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 CHAPTER II

the fourteenth century Lord Canning's ancestors were great people in Bristol. William Canynges, a wealthy cloth-worker and ship-owner, was Bailiff of that city in 1361, was six times its Mayor, and its representative in three successive Parliaments. His son was also Mayor. Of his grandsons, one, Thomas, became Lord Mayor of London, and took an active part in the suppression of the tumults headed by Jack Cade. Another grandson, William, maintained the family prestige by being four times Mayor of Bristol. In this capacity he had the honour of entertaining, successively, Margaret of Anjou and Edward the Fourth, and established a more lasting claim to the gratitude of posterity by restoring the beautiful church of St. Mary, Redcliffe, which had been damaged by a thunderstorm. His monument is still to be seen there, and 'Mr. Canynges cofre,' long preserved in the Muniment Room of the church, acquired unexpected celebrity by supplying the material with which Chatterton constructed the most curious literary fraud of modern times, the Rowley forgeries.

His nephew, Thomas Canning, by his marriage with Agnes Salmon, heiress of Foxcote in Warwickshire,