By the Rev. W. H. Jones. 



285 



twenty one. Still one cannot but remark a difference in the way 

 in which Lord Clarendon in his life speaks of his two marriages 

 respectively. Whilst of his second wife he says simply that she 

 was the daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Bart., Master of 

 Requests to the Kiug, he speaks of the first, as " Ann, daughter of 

 Sir George Ayliffe, of good name and fortune in Wilts, and by her 

 mother (a St. John) nearly allied to many noble families." 



Assuming that the tradition cannot be true of Frances Aylesbury, 

 we may ask whether it is possible that the story has been placed 

 one generation too low, referring in fact not to the wife of Lord 

 Clarendon, but to his mother, or possibly his wife's mother ? An 

 impression in some quarters (why I can hardly say) has gained 

 ground that the " blank pane" or " shield " in the genealogy of the 

 Hydes, is to be sought for among their Trowbridge connexions, — 

 in short in the family of Langford. How little such an idea can 

 be borne out I shall soon be able to show you. 



Among the earliest names in the Parochial Registry at Trow- 

 bridge (a portion of which commence in 1538) we find those of 

 members of the Langford family. In the year 1544 we find, 

 from a MS. in the possession of Mr. Poullet Scrope, Alexander 

 Langford, senior, and Alexander Langford, junior, both described 

 as " gentlemen," of Trowbridge, purchasing two water-mills, called 

 the Castle Mills, from George Worth of Dauntesy, and others. 

 And in the will of Edward Langford, who died in 1552, and is 

 called a " clothier," mention is made of his cousins Wm. Horton, 

 of Iford, and Harrie Long, of Trowbridge, a tolerable proof of 

 the respectable connexions of his family. In truth, they were, 

 like many of the younger sons of the leading families of that 

 century, engaged in the clothing trade, their ancestors in the 

 preceding century having been probably merchants of the staple. 

 One member of the family, by name Alexander, seems to have 

 been an attorney at Bradford. We find an " Alexander Langford " 

 also rated, in a subsidy roll of 1565, amongst the Wilts gentry, at 

 £22 — a considerable sum in the sixteenth century. 



Why their pedigree is not recorded in any of the Heralds' 

 Visitations I cannot tell. We meet with the names of all the 



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