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Mansion of Breakspears, co. Middlesex, described.

have been the means of affording me some assistance on the subject, for which, as a small remuneration, I beg leave to intrude the following, which forms a portion of the sweets of my intricate search.

Breakspears, an ancient mansion in this parish, is said by Camden to have taken its name from a family, from whom Pope Adrian was descended. Some traces of a family of this name are to be met with as late as the year 1591, when Anne Breakspear was married at Harefield: vide Parochial Register. In the year 1371 William Swanland granted a lease of 60 years to William Brekspere, of a house and lands in Harefield, which had been held by John Grove in bondagio. Before the end of the following century it appears to have been in the possession of the family of Ashby, who were settled at Harefield as early as the year 1471, and whose family is now become extinct in the male line. Vide Lysons's Additions to Middlesex Parishes, p. 111.

Arms in the Hall-which you enter into by a glass door from the lawn, over which, on an oval and raised shield, are the armorial bearings of the Ashbys, viz. Azure, a chevron Or between three eagles displayed with two heads Argent. Crest, an eagle with his wings elevated and expanded Argent, ducally crowned Or. On the right side of the door, in stained glass, an allegorical representation of their ancient cognomen, rebussed by an ash tree, surrounded with a swarm of bees. On the left side the following motto in a curious enveloped scroll,-Noli dicere omnia quæ scis.

Turning to the left, I commence my description of the first window of the Hall, now enclosed by a closet, which has the following arms in stained glass: Ashby, quartering, 1. Peyton, Sable, a cross engrailed Or, in the first quarter a mullet Argent. 2. Bernard of Iselham, Cambridge, Argent, a bear saliant Sable, muzzled Or. 3. Gernon, Gules, 3 piles wavy, meeting in point Argent. 4. Malory, Argent, a demi lion rampant Gules, underneath the date of 1572. Anne, dau. of Thomas Peyton, married John Ashby of Harefield in Middlesex, esq. (ancestor to those now of that place.) Wotton's Baronetage, vol. I. Asheby died October, 18 Hen. VII. 1503, buried in the chapel or burying

Ann

[Sept.

place of the Ashbys at Rickmersworth. Chauncy's Hertfordshire.

Ashby, as before, impaling Ist and 4th, Gules, 3 fish naiant within a border ingrailed Argent for Lilling; ed and 3d, Argent, a demi lion rampant Gules, for Malory; both of which are quarterings of Peyton. Vide the Visitations Com. Camb. Bernard of Iselham, in Murham Church, co. Norfolk, quarters Lilling. Blomfield, vol. VII.

In the second window.-Ashby, as before, impaling Wroth, Argent, on a bend Sable three lions heads erased of the field, ducally crowned Or. Tho mas Ashby, who died 1559, married Anue, daughter and sole heir of Edward Wroth, who died 1545. (Par. Reg.) With her he had a third part of the manor of Durants, in the parish of Enfield. (Cole's Abstract of Escheats, Harl. MSS. No. 759) Lysons's Environs, vol. II.; Dr. Robinson's History of Enfield. Note, the Ashbys through the Wroths trace up to the year 1973. See their pedigree, p. 149, vol. I. Robinson's Hist. of En field.

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A large shield of quarterings to the number of 20; the five first coats being mutilated, their place has been supplied in an unskilful manner with a fragment of the Ashby arms; 6. Argent, a chevron wavy between three roses Gules, barbed Vert and reeded Or, for. 7. Gules, three lions rampant Or, for. 8. Argent, on a chevron Sable three towers of the field, for. 9. Three Leopards' heads inverted jessant de lis Or, for . . . . . 10. Chequy Or and Azure, a chevron Ermine, for Turquinius Earl of Warwick. 11. Seemingly Azure, a pale Or, which I take for Nigel, Baron of Halton, or mutilated Newburgh, Earl of Warwick. 12. Gules, a chevron Argent, between 10 crosses formé Or, for Berkeley. 13. Gules, a lion passant gardant Argent, ducally crowned Or, Fitz Gerald. 14. Or, a fesse between 2 chevrons Sable, for Lisle. 15. Or, a saltire between 4 martlets Sable, for Guldeford or Guildford. 16. Argent, a fess dancetté Sable, for West. 17. Gules, a lion rampant and semé of cross crosslets fitché Argent, for De la Warre. 18. Barry of 6, Or and Azure, on a chief of the last two pallets between 2 esquisses of the first; over all, an escutcheon Argent, for Mortimer. 19.

