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A Downland Parish - Ash by Wrotham in Former Times by W. Frank Proudfoot

                             Chapter 3 - The Manor of Scotgrove continued  page 35

this John made his will against a background of debts and mortgages. He left, however, a quite substantial landed. estate, from which he made provision for his widow and two sons and for the raising of portions of £300 for each of his three daughters. For the latter purpose, and. for the payment of his debts, he directed the sale of certain lands, including his farm in Ash and Hartley then in the tenure or occupation of Robert French, with the wood and wood-ground belonging to it, and also his lands, both arable and woodlands, in Ash and Hartley then in the tenure or occupation of John Dawlton.30  The Scotgrove was probably included in the lands so directed to be sold,  but there was some litigation following Walter’s death and possibly not all the terms of his will were strictly carried out. In any case, his eldest daughter Dorcas married ‘one Walker’, by name John, as is evidenced by the fact that five little Walkers born to them were christened at Fawkham in the years 1660 to 1669. Dorcas died in 1669, some months after the birth of her youngest child. It could be that her portion had been provided in kind in lieu of cash and, coming to John Walker in right of or from his wife, was sold by him to Mr Morris on her death. We hear no more of Walker or his family, so probably they then departed.
   Morris did die in 1674. He seems to have had no children of his own but he had a stepdaughter, Frances Chittin, or Chitting, who in 1654 had been married at Ash to John Collinvell, or Collinwell, of Otford. 

Frances and her two children, Mary and. Susan Collinvell, were the principal beneficiaries under his will.31  She was a widow when the will was made but two months later was married at Ash to the Revd Everard Clement who, in the meantime, had succeeded Morris as rector. Frances cannot have been a young woman when she married the new rector, but she was young enough to bear him three children, of whom unhappily one died in infancy and another at the age of three. It was the second child, Margaret, born in 1679, who became the mother of ‘young Umfrey’.
   The marriage of an Umfrey of Darenth to a Finch heiress had brought to. the Umfrey family the manor of Kingsdown near Sittingbourne; thenceforth it was almost a matter of divine right that an Umfrey son and heir should be christened ‘Finch’. The one of that name who married Margaret Clement was probably the Finch Umfrey who had been baptised at Fawkham in 1675. Their son, Finch, was born in November 1700; some three months later, Margaret died. The elder Finch, whose home was at Green Street Green in Darenth, subsequently married Jane, one of the daughters and co-heiresses of Thomas Gifford of Pennis, but he did not make old bones and ‘young Umfrey’ soon came into his inheritance.
   The Umfreys later removed to Dartford the last of the family

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