By J. Way leu. 



115 



acting* committee sitting at Sadlers' Hall to carry out this scheme ; 

 he had larger work in hand just then ; but he found time to come 

 down to Marlborough and, in company with Mr. Mayor, to peram- 

 bulate the place and offer his practical advice. The tradition may 

 be at fault which attributes to him a promise that the new market- 

 house should be his personal gift to the town, seeing that in the 

 subsequent allotment of the national fund a thousand pounds was 

 expressly devoted to that object. But tradition has not falsified the 

 light in which he was generally regarded by the Marlborough 

 commonalty at that crisis ; nor need we doubt that before his de- 

 parture he utilised the occasion more Gladstomense for a characteristic 

 harangue on the moral aspects of the catastrophe. Anyhow, it 

 seems rational to conclude that gratitude for his services must in 

 great measure have been the motive prompting them two years 

 later to surpass every other town in the county (Salisbury excepted) 

 in their contribution to the Piedmontese Fund. It is a noticeable 

 fact, too, that, at the very moment of the fire's breaking out, the 

 people of the town and neighbourhood were met in special conclave 

 to invoke the divine benediction on the arduous course of action to 

 which he had just committed himself. An extract from the Mayor's 

 letter to Oliver on the day after the calamity will more fully set 

 this forth. " Too much," says he, "cannot be said for them ; they 

 being a people more generally well-affected than any town I know 

 in this county. Yet, being confident that your Excellency's ear 

 will be open to them, and also that you will be ready to act for 

 them, I shall only in reference to them say thus much more, — that 

 the very day when this affliction befel them the godly people of the 

 town and many of the country were together seeking God (ac- 

 cording to your desire in your late Declaration) for His presence 

 with you in your councils, that you might be endowed with the 

 spirit of wisdom and counsel for the management of the great and 

 weighty affairs before you, to the honour of His name and the good 

 and encouragement of His people, in settling justice and righteous- 

 ness in this nation — being confident that this was the end you 

 proposed to yourself in the dissolution of the Parliament. In the 

 truth and reality of this I am so well satisfied, that for my own 

 I I 2 



