98 The Wiltshire Compounders. 
reputation, declares that it was not printed in the eleven first im- 
pressions, but afterwards inserted by the printers for their private 
advantage. 
Levett, as a Wiltshire name, though far from being prominent, 
appears to have been one of long standing. In connection with 
Swindon it occurs as far back as the time of Doomsday Book, under 
the form of “ Leviet.”” The burials of two children of William 
Levett, Esq., are recorded at Swindon, in 1667. He was also the 
father of Sir Richard Levett, Kt., Lord Mayor of London in 1700; 
and in our own day he is represented by Richard Byrd Levett, of 
Milford Hall, Co. Stafford, of the 60th Royal Rifles. Possibly the 
name and office of the compounder’s father are preserved among the 
burials registered at Marlborough St. Mary’s. “ Richard Levet, 
minister,” 16 Dec., 1662. 
Sir Jamus Ley, of Teffont Ewyas, Eart or Mariporoven. 
None can pretend to say in what aspect the great civil war would 
have presented itself to the matured judgment of “ that good Earl,” 
as Milton styles him, had he lived to witness it. The character of 
his daughter, the Lady Margaret Ley, truly represented, so the 
poet tells us, her father’s “ noble virtues.” Would it be safe to say 
that the career of his other descendants presented an equally faithful 
mirror of his patriotic sentiments. If the dissolution of Charles’ 
third Parliament “broke” the Earl’s heart, we may yet doubt 
whether, as a lawyer, he could have accepted a resort to arms as the 
only effective method of rectification. But leaving this question, as 
we needs must, in its conjectural form, it now remains to say that 
though the Earl had been twelve years dead when hostilities com- 
menced, the case of his widow has to come under our consideration. 
The mother of the Earl’s children was Mary, daughter of John 
Petty, Esq., of Stoke-Talmage, Oxon, but he married twice after 
her decease, his third wife being Jane, daughter of John, Lord 
Butler, of Bramfield, who, surviving him, was married immediately 
after his death in 1629 to William Ashburnham, M.P. for Ludger- 
shall. She was described at the time of her second marriage as the 
young, beautiful, and wealthy widow of the Earl; and she lived 
happily with her second husband forty-two years. There was 