Azure,

1823.]

Mansion of Breakspears, co. Middlesex, described.

Azure, 3 leopards' heads inverted jessant de lis Or, for Cantilupe. 20. Gules, 3 bendlets enhanced Or, for Greelye (vide p. 2, July 1823, Gent. Mag.) impaling, 1st. Argent, a lion rampant Gules, on a chief Sable three escallops of the field, for Russell; 2. Azure, a tower with dome Argent, for De la Tour; 3. Or, three bars Gules, a crescent in chief Sable, supposed Mustian; 4. Sable, a lion rampant between 3 cross crosslets fitché Argent, supposed Hering; 5. Sable, three chevrons Ermine, a crescent Argent for difference, for Wise; 6. Sable, three dovecots Argent, a mullet Or for difference, for Sapcott; date 1569. This must certainly be the arms of Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who married to his third wife, Anne, daughter to Francis Earl of Bedford. He died in 1589.

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In the third window, Ashby, as before, impaling per fess Azure and Gules, a border Argent, for. .; quartering Gules, a fess nebulé between 6 billets Argent, for Also, the Royal Arms superbly blazoned, viz. France and England quarterly within the Garter, supported by a golden lion and red dragon on rich pedestal ornament; underneath, the Royal motto. These I take for Queen Elizabeth's arms, who in her Progresses, we read, honoured Harefield, and most probably this house, with her presence, in company with her distinguished courtiers and statesmen, to whose memory, and for the handing down to posterity of this visit, these blazoned emblems have been set up with those of her two favourites Robert and Ambrose Dudley, Earls of Leicester and Warwick.

In the ante-room, the two windows of which form in a direct line with those of the hall, is a remarkable handsome chimney-piece, a very fine specimen of antient carved work, representing in the centre, surrounded with a superb and well-cut wreath of flowers, the arms of Ashby, quartering Wroth: over all the crest. Underneath the arms, the following is inscribed: QUI. VOLVIT. ET. POTVIT. FECIT. The arms and crest are exceedingly prominent; on each side an allegory of their name; an ash-tree with the letters B. Y. and many other handsomely executed devices. I shall probably at some future time transmit

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to your pages a correct representation of this piece of antiquity.

....

In the first window of the ante-room, Ashby, as before, impaling 1st and 4th, Gules 3 piles wavy, meeting in point Argent, for (This I take to be Gernon, but know of no connection between the families, except its being a quartering of Peyton's), quartering Gyronne of 8, Argent and Gules, for surrounded by a spacious ornament, at the base of which I perceived these arms, quarterly, France and England within a bordure.. bezanty. I cannot exactly say to whom these arms belong. Ashby as before, impaling, seemingly per fesse two coats, of which the upper part is demolished and supplied by a fragment, the base of which remains, and is Gyronne of 8, Argent and Gules, for.

In the second window of the anteroom, Ashby as before, impaling, 1st and 4th, Argent, a fess Gules, for 2d and 3d Argent, on a chief Azure 3 piles Sable, each charged with a nail Or, for

Also, a shield of four-and-twenty quarterings, environed with the order of the Garter, which plainly bespeak it to be the Earl of Leicester's, who died 1588.

