12 THE WILTSHIRE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY MAGAZINE 
Scents of perfumes are in your churches and the 
odours of train oil and fermenting Urine are no more 
smelt amongst you. Your houses are ornamented with 
Bath stone wrought into Pediments, entablatures and 
Pillastrades; your market house(a stranger to 
woolpacks,) is metamorphiz’d into a theatre for 
Balls, and Concertos and Oratorio’s (sic). 1*7 
Although Hannah More attributed the 
contagion of dissipated manners to ‘a growing, 
regular, systematic series of amusements’,'* the 
permeation of society by polite manners and wider 
cultural interests acted as a civilising and 
integrating force, enhancing the urban image. 
There was, too, an element of moral earnestness, a 
belief that taste for the arts led to improvement and 
refinement. The provincials were anxious to absorb 
metropolitan culture and values and to ‘bring 
Enlightenment to their own doorsteps’.'” In a fluid 
society, manners and social habits mattered. 
Devizes provided an elegant display environment 
for the parading of wealth and refinement by social 
and cultural activities, and, like other provincial 
towns, became what one journal called ‘ the little 
London’ of the part of the kingdom in which it was 
situated.!"° 
Notes 
' “On the Utility, Choice and Use of Pleasures’: Oliver 
Goldsmith and the Moonrakers (ed. ) G. Winchcombe 
(1972), letter LX XXVIII, appendix, p. 85 
° M. Little, ‘Samuel Fancourt 1678-1768; Dissenting 
minister and pioneer librarian’, The Hatcher Review, 
Vol. 2, no. 14 (Salisbury 1982), pp. 162-170 
> Memotrs of the first Forty Five Years of the Life of Fames 
Lackington (1791), p. 387 
*T. Gisborne, An Inquiry into the Duties of Men in the Higher 
Ranks and Middle Classes, (1794), pp. 6-7 
> S(alisbury) F(ournal), 3871, 22 April 1811 
° T. Gisborne, op. cit. , p. 471 
’ Devizes) G(azette). , 390, 7 Aug. 1823 
* Waltshire) A(rchaeological) and N(atural) H(istory) 
S(ociety) LUibrary), Box 327, MS. 2602 
° SF. , 5100 (sic), 3 Aug. 1801 
10 SF , 3593, 22 April 1805; the work was written by a 
Marlborough author in 1767 
'' Letter of 6 May 1799: Elizabeth Cunnington, ‘The 
Cunnington Family History’ (typescript study 1978), 
p. 114 
DG. 321, 28 Feb. 1822 
3 DG, 389, 31 July 1823 
"T. B. Smith, ‘The Early Life of Thomas Lawrence’, 
WANHM , Vol. 9, (1865), p. 195 
15 SF. , 3893, 23 Sept. 1811 
'© The Book of Trades (3 vols. 1818; 1994 reprint, Devizes), 
Vol. III, p. 12 
” The earliest English subscription list dates from 1617; 
by the eighteenth century there were over 2,000 
'S Four Devizes seats were marked on the Andrews and 
Dury Map of Wiltshire 1773, those of Edward Eyles, 
Charles Garth, William Salmon and Willy Sutton 
'° Wiltshire) and S(windon) R(ecord) O(ffice), 873/52, 
Rules of the Devizes Book Society 1810. By 1821 
there were c. 900 Book Clubs in England: P. Clark 
and R. A. Houston, Cambridge Urban History (2000), 
Vol. II, p. 597 
°° WANHSL, S. C. 28, 113 
“1 WAHHSL, W. T. 206, A Catalogue of the curious collection 
of books chiefly relating to medals and antiquities of Dr. 
James Davis 1771 
”? This is the first known Devizes book publication 
3 WANHSL, Box 328, MS. 2605, George Sloper’s diary 
4 S(impsons) S(alisbury) G(azette), 40, 3 Oct. 1816 
°> G(entleman’s. M(agazine) , Vol. LX XVII, (1807), part. 2, 
p. 811 
*6 Miller was Head Gardener of the Chelsea Physic Garden 
7 Rey. A. C. Smith, ‘Memoir of Mr John Legge of Market 
Lavington, Wilts’, WANHM, Vol. XXVIII (1895), 
pp. 5-13 
8 SF. , 3893, 23 Sept. 1811 
”? DG. , 390, 7 Aug. 1823 
* DG. , 731, 14 Jan. 1830 
+R. Southey, Letters from England (1807), p. 115 
*» Mrs Gent to James Sowerby, 17 Sept. 1810: WANHSL, 
Box 63A, MS. 736 
3 J. Sowerby, The Mineral Conchology of Great Britain (7 
vols. 1812), Vol. 2, p. 101 
++ A member of the Bath and West Society who lived near 
Bath; later to be known as ‘The Father of English 
Geology’ 
> William Wroughton Salmon to James Sowerby, 21 May 
1810: WANHSL Box 63A, MS. 736 
*© Elizabeth Blackburn’s Journal, 1810, in private 
possession, Southampton 
7 James Sutton to Henry Addington, 11 March 1788: 
D(evon) R(ecord) O(ffice), Sidmouth Papers, 152M/ 
1788/F12. Sutton’s brother-in-law, Henry 
Addington, M. P. for Devizes, was Speaker of the 
House of Commons, and later Home Secretary and 
Prime Minister. He was a frequent visitor to New 
Park 
* Sutton to Addington, 17 June 1791: DRO, Sidmouth 
Papers 152M/1791/F3 
* DG, 740, 18 March 1830 
© R(oyal) S(ociety) of A(rts) Guard Book, Vol. 4, no. 66 
41 RSA Guard Book, Vol. 11, no. 21 
*” RSA Guard Book, Vol. B, no. 37 
*® RSA MS. Transactions 1779-1780, item 20 
“ Bath City Record Office, Bath and West Archives I, IX, 
Secretary’s accounts 1796-1811. This was the first 
agricultural society outside London, with more than 
500 members in 1805 
