70 



The Wiltshire Compounders. 



observes when writing to his superior : — " For my part I do stead- 

 fastly believe that tithes will be paid till Doomsday." Says Sir 

 Francis : — " Let Mr. Ashe or whom else have what opinion they 

 please of you for their own ends ; I cannot but have a good one ; for 

 I, and my mother before me, have found nothing but honesty by 

 you. If this world hold [that is, if the present state of things 

 continue], a man shall not be able to live by these great ones, 

 unless a man will sell them at their own rates what they have a 

 mind to. And this spirit possesses them all over the kingdom . . 

 . . Mr. Ashe talks high about his keeping courts at Melksham 

 and receiving the chief rents. [I am given to understand that] he 

 having the fee, my lease is of no validity, and that before seven 

 years I shall repent following your advice. I hope, before that 

 time, that such Naboths will repent them of this and their other 

 sins/'' In 1651 Cromwell's army, in its march northwards, gives 

 Sir Francis trouble in Yorkshire, five of his horses being pressed into 

 the service ; and if he ever recovers them, they must needs be lamed. 

 As our troops, says he, are gone into Scotland " to pick sallats at 

 Christmas," most of the horses with their riders will come short 

 home. But here our extracts must come to a close. 



Sir Francis Fane was the lineal ancestor of the modern Earls of 

 Westmoreland, the elder brother's family dying out in 1762. It 

 was Sir Francis's descendant, the tenth Earl, who executed the 

 celebrated runaway match with Miss Child, the banker's daughter. 

 "When not far distant from Gretna Green, the fugitives, in a four-horse 

 chaise, were on the point of being overtaken by the pursuing father, 

 who was still better horsed, when Lord Westmoreland, taking aim 

 from his carriage window, shot one of Mr. Child's leaders dead. 

 The rest of the team was thereby thrown into confusion, and the 

 lovers won the race ; but Mr. Child's fortune was made to descend 

 to his daughter's daughter, the Lady Jersey, long known as the 

 empress of English fashionable society. 



John Fisher, of Chute, gent., petitioned in April, 1646, ad- 

 mitting that he had been in arms against the Parliament for the 

 space of three weeks, during all which time he was under the power 

 of the King's army. Since August, 1643, he has lived peaceably 



