362 Bradford-on-Avon. [ Oid Families & Worthies. 
them. This however is simple conjecture, for as the shield con- 
tains the coat of Besill, it may also include that of the mother of 
Nicholas Hall who married Margaret Besill, of whose name and 
family as yet we are ignorant. 
Alice Hall survived her husband and died in the year 1426. 
By the failure of issue to her eldest son Reginald, who, as we have 
seen (p. 38), endowed a “chaplain to serve at the altar at St. Ni- 
cholas” in the Parish Church, the representation of the family 
devolved on her second son Thomas, who was thirty years old at 
the time of his mother’s decease. Nicholas, the son of the last- 
named Thomas Hall, further increased the wealth of the family 
by marrying Margaret one of the daughters and co-heiresses of 
William Besill of Bradford ; the other co-heiress, Cecilia, marrying 
Anthony Rogers, the founder of another family in this town, of 
which we shall presently give an account. Three generations pass 
away, during which alliances were made with the families of Bower 
of Wilton,—Tropnell of Chaldfield,—and Mervyn of Fonthill,— 
and we find the representative of the family, John Hall, described 
as ‘of Forde,’ marrying, about the middle of the sixteenth century, 
Dorothy only daughter and heiress of Anthony Rogers, the last 
male representative of the elder branch of that family in Bradford- 
on-Avon, and thus acquiring the other moiety of the Besill estate, 
together with her own patrimony,. part of which seems to have 
lain at Holt. 
One of the members of this family, to which a passing reference has 
just been made, Thomas Hall, who married Alice Bower, seems to 
have got himself into trouble on one occasion, by something like 
what is now called “contempt of Court.”” Summoned before the 
King’s Justices with reference to a debt of £100 owing to Sir John 
Turberville, Kt. he did not make his appearance: the penalty of 
‘outlawry’ soon followed. He subsequently surrendered himself 
to justice, and for a time was an inmate of the Fleet prison. 
Amongst the deeds and other documents found at Kingston House 
a few years ago, during the progress of repairs, was one, dated 18 
Henry VII., which contains a “ Royal Pardon and Revocation of 
Outlawry for Thomas Hall, lately of Bradford, Co. Wilts, Gentle- 
