Review of Waylen’s History of Marlborough. 125 
“ 9th June, 1654. Set out in a coach and six to visit my wife’s 
relations in Wiltshire. Dined at Marlborough, which having been 
lately fired, was now new-built. At one end of the town we saw 
Lord Seymour’s house, but nothing observable except the mount, 
to which we ascended by windings for near half a mile. It seems 
to have been cast up by hand.” 
The trade of the town seems at this time to have flourished 
greatly. The Marlborough cheese market in particular was cele- 
brated, and supplied the metropolis with a thin kind of cheese in 
great favour with consumers. Cloths and serges were likewise 
manufactured there, and cutlery and tanning were among the staple 
trades of the place. The population engaged in the clothing trade 
must have been considerable, as a petition of the date of 1697 to 
the Commons House states that “many thousands of poor people 
had been employed for several years past in the clothing trade 
hereabouts, besides 700 yearly in the workhouse.” Workhouses 
were evidently more deserving of their title at that period, than 
they are at present. ‘ 
Cromwell granted a new charter to the borough, in which his 
partisans were numerous. But the royalist party had many sup- 
porters there likewise, and even Lord Hertford and his brother 
Lord Seymour were suspected of readiness to join in any 
movement for the restoration of the legitimate Sovereign. The 
rash and unfortunate rising of Mr. Penruddock was intended to 
have broken out by seizure of this town, and taking unawares the 
troop of Cromwell’s horse stationed in it. The cavalry, however, 
were too well on their guard. The outbreak exploded at Salisbury 
instead. And the Seymours remaining quiet were rewarded by 
Cromwell with a considerable exemption from the threatened 
assessment on them of the commissioners. 
Mr. Waylen gives some amusing passages extracted from 
pamphlets of the day, relative to the intrigues and contests of the 
rival partisans in the borough at this period, especially the story 
of the sufferings of ‘“ William Houlbrook, the Marlborough black- 
smith,” «a royalist, and the treacheries of ‘Cornet Joyce, an old 
