Dauntsey came to the Danvers family by the marriage of Sir John Danvers with the heiress of the Stradlings in about 1500. John Aubrey, a great antiquarian of North Wiltshire, says that all her family were murdered at Dauntsey one Saturday night and that, before she heard the news of her bereavement and consequent wealth, Sir John Danvers, "a handsome gentleman," learned the story and hurriedly “clapt up a match with her." Canon Jackson tried to find some confirmation of this tale, traditional in Dauntsey, but he failed.

On the subject of the later Danverses, Aubrey has some fascinating things to say. The great grandson of the first Sir John - and his namesake - died in 1594, thirty-seven years before Aubrey was born. Through his paternal grandmother, he was related to the family and no doubt heard Sir John -who was, to him, "old Sir John" - much talked of. He was "a most beautiful and good and even-tempered person . . . of a mild and peaceable nature."

Old Sir John's wife was Elizabeth Nevill, daughter of Lord Latimer. Aubrey's grandmother told him that Lady Danvers "had Chaucer at her fingers' ends." She was "a great politician; great witt and spirit but revengeful. Knew how to manage her estate as well as any man; understood jewels as well as any jeweller. Very beautiful but only short-sighted."

They had three sons and seven daughters. The oldest son, Charles, and his younger brother, Henry, had to leave England hurriedly two months before their father's death because, following on some quarrel the details of which are not known, they broke into the house of a man called Chamberlain at Corsham and murdered Henry Long, second son of Sir Robert Long of Draycot, as he sat at dinner there. They fled to France, and their father never saw them again. Aubrey says that " his sonnes' sad accident brake his heart."

Fairly soon after her husband's death, Lady Danvers married Sir Edmund Carey, and, again, we are indebted to Aubrey for the information that she did this in order to get her sons pardoned as Carey was a cousin of the Queen. Whether by this means or some other, the brothers were pardoned and returned to England.

Sir Charles Danvers was soon afterwards concerned in Essex's rebellion and for this was beheaded on Tower Hill, February 6th, 1601. He is supposed to have been buried at the Tower, but Aubrey says that he could find no record of his burial in the register of the Tower Chapel and therefore suspected that his body had been brought to Dauntsey.

After his death, a writ of enquiry was directed to the Sheriff of Wilts to find what goods he had possessed at the time of his attainder and to seize his houses. The sheriff seized Dauntsey and put his agents into occupation of it, but they were "violently expulsed" by the servants of Sir Edmund Carey, Danvers' stepfather. An enquiry had to be held to investigate the question of the possessions of Danvers which, he having been found a traitor, would be forfeit to the Crown, but Carey was too clever. He arranged that most of the commissioners were friends of Danvers, that most of the jury who had been empanelled would not appear, and that their places would be taken by people whom he had carefully selected. It is therefore not surprising that the result of the enquiry was that Sir Charles Danvers was found to be possessed of "neither goods, chattels, lands nor tenements," and there was no forfeited property for the Crown.

Henry Danvers, the second brother, who succeeded to the baronetcy at his brother's death, was "perfect master of the French; a historian; tall and spare; temperate; sedate and solid." He was a distinguished soldier. He was page to Philip Sydney, fought in the Low Countries, in France and in Ireland. James I made him a Baron, Lord President of Munster and Governor of Guernsey. Charles I made him Earl of Danby and a Knight of the Garter. He died at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, on 20th January, 1643, and was buried at Dauntsey. His father and his sister, Lady Gargrave, lie in the same tomb beneath a massive monument of marble.

Danby's epitaph, like that of his father, was written by George Herbert who was twice related by marriage to the Danvers family. His widowed mother, Magdalen Herbert, married John Danvers, brother to Sir Charles and Lord Danby, and Herbert himself married the daughter of their first cousin, Charles Danvers of Baynton.

Aubrey records that George Herbert lived at Dauntsey for a year or more after his marriage. "H. Alien, of Dauntsey, was well acquainted with him, who has told me that he had a very good hand on the lute and that he set his own lyricks or sacred poems. 'Tis an honour to the place to have had the heavenly and ingeniose contemplation of this good man . "

Sir John Danvers, the youngest of the three brothers, "a proud, formal, weak man," was one of those who sat in judgment at the trial of Charles I, thus earning himself the title of the Regicide. He had apparently felt himself to be slighted by his brother, Danby, and after the death of the latter found himself not as much benefitted by the will as he thought he should be, while his sister, Lady Gargrave, received more than he considered her due. It was his desire to spite her and to get his brother's will overthrown that led him to take the most extreme means to curry favour with the party in power. He was remarkably successful. Danby, being a known Royalist, the will was set aside and the sequestered estates were given to Sir John.

