322 Broughton Gifford. 
was Sheriff of Wilts under the Commonwealth, his brother was a 
Colonel in that army, one Horton! was an acceptable preacher before 
the House, another Horton? was the victor at St. Fagan’s in Wales, 
and, I grieve to add, a King’s Judge and a Regicide. Sir John’s 
note books meddle not with such questions, contain no allusion to 
Crown or Commonwealth, beyond payment of “‘royall aydes,” 
“rates for the Kinge’s provision,” and subsidies, which followed 
each other with alarming rapidity on the Restoration. His atten- 
tion was given, (stewards were. then unknown on such properties) 
to his ‘“‘chiefe and other rentes,”’ (the names of his tenants and the 
grounds they occupied being given,) the cultivation of his land, the 
cattle he kept in “ Hundells, Longeston, and Plumbgestone,”’* the 
small sums he lent to his “‘brother Robert to go to London,” what 
“my cosen Thomas [ Longe | at Bath paid for ten younge beasts,” what 
his “servant at the moore paid for keep of 2 kowes for xx" weekes 
at 2s. 8d. per weeke, price £2 13s. 8d.” [Sir John charged a groat 
too much]; what “my cousen Sherfield” owed for rents [Henry 
1 September 29th 1647, Mr. Horton thanked for his sermon preached this day 
before the House at St. Margaret’s, and desired to print it. Commons’ Journals. 
? This was Colonel Thomas Horton, whose place in the family pedigree I am 
am as yet unable to determine. He might have been either Robert Horton’s 
son and so Sir John’s nephew, or the son of John Horton of Wolverton. I will 
put together, with a view to his identification, such scraps as I have collected 
about him, from the Commons’ Journals and other sources. He was clearly 
connected with Wiltshire. Sir Edward Baynton was a friend; Goddard, Foster, 
Bethel, Orpen, Read, Bruges, were in his Brigade. I presume him to have 
unsuccessfully assaulted Donnington Castle, 1644. He is most known from his 
victory over the Welsh under Major Langborne at St. Fagans near Cardiff, 8th 
May 1648. As one of the King’s Judges, his signature to the death warrant, 
in a bold free hand, may be seen in the fac-simile at the Bodleian. Cromwell, 
writing to the Speaker from Ireland 25th October 1649, says in a P.S. ‘‘ Colonel 
Horton is lately dead of the country disease [an Irish pestilence], leaving a son 
behind him. His former services, especially that of the last summer, I hope, 
will be had in remembrance.” The memory of Parliament was not so good as 
it ought to have been. Not till 25th March 1651 was the sum of £900 given 
to trustees for the young son ‘‘in full satisfaction and discharge of all arrears 
due to Colonel Horton deceased, and all demands in respect of his services.” 
3 These names still exist. Hund, hundle, or hundred was a division of a 
county ; thence applied to a division of land in a parish. Longaston was the 
long grass enclosure. Plumbgaston the grass enclosure which is full of clumps 
or lumps, the Homeric ertbélaz. 