1. Or, a lion rampant double queu'd (Vert), charged on the breast with a crescent for difference, for Dudley. 2. Gules, a cinquefoil Ermine, for Bellamont Earl of Leicester. 3. Or, two lions passant Azure, for Paganel. 4. Argent, a cross fleury Azure, for Sutton. 5. Argent, 3 bars Azure, in chief a file of three points Argent, for Grey, Viscount Lisle. 6. Fragment. 7. Blank. 8. Vaire, Or and Gules, for Ferrers Earl of Derby. 9. Gules, 7 mascles conjoined, 3, 3, and 1, for Quincy Earl of Winchester. 10. Gu. a lion rampant and border ingrailed Or, a crescent for difference, for Talbot, Viscount Lisle. 11. Gules, a fess between 12 cross crosslets Or, Beauchamp Earl of Warwick. 12. Turquinius, Earl of Warwick, as before. 13. Argent, 2 bars Gules, Mauduit, Earl of Warwick. 14. Lozengé Or and... (Azure) a border Gules, bezanté, for Newburgh, Earl of Warwick. 15. Berkeley as before. 16. Fitz Gerald, ditto. 17. Lisle, ditto. 18. Guldeford, ditto. 19. Argent, a bend Gules, for 20. West, as before.

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Breakspears, Middlesex.-Littlecote, Wilts.

before. 21. De la Warre, ditto. 29. Mortimer, ditto. 23. Cantilupe, do. 24. Greilly, ditto. The whole surmounted with an Earl's coronet.

Many of these armories are in sad disorder, from the way in which they have been jumbled together at some distant period by the hands of the glazier, more especially the coats described in the first window of the hall. The present worthy owner has taken every care for the preservation of them or any thing else that bespeaks the antiquity of his family.

Joseph Ashby Partridge, esq. Magistrate for the County of Middlesex, inherits this estate in right of his nother Elizabeth, daughter and sole heir of Robert Ashby of Breakspears, esq. which gentleman, jointly with the Rev. Hector Davies Morgan, M. A. of Trinity College, Minister of Castle Hedingham, Essex, and Chaplain to Lord Kenyon, are the two latest descendants of this ancient family; of whom it is generally supposed that they came out of Leicestershire; but my attempts have been fruitless in endeavouring to connect them with the Leicestershire Ashbys.

The Rev. H. D. Morgan, by his maternal grandfather, is collaterally and nearly connected with the great Judge Sir William Blackstone, knt. His grandfather John Blackstone shone conspicuous as a lover of botany; he was a great intimate with Sir Hans Sloane; there are many of his writings deposited in the Sloanian Library, British Museum. He spent the greatest part of his time at Breakspears, pursuing his favourite study, and possessed some land there, which bears the name of Blackstone's Meadow to this day, He was the author of an ingenious little work, entitled "Fasciculus Plantarum circa Harefield sponte nascentium, cum Appendice ad Loci Historiam spectante. Woodfall, 1737." Yours, &c. N.Y.W.G.

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[Sept.

valley, in the midst of a park, cut into ridings, after the fashion of the 16th century, surrounded by large and dreary fish-ponds, and shadowed by gloomy groves; this romantic mansion, nearly coeval with the oldest of its neighbouring oaks, seems peculiarly adapted to inspire sentiments of terror.

From the Domesday Book we learn that the manor of Littlecote was held of Milo Crispin by Turchetil, and that Godric held it in the time of King Edward, and it was assessed at one hide and a yardland. There was half a ploughland with one borderer; and four acres of meadow, four acres of pasture, and four acres of thorns, and worth ten shillings.

It afterwards became the property of the Darels or Dorrels2, in which family it continued through a long line of succession till the time of Elizabeth, when, as appears by the following traditional evidence, it became the property of the Pophams, in whose family it still remains.

Early in the reign of Elizabeth, a midwife of the town of Newbury in Berks, was called from her bed by a horseman, who, speaking to her at her window, earnestly pressed her to accompany him to a lady who wanted her assistance. A certain mysterious manner accompanied every word spoken by the stranger. He refused to disclose the lady's name, or the place of her abode, and the good woman observed, by the faint light of the Moon, that he was masked. She resolved to refuse, on his proposing that she should be blindfolded till they should arrive at the place from whence he came; but a purse of gold handed upon the point of the horseman's rod, just as she was shutting her casement, and the promise of one yet more valuable, induced her to alter that determination. She dressed herself hastily, submitted to be hoodwinked; and placed herself, trembling, on a pillion behind her unknown guide. After travelling in a dead silence for about three hours, through deep and watery lanes, a sudden halt announced the end of their journey. The good woman was now lifted from her horse;

2 Camden does not mention Littlecote as ever having been in the possession of the Darels, but only as a good seat of Sir John Popham's. Gough, in his Additions, mentions it.

her

1823.]

