358 Bradford-on-Avon. [Old Families & Worthies. 
five centuries were persons of property and station in this town, 
may well have been living at the time of King John’s visit in 1216; 
and facts already alluded to (p. 31) certainly imply, that for some 
years previously to a.p. 1251, about which time he seems to have 
died, his family were people of consequence here. Indeed his son, 
William de Aula,—a minor at the time of his father’s decease,— 
held in 1295 (23 Edward I.) the high office of Coroner,—he is 
termed in a deed of that date ‘Coronator Domini Regis,\—a post 
which implied in the holder not only wealth but worldly station. 
It will be understood that our notice of ‘Worthies’ extends only 
to those who have been actually resident here, or have been inti- 
mately connected with our town. Neither does our plan include 
those who may still remain to us; our business, as Archzologists, 
is not with the living, but with the dead; otherwise we might 
dwell proudly on the successful course of that distinguished native 
of Bradford-on-Avon, Her Majesty’s late Attorney-General, Sir 
Richard Bethel, in whose high position his fellow-townsmen re- 
cognize, no less the acknowledgment of eminent talents, than the 
reward of untiring perseverance. Were we, indeed, to diverge 
into such an extensive plan and give an account of all those of note 
or importance who have held possessions here, or of those who, from 
the marriage of some Bradford heiress, have gained no insignificant 
addition to the wealth, perhaps the dignity, of their family, we 
might give as long and proud a list as any of otr neighbours. No 
doubt, in early times, the Crown itself retained in its own hands 
some of the property here, as the names of ‘ King’s field,’ and ‘Reve- 
land,’ (both so often met with in old deeds, and the former still re- 
maining,) seem to imply: in fact ‘Reve-land’ was a common term 
for land held in virtue of the office of ‘ Reeve’? or Bailiff, under the 
1 On the dignity and authority of the ‘Coroner’ in ancient times, see ‘ Coke 
upon Littleton’ ii. 31. By the old law he was required to be ‘‘a knight, honest, 
loyall, and sage.” The fact of William de Aula having held this high office 
was not known to me at the time when the section of this paper on the Parish 
Church was passing through the press, or I should certainly have inclined to the 
conjecture that the recessed tomb on the South side of the Chancel was his. (See 
above p. 215.) ; 
? From an examination of old deeds, a tolerable conjecture may be formed 
that the building described as ‘ The Catch’ (p. 49 n.) was adjoining the land 
