338 The Wiltshire Compounders. 
1471, when the previous proprietor, Lord Wenlock, was slain at 
Tewkesbury fight. About 1633, which was soon after the execution 
at Salisbury of the Earl of Castlehaven for adultery, his son and 
heir, James Mervin, commonly known as Lord Awdley, alienated 
the family estates, for what consideration cannut now be known, to 
Sir Francis (afterwards Lord) Cottington. Whatever actually passed 
between the covenanting parties, it is notorious that Lord Awdley 
some years afterwards sought to cancel the transaction, and the 
attention of the House of Lords was at intervals occupied with the 
affair for more than half-a-year. First, there was the petition in 
1640 of James Lord Awdley, Earl of Castlehaven, praying that he 
might be restored to the manor of Fonthill, Hatch, and other lands 
in Wilts, with damages. Two months later he lodges a complaint 
that someone had stolen (‘ defaced” in the margin) from Fonthill 
Church the sepulchral monument of his mother, and obtains an 
order directing the Bishop of Sarum to enquire and make report. 
Then, in order to ground his action on a two-fold basis, he offers to 
assign errors in the attainder of his late father. This move was 
promptly set aside as reflecting on the Crown; and in June, 1641, 
it was resolved that Lord Cottington having fully established the 
integrity of his bargain, this cause be dismissed out of the House. 
Lords’ Journals, iv., 279. 
Subsequently another claimant to a portion of the Fonthill estate 
appeared in the person of James Risley, on the following plea. 
Upon the attainder of the above Mervin Lord Awdley, Earl of 
Castlehaven, Fonthill Farm, having escheated to Richard, Bishop 
of Winchester, had by that prelate been leased to James Risley 
aforesaid, and in 1648 he was carrying on a suit for the same at 
the Salisbury spring assizes. But this and all other obstructions, 
it is presumed were silenced by the Parliaments’ Order in September, 
1646, to sell all the Cottington estates ; and three years later the 
same authority conferred them, in their entirety, as a gift on John 
Bradshaw, who had sat as president of the court which condemned 
the King. 
Outline of an Act passed 15th August, 1649, for granting unto 
the Lord President Bradshaw, of the Council of State, £2000 a 
Se 
