The last historical article in the Link looked at a group of families who probably lived at the Manor House in the 1800s and perhaps as far back as the early 1700s. Before that, although the evidence is very slight, it seems to have been occupied by royal officials, part of a group based in London but also living conveniently close to the Castle in Windsor, Eton and Datchet. The most significant character was Thomas Brinley, whose tombstone in the church is frequently visited by Americans seeking their ancestors. This black marble slab has been re-set in the chancel floor behind the altar and is easily seen. The inscription reads:

HERE LYETH Ye BODY OF THOMAS BRINLEY
ESQ BEINGE ONE OF THE AUDITORS OF
THE REVENNUE OF KINGE CHARLES THE
FIRST AND OF KINGE CHARLES Ye SECOND
BORNE IN THE CITTY OF EXETER HEE
MARRYED ANNE Ye DAUGHTER OF WILLIAM
WASE OF PETWORTH IN SUSSEX GENT
WHO HAD ISSUE BY HER FIVE SONNES AND
SEAVEN DAUGHTERS HE DIED Ye 15^TH DAY OF
OCTOr IN THE YEARE OF OUR LORD 1661

The Auditors of the King's Revenue were officials whom we would now call civil servants. Land and property made up much of the crown's great wealth, but Tudor and Stuart monarchs were constantly short of actual money. The Auditors' primary job had been to visit the king's estates to assess and collect rents, but increasingly they were also required to value land, make contact with buyers and negotiate sales to boost the royal coffers. Thus they combined the skills of a modern accountant, a surveyor and an estate agent, and answered fairly directly to the King although the office was a branch of the Exchequer. This was a closely-knit group, as young men were trained as clerks to one of the seven Auditors before becoming their deputies or partners and eventually taking on an Auditorship themselves.

The first Auditor living in Datchet was Richard Budd, to whom Thomas Brinley was clerk. We know Budd was here at least by 1625 because in that year he wrote to the tax collector in London to say that he had already paid his dues in Datchet - but of course he didn't give anything so useful as his address! Budd had himself been clerk to Auditor Thomas Hanbury (brother of Richard) in the 1580s and was related through his wife Rose to Richard Hanbury and the Wheeler family of Riding Court. It is thought that these connections were the reason that he settled in Datchet. His sister had married into the Wase family, and that relationship was extended when his clerk Thomas Brinley married Anne Wase in about 1630. Such a dense network of family and business interests is typical of the time, and the above is only a brief outline of a much more complex situation.

We do not know where in the village Richard Budd actually lived, but the current suggestion is that it may have been the Manor House, perhaps followed by the Wases and eventually by Thomas Brinley. It was rented out directly by the crown and then by the Wheelers who bought it as part of the Manor of Datchet in 1631, and is the only high status house with no known occupants during this period. Neither Richard Budd, William Wase nor Thomas Brinley left any property in Datchet by their wills, which strongly suggests that they had rented rather than owned the houses where they lived; this is just one more piece of circumstantial evidence.

Budd was a wealthy man; in a taxation list he paid an amount second only to William Wheeler of Riding Court, but as the value of his possessions rather than land, which was probably even more impressive to his neighbours. He was godfather to Brinley's son Richard and left him by his will all his 'household stuff' at Datchet, to be used by Richard's mother Anne Brinley during her life. To Thomas Brinley Budd bequeathed his copy of Sir Walter Raleigh's History of England

There is one source which provides a tiny glimpse into the lives of these people: in 1626 Eton College held an inquiry into the will of the vicar of Datchet, because his widow was refusing to hand over a bequest the vicar was said to have made to the College. Richard and Rose Budd, together with Thomas Brinley and several other gentlemen from the village, attested to how the will was found concealed in the vicar's clothes when he died suddenly at the vicarage house. Auditor Budd stated that the vicar had made a will by his advice, sitting in an arbour in the garden of Budd's house in Datchet. All the witnesses had come running to the vicarage when he was taken ill, having been carried there by two men in a chair. Rose said that the other gentlemen found the purported will in his 'bosom' as they unloosed the sick man's cassock while she ran to fetch clean sheets and a warming pan to make up his bed. When she came back the papers were shown to her, laid on the window sill, and she gave them to the vicar's maid to pass onto his wife as she was told they were important. The outcome of the inquiry is unclear, but the circumstances could be seen as suspicious.

The main interest of this case is to show that by 1626 we have not only Richard Budd living in the village but also his clerk Thomas Brinley at least visiting if not actually living here with him. In 1647 Brinley's youngest child was baptised in the village church, all the others having been baptised in the 1630s and 1640s in London. During the period of the Civil War and Cromwell's Commonwealth, from 1649 to 1660, Thomas and Anne Brinley were in dire trouble; he was seen as a Royalist by the Parliamentary side and stripped of his office and it is possible that all his assets were seized. It has been suggested that he went into hiding, and he certainly kept a very low profile throughout those dangerous years. There is evidence that the couple were trying to maximise their financial investments overseas in order to provide for all their children, the seven daughters and three surviving sons, in case the worst should happen.

On the restoration of Charles II in 1660 Brinley was given back his original auditorship but died a year later, which explains the tombstone claim of having been an Auditor to Kings Charles I and II. The last, and most convincing, piece of evidence is provided by Brinley's will in 1661. As was usual, two of his neighbours drew up an inventory of the possessions in his house, valuing them for probate purposes and listing items in each room in order as they walked through. It is strange that Brinley's possessions seem hardly sufficient to furnish the house and are of low value; perhaps he had fallen on very hard times or maybe everything of quality had already been passed on to his children for safe-keeping. Such inventories are often used for establishing the number and type of rooms in houses of the past, and the internal layout at various periods. In this case, if the two present tenements of the Manor House are read as one, the appraisors' route exactly fits for the three stories and the sequence of rooms, including some unusual features which are similar to Riding Court. On this basis alone it is highly likely that it was Thomas Brinley's house, at least at the time of his death. As at present there were subsidiary dwellings each side of the big house which may have been occupied simultaneously by this group of families - or by others completely unrelated.

The reason for American interest in the Brinley tombstone is that several of his children settled on Long Island, having been sent out for their own safety and prosperity during the perilous Civil War years in England. In the next Link article their fortunes at Sylvester Manor, an important and almost unchanged early settlement, will be followed.