Traditional Account of Littlecote, Wilts.

her conductor softly unlocked a door, and led her still blindfolded into a house, and through a suite of apartments so spacious, and so numerous, as to impress her mind with a high idea of the grandeur of the owner. At last her companion stopped her, and knocked gently at a door, which was presently opened to admit thein, and as hastily locked as soon as they had entered. The covering was now taken from her eyes; when she found herself in a plainly furnished chamber, in which was another gentleman also masked, and a lady sitting on a bed. After a silence of some minutes, the gentleman informed her in a low whisper that the lady she saw was the person who had need of her professional assistance, and that when the child was born she was to bring it to him in an adjoining closet, to which he retired; the door was behind the tapes try..

The child, a female infant, was not long after, according to order, conveyed to the gentleman, who now led her through a low passage to a small room, which seemed unconnected with the house by any other communication, and in which was a prodigious pile of dry wood in the chimney, blazing with great fury. She was now informed that the child must be thrown into the fire, first stopping its mouth with a cloth, which he presented to her for that purpose. The woman naturally refused, but her companion seizing her throat, drew a dagger, and Yowing to put her instantly to death, she at last consented. Gagging the infant, she attempted to save it by suffocation from pain yet more terrible; but such was the eagerness of the barbarous employer, that she was forced to lay it yet alive on the fire, when its agony gave it strength to spring out on the floor. It was thrown in again, and consumed to ashes. When this

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deed was done, she was conducted to her house in the same manner as she had come from it, and the promised purse was thrown into her cottage after her. The tradition then goes on to relate the usual horrors upon the acquisition of guilty treasure, and concludes that she determined to expiate her crime by bringing the instigator to justice. In the hopes of discovering the house, she traversed every part of the neighbourhood within the distance she supposed she had been conducted, and contrived, under various pretences (but the tradition does not inform us what pretences they were) to examine most of the large mansions which fell in her way. At length, when she was on the point of relinquishing her search, she found at Lit tlecote a chamber and closet, which she could scarcely doubt was the same in which the murder had been com mitted; but in her pocket she had a most positive clue. During the short attendance on the parturient lady, she had the presence of mind to cut out of one of the bed-curtains a small piece of cloth, which upon comparing with a hole in the curtain of the room where she was, was found to tally. She related the whole to a Magistrate. Mr. Dor rells was apprehended and tried on her evidence, but acquitted. It is said that he owed his escape to the eloquence of Sir John Popham, and that in gratitude for such service he bequeathed him this estate.

Thus far tradition; but now for facts. It is certain that in the latter end of Elizabeth, the estate was in the possession of Sir John Popham; as I shall subsequently show.

This Sir John Popham was born at Huntworth, co. Somerset, in 1531; was some time student at Baliol College, Oxford, and was as stout and skilful a man at sword and buckler as any in that age, and wild enough in

3 Deep marks of burning, occasioned by the child's jumping out of the fire, are pretended to be exhibited in the floor of the closet. It is needless to remark on the impossibility of this story.

4 The curtains were of broad blue cloth, fringed with yellow, and are still shown, together with the piece of cloth which the woman cut out, now sewed in its place.

5 In Nichols's History of Leicestershire, vol. III. Part ii. p. 627 seq. is an account of one Mr. John Darrell or Dorrell, famous about the time of the above occurrence, for casting out devils, who was tried by a Special Commission, issued under the authority of the Archbishop of York; which was afterwards removed into the High Commission Court; by whose sentence he was degraded from the Ministry, and committed to close prison in York Castle. Whether this was one of the above family, I have not been able to learn.

