286 Lord Clarendon and his Trowbridge Anoestry. 



families with which we know them to have intermarried, or to 

 have been intimately connected ; thus, for example, of Bailey of 

 Trowbridge, Mitchell of Calston, Horton of Iford, Long of 

 Trowbridge, Hyde of Marlborough, Wallis of Trowbridge. 



Coming now to the next generation, we have an Edward 

 Langford, of Trowbridge, who is described as a gentleman and 

 clothier, speaking in his will, proved in 1594, of his "loving 

 brother-in-law, Edward Hyde." Who his wife was — (her 

 christian name was Mary) — I have not been able to discover, nor 

 whose son was the " Edward Hyde " alluded to. He was con- 

 temporary with Laurence Hyde, who, about the middle of the 

 16th century, purchased the manor of West Hatch, and a brass 

 to whose memory is in Tisbury Church, and may have been his 

 brother, both of them being the sons of Eobert Hyde, of 

 Norbury in the county of Chester, whence their family sprung. 

 About the same time there was certainly living " John Langford/' 

 at Charlton, in the hundred of Downton. The fact, however, 

 of an alliance with the Hydes at so early a date (two gener- 

 ations before Lord Clarendon was born) shows the good position 

 that the Langford family held at that time in Wiltshire. Amongst 

 friends named in the will of this Edward Langford, who died in 

 1594, are Sir William Eyre and Sir Walter Hungerford. The 

 witnesses to the will were Thomas Wallis and John Long, both of 

 them among the Trowbridge gentry. 



The daughter of this last named Edward Langford, by name 

 Mary, who was baptized at Trowbridge in 1578, was married in 

 that same Church, on April 3rd, 1597, to Henry Hyde, described 

 as of Purton and Dinton ; and their third son, Edward, became 

 ultimately Lord Chancellor Clarendon. In his life, Lord Clarendon 

 gives us some particulars of the early days and marriage of his 

 father. He was the third son of Laurence Hyde of West Hatch. He 

 was educated at Oxford, and afterwards admitted as a member of the 

 Middle Temple. He travelled much, especially in Italy, then a 

 dangerous place on account of the animosity felt by the Pope, 

 Sixtus V., towards Queen Elizabeth and all her subjects. He 

 nevertheless received so much attention when at Home from Car- 



