164 Swindon and Us Neighbourhood — No. 2. 



The country about the present Braden hamlet is pretty enough, 

 but it is not quite first-rate for agriculture, and I do not suppose 

 that when the Millennium of small peasantry sets in, there will be 

 any very great competition for the much-talked " three acres a-piece " 

 in that quarter. Yet I remember many years ago a piece of about 

 five hundred acres, then a sort of common occupied chiefly by squatters 

 who led a wretched life, which, being taken in hand by a gentleman 

 with capital, enclosed and divided into farms, now presents a 

 very respectable appearance. If it should ever come to be sub-divided 

 again it would probably relapse into its former condition. 



If Braden is not fertile in crops, neither is it in topics for archse- 

 ological disquisition. At Eingsbury you will see one of the great 

 earthworks so frequent in this county, but I am not aware that 

 there is any particular history belonging to it. Nor have we about 

 Braden Forest any sensational or romantic traditions of the Robin 

 Hood School, or of robbers and marauders of a lower class who used 

 to haunt such regions. One story only about it is all that I have met 

 with in ancient records. There was a Wiltshire family in the reign of 

 King John of the name of Fitzwarren — a name which still survives, 

 attached to the parish of Stanton, near High worth. Fulco Fitz- 

 warren had been banished from the Court for treason or some 

 other intolerable behaviour; so, with a number of fellows, he 

 took to the highway business in Braden, waylaying and plundering 

 the King's peaceful travelling subjects. A company of carriers, 

 with a train of waggons of valuable goods, happening to come along, 

 Fitzwarren captured the whole party, but on finding that the goods 

 did not belong to the carriers themselves, but that they were the 

 King's, and that they were merely being conveyed from one place 

 to another, he forthwith opened the bales of goods, unpacked 

 rich stores of cloths and furs, quietly measured these off and divided 

 them among his troop, and told the drivers they might now turn 

 their horses' heads back to London, with his dutiful compliments 

 to His Majesty, and best thanks for the beautiful wardrobes with 

 which he had so graciously provided them. 



On the breaking up of the large forest of Braden, that part which 

 was the actual property of the Crown, as being part of the Duchy 



