59 



§i$J)Cf Cawur, $ts Jfamilg snb Pointings. 



By the late Rev. Edward Wilton, M.A., 



Of West Lavington. ( x ) 



3j|S]|pHEN, in compliance with the request of our Committee I 

 gJjSgj engaged to prepare a Paper to be read at one of the Evening 

 Meetings of the Wilts Archaeological Society, I mentioned, that "I 

 had collected a few Notes illustrating the Biography of a distin- 

 guished Wiltshire writer on Monastic History, a native of the 

 Parish adjoining the place of my residence for the last 35 years/"* 

 I was referring to the eminent Bishop Tanner; son of the Reverend 

 Thomas Tanner, Vicar of Market Lavington: this decided the sub- 

 ject of my promised paper. 



1 This paper was prepared to be read at the Society's Meeting at Devizes in 

 1863; but for want of time it remained unread. Since the author's death, the 

 MS. has been placed in my hands, to be looked over, before being printed. 

 Between 1863 and 1871, some additional memoranda about Bishop Tanner had 

 fallen in Mr. Wilton's way, which he had preserved, but had not woven into 

 his paper. This I have done : and this with a few verbal alterations, is all I 

 have done. In sending it now to be printed, as " Mr. Wilton's Paper," 1 will 

 not say that I claim, but I use, what I am sure the Wilts Archaeological Society 

 will most readily grant me in their pages, a little space for a few lines of Notice 

 of One who, too diffident of himself to appear often as an original writer, 

 still served the Society in a quiet way, long and well. 



He was born at Edington near Trowbridge, about A.D. 1797, and he took his 

 degree of M.Aat Queen's Coll. Cambridge. For a very accurate description 

 of his character, and special ability, I am glad to borrow from an obituary 

 notice which appeared in the " Devizes Gazette," the week after his death. 

 il Up to the time of his death he held the office of Master of the Endowed School 

 of West Lavington, to which he was appointed, we believe, in the year 1832, 

 and he had now for many years been officiating minister of the Chapelry of Erie 

 Stoke, where his ministrations and his earnestness in endeavouring to promote 

 the welfare of those committed to his charge were well appreciated. As an 

 archaeologist he was accurate and persevering, and many are the correspondents 

 who would be ready to confess their obligations to him for valuable suggestions 

 as well as for laborious investigations into points which required careful research 

 and nice discrimination. He was a complete master in heraldry, not only so as 

 to be a most interesting companion to any who were desirous to trace the origin 

 of the various quarterings on their old family shields, but he had a more than 



