Funny old business is butling. You never know what you might be called upon to do, and you may also have a yearning to live the life of whoever employs you. Take, for instance, a certain nameless butler of the early 19th century who plied his trade at the old Fettiplace mansion, which stood between Swinbrook and the tiny chapel of Widford, the present-day remains of which consist only of bumps in the ground.

According to The River Windrush, a charming book by Wilson MacArthur, published by Cassell in 1946 (incidentally at 10s 6d, or 52 and a half pence in new money ) his career came to a sudden and undignified end on the turnpike, now the A40, in about 1808.

The mansion was let to a charming and urbane gentleman called Mr Freeman, who, in true Jane Austen style, quickly became a great favourite among the county set of west Oxfordshire, since he was single, attractive and apparently rich. But at about the same time as Mr Freeman took up residence in Swinbrook, highway robberies became such a menace on the road, and the mail coach to Gloucester robbed so often, that timid people gave up travelling along it altogether.

The hold-ups never occurred within ten miles of Swinbrook, but they covered a wide area on that road and also on the London to Banbury and London to Worcester roads.

Then, one day, an attack was made on a particularly well-guarded coach and a well-aimed shot brought down one of the highwaymen.

Wilson MacArthur writes: “People stared open-mouthed; and well they might, for he was soon recognised. It was Mr Freeman’s butler, a figure inevitably well known to everyone who had enjoyed the open-handed hospitality of that London gentleman.”

Mr Freeman and his entire household were in reality a gang of thieves, all of whom were subsequently arrested by Bow Street Runners specially sent down from London. According to the book, the mansion never recovered and was left to rot away. A sad end of the line, indeed, for the Fettiplaces, whose stone effigies lie like travellers on couchettes, on a monument in Swinbrook Church (pictured).

The first of the English line arrived on these shores as a gentleman usher to William the Conqueror. The last, Charles, died in 1805. The inheritance went to a nephew who changed his name to Fettiplace, but died soon afterwards — at which point the house was let to Mr Freeman.

A happier tale of a butler happened a few miles upstream along the Windrush, at the Priory in Burford, about 100 years earlier.

Here a butler served up breakfast as usual to the then owner of the Priory, a member of the Lenthall family — but then requested a private interview.

He explained that he had won £3,000 (a huge sum then) in a lottery and wanted to strike a bargain.

He would live the life of a gentleman for one glorious year, but would Mr Lenthall please take him back at the end of that year?

And at the end of the year back he came as a gentleman’s gentleman. Sadly history does not explain exactly how he spent the time in between.

That Mr Lenthall was a descendant of the House of Commons Speaker William Lenthall who bought the Priory from Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, in 1637. He was the speaker who told Charles I to his face: “I have, Sir, neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, in this place, but as this house is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am; and I humbly ask pardon that I cannot give any other answer to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.”