62 The Wiltshire Compounders. 
submitted to the Parliament in April, 1645, when he took the two 
oaths, and paid £100 for his personal estate, and other sums on 
account, for his real estate, to the Wilts Committee. These gentle- 
men, wishing to screen him as much as possible, reported to the 
London Committee as follows. He declares that when acting as 
commissioner it was by reason of his being under the forces of the 
King. He suffered considerably by the proximity of his property 
to Great or East Chalfield when occupied as a garrison, and 
especially when it was besieged, his own house being next unto it. 
[‘* Next” must be here understood as nearest, for the two mansions 
were a quarter-of-a-mile asunder.] Since his submission he hath 
taken the National Covenant, and hath been obedient to all orders 
of the Parliament. As for his real estate in this county, as we are 
credibly informed, it was worth in time of peace £190 per annum. 
Signed 2nd October, 1646, by Robert Browne, Edward Martyn, 
and Thomas Goddard. [Certificate of his having taken the covenant 
subjoined. ] 
He is seised in the manor of West Chalfield, remainder to six 
sons in succession, then to his brother Henry ; annual value thereof 
£160; tithes of a free chapel there, £10; lands at Atford, £20 ; 
lands at Melksham and Bradford, £20. Having already compounded 
for his personal estate, his fine, at a tenth, is £420. 11th December, 
1648. 
John Eyre, of Wedhampton, returned as knight of the shire in 
Elizabeth’s Parliament of 1563, considerably increased his estate by 
marriage with a co-heiress of the family of Payne, of Motcombe, 
in Dorset. His son, of the same name, was yet more fortunate in 
his espousals ; he had married Anne, the eldest daughter of Thomas 
Tropenell, of Great Chalfield, when the singular and untimely 
death of her brother in the chase made her co-heiress of that opulent 
house. It is related of this brother that he had put a dog-couple 
over his head, and leaping a hedge was caught by a bough and 
strangled. In the division of the property thereupon occurring the 
estate of Great Chalfield was assigned to the wife of John Eyre, 
who at once made it the family seat. ‘‘ The mansion,” observes 
Mr. Matcham, “reared in the time of the Plantagenets, still 
