By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jachson, F.8.A. 197 
Lockswell Heath (and to prevent their straying) between two 
temporary walls of broadcloth, supplied by the clothiers of Calne. 
On the Restoration of Charles II. Bowood came back into the hands 
of the Crown: and a long lease was then granted to Sir Orlando 
Bridgeman, a lawyer, who had been first a royalist, made a certain 
peace with Cromwell, but at the Restoration resumed his royalism 
rather emphatically, by presiding at the Trial of the Regicides. 
There had been all this time a house in the park, tenanted once by 
one of the Webb family, who came, I believe, from Bromham. The 
Bridgemans are presumed to have resided : at least they certainly laid 
out a good deal of money in various improvements under the direction 
of a person of the name and probably of the family. An old painting 
of the house as it then was is still preserved at Bowood. Another 
Sir Orlando prevailed upon the Crown to put an end to the lease 
and sell the estate: which was done; and upon his death it was sold 
to the Earl of Shelburne somewhere about the year 1740 to 1750. 
Into any history of the present Bowood family I shall not enter : 
_ but there are one or two points which may not be generally known. 
The son of the purchaser was William, Earl of Shelburne, whose 
life has lately been published by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. He 
was Prime Minister in the reign of George III. It was he who 
built the present house (though it has been very much enlarged 
since), and who, under the direction of the celebrated Capability 
_ Brown and an amateur landscape gardener—the Hon. Charles 
_ Hamilton, one of the Abercorn family—laid out the grounds and 
_ made the cascades, &c. Old Lord Lansdown told me that he re- 
membered the making of the cascade very well, for while it was 
going on, he was quite a little boy, and, creeping about to see it, he 
fell from the top to the bottom, was taken up half-dead, and re- 
covered with some difficulty. It was William, Earl of Shelborne, 
who formed the valuable collection now called the Lansdowne MSS. 
in the British Museum; and I must not forget to add that it was 
he who first took by the hand and encouraged towards beginning a 
county history of Wiltshire, our old acquaintance, John Britton, a 
very remarkable man, who began the world as a baker’s boy in a small 
village and lived to produce some of the most beautiful works on 
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