Communicated by Mr. James Waylen. 333 



and, from the house itself, damask curtains, scarlet cloth, silver 

 plate, one fair gridiron, one hundred cheeses, and all the butter, 

 together with the apparatus for making it, out of the dairy — total 

 value, £526 6s. On the 22nd November, same year, Sir Edmund 

 Fowell, president of the Committee of Sequestrations, was constituted 

 " tenant to the State" for Sir William Button's lands at Tockenham, 

 paying £320 a year. Sir William appears afterwards to have lived 

 at his manor of Shaw, near Overton; and in 1646 was fined £2380 

 for delinquency. He died in 1654. He had been educated at 

 Exeter College ; and attended Sir Arthur Hopton in his embassy 

 through France and Spain. His hospitality is said to have been 

 exemplary to poor scholars, poor ministers, and cavaliers. Aubrey 

 and Jackson, 190. The acts of plunder recorded in the above docu- 

 ment, which is evidently a private family memorial, are quite within 

 the range of credibility, but they form no part of Sir William's 

 plea for clemency when exhibiting his "particular" before the 

 London Commissioners. 



This family claimed descent from Sir Walter Button, or Bytton, 

 a knight who flourished in the reign of Henry III. Sir William 

 Button of the Civil War period, in conversation with Aubrey, the 

 antiquary, once informed him that their ancestors had held Tocken- 

 ham four hundred years. The lease of this inheritance expiring in 

 1652, it fell to the Earl of Pembroke. This Sir William, who had 

 been created a baronet by James I. in 1621, married Ruth, daughter 

 of Walter Dunch, of Avebury, Esq., by whom he had seven children. 

 Three of his sons, viz., William, Robert, and John, successively 

 inherited the baronetcy ; but dying without issue the title became 

 extinct in 1712. Their sister Mary, married to Clement Walker, 

 Esq., of Charterhouse Leadon, in Somersetshire, Usher of the 

 Exchequer, came in modern times to be represented by George 

 Heneage Walker-Heneage, of Compton Basset, in Wilts, and M.P. 

 for Devizes. Sir William, the compounder, died in 1655, and was 

 buried in a vault which he had caused to be constructed in the 

 north aisle of North Wraxhall Church ; where also lie his son 

 William, aforesaid, and William's wife, Dame Anne (Rolle) Button. 

 In 1667 Sir Robert Button sold the manor of North Wraxhall, 



