66 Philip Bennet of the Parish of Lyncombe and Widcombe, Bachelor, and Mary Hand, of the Parish of Aller, in the County of Somerset, were married in this Church by licence this fourteenth day of December, in the year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-nine, by me.

"This Marriage was solemnized

between us in the presence
of Ralph Allen.1

Robt. Fleetwood.

"John Chapman, Rector.

Philip Bennet.
Mary Hand.

"N.B.-The Parish Church of Lyncombe and Widcombe by the late Marriage Act deemed Extra Parochial, and the Parish of St. James is rebuilding.

"I do hereby Certify the above to be a true Copy from the Marriage Register of the Parish of St. Peter and Paul, in the city of Bath, extracted from the register this 9th day Nov. 1813.

"Signed, JAMES PHILLOTT, Rector of Bath."

In the Widcombe valley, opposite Prior Park, there stood, and still stand, the ancient and picturesque little Church and

1 This Ralph Allen was the younger son of Philip Allen and nephew of Ralph Allen, and is the same mentioned as witness also in the following :"No. 572.

"Cornwallis Maude, Esqre, of the Parish of Laugharne, in the County of Caermarthen, Widower, and Miss Mary Allen, in their Parish, Spinster, were married in this Church by Licence, this tenth day of June, in the Year One Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-six, by me, Duel Taylor, Rector of Bath.

"This Marriage was solemnised

between Us.

Cornwallis Maude.*

Mary Allen.

"In the presence of Ralph Allen and Philip Bennet.

"I certify ye above to be a true copy from ye Marriage Register of ye Parish of St. James, City of Bath, extracted this 3rd Day June 1830.

"CHARLES CROOKE, Rector."

* Afterwards Lord Hawarden. Mary Allen was the daughter of Philip Allen, by his marriage with Jane Bennet.

Manor House, with their lovely surroundings, forming one of the most beautiful groups near the city.

The Church was built in 1502, and is dedicated to St. Thomas á Becket. The Manor House stands upon the site of a pre-Reformation mansion, which was standing long before the first Richard Chapman, by subtlety, acquired the estate at the Reformation (vide p. 40). In 1656 Walter Chapman employed Inigo Jones to design a new mansion.1 This Chapman family, to whom reference has already been made, figure throughout Bath history for three and a-half centuries. The race has presented various types in almost every profession and trade. There is scarcely a public office of any consideration which has not been filled by a Chapman, sometimes with credit, and occasionally the reverse. The elder branch, of whom the representative lived from the Reformation, down to 1702, in affluence and dignity, became extinct by the death of Scarborough Chapman, when began the reign of Philip Bennet, who married Chapman's only child in the year of her father's death. Besides Philip and other issue, she had a daughter, Jane, who became the wife of Philip Allen, and she died in 1767. It was in 1736 that the last-named Philip Bennet restored the south front of Widcombe House, on which are his arms and those of his two wives; he also made the present entrance, and erected the two handsome pillars, each being surmounted by the Bennet crest. He added the pretty group of offices in the south garden, close to the Church. It is strange that this gentleman, so reserved and circumspect up to middle age, entered about 1747 upon a career of wild dissipation, squandering his fortune with reckless prodigality.

1 Dictionary of Architecture, article "Inigo Jones".

["There are things we do and know perfectly well, though we never speak of them-the moral world has, perhaps, no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable objection to having it called by its proper name. The Ahrimanians worship the devil, but don't mention him, and a polite public will no more bear to read an authentic description of vice than a refined English or American will permit the word teacher to be pronounced in her presence."-Thackeray.]

T would be difficult to write of Ralph Allen and his Times without touching upon the subject of Beau Nash. Of Nash we have ventured to make some brief but emphatic observations in Rambles about Bath, Historic Houses, and Bath, Old and New. We believe we were the first local writer by whom any unfavourable criticisms were published on the life and character of the notorious beau. For some reasons, or for no reasons, we are expected to receive the charming romance by Goldsmith as a trustworthy account of Nash; that is, we are expected to accept his inferences, despite his facts. We may say that Goldsmith's biography of Nash has been the quarry from which all succeeding biographies of Nash have been hewn. It is true that a few writers, aiming at novelty, have manufactured a few dull anecdotes for our edification. We accept Goldsmith's dictum expressed in the opening paragraph: "History," he says (he should also have

said Biography), "owes its excellence more to the writer's manner than the materials of which it is composed." We freely admit that Nash, in succeeding the coarse and vulgar Webster, about 1706, perceived that any attempt on his part to "organize" society, must be made in a different spirit and with a higher aim than had ever entered the mind of his predecessor. Moreover it is clear that, at the outset, Nash really aimed at purifying the curious, not to say motley, and promiscuous admixture of people with whom he had to deal; and we frankly allow that for nearly fifteen years he performed his self-assumed functions with decision and prudence.1 The assemblies were conducted with propriety and success. Again, Nash's private life, if not beyond impeachment, was fairly good. Sobriety was always one of his virtues, and so far he was an example to the by no means exemplary youth of the period who ranged themselves under his banner, and, in a sense, were subject to his sway.

After this all was changed. The first assembly-rooms were

1 Nash possessed no private fortune, and as he gradually lapsed into luxurious and extravagant habits, he became reckless and unscrupulous as to the methods of gratifying them. This mode of life, doubtless, was largely encouraged by the snobs and fashionable cads of the day. There was literally no moral restraint exercised by the society from whom Nash received his principal support. And it must again be admitted that illiterate and ignorant as Nash was, yet in natural shrewdness, general intelligence, and insight into the sort of human nature with which he had chiefly to do, and in the audacity and the assumption of a plausible and factitious authority, he did exercise a unique and irresistible influence upon the persons with whom he had to deal.

The life and character of Nash are excused-nay justified-on the ground of the unrestrained licentiousness of the age. This is the very essence of our indictment. We say that whilst he "curbed the young bloods" of the day and repressed the coarse and vulgar vices which had previously prevailed, Nash erected his own policy-more dangerous because less manifest and revolting-into a system, carried on in secret with all the subtlety and cunning of which Nash was a consummate master.