Page:Austen Lady Susan Watson Letters.djvu/340

LETTERS OF JANE AUSTEN The first of these Barons was Sir William Sands, whom King Henry the Eighth advanced to that dignitie, being Lord Chamberlaine unto him, and having much amended his estate by marrying Margerie Bray, daughter and heire of John Bray, and cousin to Sir Reinold Bray, a most worthy Knight of the Order of the Garter, and a right noble Banneret: whose son Thomas Lord Sands was grandfather to William L. Sands that now liveth.”

Warner has, in his “History of Hampshire,” an interesting account of this place and of the Sands family, concluding thus: “About 1654, the ancient family mansion of the Vine, together with the estate, was sold, in those unhappy times, to Chaloner Chute, Esq., a lawyer, who, in 1656, was returned member for Middlesex; and again for the same place in the Parliament of Richard Cromwell; and also Speaker of the House, but from the anxiety of his mind respecting the tumults, he was so ill, that the Parliament chose another Speaker, until his health should be re-established; but that never happened: he dying April 15, 1659.” Anthony Chute, says Warner, “stood the famous contested election for the county” in 1734, and afterwards sat for Yarmouth and subsequently for Newport in the Isle of Wight. A collateral branch of Chutes, from Norfolk, came into this property in 1776. &emsp;&emsp;[304]