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windows of the chancel contain much stained glass: and among other heraldry, a quaint allusion to the name of Oliver St. John; an olive tree, from the boughs of which hang the different shields of all the heiresses just named. There is also a painting on wooden panel, as large as life, of Sir John St. John and his wife, Lucy Hungerford, of Farley Castle. On the panels is a pedigree of the St. Johns, drawn up by Sir Richard St. George, Garter King at Arms, whose wife was a St. John, sister of the Knight who is painted there. Horace Walpole, in his "Anecdotes of Painting," mentions that upon one occasion, when the furniture of Lydiard house was sold by auction, an old servant of the family during the night hid a bust of Lord Bolingbroke, by Rysbrach, in a vault in the church, from which, in due season, it was restored to light. One of the daughters of Sir John St. John (just mentioned) was wife of Sir Allen Apsley Governor of the Tower, by whom she was the mother of Mrs. Mary Hutchinson the wife and biographer of Col. John Hutchinson, governor of Nottingham Castle. In the church is an inscription to another daughter of Sir John St. John, Katharine, Lady Mompesson. Her husband was Sir Giles Mompesson, of an old Wiltshire family, of Corton and Bathampton Wyly, near Deptford Inn. Sir Giles was M.P. for Great Bedwyn, about 1620. He was also a great projector, dealer, and patentee. In no reign was the system of patents, granted by the Crown, more abused than in that of King James I., chiefly through the fault of, and to fill the purse of, the favourite Duke of Buckingham. Sir Giles Mompesson and another person of the name of Mitchell obtained the privilege of the exclusive manufacture of gold and silver thread, with which the dresses in those days were liberally embellished. This privilege they abused so outrageously, that an example was obliged to be made, and Sir Giles was severely punished. He was the original of the Sir Giles Overreach of Massinger the dramatist (himself a Wiltshire-man).

The most remarkable name in the family of St. John is that of Henry, the first Lord Bolingbroke, the celebrated statesman. He was neither born nor buried here: but Lydiard was his family inheritance. In 1712 he was created Baron St. John of Lydiard,

and Viscount Bolingbroke, but owing to the course he had taken in Queen Anne's reign he was, upon the accession of George I., in 1714, attainted of high treason, and deprived both of his estates and titles. He escaped to France, where he entered the service of the Pretender, but was again unsuccessful. In 1723 he contrived to make his peace at home, and was restored to his estates, but never to his titles. After several years of able hostility to Walpole, he renounced politics, and again retired to France; but upon his father's death came back and lived at Battersea. The "lethalis arundo," the poisoned arrow that rankled in his heart, was his degradation from the House of Lords. His political disappointments embittered his mind against everything else.

During the latter part of his life he employed his great abilities in preparing a grand attack upon Religion. He was looked upon as the Goliath of his party, and great were the vaunts of the wonderful feat he was about to perform. But there was lying in wait for him a champion, of whom he had already had some slight experience, enough to make him hesitate. So he delayed his work: and, in fact, it was not published until 1753, two years after his own death. Bishop Warburton then placed Lord Bolingbroke's philosophy and reputation in the light in which it has since stood, which is this. That though there is much in his works to mislead the people, there is nothing in them to alarm the scholar. And others who have also studied them deeply tell us, that (unlike the case of Lord Bacon, Newton, and others) there is nothing really original in Bolingbroke. With all his transitory splendour, his knowledge was that of other men which he had mastered. He is not the author of a single new discovery in Nature.

Lord Bolingbroke admits the existence of a Deity, but he denies God's moral superintendence. This was anything but new doctrine; but in his hands it was revived with every attraction that language could supply. If he was really anxious for his principles to be adopted and acted upon, then he must have been anxious to destroy in men's minds all checks to conscience, and all the consolations of religion. The world may regard such men as prodigies, but it has no reason to remember them as its benefactors.

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SILBURY HILL; FROM THE
Scale 1 inch to 100 feet

WEST.

Silbury.

By the Rev. A. C. SMITH, M.A.

Read before the Society at Avebury during the annual Meeting at Marlborough, September, 1859.

"Unchanged it stands: it awes the lands
Beneath the clear dark sky;

But at what time its head sublime
It heavenward reared, and why-
The gods that see all things that be
Can better tell than I." *

IVING as I do, though not quite under its shadow, yet

within sight of Silbury, I feel in some degree locally constituted its guardian, and if I hear of any one impugning its purpose, or in any way speaking disrespectfully of the great mound, I have such a wholesome dread of incurring the wrath of the "genius loci," that I consider myself in duty bound to act in some sort as its champion, and rebut any such accusations to the best of my power. Moreover esteeming it as one of the most remarkable and interesting relics of antiquity in this or any other County, and entertaining a strong belief that it contains the remains of the mighty dead of a very early age, I am very desirous to rescue it from the imputation of having been raised for other than sepulchral purposes, under which it has lain since the year 1849, when Mr. Tucker, who drew up the report of its examination by the Archæological Institute boldly concluded his paper by announcing the sepulchral theory to be henceforth exploded.1 From such an assumption I must beg leave to dissent, and I hope to prove that here Mr. Tucker has jumped too rapidly to a conclusion, which is hardly warranted by his premises; and while I enter my humble

*Bode's Ballads from Herodotus, p. 102.

1 Salisbury Volume of the Proceedings of the Archæological Institute for 1849, p. 303. Archæological Journal, vi., 307.

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