniense for a characteristic 
harangue on the moral aspects of the catastrophe. Anyhow, it 
seems rational to conclude that gratitude for his services must in 
great measure have been the motive prompting them two years 
later to surpass every other town in the county (Salisbury excepted) 
in their contribution to the Piedmontese Fund. It is a noticeable 
fact, too, that, at the very moment of the fire’s breaking out, the 
people of the town and neighbourhood were met in special conclave 
to invoke the divine benediction on the arduous course of action to 
which he had just committed himself. An extract from the Mayor’s 
letter to Oliver on the day after the calamity will more fully set 
this forth. ‘‘Too much,” says he, “ cannot be said for them; they 
being a people more generally well-affected than any town I know 
in this county. Yet, being confident that your Excellency’s ear 
will be open to them, and also that you will be ready to act for 
them, I shall only in reference to them say thus much more,—that 
the very day when this affliction befel them the godly people of the 
town and many of the country were together seeking God (ac- 
cording to your desire in your late Declaration) for His presence 
with you in your councils, that you might be endowed with the 
spirit of wisdom and counsel for the management of the great and 
weighty affairs before you, to the honour of His name and the good 
and encouragement of His people, in settling justice and righteous- 
ness in this nation—being confident that this was the end you 
proposed to yourself in the dissolution of the Parliament. In the 
truth and reality of this I am so well satisfied, that for my own 
I 2 
