Removal from Steventon—­Residences at Bath and at Southampton—­Settling at Chawton.

The family removed to Bath in the spring of 1801, where they resided first at No. 4 Sydney Terrace, and afterwards in Green Park Buildings.  I do not know whether they were at all attracted to Bath by the circumstance that Mrs. Austen’s only brother, Mr. Leigh Perrot, spent part of every year there.  The name of Perrot, together with a small estate at Northleigh in Oxfordshire, had been bequeathed to him by a great uncle.  I must devote a few sentences to this very old and now extinct branch of the Perrot family; for one of the last survivors, Jane Perrot, married to a Walker, was Jane Austen’s great grandmother, from whom she derived her Christian name.  The Perrots were settled in Pembrokeshire at least as early as the thirteenth century.  They were probably some of the settlers whom the policy of our Plantagenet kings placed in that county, which thence acquired the name of ’England beyond Wales,’ for the double purpose of keeping open a communication with Ireland from Milford Haven, and of overawing the Welsh.  One of the family seems to have carried out this latter purpose very vigorously; for it is recorded of him that he slew twenty-six men of Kemaes, a district of Wales, and one wolf.  The manner in which the two kinds of game are classed together, and the disproportion of numbers, are remarkable; but probably at that time the wolves had been so closely killed down, that lupicide was become a more rare and distinguished exploit than homicide.  The last of this family died about 1778, and their property was divided between Leighs and Musgraves, the larger portion going to the latter.  Mr. Leigh Perrot pulled down the mansion, and sold the estate to the Duke of Marlborough, and the name of these Perrots is now to be found only on some monuments in the church of Northleigh.

Mr. Leigh Perrot was also one of several cousins to whom a life interest in the Stoneleigh property in Warwickshire was left, after the extinction of the earlier Leigh peerage, but he compromised his claim to the succession in his lifetime.  He married a niece of Sir Montague Cholmeley of Lincolnshire.  He was a man of considerable natural power, with much of the wit of his uncle, the Master of Balliol, and wrote clever epigrams and riddles, some of which, though without his name, found their way into print; but he lived a very retired life, dividing his time between Bath and his place in Berkshire called Scarlets.  Jane’s letters from Bath make frequent mention of this uncle and aunt.