A Travel Year – Jacques & Chris big adventure

Visiting Burford in the Cotswolds

Today was beautiful! The clear blue sky out our window this morning and forecast of warmth enticed us to go to Burford, a picturesque town on the southern edge of the Cotswolds. For those who have never visited, the Cotswolds is an area of almost impossibly picturesque and quaint villages, united by being built from golden stone, situated on green rolling hills. It’s unforgettable. Burford grew as an important crossroads and very wealthy wool town and today is very popular with tourists. It has lovely old pubs, nice shops and picturesque streets.

Chris found a 7-mile hike loop starting in Burford that sounded good and we drove about a half hour to get there, only slightly delayed by tea, coffee, clotted cream, jam and a large scone. Actually, it’s amazing that we started the hike at all. 🙂 The hike took us over river and dale, and through a few small towns along the way.

As we were walking through Burford, we stopped in the Church of St John the Baptist and found this amusing story on a laminated educational card.

The Story of John Prior

In the south transept, close to where you are standing, there is a smooth black ledger stone with the following inscription:

Here lyeth the body of JHN PRYOR GENT: who was murdered and found hidden in the priory garden in this parish the 39 day of April Anno Domini 1697 and was buried the 6th day of the same month in the 67th yeare of his age.

John Prior was a trustee for the young sons of William Lenthall, Lord of the Manor of Buford and grandson of Speaker Lenthall. William had married his cousin, Katherine Hamilton, who had borne him two sons before absconding with Walter Goss, one of her husband’s grooms. When William died in 1686 he left his estates in trust to his elder son, John Prior and Sir Edward Fettiplace of Swinbrook being the trustees. Meanwhile Katherine had abandoned her paramour, and after her husband’s death married another cousin, Charles Hamilton, 5th Earl of Abercorn. Presumably the Hamiltons then moved into the Priory, although by what right is not clear. It may have been to challenge that right that John Prior called upon Abercorn in April 1697. It is clear that some quarrel arose between them over the Lenthall estate. According to an account published in the Protestant Mercury of 7th April 1697, the pair were seen walking together in the garden. After Abercorn had ridden off ‘to blind (as he believed) all suspicion’, Prior’s body was found in the garden close to where they had last been seen having several barbarous wounds upon his body’. Lord Abercorn was arrested, and brought to trial at the Oxford Assizes on the 20th July, but according to an account left by Thomas Hearne (later the Keeper of the Bodleian Library) the trial was a farce. The jury had been bribed, many of them were drunk and the character witnesses who testified to his “good and honest nature” were not telling the truth. After being acquitted he committed another murder and he soon came to an untimely end.

There is no doubt that Abercorn was guilty. As another contemporary account put it, his sword was bloody, and found to fit the wounds on the victim’s body. He had a reputation for violent speech and conduct. Although denied justice, Prior in a sense had his revenge because Lord Abercorn left Burford shortly after, having no right to remain, and was killed in Ireland in unknown circumstances four years later. Lady Abercorn, who in a sense had been responsible for this fracas, survived until 1721. The heir, in whose interest John Prior had given his life, later assumed the estate, became Sir John Lenthall, and died childless in 1763.

There are lots of lovely stacked stone walls and buildings along the way, through fields, woods and pastures. The village of Swinbrook is lovely.

The landscape is beautiful: bright green grass and lovely spring flowers. Sheep dot the fields. In the woodlands bluebells push up under trees and mounds of daffodils decorate the fields. It’s everything that we could hope for.