By the Rev. Canon J. E. Jackson, F.S.A. 173 



irregular, or rather, very bad, and called loudly for renovation 

 at the same time it cannot be denied that a great many valuable 

 and eminent men were introduced through them. So far as good 

 English names are an indication of respectability, the list of Mem- 

 bers for Wootton Basset will, with some few exceptions, bear com- 

 parison with those of any other place. As for the persons who 

 accepted bribes, one cannot be much surprised, knowing what human 

 nature is, and how widely, from various causes, political corruption 

 was spread. The inferior will follow the example of a superior. It 

 is a Greek poet who says, in an English dress : — 



When base deeds, from those of highest rank 

 Receive a sanction, all below esteem them 

 As objects of their honest imitation. 



But Wootton Basset is now making a fresh start. The railway 

 has put some new life into it, and we hope has carried away all bad 

 habits and associations. A new town hall and a restored Church 

 have taken the place of decayed buildings, and we expect that with 

 signs of improvement its future will obliterate the past. 



One difficulty in getting at the serious history of the town in 

 other particulars is that the oldest documents relating to it seem to 

 have been strangely neglected and lost. They had a Recorder who 

 has recorded nothing, and the boxes for safety have saved very little. 

 Nothing of this kind can surprise anybody who has heard of the 

 shameful way in which, until some few years ago, the National 

 Records in London were stowed away and then neglected. They 

 were shut up in boxes in vaults almost under the Thames, and eaten 

 up by rats, so numerous that the first step in reform was to employ 

 a number of terriers to clear the room. It was only the other 

 day that all the valuable records of the old East India Company 

 were recsued from oblivion. Therefore we must not be too hard 

 upon small provincial authorities. Queen Elizabeth's charter to 

 Wootton is said to have been quietly carried away by a former lord 

 of the manor. King Charles the Second's turned up quite acci- 

 dentally about twenty-five years ago in the house of a Mr. Owen, 

 near Denbigh. That gentleman did not know that he had it. The 

 box had come to him many years before with some papers of a person 



