By J. U. Powell, M.A. 



129 



neighbourhood, for Ludlow, of Maiden Bradley, and Wansey, of 

 Warminster, were strong Parliament men. There was a skirmish 

 at Crockerton, and it would have been possible to hear the guns at 

 the siege of Wardour Castle in 1642-3. From Mr. Euddle's 

 calculations in Wilts Notes and Queries, ~No. 36, p. 537, we may take 

 the population of the Deverills in 1676 to have been approximately 

 as follows: — Brixton, 121; Kingston, 320 ; Monkton, 96; Long- 

 bridge (which probably includes Crockerton), 480. Hill, Tyther- 

 ington, Knook, and Heytesbury, which are all ecclesiastically con- 

 nected, do not appear in this voluntary census return, which had 

 a special purpose. It was set on foot by the Bishop of London, in 

 order to ascertain the numbers of Church people, Boman Catholics, 

 and Nonconformists, above the age of 16, and the figures in the re- 

 turn have a suspicious way of reaching round numbers in tens. The 

 numbers above are reached by adding 60 per cent, for children 

 under 16. 1 Four Boman Catholic families are found at Monkton, 

 and three at Kingston. This is probably to be attributed to their 

 connection with the district of Donhead, Semley, Tisbury, 

 and the Deanery of Chalke generally, of which Wardour was the 

 centre, where there is a considerable number of Boman Catholics 

 recorded. 



Passing on to the eighteenth century, we find a few signs left of 

 the various trades which at that time made each village fairly 

 self-sufficing, the weavers, tanners, potters, candle-makers. In the 

 West, many rural districts of Devon, Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, were 

 prosperous by cottage industries ; indeed the prosperity of the rural 

 classes depended more on these by -industries than upon agricultural 

 wages {Social England, v., 132, 133). A few large windows where 

 looms stood and "went hickety-snackety," as an old man who 

 remembered them said, can still be seen, especially at Crockerton, 

 Heytesbury, and Tytherington, for Heytesbury was a seat of cloth 

 making, and Five Ash Lane, in Sutton, was the road by which 

 those who had taken out work to do in their homes went to and 



1 For the increase of the population during the period between 1760 and 

 1800 see C. Simpson's "A Census of Wilts," in 1676, in Wilts Notes and 

 Queries, No. 36, p. 534. 



