303 



(Communicated by Me. James Waylen.) 

 (Continued from p. 103.^ 



)IR JAMES LONG, of Draycot, Knt. The military career 

 , of this knight, if fully set forth, would be almost equiva- 

 lent to a history of the County of Wilts during the wars. The 

 sequestration of his property must therefore be our main subject. 

 The first document that turns up is from the Falstone Day-book :— 



"At a council sitting at Malmesbury, 7 Oct. 1644, present Alexander Thistle- 

 thwayte, Thomas Bennet, Robert Long, Thomas Goddard, Edward Martyn, 

 Humphrey Ditton, John Eeade, William Jesse, Edward Stokes, and Robert 

 Good — It is— Ordered, that a party be sent out with a collector to sequester the 

 rents of Mr. James Long of Dray cot, and to seize his stock and goods." 



At a subsequent sitting, in April, 1645, the Wilts Committee, 

 resolved that for his present composition Sir James Long should 

 immediately pay down £100, and £100 a year ever after; and as 

 Mistress Dorothy Long, in her husband's absence, accepted the 

 conditions and expressed her desire that he would lay down his 

 arms, they granted her a protection for house and goods ; which 

 was almost immediately after violated by one Thomas Vaughan, 

 who, with a party of soldiers, pillaged her premises to the loss o£ 

 £400. It was in vain that the committee, then sitting at Devizes, 

 denounced the action as illegal, or that Sir James expostulated with 

 the sequestrators in Goldsmith's Hall— Mr. Ashe's reply only 

 amounted to this : — " That as the goods were taken by soldiers, and 

 not by order of the Wilts Committee, the London Committee can- 

 not interfere." 



In the spring of 1645 Sir James Long, in his capacity of King's 

 Sheriff of Wilts, was, with almost his entire regiment of cavalry, 

 captured by Cromwell and Waller in the neighbourhood of Devizes 



