By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 859 
King. To the royal possessions here we may have owed the honor 
of King John’s visit in 1216, for, with few exceptions, that King, 
in his progresses, always stopped at places where he had an inter- 
est, as either a castle, a royal manor, or some religious house, in 
order that he might consume the provisions due to him, in lieu of 
rent.! And many noble families have been connected, directly or 
indirectly, with Bradford-on-Avon. Amongst our Lords of the 
Manor, we can reckon an “Earl of Wiltshire,’’ whose devotion to 
the cause of his King and master, Charles I., in his gallant defence 
of Basing House against the Parliamentarian forces, is matter of 
history, and forms “one of the most eventful episodes of the Civil 
War.” The noble families of ‘Shaftesbury ”* and ‘Leicester’! have 
both of them in times gone by been associated with our town; 
the former, as a descendant of a daughter of John Basset, a name 
most frequent in deeds of the latter part of the thirteenth century ; 
the latter, as a landowner by special grant from Queen Elizabeth. 
The second Duke of Kingston filled, for some little time, a very 
prominent position in our town, and was the representative, 
through a female branch, as his descendant Lord Manvers is, at 
the present time, of the ‘Hall’ family. The titles of Methuen 
and Broughton, successively connected with the Lordship of the 
called ‘ Reve-land.’ If so, it lends colour to an ingenious supposition kindly for- 
warded to me by a “‘ Reader of the Magazine in Yorkshire,” that ‘‘the premises 
called ‘the Catch’ may have been so designated from having been used as the 
‘ Cagia,’ i.e. the cage, or lock-up; or as the residence of the ‘ Cachepolus,’ 
Bailiff, or ‘ Catchpole’ of the place.” 
1 Archeologia xxii. 125. 
? Wiltshire Magazihe iy. 22. 
*JIn Hutchins’ Dorset ii. 216, we have the following, as the beginning of Lord 
Shaftesbury’s pedigree. 
Benedict Ashley of Ashley Place, Co. Wilts,= 
lived temp. Hen. II., I1I., and Edw. I. 
Henry Ashley s. and h. Edw. I. and II. 
John Ashley of New=.........daughter of John Basset 
Sarum. Edw. III. of Bradford. 
John Ashley=Edith d. and h. of John 
s.andh. Talbot of Trowbridge. 
Rich. II. 
‘Queen Elizabeth (19 July 1574) granted by Letters Patent to Robert Dud- 
ley, Earl of Leicester, certain messuages and lands at Lye, part of the Manor of 
Bradford :—on these lands stands Mr. Bradney’s house, 
