The bone-bed of Axmouth in Devonshire and Westbury and Aust in Gloucestershire, in the Penarth or Rhaetic series of strata, contains the scales, teeth and bones of saurians and fishes, together with abundance of coprolites; but neither there nor at Lyme Regis is there a sufficient quantity of phosphatic material to render the working of it for agricultural purposes remunerative.
He was elected to represent Lyme Regis in Elizabeth's second parliament of 1563 as well as for Banbury, and preferred to sit for the former borough.
No evidence of settlement on the site of Lyme Regis exists before that afforded by a grant, dated 774, purporting to be by Cynewulf, king of the West-Saxons, of land here to the church of Sherborne, and a similar grant by King Æthelstan to the church of Glastonbury.
The last was acquired by the family of Bayeux, from whom it passed by marriage to Elias de Rabayne, whose nephew, Peter Baudrat, surrendered it to the crown in1315-1316when the king became lord of one moiety of the borough, henceforth known as Lyme Regis.
Lyme ranked as a port in 1234, and Edward I.
