Note on the name of Drew. 177 
what perhaps nearly every inhabitant of Devizes could have told 
Mr. Bowles—that this well-known spot can claim no connection 
either with the druids, or with the favorite chamberlain of Matilda. 
The name of Thomas Drewe, occurs in a list preserved by Fuller, 
of the gentry of Wiltshire in the twelfth year of Henry VI. (1483),' 
whether of the same family with that settled at Devizes, for at least 
two centuries from Henry VII. to the close of the reign of Charles 
II., is not clear. Robert Dréw represented Devizes in several of 
the parliaments of Elizabeth and James the First; and different 
members of this family are commemorated by monumental tablets 
in the old church at Westbury, and in those at Devizes of St. John 
and St. James’, Southbroom.? This family was possessed of the 
Southbroom estate, which they parted with about the year 1680. 
Drew’s pond was included in this property, and indeed continued to 
be so down to its last change of ownership, about the year 1826. 
_ There are title-deeds, and other old documents, preserved in the 
office of the Town Clerk of Devizes, shewing that in the time of 
_ Henry the Seventh, this family bore the name of Trewe; among 
which is a lease from the Bishop of Salisbury to John Trewe, 
bearing date the twenty-fifth year of this reign. That this is not 
a mere clerical error is proved, by a deed of the 20th of November 
of the 25th Elizabeth, in which are found the names of “John 
Drewe alias Trewe,”’ and of “ Robert Drewe alias Trewe his son 
and heir apparent.’* 
In the case of Drew’s pond then, we have this name applied to 
_ a locality, almost in our own day, without any reference to Druids, 
and without any further significance than any other common name 
would have in the same connection. The name itself, in this in- 
stance, traced back as far as we can reach, was not Drewe but Trewe. 
1 “ Worthies of England,” ed. 1840, p. 339, 
2 See R. C. Hoare “Modern Wilts, Westbury ;” and Waylen ‘Chronicle of 
Devizes,” 1839, pp. 292. 307. 313. 
3 There is a pedigree of this family of Drew in the ‘‘ Visitation of 1623,” and 
a continuation in the possession of the family of the lateWilliam Hughes, Esq., 
of Devizes and Poulshot ; whose father, by marriage with a female descendant of 
_ the Drews, (Elizabeth Marsh the daughter of Elizabeth Drew, of Lacock), became 
the representative of the Drew family, which seems to have become extinet, 
except in the female line, by the death in 1728, of Robert Drew the younger, 
~ and in 1729, of Joseph Drew, both the sons of Robert Drew of Lacock. 
2A 
