* The Despencers’ Estates in Wilts. 245 
all of which have been engraved. The earliest is a beautiful min- 
iature in enamel, used by Lady Foster as an ornament, and supposed. 
to have been painted about the time of their marriage in 1725. A 
private plate of this was executed in 1831, by E. Scriven, in his 
best manner. A three-quarter length painting of Sir Michael, in 
his judicial robes, with a companion picture of Lady Foster, was 
taken by T. Wills, between the years 1745 and 1748. There is a 
very good mezzotint of the former, executed by Faber in 1748, 
and another engraving of the same by an inferior artist. Another 
excellent portrait, a half-length, painted in after life, probably by 
Wills. This is the picture engraved by James Basire in 1811, but 
the plate is not held in much estimation, either as a work of art, 
or as expressing the extreme benevolence of the Judge’s features, 
depicted in the original. These portraits are now in the possession 
of Thomas Rawdon Ward, Esq. 
Joun Warp. 
Che Despencers’ Extater in Wilts. 
Without inflicting on our readers the long story of the rule of 
the two Despencers in the Court of Edward II.; of their short 
banishment and recall; how Queen Isabella took the affair into her 
own hands, and, with the assistance of her favorite knights, drove 
the King into Wales, and his advisers into other places of refuge; 
how she stormed the city of Bristol and hung up the elder Despen- 
cer in his coat of armour; how she pursued the younger Despencer 
to Hereford, and in like manner suspended him upon a gibbet fifty 
feet high; how she procured the abdication of her husband and the 
accession of her youthful son Edward III.; all which belongs to 
the general history of England: we may, nevertheless, regard the 
traces left by the belligerent parties in this county, as falling within 
our legitimate limits, and discover in them additional evidence of 
the despotism which a court favourite could exercise in the Plan- 
tagenet age. 
Edward IIT. being now placed on the throne, the Queen Mother, 
Isabella, wielded for a brief period an empire almost equal to that 
