The Wilt/shire Compounders. 



reputation, declares that it was not printed in the eleven first im- 

 pressions, but afterwards inserted by the printers for their private 

 advantage. 



Levett, as a Wiltshire name, though far from being prominent, 

 appears to have been one of long standing. In connection with 

 Swindon it occurs as far back as the time of Doomsday Book, under 

 the form of " Leviet." The burials of two children of William 

 Levett, Esq., are recorded at Swindon, in 1667. He was also the 

 father of Sir Richard Levett, Kt., Lord Mayor of London in 1700 ; 

 and in our own day he is represented by Richard Byrd Levett, of 

 Milford Hall, Co. Stafford, of the 60th Royal Rifles. Possibly the 

 name and office of the compounder's father are preserved among the 

 burials registered at Marlborough St. Mary's. " Richard Levet, 

 minister/' 16 Dec., 1662. 



Sir James Ley, of Teffont Ewyas, Earl op Marlborough. 

 None can pretend to say in what aspect the great civil war would 

 have presented itself to the matured judgment of " that good Earl," 

 as Milton styles him, had he lived to witness it. The character of 

 his daughter, the Lady Margaret Ley, truly represented, so the 

 poet tells us, her father's " noble virtues." Would it be safe to say 

 that the career of his other descendants presented an equally faithful 

 mirror of his patriotic sentiments. If the dissolution of Charles' 

 third Parliament "broke" the Earl's heart, we may yet doubt 

 whether, as a lawyer, he could have accepted a resort to arms as the 

 only effective method of rectification. But leaving this question, as 

 we needs must, in its conjectural form, it now remains to say that 

 though the Earl had been twelve years dead when hostilities com- 

 menced, the case of his widow has to come under our consideration. 



The mother of the Earl's children was Mary, daughter of John 

 Petty, Esq., of Stoke-Talmage, Oxon, but he married twice after 

 her decease, his third wife being Jane, daughter of John, Lord 

 Butler, of Bramfield, who, surviving him, was married immediately 

 after his death in 16*29 to William Ashburnham, M.P. for Ludger- 

 shall. She was described at the time of her second marriage as the 

 young, beautiful, and wealthy widow of the Earl ; and she lived 

 happily with her second husband forty-two years. There was 



