o* 
By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 29 
King John came to this town. He was here on the 29th and 30th 
of August, 1216. The king had often been in Wiltshire before, 
his brother William de Longespee (the natural son of Henry IT. 
by the ‘Fair Rosamond’) having, though his marriage with Ela 
Countess of Sarum, obtained the Earldom and with it the office of 
Sheriff of the County. At the time of the king’s visit to Bradford, 
however, the Earl had thrown off his allegiance, though till within a 
very short period previously he had been among John’s most faithful 
supporters! Among the deeds signed at Bradford by King John 
is one which directs the confiscation of part of the Earl’s possessions 
at Hinton. It was not long that the king had to endure the mor- 
tification of the desertion of his brother, for within two months of 
his visit to Bradford he closed his miserable and turbulent reign.? 
Our materials are very meagre for the 56 years during which 
Henry III. reigned over England. It is well known that during 
that long and disturbed reign many abuses crept in. The large 
concessions from the Crown which the barons had already won, 
made them wish for more, and, as a natural consequence, whenever 
they had the opportunity, they began to take more. So much were 
the royal revenues diminished by these encroachments, that at the 
commencement of the reign of Edward I., a commission was set on 
foot for the purpose of enquiring into all such abuses. <A jury of 
each hundred and town were impanelled to enquire, amongst other 
things, what losses the Crown had sustained by tenants ‘in capite,’ 
1The Earl of Salisbury was with the king on March 28th in this year at Ples- 
sey in Essex, and on the 31st received favours from the king. On August 17th 
he was amongst the king’s enemies, just twelve days before John’s visit to 
Bradford. (Rot. Lit. Clausar.) 
* We might perhaps infer that Bradford was but a small place in these early 
times, from the fact that it is not mentioned among the towns in Wiltshire on 
which rates were levied (14 Henry II.) “to marry the king’s daughter” to the 
Duke of Saxony,—(from which union, by the way, is lineally descended the pre- 
sent royal family of England,)-—nor among those from which ‘ aid’ was taken (33 
Henry II.) by the King’s Justices. ‘The towns mentioned in the former case 
are Chippenham, Melksham, Calne, Malmesbury, Wilton, Salisbury, Heytesbury; 
in the latter, in addition to those already named, (and with the exception of 
Heytesbury) Marlborough, Combe, Devizes, Bedwin, and West Combe. Madox 
‘ History of the Exchequer,’ i. 588, 634, 
