Communicated by Mr. James Waylen. 



95 



Dr. Hyde, Bishop of Salisbury, brother of the great Lord Chancellor 1 

 Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, and she lost her fortune in the South Sea 

 year, 1720. She is also a distant cousin of their late Majesties, 

 Queen Mary and Queen Anne, whose mother was Lady Anne Hyde, 

 Duchess of York, whose royal consort was afterwards King James 

 II. A lively instance of the mutability of all worldly things, that 

 a person related to two crowned heads should, by a strange caprice 

 of fortune, be reduced to live in an almshouse. She retains her 

 senses in a tolerable degree ; and her principal complaint is that she 

 has outlived all her friends, being now upwards of an hundred years 

 of age." A subsequent notice in the Animal Register describes her 

 death in 1772, at the age of a hundred and eight years. 



Benjamin Jay, of Haekleston, Gent. Was one of those who 

 allowed themselves to be implicated in the measure already frequently 

 referred to in these papers as the Illegal Assizes. His own account 

 of the affair is as follows :-— 



" Your petitioner having for divers years in the time of peace served in tho 

 grand jury for Wilts ; and when the King's commission came in 1644, being 

 summoned as formerly, your petitioner fearing inconveniences for absenting 

 himself, for which he was several times fined by the commissioners, and being 

 much terrified by their rigorous proceedings, he did unhappily serve. Your 

 petitioner is a man of very mean estate, much indebted, and his poor wife at 

 home grievously sick and languishing. In humble acknowledgment of his said 

 offence, unwillingly committed, he doth humbly crave your honors' charitable 

 and favourable censure, to which he will readily submit." 



He held the manor of Fittleton, with old rents to the same be- 

 longing, worth £4 per annum ; a portion of the tithes there at a 

 fee-farm rent of £3 55., worth more £8 ; a freehold at Hackleston, 

 £12, over and above the reserved rent of 235. \d. ; and he had 

 already given the Wilts Committee £20, in respect of his personal 

 estate. The said committee do return that his old rents are " ex- 

 tended " upon a statute of £400. His petition was presented in 

 March, lb'46, at which time he also took the National Covenant 

 and the Negative Oath. Fine, £28. 



William Kent, of Boscombe, Esq, Was in arms against the 

 Parliament during the first war, and rode in the troop of Sir George 

 Vaughan, the Sheriff for Wilts. He also served in the " Illegal 



