270 



Charles, Lord Stourton, fyc. 



DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE. 

 After the account of the Murder and a general explanation, so 

 far as known, of the causes that led to it, we come to the Letters 

 and other Documents (besides the few already given), that have 

 lately ,been discovered at Longleat and in the Record Offices. In 

 one or two instances, the originals being of great length, the 

 substance only has been extracted. Their connexion with the 

 Story will be explained, so far as possible, and where there is 

 no commentary it must be taken for granted that nothing further 

 is known. 



Of those which now follow (in chronological order, as well as 

 the case will permit), the earliest, from No. 16 to 20 both included, 

 relate to transactions in the time of Charles's Father, William 

 Lord Stourton, who died about October 1548. 



The first of these, No. 16, dated A.D. 1540, seventeen years 

 before the murder, shows not only generally the lawless manner 

 in which private quarrels were in those days settled, but more 

 particularly (if the facts deposed to were true), that the two 

 Hartgills had not been more scrupulous than their neighbours in 

 the use of weapons, and that upon one occasion they were only 

 saved from committing manslaughter, if not murder, by the inter- 

 ference of a stronger force. Horace says that in the early ages 

 of the world, 



" For caves and acorns, then the food of life, 

 "With nails and fists men held a bloodless strife ; 

 But, soon improv'd, with clubs they boldly fought 

 And various Arms." (1. Sat. 3, 100.) 



But at Kilmington (and not there only), even in the 16th century 

 of the Christian era, "clubs and various arms" were, as Document 

 No. 16 shews, still used as convincing arguments for proving a 

 man's title, not indeed to the primitive acorns, but to the animal 

 on which, by that time, the luxury of eating them had devolved. 

 The Hartgills, it will be seen, were quite prepared to break 

 their fellow-parishioner's head for the sake of a hog, and that too, 

 in the opinion of one deposing witness, under the most unjustifiable 

 circumstances, for " they had (he says) already more brawn in their 



