34(3 



The Wiltshire Compounders. 



would have been a hundred years old. The next portrait to 

 be noticed is called Lady Dan vers; certainly not the mother of 

 Lady Anne Lee; the style of dress, which, like the above, is that of 

 Charles the Second's Court, quite forbids this assumption ; but it 

 may creditably pass for Sir John's third wife, who we know long* 

 survived him. The third portrait is that of Lady Anne Lee 

 herself, ' Sir John Danvers's daughter and the mother of the first 

 Countess of Abingdon, an innocent-looking' young creature in 

 Restoration costume, and painted, we may presume, not long after 

 her marriage with Sir Henry Lee. This picture may be accepted 

 without hesitation. The marble memorials of Henry and Anne in 

 West Lavington Church complete our list of family portraits ; for 

 it cannot now be expected that any credible representation of the 

 old knight himself in his later days, will ever crop up. 



The above is but a scanty gathering from a field which the late 

 Rev. Edward Wilton, of Lavington, had crowded with abundance. 

 Born in the neighbouring priory of Edington, his early rambles 

 among the Churches of that district were not long in forming his 

 archaeological bias ; and in after years, following on the lines of 

 John Aubrey, he made it one of his favourite pursuits to exhaust 

 the annals of the house of Danvers. To analyse the mass of 

 materials thence resulting would involve indefinite expansion. The 

 materials are still extant, but this is not the place to display them. 

 The most instructive parts of Mr. Wilton's utterances were his 

 peripatetic comments on the family history, while traversing and 

 deciphering its local vestiges in company with friends who aspired 

 to share his enthusiasm. Possibly the traditions which he contrived 

 to exhume may yet be formulated into a systematic narrative. 



