liability rested with the executors of Sir Ymbert Pugeys, to which Sir Ymbert the custody of Ralph’s lands had been committed during their owner’s minority. In the result, it was decided that the escape had occurred a year and a half before Ralph had attained his majority and that responsibility rested either with the executors or with Sir Ymbert’s son and heir. What emerges incidentally is that the Hodsolls were a family of repute with local knowledge and must then have living in the neighbourhood, perhaps at Hodsoll  Street.²⁶
   The first conclusive evidence that the family were in fact settled in Ash comes from the year 1342, when two young men from the parish, Henry, son of Thomas de Hodeshole and William de Hodeshole, took their initial steps into the priesthood by receiving the first tonsure. Henry’s father may have been the Thomas de Hodesole who figures in the Lay Subsidy roll of 1334-35 for the hundred of Axton, when he was assessed at 4s.4d; 

others of the family who appear on this roll are Clement, assessed at 10s.3¾d., more than the manor of ‘Esse’, which paid only 8s.11½d., Michael, assessed at 3s.ld. and William, whose 8d. was the smallest contribution in the hundred. Another contemporary record of the Hodsolls is of a law suit in 1345, when Roger, son of Clement de Hodeshole, and his brother Thomas were defendants to proceedings brought by Otho de Grandison concerning a fee of Otho’s at ‘Eashe next ffaukham’ - presumably his fee at South Ash.²⁷
   Henry and William had not been the first of the Hodsolls to receive the tonsure. Robert, son of William de Hodeshole, had done so in 1335 and it is likely, though not certain, that he, too, came from Ash. Nor were the Hodsolls of those times by any means the only Ash family to provide candidates for