The Hertford Correspondence. 219 
sive manner in which it was supposed some of the regulars stationed 
in the town sought to signify their contempt of the County Justices. 
The affair was reported as follows :—Sir Edward Baynton while, in 
company with his brother Magistrates, conducting the business of 
the Quarter Sessions in the Town Hall, was greatly disturbed by 
parties of the 5th, 38th, 50th, and 56th foot, who persisted in 
patrolling the streets with drums and fifes, and in defiance of a 
custom which had hitherto exempted the period of the Sessions 
from this sort of exhibition, continued their exercise immediately 
in front of the Court. Sir Edward Baynton having submitted to 
the nuisance for a considerable time, sent out his Constables to 
request their withdrawal. This appeal was unheeded, and the writer 
of the account closes with the remark that “in his humble opinion, 
if the Court had offered to punish them for disobeying the order of 
all the Magistrates, we might have had another Boston affair in the 
Town of the Devizes.” It is true that this charge of insubordina- 
tion was indignantly repelled by subsequent writers in the public 
Journals both of Salisbury and London, but the whole tenour of 
the correspondence, even if it mitigate in some measure the impres- 
sion that an affront was designed, by no means disturbs the fact, 
that annoyance was felt. 
On the other hand, the local Militia did not always set an 
example of decorous citizenship. A signal instance of the defiant 
front which they would occasionally venture to assume, in order to 
show their independence of the Government, is the fact that in 1771 
nearly all the officers of the Wilts regiment resigned their com- 
missions, for no other purpose than to express their “disgust at a 
late promotion.” What the promotion was, is not stated. It may 
possibly have been that of the Earl of Suffolk, of Charlton, who 
during that year, sueceeded Lord Halifax as keeper of the privy 
seal. 
lt is worth mentioning in this place, that even Wolfe the 
conqueror of Quebec, when recruiting his regiment in Devizes, 
during his early career, is traditionally reported to have found no 
better quarters than could be furnished by an obscure Inn at the 
back of the Town Hall, known by the sign of the “ The Seribbling 
22 
