70 AUBREY'S NATURAL HISTORY OF WILTSHIRE. 



Ela, Countesse of Salisbury, daughter to [William] Longespe, was foundress of Lacock Abbey ; 

 where she ended her days, being above a hundred yeares old ; she outlived her understanding. This 

 I found in an old MS. called Chronicon de Lacock in Bibliotheca Cottoniana, [The chronicle 

 referred to was destroyed by the fire which so seriously injured the Cotton MSS. in 1731. The 

 extracts preserved from it do not confirm Aubrey's statements, but place the Countess Ela's death on 

 the ix kal. Sept 1261, in the 74th year of her age. See Bowles's History of Lacock, Appendix, p. v. 

 J. B.] 



Dame Olave, a daughter and coheire of Sir [Henry] Sharington of Lacock, being in love with [John] 

 Talbot, a younger brother of the Earle of Shrewsbury, and her father not consenting that she should 

 marry him ; discoursing with him one night from the battlements of the Abbey Church, said shee, 

 " I will leap downe to you : " her sweet heart replied he would catch her then ; but he did not believe 

 she woidd have done it. She leap't downe, and the wind, wliich was then high, came under her 

 coates and did sometliing breake the fall. Mr. Talbot caught her hi his armes, but she struck him 

 dead : she cried out for help, and he was with great difficulty brought to life again. Her father told 

 her that since she had made such a leap she should e'en marrie him. She was my honoured friend 

 Col. Sharington Talbot 's grandmother, and died at her house at Lacock about 1651, being about an 

 hundred yeares old. Qua?re, Sir Jo. Talbot? 



[This romantic story seems to have escaped the attention of the venerable historian of Lacock, 

 the Rev. Canon Bowles. The late John Carter mentions a tradition of which he was informed on 

 visiting Lacock in 1801, to the effect that " one of the nuns jumped from a gallery on the top of a 

 turret there into the arms of her lover." He observes, as impugning the truth of the story, that the 

 gallery " appeal's to have been the work of James or Charles the First's tune." Aubrey's anecdote 

 has an appearance of authenticity. Its heroine, Olavc, or Olivia Sherington, married John Talbot, 

 Esq. of Sahvarpe, in the county of Worcester, fourth in descent from John, second Earl of Shrews- 

 bury. She inherited the Lacock estate from her father, and it has ever since remained the property 

 of that branch of the Talbot family, now represented by the scientific Henry Fox Talbot, Esq. 

 J. B.] 



The last Lady Prioresse of Priorie St. Marie, juxta Kington St. Michael, was the Lady Mary 

 Dennys, a daughter of the Dennys's of Pocklechurch in Gloucestersliire ; she lived a great while after 

 the dissolution of the abbeys, and died in Somersetshire about the middle or latter end of the raigne 

 of King James the first. 



The last Lady Abbese of Aniesbury was a Kirton, who after the dissolution married to 



Appleton of Hampshire. She had during her life a pension from King Henry VIII. : she was 140 

 yeares old when she dyed. She was great-great-aunt to Mr. Child, Rector of Yatton Keynell ; from 

 whom I had this information. Mr. Child, the eminent banker in Fleet Street, is Parson Child's 

 cosen-german. [The name of the last Abbess of Aniesbury was Joan Darell, who surrendered to the 

 King, 4 Dec. 1540. Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, Amesbury Hundred, p. 73. J. B.] 



When King Charles II. was .at Salisbury, 1665, a piper of Stratford sub Castro playd on his tabor 

 and pipe before him, who was a piper in Queen Elizabeth's tune, and aged then more than 100. 



One good wife Mills of Yatton Keynel, a tenant of my father's, did dentire in the 88 yeare of her 

 age, which was about the yeare 1645. The Lord Chancellour Bacon speakes of the like of the old 

 Countesse of Desmond, in Ireland. 



