Читать книгу The Discovery of Witchcraft. Facts, Fiction & Conspiracy Theories Behind the Medieval Witch Hunt онлайн

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This tradition excluded, we find that Sir William Scot of Braberne, now Brabourne, in Kent, is the first of whom we have historical mention. He was knighted in 1336, when the Black Prince was created Duke of Cornwall, and died in 1350: a brass to his memory, being in Weever’s time (1631), the first of the memorials of the Scot family in Brabourne church. According to Philipot, this Sir William was the same with Sir William Scot, then Chief Justice of England; but if Mr. Foss be right in stating that this latter died in 1346, the year of the Black Death, this view cannot be upheld.

Another Sir William, apparently a grandson of the above, acquired through his mother the manor of Combe in Brabourne, and through his first wife and her relations—modes of increase in which the family seem to have been fortunate—that of Orlestone, as well as other places; and in 1420 he built Scotshall, in the manor of Hall in Smeeth, and was in 1428 sheriff of the county, and in 1430 knight of the shire in parliament. He died 1433. Scotshall, from time to time enlarged or rebuilt, and especially so by Sir Edward Scot, in the reign of Charles I, became the family seat for twelve generations. Evelyn, under date August 2, 1663, records his visit to it (soon after the young knight’s marriage), and calls it “a right noble seate, uniformely built, with a handsome gallery. It stands in a park well stor’d, the land fat and good. We were exceedingly feasted by the young knight, and in his pretty chapell heard an excellent sermon by his chaplaine.” It was sold, with the remaining possessions of the family, at the close of the last century, and destroyed in 1808. Some undulations in a field on the north side of the road from Ashford to Hythe, about half a mile to the east of Smeeth church, alone mark its site.