140 Swindon and its Neighbourhood. 



Mr. Hyde came to Purton. This is told in Lord Clarendon's life 

 of himself, where he mentions a little incident, which may help to 

 garnish our notices of Purton. Among other juvenile recollections 

 of himself and this place, Lord Clarendon says that in 1625, 

 being then only Edward Hyde, 17 years of age, studying law in 

 the Middle Temple, he was seized with an illness, and that his 

 friends, fearing consumption, sent him down to Purton. One 

 evening he was busy reading to his father a chapter in " Camden's 

 Annals." The particular chapter was one which mentioned that 

 many years before, a copy of an excommunication by the Pope had 

 been nailed up against the Bishop of London's Palace-gate by a 

 person whose name was John Felton.^ Whilst young Hyde was 

 reading this passage a neighbour knocked at the door, and being 

 called in told them that an express messenger had just gone 

 through the village on his way to Charlton House, Lord Berkshire's, 

 bringing the news that George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, had 

 been stabbed at Portsmouth, and that the culprit's name, in this 

 case also, happened to be the same as the one he was reading about, 

 John Felton. The coincidence of names made an impression upon 

 young Hyde, and, in after life, when Chancellor, he used often to 

 tell the anecdote. 



Lord Clarendon's first wife was a Wiltshire lady, and a neigh- 

 bour to Purton. She was a daughter of Sir George Ayliffe, of 

 Grittenham House in Brinkworth. She was very fair and beauti- 

 ful, but died at the age of 20, and in the first year of marriage. 

 There is, or was, a gravestone to her at Purley, in Berkshire, with 

 a short and touching Latin inscription, which no doubt was written 

 by her young husband himself, and shows that the great historian 

 knew how to write in other languages besides his own — " Yale, 

 anima candidissima ; Yale, mariti tui, quem dolore et luctu conficis, 

 seternum desiderium : Yale, faeminarum decus, et sseculi ornamen- 

 tum." [Adieu, fairest of spirits: for ever to be regretted by thy 

 sorrowing husband : honour to thy sex, and ornament of thy age, 

 adieu I J 



'Joannes Feltonus af&xed a Pope's Bull against Queen Elizabeth upon the 

 Bishop of London's palace 1570. Camd. Ann., p. 182. Ed. 1615. 



