Buckland, Gloucestershire

Sir Richard Gresham (1494–1549) was a successful merchant who in 1537 was elected Lord Mayor of London. He served as a commissioner under Henry VIII,[14] Three years after being granted the manor of Buckland, one of his many properties, he died, and the estates passed to his son Sir Thomas Gresham.[9] Thomas was even better than his father at accumulating wealth and land, serving as a financier and royal agent in turn to Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I.[15] Although he was lord of the manor for 30 years, there is, however no evidence that he lived at Buckland, or even visited it. Amongst his many achievements, he founded the Royal Exchange. His only son died unmarried in 1566, so when Thomas died in 1579, his bequests included generous provision for his foundation, Gresham College, London's first institution of higher learning. The manor of Buckland, however, passed to the eldest son of his sister, Christian.

Christian Gresham married Sir John Thynne in 1549, just before her father died. John Thynne was steward to the Duke of Somerset, and even before this advantageous marriage was gaining preferments and amassing a considerable fortune.[16] Christian died before 1566, leaving 9 children, and Sir John married again. He had by this time acquired a vast estate at Longleat and began the long task of building his mansion. His eldest son, also John, received his maternal inheritance, including Buckland, in 1579 on the death of Christian's father,[9] but within a year his own father died, and he was master of Longleat. His son Thomas inherited the Longleat and Gloucestershire estates when the younger Sir John died in 1604.[17]

Tangible evidence of the Thynnes at Buckland occurs over a hundred year's later. Thomas's third son, Henry Frederick, had three sons, the second of whom, James Thynne of Buckland, had become the lord of the manor, and appears to have been resident in the village. He is credited with renewing the wainscotting, pews and pulpit in the Church.[4] He died unmarried, aged 66, in 1709,[18] and a memorial in St Michael's Church records how he left his 'large personal estate to pious uses', and his lands to his nephew, Thomas Thynne.[4] Thomas, as third son of a third son, would have had few expectations of inheritance. However his uncle (the 1st Viscount Weymouth, James' elder brother) had inherited Longleat when another Thomas Thynne was assassinated in Pall Mall in 1682,[19] and when Henry, the heir, died without sons in 1708, Thomas, who erected the Buckland monument, had become heir to the entire Longleat estate. Tragically he died a year after James, in 1710, a month before his son was born, The baby Thomas became heir to Longleat, and became 2nd Viscount Weymouth, inheriting the Longleat estates aged just 4, when his great uncle, the 1st Viscount, died.[19] The manor of Buckland was thus re-united with the Longleat estates, and Thomas's son, the 3rd Viscount, was made 1st Marquis of Bath in 1789.[19]

In the 1790s the 1st or 2nd Marquess sold Buckland Manor to Thomas Phillipps,[9] a local magistrate and landowner, who acquired a number of local estates around Broadway, including Middle Hill and Child's Wickham.[38] Phillipps died in 1818, and the property all passed to his son, also Thomas Phillipps, who had embarked on a lifetime of collecting documents and manuscripts on a huge scale. He accumulating some 60,000 manuscripts, a great many of which he worked on, indexed, transcribed, and in many cases published, printing his books and leaflets from his printing press in Broadway Tower, Middle Hill.[38] In addition to acquiring documents, Phillipps was meticulous in keeping his own estate records.[39] Harrison Horblit, an American with a similar enthusiasm for documents, acquired many of the Phillipps documents and these, including many Buckland estate records, are now in the library of the Grolier Club of New York.[40] When Thomas jnr died in 1872, the terms of his father's will ensured the inherited properties were passed on to his eldest daughter, Henrietta. She had eloped to marry James Orchard Halliwell, a Shakespeare scholar who met her whilst studying her father's manuscripts. Thomas refused his consent, and cut off all communication following the elopement. But it was still Henrietta and Halliwell (who later change his name to Halliwell-Phillipps) who became the next masters of Buckland Manor.[39]

St Michael's church, Buckland

For many years the village church, St Michael's, housed a sixteenth-century copy of The Acts and Monuments (popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs). However, the book was stolen in January 2012.[41]