Communicated by Mr. James Waylen. 



339 



| to act as a political partisan, placed in jeopardy his power to fulfil 

 those engagements to brothers and sisters on which the validity of 

 his own title morally rested ; and in the remarkable history of the 

 Squire Papers we have evidence that the smouldering embers of family 

 jealousy, thus first kindled, have in one instance, at least, retained 

 a murky vitality down to the middle of the nineteenth century. See 

 the introduction to the Squire Journal in Thomas Carlyle's Letters 

 [ and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. 



\ Mr. Townson's fine, which was not adjudicated till August, 1649, 

 was fixed at £320 — to one in his embarassed position no doubt a 

 serious infliction ; for he had to suffer the further indignity of eject- 

 ment from the living of Bremhill in favour of a nominee of the 

 Parliament, Richard Frankly n. He recovered it as a matter of 

 course at the Restoration, and continued to hold it till his death, in 

 1687. The peculiar circumstances environing this family may 

 warrant a brief additional note. 



Robert Townson, father of the compounder, had been by James 



| I. advanced in 1620 from the Deanery of Westminster to the 



I Bishopric of Sarum ; but within ten months, too short a space in 

 which to accumulate much private wealth, his premature death cast 



; his widow and fifteen children on the fraternal resources of his 

 brother-in-law, Dr. John Davenant. To enable him to meet this 

 unlooked-for liability, Davenant was at once promoted to the vacant 

 see, but was at the same time given to understand that along with 

 the bishopric he must accept as a legacy his sister's family, together 

 with the further implied stipulation that he should not take to 



i himself a wife. In Bishop Davenant's Salisbury palace, therefore, 

 his widowed sister, Margaret, found an asylum for thirteen years, 

 as testified by her epitaph in the Cathedral ; while in the dispensation 

 of his various preferments nepotism assumed the form, if not of a 

 virtue, yet of something resembling a moral obligation. The small 

 number of legacies mentioned in Mrs. Townson'' s will shews that at 



o 



the time of her death the majority of the children must have been 

 either provided for or removed by death. John, the eldest, with 

 whom we commenced, became Prebendary of Highworth in the 

 Cathedral of Salisbury, and Vicar of Bremhill,, in 1640. Ono 

 U z 2. 



