164 Swindon and its Neighbourhood—No, 2. 
The country about the present Braden hamlet is pretty enough, 
but it is not quite first-rate for agriculture, and I do not suppose 
that when the Millennium of small peasantry sets in, there will be 
any very great competition for the much-talked “three acres a-piece ” 
in that quarter. Yet I remember many years ago a piece of about 
five hundred acres, then a sort of common occupied chiefly by squatters 
who led a wretched life, which, being taken in hand by a gentleman 
with capital, enclosed and divided into farms, now presents a 
very respectable appearance. If it should ever come to be sub-divided 
again it would probably relapse into its former condition. 
If Braden is not fertile in crops, neither is it in topics for arche- 
ological disquisition. At Ringsbury you will see one of the great 
earthworks so frequent in this county, but I am not aware that 
there is any particular history belonging to it. Nor have we about 
Braden Forest any sensational or romantic traditions of the Robin 
Hood School, or of robbers and marauders of a lower class who used 
to haunt such regions. One story only about it is all that I have met 
with in ancient records. There wasa Wiltshire family in the reign of 
King John of the name of Fitzwarren—a name which still survives, 
attached to the parish of Stanton, near Highworth. Fulco Fitz- 
warren had been banished from the Court for treason or some 
other intolerable behaviour; so, with a number of fellows, he 
took to the highway business in Braden, waylaying and plundering 
the King’s peaceful travelling subjects. A company of carriers, 
with a train of waggons of valuable goods, happening to come along, 
Fitzwarren captured the whole party, but on finding that the goods 
did not belong to the carriers themselves, but that they were the 
King’s, and that they were merely being conveyed from one place 
to another, he forthwith opened the bales of goods, unpacked 
rich stores of cloths and furs, quietly measured these off and divided 
them among his troop, and told the drivers they might now turn 
their horses’ heads back to London, with his dutiful compliments 
to His Majesty, and best thanks for the beautiful wardrobes with 
which he had so graciously provided them. 
On the breaking up of the large forest of Braden, that part which 
was the actual property of the Crown, as being part of the Duchy 
