Leland’s Journey through Wiltshire. 183 
ders. Peradventure it was his badge or token of the Admiraltye. 
Ther is a fayre parke, but no great large thynge. In it be a great 
nombar of very fayre and fine-greynyd okes apt to sele houses.! 
1“ Brooke Halle.” This house stood on or near the site of Brook House 
Farm (not Brook Farm, which is another ancient house, still in existence at a 
little distance from it) between Hawkeridge and Coteridge about 3 miles N.W. of 
Westbury. The estate originally belonged to the Crown. From Henry III. to 
Edw. III. a.p. 1361, it was the residence and property of the family of Paveley, 
lords of the hundred of Westbury. Between the two coheiresses of Paveley 
there was a division of lands. The younger sister married Sir Ralph Cheney. 
Her grandson, Sir Edmund Cheney, married Alice, daughter of Sir Humphrey 
Stafford, and died A.D. 1430 leaving two daughters coheiresses, of whom Anne 
was the wife of Sir John Willoughby. Sir John’s son, Robert, was created in 
A.D. 1492 Lord Willoughby de Broke, taking his title from this place. He was 
Steward of the Household to King Henry VII. His two granddaughters were 
married—1. Elizabeth, to John Paulet (son of Lord St. John of Basing), 
2nd Marquis of Winchester; and 2. Anne, to Charles Blount 5th Baron Mount- 
joy, who died a.p. 1544. Brooke came by the latter match to Lord Mountjoy, 
and was sold by his grandson the 8th Baron, about A.D. 1599, to Sir Edward 
Hungerford of Farley Castle, who died a.p. 1607. It remained in that family 
till A.D. 1684, when it was sold by the extravagant Sir Edward Hungerford to 
Sir Stephen Fox. For its subsequent history, see Sir R. C. Hoare’s Westbury, 
p. 30. 
Aubrey describes it, about A.D. 1650 as being still “avery great and stately 
house :” and he has preserved in his collections for North Wilts, 4 minute 
description of the emblazoned windows. ‘The device of a ship’s rudder which he 
says was “everywhere,” he considers, [as Leland, with a “peradventure,’ had 
done before him], to have been the badge of office of the first Lord Willoughby de 
Broke, as Admiral to Henry VII. But “Mr. Wadman,” says Aubrey, “ would 
persuade me that this rudder belonged to Paveley who was lord of this place.” 
“ Mr. Wadman” was perhaps right: as it is not quite certain to whom it did 
belong ; but one point (suggested by the Rev. E. Wilton, of Lavington) does 
seem certain ; viz., that it did not belong to the Willoughbys. For it is found in 
the neighbouring church of Edington upon the tomb of Sir Ralph Cheney, who 
married the coheiress of Paveley, a hundred years before the first Willoughby had 
acquired Brooke Hall by marriage with the coheiress of Cheney. It is also found 
on the west porch of Westbury church in juxtaposition with Stafford, also before 
Willoughby’s time. As representative of Cheney and Paveley, Lord Willoughby 
may have used the rudder for an ornament to his windows in reference to one or 
other of those two families, but not as any device relating to his own office in the 
admiralty. As /is representatives, the Paulet family, still use it. 
The rudder is also found on the parapet of Seend Church, north aisle: where it 
is probably only the memorial of a pecuniary contribution towards the building 
of that part of the church, by some Willoughby who used the badge at that time 
as an hereditary device. 
