222 THE BATH ROAD 



nobly-wooded park, is Elizabethan, and exliibits the 

 merging of the two periods of Gothic and Renaissance 

 architecture. It was Lady Hiingerford, widow of a 

 former owner of Corsham Court, who, in 1672, built 

 the quaint Hungerford Almshouse, close by. 



For the rest, Corsham has little history. It was 

 the scene of a mysterious murder in 1594, when a 

 gentleman, one Henry Long, was shot dead, while 

 sitting at dinner amid his friends, by Sir Charles and 

 Sir Henry Danvers, two brothers, who hailed from 

 Dauntsey. Tiie motive was never known, and the 

 assassins were never punished. Six years later, 

 Charles was beheaded for taking part in Essex's 

 rebellion ; whicli seems to be a kind of oblique and 

 fumbling retribution on the part of Providence for his 

 crime. Henry, however, prospered amazingly, and 

 was eventually created Earl Danby, flourishing all his 

 life, as the wicked are, on good authority, supposed to 

 do, " like the green bay tree," and dying in the odour 

 of sanctity, " full of honours, woundes, and dales." 

 He is commemorated in an eloquent epitaph, written 

 by the saintly George Herbert of Bemerton, more 

 than ten years before his (Danvers') death ; a circum- 

 stance which would seem to prove Herbert a hyj>ocrite 

 and Danvers peculiarly solicitous for his own post- 

 mortem rejDutation. 



Corsham was the birthplace of Sir Richard Black- 

 more, physician to William the Third, and poetaster, 

 who, says Leigh Hunt, " composed heaps of dull 

 poetry, versified the Psalms, and, by way of extend- 

 ing the lesson of patience, wrote a paraphrase of the 

 Book of Job." What sarcasm ! 



