By Sir Charles Hobhouse, Bart, 



93 



The name, at least, was of some consequence in the neighbour- 

 hood. There was a Webb, a freeholder, holding (curiously enough) 

 under Sir Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, at Great Sherston, 

 in 15S5. Thomas Webbe, of Clyford, Beckington, Somerset, 

 bought the manor of St. Maur from that family in 1604 — 5. 

 (Hoare's Wilts, p. 39.) A Webb of Ashwick, near Marshfield, 

 who presented to Box rectory in 1613, and another who presented to 

 Rudlow, in Box parish, in 1720. The parish register would appear 

 to assign the death of our Webb to the year 1731, but the entry is 

 torn and interpolated, and for 1731 I would read 1730, as the year 

 in which the manor was transferred to the Threshers. 



The John Thresher who was our lessee from 1730 to 1737 was, 

 perhaps, that John who is entered on the pedigree of the Long 

 family in Walker's History of the manor house at South Wraxall. 



If so, the following is his pedigree : — 



Edward. =Dyonisia, second daughter of Richard Long, of 

 J Collingboume, c. 1680. 



John.=Ellen d. of Henry Long, of Melksham, 

 died at Bradford, 1741, set. 52. 



If it was by the exercise of violence that the Seymour family rid 

 themselves of our manor in 1547, there was a Nemesis in the fact 

 of their returning to live here, in the inferior position of tenants 

 only, from 1737 to 1805. 



In the year 1716 Edward Seymour, of Maiden Bradley, Esquire, 

 is recorded as marrying Mrs. Mary Webb, sole child and heiress of 

 our Daniel Webb. Burke gives an incomplete pedigree, and is, I 

 think, in error when he states that this Seymour succeeded to our 

 manor in right of his wife. 



When Daniel Webb's lease was up, in 1730, the see of Salisbury 

 was quite at liberty to seek, and did seek and obtain, a tenant outside 

 the Webb family, and when the Seymours took the lease in 1737 

 they must have done so out of love, either for the place, or for the 

 profits of it. 



The family pedigree, as it appears partly in Burke and partly in 

 our registers, is as follows : — 



