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President's Address. 



worth inspection. The chancel is supposed to be part of the nave 

 of the old church, and portions of it partake of the Saxon character. 

 Tradition still points out a site at Westbury Leigh as the residence 

 of our Anglo Saxon Kings, and to this day it retains the name of 

 the Palace Garden. In the south transept is a monument in the 

 Corinthian style to James Ley, " that good 33 Earl of Marlborough, 

 who was born at Teffont in South Wiltshire. Sir Richard Hoare has a 

 good engraving of it in his work on Modern Wilts. In this church 

 was formerly a chantry chapel built in the time of Henry VI., and 

 founded by J ohn de Westbury and his son William. The latter was 

 an eminent lawyer, who was called to the rank of serjeant-at-law in 

 1421, and justice of the Common Pleas in 1426. In 1861 the name 

 of Westbury was selected for the title of his barony by the Right 

 Hon. Sir Richard Bethel, Lord High Chancellor of England, who 

 is a native of Bradford-on-Avon, in this county. Among the 

 ejected ministers of Wiltshire is the name of Phillip Hunton, M.A., 

 who was instituted to Westbury in 1657 and died in 1682. Westbury 

 has of late become more known from its ironworks. A paper by 

 my friend Mr. Cunnington, on this subject will be read to you. 

 Aubrey, in his Natural History of Wiltshire, conjectures that the 

 clothiers left Seend and settled at Trowbridge because the water 

 being impregnated with iron was not proper for the lulling and 

 washing of their cloth. Might this have been the case with the 

 clothiers of Westbury? Erom Westbury we go to Bratton, with 

 its pretty little church dedicated to St. James. Nestling at the 

 foot of our Wiltshire Downs, near the summit of which is the white 

 horse of Westbury, the quiet little village seems to rejoice in the 

 protection of the earthwork above, called Bratton Castle, situate 

 nearly 800 feet above the level of the sea. A description and 

 history of the White Horses of Wiltshire will be given us by the 

 Rev. W. C. Plenderleath, and I will refrain from risking too much 

 of an opinion on their origin. I like to think of the old tradition, 

 which makes the white horse the standard of the Saxons, but I find 

 that the historian Henry of Huntingdon, speaks of the golden 

 dragon as the standard of the West Saxons. However, the Bratton 

 horse is evidently of a good breed, as Sir Richard Hoare tells us. 