6 General Chronicle, vol. I, pp. 226, 227, 228.

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Sir J. Popham.-Roman Pavement at Littlecote.

his recreations". He was made Serjeant-at-Law about 1570; Solicitor General in 1579; Attorney General in 1581; and Treasurer of the Middle Temple. In 1592 he was promoted to the rank of Chief Justice of the King's Bench (not Common Pleas as has been asserted). In 1600 he was sent by the Queen with some others to the Earl of Essex, to learn the cause of so many military men assembling at his house. He was detained by the soldiers therein, which was considered as tantamount to an imprisonment. To this detention Sir John deposed upon his oath at the Earl's trial8.

Mr. Chamberlain, in his Letters to Sir Dudley Carleton 9 in 1601, says, "On the 13th of August, the Queen came to Windsor, and is expected shortly at Mr. Comptroller's 10 at Causham. And so the Progresses should hold on as far as Littlecot, a house of the Lord Chief Justice in Wiltshire. But there be so many endeavours to hinder it, that I will lay no great wager of the proceeding "."

Sir John Popham was a very severe judge. He even counselled King James not to grant so many pardons to malefactors as he was used to do; but his severity did great benefit to his country, even after his death 12. He died in 1607, aged 76, and was buried at Wellington, where he had erected a noble mansion.

Littlecote, though of no great importance in the present day, must have been a place of some consequence in the time of the Romans; for, by the following particulars of a tesselated pavement found here, it appears to have been possessed of a temple.

In the park, in 1730, then in the possession of Edward Popham, esq. was found by his steward Mr. Wm.

[Sept.

George, two feet under ground, a Roman pavement 41 feet by 28, and seemed to have formed the floor of a temple. It consisted of two parts, the templum and sacrarium, answering to the nave and chancel of our churches. The outer part, which was nearly square, had at bottom a border, on the centre of which was a large twohandled cup, supported by two seamonsters with fishes' tails, and behind them two dolphins. At the other end was also a border, with a similar cup supported by two tigers. The floor of the sacrarium was a square, inclosing a circle, and having semi-circles of various rich patterns at three of its sides. In the centre was Apollo playing on his harp; and in four surrounding compartiments, four female figures representing the four seasons, mounted on four beasts; the first, holding a flower in her hand, and seated on a deer, might represent Spring; the second, on a panther, and holding a swan, Summer; the third, resting on a branch, perhaps of a vine, rode on a bull, Autumn; and the fourth, on a goat, held nothing in her hand, and represented Winter. The two first figures were naked to the waist, the two last clothed.

Such is Professor Ward's account of this curious pavement, one of the largest ever found in England, but in 1733 unhappily destroyed. Mr. George, above mentioned, made an exact drawing of it in all its parts, in their proper colours, whence his widow afterwards worked a beautiful carpet reduced to the size of one inch to a foot of the original, and from whence it was engraved by Mr. Vertue, at the expence of the Society of Antiquaries '3.

Among some of the late supersti

7 Fuller's Worthies, vol. II. p. 284; and Chalmers's Biog. Dict.

8 Ib. on the authority of Camden's Elizabeth, anno 1600.

9 An eminent Statesman, born near Watlington, Oxon, March 10, 1573, knighted in 1610, created Viscount Dorchester by King Charles, on his arrival from his embassy to Holland in 1628; died Feb. 15, 1631-2, in his fifty-ninth year, and was buried at Westminster Abbey. Having no heirs, the title became extinct.

10 Sir Wm. Knollys, knt. son of Sir Francis Knollys, K. B. who had been Treasurer of the Household, was Comptroller of the Household in 1579. He was employed by the Queen in 1592, to negotiate between the King of Spain and the Low Countries. In 1601 he was made Treasurer of the Household; and in 1608 created Baron Knollys by King James, whose Queen he entertained at Causham on her way to Bath, 1613. He was made Master of the Wards in 1614, and about the same time elected K. G. He was made Viscount Wallingford in 1616, Earl of Bunbury in 1622, and died in 1631. 11 Nichols's Eliz. Prog. new edit. vol. III. p.565. 12 Fuller's Worthies, vol. II. p. 284.

13 Gough's Camden, vol. I. p. 163.

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