34 



Westbury under the Plain. 



was compiled chiefly from something" of my own writing, he has 

 done me the honour to connect my name. Some people might feel 

 mortified at seeing their handiwork, or rather the spinning of their 

 brains, offered at such a very insignificant figure. On the contrary, 

 this was exactly what I was pleased to see : because, the very object 

 of our Society was from the first, and is now, not to keep our in- 

 formation to ourselves, or hide it in volumes which nobody can buy, 

 but to put county history and other archaeological subjects into a 

 cheaper form, to popularize and diffuse it, to encourage a taste for 

 it, and enable people of the humblest class to take more interest in 

 the places they live in, by knowing who had been there before them, 

 who built this house or Church, what changes there have been, and 

 so forth — things of which they are generally quite ignorant. I have 

 told the story before, but as a specimen of popular acquaintance with 

 the history of a place it will bear telling again. Visiting Glastonbury 

 Abbey some years ago, though not altogether unacquainted with 

 its history, I thought myself in duty bound to get all the information 

 I could from the cicerone of the ruins. The regular official happening 

 to be ill, or, at any rate, not forthcoming, an old post-boy (an 

 animal hardly known, except by tradition, to the present generation) 

 hanging about the gate offered his services, assuring me that he 

 knew all about it quite well. So, in the course of our tour, I asked 

 him, for fun, who was it that built up this old place? He had not 

 got his lesson quite pat, so he scratched his head, and said he'd heard 

 tell it wur Oliver Crummell. " Well, then/" said I, " who knocked 

 it about in this way ? " " Oh ! [then another scratch] why that 

 wur Willum Norman." 



A cheap account, then, of Westbury being now within very easy 

 reach, and other gentlemen being about to address you upon the 

 Church, the geology of the district, &c, I propose to make only a 

 few remarks on one or two of the more prominent points of the 

 subject, with, first, a slight sketch of the general history, for the 

 benefit of those who may not happen to have invested twopence in 

 Mr. Michael. 



There is no other Westbury in Wiltshire, but there are several 

 places of the same name in England, some of them in counties 



