MELFORD, called LONG-MELFORD, (Suffolk) near the Stour r. bet. Clare and Sudbury, 3 m. from the latter, has divers good
inns, with handsome houses, and is one of the best and biggest villages in England. It bel. formerly to the abbey of St.
Edmundsbury; but was granted at the Diss. to Sir Will. Cordell, who was speaker of the House of Commons in the R. of Q.
Mary, master of the rolls, and the founder of an hos. here, and has a handsome tomb in its Ch. It went, by marriage of his
sister and heiress to Sir Rich. Allington, and passed by the marriage of her daughter to Sir John Savage, the ancestor of
that E. of Rivers, whose widow's house here, and her seat at St. Osyth in Essex, were plundered, in the beginning of the
civil war bet. K. Cha. I. and the Pt. to the value of 100,000 l, During this, Melford-Hall lay under a mortgage made to
Sir John Cordell by the first E. of Rivers, which being afterwards sold to Sir Rob. Cordell, Bt. he made Melford-Hall his
seat; but male issue failed in his family, and it is now the seat of Sir Cha. Firebrace, who married one of the daughters
and coheirs of Sir John Cordell. Sir Roger Martin, Bt. has also a seat here, whose ancestor of the same name, a mercer
here, was in 1567 lord-mayor of London.