Communicated by Mr. James Waylen, 823 
there under the continual care of physicians and chirurgeons, and 
thus avoided taking part in any councils of importance. In the 
summer of 1644 he made his second escape to Bedwyn, and found 
the place in possession of a party of Parliamentarians under the 
personal command of the Earl of Essex, to whom he at once sur- 
rendered himself, and obtained permission to remain there in peace, 
and recruit his broken health. The die was now cast ; but he declared 
in his after petition that he was always looked upon as a disaffected 
person by the King’s party, who told him he was liable to be tried 
for his life for sending munitions of war to the Parliament’s cause. 
Thenceforward that party made him sufficiently sensible of the fact 
by repeated acts of plunder and living at free-quarters, On the 
other hand there was still the Covenant and the Negative Oath to 
be taken, A section of the Wilts Committee was sitting at Devizes, 
but by the testimony of his doctor, Hugh Barker, Mr. Smyth 
was quite unfit to travel to that town; and a letter from Devizes 
shews that the committee-men themselves looked upon a ride to 
Bedwyn as a very risky affair. This formidable obstacle was at last 
surmounted. Henry Hungerford, Mr. Smyth’s successor in the 
representation of Bedwyn, tendered him the documents, and three 
of the Devizes Committee witnessed his signature in December, 
1645. In the final compounding at Goldsmith’s Hall, it was found 
that his real estate consisted principally of houses in London, on 
which a fine was estimated of £1600 at a third, or £750 at a tenth, 
but finally adjudged at £685. 
_Joun Sprzncer, of Quidhampton, Esq. Served the King asa 
cavalry officer till the autumn of 1645, when, becoming, as he says, 
convinced of his error, he surrendered himself to the garrison at 
Malmesbury, took the two oaths, and, to liberate his personalities, 
paid £50 to the Wilts Committee, there sitting, represented by 
William Legge, Richard Talboys, Edmund Martyn, and Thomas 
Goddard. In respect of his final composition in London, he is seised 
of a freehold in the manor of Quidhampton, in the parish of Rawton, 
worth, over the rent reserved, £140 per annum, and lands at Eleombe, 
£64. Against this he craves a heavy set-off in the shape of an 
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