By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 197 



Lockswell Heath (and to prevent their straying) between two 

 temporary walls of broadcloth, supplied by the clothiers of Galne. 

 On the Restoration of Charles II. Bowood came back into the hands 

 of the Crown : and a long lease was then granted to Sir Orlando 

 Bridgeman, a lawyer, who had been first a royalist, made a certain 

 peace with Cromwell, but at the Restoration resumed his royalism 

 rather emphatically, by presiding at the Trial of the Regicides. 



There had been all this time a house in the park, tenanted once by 

 one of the Webb family, who came, I believe, from Bromham. The 

 Bridgemans are presumed to have resided : at least they certainly laid 

 out a good deal of money in various improvements under the direction 

 of a person of the name and probably of the family. An old painting 

 of the house as it then was is still preserved at Bowood. Another 

 Sir Orlando prevailed upon the Crown to put an end to the lease 

 and sell the estate: which was done; and upon his death it was sold 

 to the Earl of Shelburne somewhere about the year 1740 to 1750. 



Into any history of the present Bowood family I shall not enter : 

 but there are one or two points which may not be generally known. 

 The son of the purchaser was William, Earl of Shelburne, whose 

 life has lately been published by Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice. He 

 was Prime Minister in the reign of George III. It was he who 

 built the present house (though it has been very much enlarged 

 since), and who, under the direction of the celebrated Capability 

 Brown and an amateur landscape gardener — the Hon. Charles 

 Hamilton, one of the Abercorn family — laid out the grounds and 

 made the cascades, &c. Old Lord Lansdown told me that he re- 

 membered the making of the cascade very well, for while it was 

 going on, he was quite a little boy, and, creeping about to see it, he 

 fell from the top to the bottom, was taken up half -dead, and re- 

 covered with some difficulty. It was William, Earl of Shelborne, 

 who formed the valuable collection now called the Lansdowne MSS. 

 in the British Museum : and I must not forget to add that it was 

 he who first took by the hand and encouraged towards beginning a 

 county history of Wiltshire, our old acquaintance, John Britton, a 

 very remarkable man, who began the world as a baker's boy in a small 

 village and lived to produce some of the most beautiful works on 



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