Notes on Places. 



281 



At Escott, or Eastcott, House lived Seymour Wroughton, Esq., 

 who also seems to have owned " Maggot's Castle/' otherwise known 

 as " Wroughton's Folly/' a building in a woody dell under the cliff 

 to the north side of Fiddington Sands. The fishponds remain, and 

 traces of banks and foundations show where the " Castle n stood, 

 but the great stones above ground were removed years ago, just 

 within the memory of the oldest inhabitants. Seymour Wroughton 

 died 3 1st May, 1789, aet. 53, and was buried at Urchfont, where a 

 monument records nearly all that is known of him. 



Erchfont Manor House, passed near the road shortly before 

 arriving at the village of that name, was occupied in Charles the 

 Second's time by Edward Howard. The present mansion was, 

 however, built by Sir William Pynsent, Bart., of an old Devonshire 

 family, who was M.P. for Devizes, 1689—90, and High Sheriff of 

 Wilts, 1692. (See Waylen's History of Devizes, p. 353—392.) 

 He left the property to the Earl of Chatham, by whom it was sold 

 to the Duke of Queensborough, or Queensberry, who lived at 

 Amesbury. Macaulay (Hist. Essay on the Earl of Chatham, vol. 



iii., p. 499, ed. 1854) alludes to this incident as follows : — 



" About this time took place one of the most singular events of Pitt's life. 

 There was a certain Sir William Pynsent, a Somersetshire Baronet, of Whig 

 politics, who had been a member of the House of Commons in the days of Queen 

 Anne, and had retired to rural privacy, when the Tory party, towards the end of 

 her reign, obtained the ascendancy in her councils. His manners were eccentric. 

 His morals lay under very odious imputations. But his fidelity to his political 

 opinions was unalterable. During fifty years of seclusion he continued to brood 

 over the circumstances which had driven him from public life, the dismissal of 

 the Whigs, the Peace of Utrecht, the desertion of our allies. He now thought 

 he perceived a close analogy between the well-remembered events of his youth 

 and the events which he had witnessed in extreme old age ; between the disgrace 

 of Marlborough, and the disgrace of Pitt ; between the elevation of Harley, and 

 the elevation of Bute ; between the treaty negotiated by St. John, and the treaty 

 negotiated by Bedford ; between the wrongs of the House of Austria in 1712, 

 and the wrongs of the House of Brandenburg in 1762. This fancy took such 

 possession of the old man's mind that he determined to leave his whole property 

 to Pitt. In this way Pitt unexpectedly came into possession of near three 

 thousand pounds a year. Nor could all the malice of his enemies find any ground 

 for reproach in the transaction. Nobody could call him a legacy hunter. 

 Nobody could accuse him of seizing that to which others had a better claim. For 

 he had never in his life seen Sir William ; and Sir William had left no relation 

 so near as to be entitled to form any expectations respecting his estate." 



The Earl of Chatham erected a monument to his benefactor on 



