Devonshire Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Devonshire Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Devon (England) -- Biography; Devon (England) -- History
We need not follow in detail all Bampfylde-Moore Carew’s adventures.
He went to Sweden, where he collected money on the ground that he
was a Presbyterian Minister, to Paris where he posed as a refugee
Romanist from England; he was again arrested and sent to Maryland, and
again escaped. He pretended to be a soldier wounded at Fontenoy, and
exhibited a raw beefsteak attached to his knee as his open wound. In a
word his disguises, his rascalities were endless.
Many attempts were made by his family to reclaim him, by Lord Clifford
who was his first cousin, but all in vain.
He died in obscurity in 1758, at the age of fifty-five, at Bickleigh,
where he is buried. It is not known what became of his daughter, the
only child he had.
WILLIAM GIFFORD
William Gifford, the satirist, was born at Ashburton in April, 1756.
His father’s name was Edward, and he says that his great-grandfather
“was possessed of considerable property at Halsbury, a parish in the
neighbourhood of Ashburton.” There is no such parish, but there is the
_manor_ of Halsbury that belonged to the Giffords or Giffards in the
neighbourhood of Bideford, in Parkham parish.
As William Gifford does not give the Christian names of his grandfather
and great-grandfather, it will not be an easy matter to trace descent
from the Giffards of Halsbury. That estate was sold by Roger Giffard,
who died in 1763, seven years after the birth of William.
Roger had inherited Halsbury from his great-uncle, of the same
Christian name, who died without issue in 1724. There is no trace of
any legitimate son of this Roger.
No Giffords appear in the Ashburton register prior to 1716, when Mary,
daughter of Edward Gifford, was baptized; but there were Giffords, but
not gentlefolk, in the neighbouring parish of Ilsington.
William Gifford’s great-grandfather was of the same generation as Roger
Giffard of Halsbury, second son of John Giffard, of Brightleigh, who
succeeded to Halsbury, under some family arrangement, in consequence
of the then heads of the Halsbury Giffards dying without issue. It
is possible that the last Halsbury Giffard may have left his estate
to Roger of Brightleigh, in consequence of his having disinherited a
worthless son. In this case William Gifford’s story of a disinheritance
may have some foundation. But one would expect to find an entry in the
Parkham registers of the baptism of such a son; and there is none.
[Illustration:
_I. Hoppner, R.A._
_R. H. Cromek_
W. GIFFORD]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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