The Regicide died in 1655 and was buried at Dauntsey. After the Restoration, he was attainted. The Rev. J. C. Young, a nineteenth century Rector of Lyneham, said that there was a local tradition that his body was hurriedly dug up from Dauntsey churchyard before the order could be enforced that the bodies of the Regicides should be disinterred, hanged at Tyburn and their heads fixed at Westminster Hall. Danvers' body is supposed to have been taken to a certain bank in the grounds of Bradenstoke and there secretly re-buried. Young thought the story was confirmed by the discovery of a skeleton in 1840 near Bradenstoke Priory, but there is no evidence for it except tradition.

Some of the Danvers properties passed to Sir John's daughter, Lady Lee of Ditchley, and through her daughter to the Earls of Abingdon. Dauntsey, however, was forfeited to the Crown on the attainder of Sir John, and, after remaining as royal property for some years, was granted in 1690 to Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Monmouth, later Earl of Peterborough. He distinguished himself as a general in the War of the Spanish Succession, and Macaulay wrote in praise of him. Whether he ever lived at Dauntsey is not known. His descendant, the last Earl of Peterborough, lived there and died there in 1814. He had a sumptuous funeral costing £3,000 and his funeral cortege, in order to give the neighbourhood a good view, travelled 2 miles in carrying the body from Dauntsey House to the Church which is next door. It must have caused some excitement in the neighbouring villages and even more in Dauntsey itself, and I imagine that it is this Earl whose memory is preserved by the public house near Dauntsey Station called the Peterborough Arms.

The Almshouse built and endowed by Lord Danby still stands in Dauntsey. The big house has been rebuilt but still occupies the same site.

In the latter years of the nineteenth century, Dauntsey was bought by Sir Henry Meux, a wealthy brewer who bought a lot of property in North Wiltshire. His wife was a remarkable character, Lady Meux was not accepted by her husband's aristocratic family nor by polite Victorian society. She claimed to have been an actress before her marriage to Henry Meux, but was believed to have worked under the name Val Reece at the Casino de Venise in Holburn. The magazine Truth claimed that for a time she had cohabited with a certain Corporal Reece in the Life Guards. He divorced her and went abroad. On his return, they were married again. Then she divorced him. In the nineteenth century this was thought rather odd. Then she married Henry Bruce Meux in haste and in secret on 27th August 1878. They spent part of every year at Dauntsey and kept a pack of harriers there.

Soon after their marriage, Sir Henry and Lady Meux went to Egypt on a tour. This roused in her a great enthusiasm for Egyptian antiquities, and she formed a large collection of them which she bequeathed to the British Museum on condition that it should be kept together as a complete collection in a suitable place. The British Museum refused it, She published, at great cost, a work on Egyptian antiquities.

Lady Meux was given to doing very original things. It is on record that in February 1885, she drove to Christian Malford to call on Lady Savernake who was staying in a house there. Not finding her in, she broke all the windows before driving home again. The tale is still told of the method she used to thaw the frigidity of the members of the Beaufort Hunt towards her. As they took not very much notice of her, she decided to do something that would oblige them to take notice, and she appeared at a meet at Swalletts Gate riding on an elephant. A number of horses bolted, to the discomfiture of their riders, and Lady Meux - in a way - had won her point.

Another story relates how, in 1884, a local farmer was sent to prison for attacking two men whom he mistook for lord Bolingbroke's keepers. Lady Meux apparently disliked Lord Bolingbroke's keepers, too, so she was particularly sorry for the farmer. When he came out of prison, she gave a sumptuous repast for him at the Royal Oak Hotel, Wootton Bassett, and invited a lot of people and had a band to play "Home, Sweet Home."

She gave the Town Hall to Wootton Bassett. When Meux died, in 1900, he left her everything. She survived him by ten years, but after her husband's death she did not come back to Wiltshire, and in 1906 the Meux properties in this county were sold.