The Hertford Correspondence. 173 



( Concluded from Vol. I., page 2,32.) 



Among the following documents will be found two lists, both 

 possessing some interest for the Wiltshire genealogist, the first 

 being a schedule drawn up by four gentlemen resident in the 

 county, of the amounts which they considered their neighbours 

 were capable of lending to the king; the second being a list of 

 the sums actually advanced. An examination of this latter list 

 suggests sundry remarks. Some of the most opulent names in the 

 county do not appear in it. We look in vain for the contribution 

 of a Baskerville, or an Arundel; for Cottington, Gorges, Grove, 

 Sadler, Seymour, Webb, Audley, Estcourt, Englefield, Stump, 

 Herbert, Chafyn, Penruddock, Ley, Weld, Stourton, Thynne, 

 Norborne, or Smythe, with many others. But the simple mention 

 of these names suggests a partial solution. Though not all Roman 

 Catholics, yet they include the most powerful of that class in the 

 county, and King James was perhaps afraid of irritating them. 

 The Romanist profession was, for the time, in the eyes of the nation, 

 a declining and unpopular cause, and while the king so far yielded 

 to the general prejudice as to enforce with rigour the laws against 

 "recusants," he probably felt that, beyond this outward demon- 

 stration, it was unnecessary, perhaps unsafe to go. It may also be 

 remarked that in this list we are not to look for the names of dis- 

 tinguished burgesses or citizens, for such communities were charged 

 separately ; and as the gentry of those days (such as Seymour of 

 Marlborough^ Smyth of Bedwin, and several of Salisbury) did not 

 disdain to live in towns, this circumstance may explain the absence 

 of some names of eminence who would otherwise have figured as 

 dwellers in country-seats. The principal feature distinguishing 



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