66 The Wiltshire Compounders. 
that lady’s jointure by a former husband, for her maintenance and 
to be at her own dispose. [This lady was Elizabeth, daughter of 
William West, of Tirbeck, Co. York, and widow of John, Lord 
Darcey. She died in 1649.] Sir Francis’s fine does not appear to 
have been fully declared till May, 1652, when he was adjudged to 
pay £1206 and to settle £160 per annum on some ministry, not 
specified. His case possesses more than ordinary interest owing to 
the survival of an almost unbroken series of letters passing from 
him to his Wiltshire agent, Mr. Thomas Michell, of Bewley Court, 
near Lacock, who, with his father, Mr. Edward Michell, had long 
been in the service of the Fane family. They extend over the 
whole period of the Commonwealth, that is from 1639 till the 
Restoration of Charles II., and are far too numerous to be recited. 
The few here following must be accepted as samples of the whole. 
The originals came into the possession of Mr. John Strange, of - 
Devizes, and subsequently of Streatley, near Reading, through his 
maternal descent from the Michells, of Bewley Court. Mr. Strange - 
died in 1884. One of the bundles is docketed thus :—“ All these 
are letters I received from the right hon. Sir Francis Fane, except 
a ticket I had from Captain Hutcheson for corn he sent for to 
Chalfield, and an acquittance I had of Mr. Jesse for £50 paid at 
Malmesbury.” We trace in them Sir Francis’s contests with the 
sequestrators, and his private advice to Mr. Michell how to deal 
with them, sundry negociations with his Wiltshire neighbours, 
Ashe, Yerbury, Chappel, Norborne, Hungerford, and others; we 
discover Mr. Ashe’s great power in the county, as one of the Gold- 
smiths’ Hall dictators; domestic details also crop up from time to 
time; and Mr. Michell is cautioned, when he sends gold coin, to 
conceal it in the pannel of his man’s saddle ;—until at last, Sir 
Francis, having survived the unquiet times, is able to tell his tried 
friend that the King hath pricked his son, Francis, for a knight at 
the approaching coronation; but withal, that the expenses attending 
that affair will make the prompt remittance of his gathered rents 
more urgent than ever. 
“To my kind friends Mr. Edward and Mr. Thomas Michell at Seend and 
Melksham in Wiltshire, 
