By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A 



31 



of Heytesbury, just beyond Warminster, there still stands, occupied 

 and flourishing, a fine old house founded and very richly endowed in 

 the reign of King Edward IV., by Margaret Lady Hungerford 

 and Botreaux, widow of Robert, second Lord Hungerford, of Farley 

 Castle, near this town. She was the wealthy heiress of the old Cornish 

 family, the Lords Botreaux. Her husband and son being, during 

 the Wars of the Roses, on the Lancastrian, that is the losing side, her 

 life was full of trouble. There is a great deal about her in Hoare's 

 History of South Wilts ; and among other curious documents is one 

 attached to her will, in which she very sorrowfully recapitulates all 

 the " expense and loss with the causes and occasions of the same 

 which she had borne in this great season of adversities which have 

 befallen in this land to herself, her children and her friends; especially 

 in ransoming those who had been taken prisoners, and in redeeming 

 estates that had been forfeited. Also when she had been sent for 

 safety by order of the King to the Abbey of Ambresbury, all her 

 costly goods and furniture were destroyed by a fire/'' In short a 

 very lamentable story . She left considerable estates for the endow- 

 ment of the Hospital, which it has enjoyed for above five hundred years. 



At Corsham there is another fine old Almshouse, close to the gates 

 of Lord Methuen's park, founded by another Margaret Lady Hun- 

 gerford, three hundred years later than the first. She was by birth 

 daughter and co-heiress of William Halliday, a wealthy Alderman 

 of London, and Corsham estate was part of her share. Her husband 

 was a Sir Edward Hungerford, also of Farley Castle, 



To another lady this county is indebted for a much larger and more 

 general gift, the almshouse at Froxfield, near Marlborough, for fifty 

 widows ; twenty of them being widows of clergymen, and thirty, of 

 laymen. The foundress was Sarah, Duchess op Somerset, widow 

 of John, 4th Duke, who died 1675. His family at that time were 

 owners of Tottenham and Savernake. The Duchess's own name 

 had been Alston. She died in 1692, and was buried in Westminster 

 Abbey. She also founded another charity called the " Broad Town 

 Charity"; under which a certain number of Wiltshire boj^s are ap- 

 prenticed to trades. There is a very fine full-length portrait of her 

 in the dining-hall of Brasenose College, Oxford. 



