208 



Charles, Lord S tour ton, fyc. 



hundred pounds in money, being parcel of the value of the money, 

 corn, cattle and debts the Lord Stourton wrongfully keepeth from 

 me." (See Document 63.) 



These land and money feuds led to feuds of other kinds : and 

 more particularly as to the right of hunting deer : about which 

 much Will appear in the Correspondence. This species of quarrel 

 naturally brought in not only servants and retainers on both sides, 

 but also the neighbouring gentry ; and so there grew up a Stourton 

 and a Hartgill faction. 



It is also to be suspected that there was between them another 

 cause of estrangement, and one by no means insignificant in those 

 days — a difference in Religion. Charles Lord Stourton himself 

 was an uncompromising Romanist, but he had for his nearest 

 neighbours two chief men of the opposite party, the Protector Duke 

 of Somerset at Maiden Bradley, and Sir John Thynne at Longleat. 

 Under the old order of things, when the Hartgills were Tenants to 

 the Abbess of Shaftesbury and Stewards to the Stourtons, they of 

 course held the Creed of their superiors. Nor is there any evidence 

 of their having abandoned it : but certain it is that when no longer 

 allowed to act for Lord Stourton in the management of property, 

 they enlisted themselves in the service of those who, in Religion, 

 were rather prominently opposed to Lord Stourton and the Abbess 

 of Shaftesbury : for the elder Hartgill had the care of the Pro- 

 tector's woods at Maiden Bradley, and John Hartgill was in the 

 service of Sir John Thynne. 



LOOKING at the case generally, it should not be forgotten that 

 the Narrative of the Murder is a one-sided statement, and that, 

 on the side of the Hartgills. For 300 years this story has remained 

 unsifted, and we have now no means of hearing the counter-state- 

 ment except by casual gleaning from the newly-discovered papers. 

 From them it will appear that the Hartgills had been to Lord 

 Stourton a continual blister: that being, unluckily, his nearest 

 neighbours, and falling into, if not courting, collision with him, 

 they made matters worse by insulting language and acts of defiance. 

 To. a fiery-tempered man this was intolerable, and were his pre- 



