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colourful Restoration character, Sir Charles Sedley.2
By his will of 1586, James Crippes of Hartley bequeathed to
his ‘good Landeladie, Misstress Anne Sedley, and Mr. William Sedley,
Esquire to each two angells',3 Whether it was this James
or his son of the same name who carried the twenty shillings to the
churchwardens of Ash does not appear; if the former, perhaps his good
landlady told him to pay it out of his rent.
Of those on the receiving end, William Kyppes was probably
the one of that name who married Alice Greenwell in 1583. She died in 1599
and William, who was left with two or three children, married Joyce Godden
in the same year. He may then have left Ash, for there are no more entries
relating to him or his family.
William Dew, as the surname was more usually spelt, may have
been the William whose son John was christened in 1572 or the William who
married Alice Saunders, widow, in 1597. These two were possibly one
and the same, but there were two Williams in the family, one of whom died
in 1616 and the ether in 1624. The name is not found after 1635, when
Alice Dew, widow, was buried; she no doubt was Alice Saunders that was.
The recording of the Walter charity, which extends to |
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three pages of the register book, consists of ‘A
true Copy of that part of the last Will and Testament of John Walter late
of Falkeham ... Esqr deceased Concerning his Charitie to the Poore’.
Both heading and the extract from the will that fellows appear to have
been copied, with some variations in spelling, from the entry of the
charity made in the Fawkham register book by Edward Archbold, who
was rector of that parish from 1650 to 1666.
For more than three hundred years John Walter's charity,
sometimes known locally as the Coats and Gowns, has played apart, now but
not always minimal, in the histories of the three parishes of Fawkham, Ash
and Hartley. Its aim was to help each year two of the poorest men and two
of the poorest women in each parish, ‘being widdowers and widdowes (if
such poore be in the sayd parishes)’ by providing for each of the men a
‘Coate of good russet cloath with skirts to the knees’ and for each of
the women ‘a gown of good russet cloath’. The gifts for the men were
to begin with Walter's death and for the women with his wife Dorcas’
death and. to continue ‘for euer that is to say soe long as the world
indureth’. The distribution was to be made at Pennis between eight and
nine o’clock in the morning on ‘the 25th day of December |