32 Conversazione. 
whose name they bear. I only regret that the information which 
they contain is not a/so placed within reach of the more ordinary 
purchaser. With reference to this Society and any project which 
it may by-and-by entertain of finishing the History of the County, 
it is to be hoped that the gentlemen of Southern Wiltshire will not 
altogether abandon us of the North, and rub their hands with com- 
placency because their History is written. The privilege of enjoying, 
as they do, light and knowledge, ought rather to inspire them with 
an active compassion for us who are sitting in darkness. 
Yet not in tofa/ darkness ; for a few rays of topographical light 
have from time to time broken out to illuminate even our Northern 
hemisphere. We have the labours of Mr. Britton, in the “ Beauties 
of England and Wales,” and the “ Beauties of Wilts :’ The History 
of Lacock, by Nichols and Bowles: The Histories of Bremhill and 
of Malmesbury. Devizes has its annalist in Mr. James Waylen, 
who, (as I believe I may say, having seen it advertised,) is about 
to confer the same service upon Marlborough and its district. To 
these we may add the History of a place, which enjoys the (now 
very unusual) distinction of having belonged to one and the 
same family for 500 years: a family which has given to England 
two Earls, and I know not how many Barons, one Chancellor, four 
Treasurers, two Chief Justices, one Archbishop, two Bishops, five 
Knights of the Garter, and numerous Bannerets. Such a Wiltshire 
parish deserved a separate volume from an accomplished historian : 
and Castle Combe has found one—in Mr. Poulett Scrope. 
Several publications have issued from the private press of Sir 
Thomas Phillipps, Bart.: but they have been limited to so few 
copies that it is now very difficult to meet with them. One of these 
is of great utility,—viz., the ‘“ Wiltshire Institutions,” as it is 
called,—being the Ecclesiastical Register of Salisbury transferred 
to print. The permission to make such an use of that record was 
most creditable to Bishop Fisher, and Mr. Davies, the late Registrar. 
It is of great assistance to any one interested in our Topography, 
as it supplies an important key to Manorial history. 
Of another book printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps I must now 
speak more at length, as it relates especially to the Northern part 
of the county. It also enables me to introduce to your notice 
a worthy of former days, who ever deserves kind mention by all 
Wiltshiremen—John Aubrey, of Easton Piers. 
It is impossible to refer to the subject of Wiltshire history with- 
out mentioning Aubrey; and it would be ungrateful to omit him, for 
no man was more attached to his native county, or laboured more 
diligently, though in an odd way of his own, on its behalf. 
He was born in 1626, on the site of what is now the farm-house 
of Lower Easton Piers, in the parish of Kington St. Michael, three 
miles north of Chippenham. Though by position and education, a 
gentleman, he was from an early period of his life so involved in 
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