144 FORD ABBEY. 



Abbey. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Edmund Prideaux 

 Gwyn, Esq., M.P. for Wells, who, dying intestate and unmarried, 

 his estates devolved upon his next brother, Francis Gwyn, who was 

 also M.P. for Wells. He died without issue in 1777, and under 

 his will his estates passed to his kinsman, John Fraunceis, of 

 Combe Florey, on condition of his taking the name of Gwyn, which 

 was done in 1780. He died in 1789, and was succeeded by his 

 eldest son, John Fraunceis, who also took the name of Gwyn on his 

 father's death. He was a highly educated man, an elegant classical 

 scholar, fond of country sports, and a great benefactor to all around 

 him. Having parted with his own paternal estate * he spent very 

 large sums of money in the internal decorations of Ford Abbey, and 

 to him Mrs. Allen says is due the praise for making it the elegant 

 mansion which we know. During a tour of Mr. Gwyn on the 

 continent Ford Abbey was occupied for three years (from December, 

 1815) by the philosopher, Jeremy Bentham, who thence issued 

 some of his celebrated works. Upon Mr. Gwyn's death in 1846 

 Ford Abbey was sold together with the furniture, and was 

 purchased by George F. W. Miles, Esq., who in turn (about the 

 year 1864) sold it to Mrs. Bertram Evans, whose eldest son, W. H. 

 Evans, Esq., resides in it at the present time, and who, we may 

 venture to express a hope, may at length prove the inapplicability 

 of the " common observation " to which Dr. Pring in his Memoirs 

 of Thomas Cliard says that Ford Abbey has proved no exception 

 "That either through sale, through default of issue, or, in many 



* To the Helyars, I think, who, in turn, sold it to Sir Wroth Lethbridge, 

 Bart., of Sandhill Park, Bishop's Lydeard, the present owner. There is a 

 very handsome heraldic achievement in stone of the Fraunceis family in 

 the gate-house at Combe Florey, and also several monuments of the same 

 family lying on the floor of the church (which contains, as many of the 

 churches of that part of Somerset do, some very interesting old oak bench - 

 ends, probably 16th century work, and an old oak poor-box of the 17th 

 century), which formerly must have been of considerable heraldic interest; 

 but the brasses seem now to have disappeared from the matrices, the 

 monuments themselves being mostly pewed over ! May I call the attention 

 of the Somerset Archaeological Society to this ? 



