Notes on Audley House, Salisbury. 365 



cum taberna 4|e£., and William Lyghtefoot, in respect of a tenement 

 called the Falcon, near the lower bridge in Fisher ton, 4£rf. 1 Mr. 

 Swayne suggested that the old part of the house was built by a 

 member of the Webb family, and the tangible fact in proof of this 

 is, that the merchant's mark of that family is carved on a corbel 

 in the present library, then the great hall of the mansion. The 

 Eev. Edward Duke, in his " Prolusiones Historical" p. 371, states 

 that King Henry VII. was at Salisbury in 1486 (quoting a 

 parchment roll which was in the possession of Dr. Maton), "and 

 Aubrey says that he paid a visit to Webb, who was a Merchant of 

 the Staple." This is all the available evidence of the past history 

 of this house. 



As Mr. Swayne stated, the Webbs, to deal briefly with them, 

 were Merchants of the Staple here in the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries, who prospered and acquired lands in the neighbourhood 

 and in Dorsetshire. One of them, by a marriage with the daughter 

 and heiress of a Tourney, acquired, in her right, the estate of 

 Paine's Place, Dorset, which had come to Tourney, a merchant 

 of Salisbury, by bis marriage with the daughter and heiress of 

 Paine. 2 Another acquired, as mortgagee of the Cervingtons and 

 Gerberd's respectively, the Manor of Langford (now known as 

 Longford) and the Manor of Odstock. Langford was sold to Sir 

 Thomas Gorges, but Odstock was retained,as one of their residences, 

 till about 1790, when Sir John Webb sold it to the Earl of Kadnor. 

 By advantageous marriages, and other circumstances, the Webbs 

 acquired large estates ; the grandson of the Webb, who acquired 

 Odstock was created a baronet. Sir John Webb, who sold Odstock, 

 made a remarkable will, whereby he left to his granddaughter, the 

 only child of the fifth Earl of Shaftesbury, the Canford Estate — 

 a very small portion of his property — and left to an adopted family 

 the rest of his estates. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his 

 nephew, on the death of whose son, in 1876, the baronetcy became 

 extinct, and no legitimate male Webb of Odstock exists to-day. 



1 Hatcher and Benson, footnote to p. 397. 

 2 Hutchins' Dorset, under Motcombe. 



