72 The Wiltshire Compounders. 
extinct. Pursued as a “ popish recusant,’” Thomas Gawen of Queen 
Elizabeth’s time who was, by an inquisition taken in the forty-third 
year of her reign fined no less a sum than £1380 for non-attendances 
at his parish Church, and in a further sum of £120 for failing to 
make his submission in the required form. In fact, the Queen, or 
her successor, just took two-thirds of his property. As he lived to 
be an adherent to the Crown during the Civil War, his estates at 
Norrington, Baverstock, and elsewhere, were sequestered 31st July, 
1647, and publicly sold at Drury House in 1653; the ostensible 
purchaser being Mr. Walter Barnes, of Shaftesbury, who in reality 
only acted as trustee for his friends, Thomas Gawen and his son, 
William. But as all secret trusts to the prejudice of the State in 
favour of popish recusants were declared void, the sequestration was 
not finally withdrawn till 1657, down to which period £166 had, 
by order from the Exchequer been yearly charged upon the tenants 
and occupiers of two-thirds of the estate. On the removal of the 
sequestration, Jane Barnes, who held as widow of the aforesaid 
Walter Barnes, was discharged from all further liabilities to the 
State, and allowed to retain possession. The elder Gawen had in 
the meantime deceased. 
Notwithstanding that it would appear from all this that whoever 
had a hold upon the estates the Gawens had none, yet in the fol- 
lowing year William, the surviving son, covenanted with Wadham 
Wyndham, Esq., for the sale of Norrington, Trowe, Hurdcott, and 
other lands, for £9000, and Mr. Wyndham paid him £300 as deposit. 
Mrs. Jane Barnes agreeing to join in the conveyance on receiving 
for her share £1600, said to be due from Gawen to her late husband 
as the balance of the account between them. But before the 
settling day arrived, Mrs. Barnes re-married and changed her mind. 
In concert with her second husband, John Barnes, she now claimed 
all the estates purchased at Drury House as their absolute property , 
and made a pretended sale thereof to one Taylor, a brother of hers. 
Mr. Wyndham promptly filed his bill in the Court of Exchequer 
that same Michelmas term, 1658, and after some litigation was 
declared the legal purchaser, and proper assurances of the same were 
then made to him. It is to be inferred that William Gawen also 
