248 A Sketch of the History of Hill Deverill 



form part, if not of a local history, at all events of local lore. 

 Whether these traditions have any value or not as history, they 

 show that the Civil War made a great impression in this quiet 

 valley. On which side popular sympathy lay, we do not know, but 

 in a letter dated April 2nd, 1660, William Thynne, writing to Sir 

 J ames Thynne about the election at Hindon, for which Edmund 

 Ludlow was standing, says "the country generally are against 

 Ludlow." His judgment seems correct, for Ludlow was not 

 elected. Hindon apparently was afraid of him, " his appearance 

 (for fear more than love) takes much with them, and many of our 

 voices appeared but with cloudy countenances after he came into 

 town." Grabriel Ludlow was killed at the Battle of Newbury in 

 1644 ; Benjamin was killed at the siege of Corfe Castle in 1659-60 ; 

 Roger Ludlow matriculated at Balliol in 1610, and became Deputy- 

 G-overnor of Massachusetts and Connecticut : he compiled the first 

 Connecticut code of laws, published in 1672. The estate descends 

 regularly in the male line, till Edmund Ludlow. He had but one 

 child, Elizabeth, baptised at East Coker, in Somerset, February, 

 1630 ; he died in 1644 (will proved February, 164{), and the 

 young heiress married Sir Henry Coker, of Maypowder, in Dorset, 

 when she was about seventeen years old. The manor thus becomes 

 associated with the name of Coker, from 1648 till 1736, and the 

 name of Ludlow does not occur in any of the many legends which 

 have grown up about the Manor House. 



Sir Henry Coker, who was a Royalist, had a large family, several 

 of whom died in infancy : a tablet to their memory is in the 

 Church, and the vault in which they were buried on the north side 

 of the chancel was known as " Coker's Hole." The manor went to 

 his eldest surviving son, Henry. He died in 1736, aged 80, and 

 was succeeded by his second son, Thomas, who, in 1737, sold it to 

 the Duke of Marlborough, and lived at Monkton Deverill in a house 

 where the Ludlow coat of arms can now be seen facing the road. In 

 1796 it was bought by the Duke of Somerset, who held it till 1888, 

 when it was bought by Mr. C. H. Stratton, of Kingston Deverill. 

 Tenant-farmers dwelt in the house from 1737 to 1888. 



To return to the Cokers: the monument in the Church to Sir 



