152 "Early Heraldry in Boy ton Church, Wilts." 



John Giffard, of Boyton, surnamed " The Rich," as inheriting" 

 also the Brimsfield estates, naturally and perhaps almost necessarily 

 followed the fortunes of his superior lord. 1 The histories commonly 

 say that he was hanged at Gloucester, hut it seems possihle that, 

 from his local influence in that neighbourhood, decapitation may, in 

 this case also, have been substituted for the more ignominious death 

 ordered by the actual sentence. 



Mr. Fane states that J ohn Giffard, of Boyton, surnamed le Rych, 

 was beheaded at Gloucester, and mentions that, having occasion, in 

 the course of repairs, during the year 1853, to move a very large 

 slab of Purbeck marble in the centre of the north chapel of Boyton 

 Church, he found beneath it, in a stone grave (not coffin), a skeleton 

 with the skull placed on the left side of the skeleton, as if on the 

 interment this position had been originally established. 2 



In the same year that Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, was beheaded, 

 Alice, who had been his wife, resigned to the King the manors 

 of Ambresbury, Winterbourn, Troubrigges, Wilts ; of Caneford, 

 Dorset ; and of Hengisterigge and Cherleton, Somerset, which were 

 of her inheritance. 3 



Each of the two husbands she afterwards married claimed to be 

 Earl of Lincoln, in her right, but no mention is made of the earldom 

 of Salisbury. She died in 1349, without issue. 



Henry, the younger brother of Thomas, became Earl of Lancaster, 

 Leicester, and Derby, and died, leaving issue, in 1345 ; but in 1337 

 King Edward III. created William de Montacute Earl of Salisbury. 



The painted glass in Boyton Church, depicting England with a 

 label of France, is very early, and the shape of the shield is very 

 pointed, in the style of the thirteenth rather than of the fourteenth 

 century, but Thomas, Earl of Lancaster from 1296 to 1321, is the 

 only one of his family who held the earldom of Salisbury, and so 



1 In a former generation, A.D, 1250, "according to the ^strict laws of feudal 

 tenancy," a Giffard, of Boyton, had followed a Longespee in the Crusades. Wilts 

 Mag., vol. h\, p. 103. 



2 Ibid, p. 107. 



3 Dugdale, Bar. i., 782 ; Bp. Kennet, Par. Ant., sub anno. 



