of Hampden Pye, which Barham thus versified, was one once current in Faringdon and Uffington, and the surrounding district; and told how he, the eldest son, heir to the family estates, contracted what his family regarded as an undesirable marriage, and how he was hounded on to join the naval expedition to Vigo, under the command of Sir George Rooke, in 1702. His own mother is said to have been chiefly instrumental in this, and to have been among those who secured his being placed prominently in the post of danger, so that he might be got rid of. One of the earliest shots in action carried off the head of Hampden Pye, who was by no means the reckless youngster we might at first suppose, for a comparison of dates shows him to have been fifty-five years of age at the time. It was believed in Faringdon that always afterwards, when his mother went out in her carriage, the spectre of her son stood at the door with his head under his arm, handed her in, and took his seat opposite. He grew even more troublesome after her death, but was at last “laid” for a hundred years in a small pond near the house by an eminent divine skilled in dealing with refractory ghosts. “The period,” continues Barham, writing in 1832, “lapsed a few years ago, and the people are now very shy of passing the said pond after dark.” And now the best part of another century has fled; but in the meanwhile the ghost of Hampden Pye appears to have been quiescent. But the most famous of the Pyes was that Henry James Pye, born here in 1745, who was descended from Edmund, the younger brother of the unfortunate Hampden, and was not only a typical county gentleman, and sometime a member of Parliament, but became also, in 1790, Poet Laureate. The appointment was one of Pitt’s political jobs, and given as a reward for support in Parliament. Pye effected a change in the old-time payment of poets-laureate in kind by the annual gift of a tierce of Canary wine, and accepted an annual £27 instead.