Bg the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 167 



finding the names of Washington and Penn as at one time among 

 North Wilts families, we should be glad to claim as Wiltshire men 

 two such eminent historical characters as the Founder of Pennsylvania 

 and the Founder of American Independence : but we have no right 

 to them. In Purton Church, however, you will see the monument 

 of an eminent man to whom we have a right, Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, 

 a very distinguished astronomer in his day. You will notice it with 

 the more interest and respect when you understand that he was 

 grandfather to the gentleman who is now kindly occupying our 

 President's chair. Astronomy is the first of sciences ; geology is 

 the second. If the grandfather was accomplished in the one, I am 

 not indulging in any idle flattery when I say that he is rivalled by 

 the grandson in the other. 



Wootton Basset. 



If to Wood-town, now shortened to Wootton, we add the sur- 

 name of a family once lords there, we get the name of Wootton 

 Basset. I need hardly say that many of our places have a double 

 name, and the second is often that of some ancient family. There 

 are several Woottons — Wootton-under-Edge, i.e., under the brow 

 of the Cotswold Hills, on the borders of Gloucestershire ; Wootton 

 By vers (from the Ry vers family) , near Marlborough ; and Wootton 

 Basset, sometimes called Wootton Vetus or Old Wootton ; and well 

 is it entitled to that name, as I have no doubt it is one of the oldest 

 places in the county. The Bassets were very great proprietors in 

 Norman times. In Wiltshire they have left their mark at Wootton,at 

 Winterbourne Basset, Compton Basset, Berwick Basset, and Basset 

 Down, and that mark — their name — is about all that they have left, for 

 I have never heard of anything that they did for the perpetual grati- 

 tude of the county, except to found a small almshouse of St. John the 

 Baptist at Wootton, which, however, together with its founders, 

 disappeared long ago. It was in the year 1266 that Philip Basset 

 and Thomas Gayton, Rector 1 of Wootton, joined together in setting 



1 The Church was a Rectory till about A.D. 1363, when the great tithes were 

 given by the Crown to Stanley Abbey, near Chippenham. From that time it 

 ber-vme a Vicarage. 



