[LETTER FROM REV. JOHN WALROND OF OTTERY, ENG., TO REV. WILLIAM WALDRON, MINISTER OF BOSTON, AND BROTHER OF SECRETARY WALDRON.]

Ottery, March 8, 1725-6.
"Rev. and dear Sir,

It was a very pleasant surprise to me to receive a Letter from you, who no doubt are of the same Name and Family with myself, tho' a letter in it be transposed, and who by Dr. Mather's Character of you, are not the least in your Father's House.

I have made some Enquiry about the Somersetshire Branch of our Family, from whence you are descended, but cannot exactly determine, tho' I am apt to think it must be from one of those two Gentlemen, of which, one was Walrond, of Illbrewers who had about five hundred Pounds pr. Annum or more, and the other Walrond of Saye, of about the same Value, and I think both of them Justices of the Peace, in that County, one of them I am sure was so, viz., the former; both of them degenerated into looseness of Living in Charles 2ds Reign, and both ruined their Estates and dyed poor, above twenty years since. Walrond of Illbrewers was a great persecutor of the Dissenters, but in the conclusion wanted bread.

There is an honest family of about a hundred Pounds pr. annum, still living at Wellington, in Somerset, very excellent Men, great supports of Religion, and one of the Brothers abt your Age, a very good young Minister, living now in Dorsetshire.

The Head of all our Family still remains in a good Estate, about a thousand Pounds pr. Annum, from whom I am the second Generation. The seat is called Bradfield in Devon.

It was granted by the Crown, about six hundred years since, to one Richard Walerand, and has continued in the Family to this Day; The last Gentleman that dyed was a very pious good Man, about eighty years of Age and an excellent Magistrate in his Country, that could at any time lead three hundred Freeholders, to the Election of a Shire Knight; but his son is degenerate and very wicked: I conversed much with the old Gentleman, but this is no Friend to my Profession.

Another Branch sprung from Bradfield House in this county (beside those two families in Somerset before mentioned) which is seated at Bovey, in the East of Devon, which Branch sprang from its Root about 340 years since, and now inherits at least, a thousand Pounds per Annum; This also has degenerated and become like other Gentlemen in England: For Religion indeed, is almost quite gone, out of the Familys of the Gentry, by Means of a loose and licentious Clergy.