124 Review of Waylen’s History of Marlborough. 
? 
the Parliament for his ‘ delinquencies ;’ 
residence at the castle ; and so rapidly were all traces of the recent 
struggles obliterated, that in 1648, our old gossip and friend, John 
Aubrey, spent the Christmas there, happily hare hunting on the 
downs with Mr. Charles Seymour’s beagles and Sir W. Button’s 
settled quietly in his 
greyhounds, and investigating the interesting relics of Avebury 
which he seems to have been the first to discover, at least to make 
known to the world. 
The disorders incident to a state of war were now at an end, 
and the only military spectacle of which the town was at this 
period the scene, was in July 1649, six months after the King’s 
death, on occasion of Cromwell’s passing through it on his way to 
Bristol, at the head of a large force destined for the conquest of 
Ireland. The general was himself with his officers entertained at 
a grand feast given by the Earl of Pembroke at his manor-house 
of Ramsbury, the army being quartered principally in Marl- 
borough. A few years later, in 1653, the town was in great part 
destroyed by a terrible conflagration arising from accident ; and 
this calamity being contemporaneous with the accession of the 
Lord Protector to supreme power, was spoken of by some of the 
loyalist scribes of the day as “an ominous commencement of this 
incendiary’s usurpation, whose red and fiery nose has been the 
burden of many a cavalier’s song.” By this calamity the town 
hall, market-house, the church of St. Mary, the principal inns, 
and between two and three hundred houses were burnt to the 
ground. The loss was estimated in the petition for aid sent up on 
the occasion to the council of state from the mayor and other 
inhabitants, at “three score and ten thousand pounds at the least.” 
A committee was thereupon appointed by the council to sit at 
Sadler’s Hall, London, for managing and ordering collections to be 
made through special letters of the council, addressed to all parts 
of thekingdom. The amount raised by this collection is not stated ; 
but that the town rose rapidly again from its ashes is clear from a 
passage in Evelyn’s memoirs, recording his visit to it the year after 
the conflagration, 
