By the Rev. Canon J. EB. Jackson, F.8.A. 173 
irregular, or rather, very bad, and called loudly for renovation 
at the same time it cannot be denied that a great many valuable 
and eminent men were introduced through them. So far as good 
English names are an indication of respectability, the list of Mem- 
bers for Wootton Basset will, with some few exceptions, bear com- 
parison with those of any other place. As for the persons who 
accepted bribes, one cannot be much surprised, knowing what human 
nature is, and how widely, from various causes, political corruption 
was spread, The inferior will follow the example of asuperior. It 
is a Greek poet who says, in an English dress :— 
When base deeds, from those of highest rank 
Receive a sanction, all below esteem them 
As objects of their honest imitation. 
But Wootton Basset is now making a fresh start. The railway 
has put some new life into it, and we hope has carried away all bad 
habits and associations. A new town hall and a restored Church 
have taken the place of decayed buildings, and we expect that with 
signs of improvement its future will obliterate the past. 
One difficulty in getting at the serious history of the town in 
other particulars is that the oldest documents relating to it seem to 
have been strangely neglected and lost. They had a Recorder who 
has recorded nothing, and the boxes for safety have saved very little. 
Nothing of this kind can surprise anybody who has heard of the 
shameful way in which, until some few years ago, the National 
Records in London were stowed away and then neglected. They 
were shut up in boxes in vaults almost under the Thames, and eaten 
up by rats, so numerous that the first step in reform was to employ 
a number of terriers to clear the room. It was only the other 
day that all the valuable records of the old East India Company 
were recsued from oblivion. Therefore we must not be too hard 
upon small provincial authorities. Queen Elizabeth’s charter to 
Wootton is said to have been quietly carried away by a former lord 
of the manor. King Charles the Second’s turned up quite acci- 
dentally about twenty-five years ago in the house of a Mr. Owen, 
near Denbigh. That gentleman did not know that he had it. The 
box had come to him many years before with some papers of a person 
