338 



The Wiltshire Compounders. 



1471, when the previous proprietor, Lord Wenlock, was slain at 

 Tewkesbury fight. About 1633, which was soon after the execution 

 at Salisbury of the Earl of Castlehaven for adultery, his son and 

 heir, James Mervin, commonly known as Lord Awdley, alienated 

 the family estates, for what consideration cannot now be known, to 

 Sir Francis (afterwards Lord) Cottington. Whatever actually passed 

 between the covenanting parties, it is notorious that Lord Awdley 

 some years afterwards sought to cancel the transaction, and the 

 attention of the House of Lords was at intervals occupied with the 

 affair for more than half-a-year. First, there was the petition in 

 1640 of James Lord Awdley, Earl of Castlehaven, praying that he 

 might be restored to the manor of Fonthill, Hatch, and other lands 

 in Wilts, with damages. Two months later he lodges a complaint 

 that someone had stolen (" defaced 33 in the margin) from Fonthill 

 Church the sepulchral monument of his mother, and obtains an 

 order directing the Bishop of Sarum to enquire and make report. 

 Then, in order to ground his action on a two-fold basis, he offers to 

 assign errors in the attainder of his late father. This move was 

 promptly set aside as reflecting on the Crown; and in June, 1641, 

 it was resolved that Lord Cottington having fully established the' 

 integrity of his bargain, this cause be dismissed out of the House. 

 Lords' Journals, iv., 279. 



Subsequently another claimant to a portion of the Fonthill estate 

 appeared in the person of James Risley, on the following plea. 

 Upon the attainder of the above Mervin Lord Awdley, Earl of 

 Castlehaven, Fonthill Farm, having escheated to Richard, Bishop 

 of Winchester, had by that prelate been leased to James Risley 

 aforesaid, and in 1648 he was carrying on a suit for the same at 

 the Salisbury spring assizes. But this and all other obstructions, 

 it is presumed were silenced by the Parliaments' Order in September', 

 1646, to sell all the Cottington estates ; and three years later the 

 same authority conferred them, in their entirety, as a gift on John 

 Bradshaw, who had sat as president of the court which condemned 

 the King. 



Outline of an Act passed 15th August, 1649, for granting unto 

 the Lord President Bradshaw, of the Council of State, £2000 a 



