By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 357 
There is also mention in the Parliamentary Returns, of 1786, of 
a Charity, which however, even then, was lost, said to have been 
given by an unknown person, “for clothing one, two, or more poor 
persons, not receiving alms.” 
OLD FAMILIES AND WORTHIES. 
The history of our Town, which has been set before our readers, 
will have prepared them not to look, as a matter of course, for a 
long calendar of eminent men, amongst its natives or inhabitants. 
Such characters are only called forth by great and stirring events, 
and of these Bradford-on-Avon has seldom been the scene. Shut 
in by its hills and woods, its townsmen have lived, secluded, as it 
were, and apart from their neighbours, pursuing their peaceful 
occupations of industry, and caring little for the din and tumult 
that now and then might have been heard close to their borders. 
That spirit of calm peacefulness which brooded over the Abbess and 
her household at Shaftesbury, seems to have extended its influence, 
in a measure, to the Manor over which she ruled as Lady Para- 
mount, and we seldom hear in Bradford-on-Avon of any contests 
or commotions, save such as testify at the same time to the earnest- 
ness with which its denizens applied themselves to those mercantile 
pursuits, on which especially the wealth of our country has been 
founded. 
And yet we are able to commence our list of Worthies resident 
at one time or other in our Town or its immediate neighbourhood, 
for to such only does this notice refer, from a very early period. 
Of most of those who lived in remote times, we know, of course, 
little more than their names, or have perchance a general idea of 
the lands that belonged to them. It is something however to 
commence an authentic history,—our acquaintance with somewhat 
of the private life of men who lived and died in Bradford-on-Avon, 
—from a period when William de Longespée, Earl of Sarum, the 
Fair Rosamond’s son, was yet living, and when Richard Poore, 
the founder of our glorious Cathedral, held the see of Sarum. Re- 
ginald de Auld, the head at that time of a family that for more than 
