Whether or not he was a good tanner, and his apparent affluence in 1770 suggests that he was, William V had also, it seems, been a very capable cricketer. The first full scores to survive from a first-class cricket match are those of a game played between England and Kent in June 1744 on the Artillery ground in London. The ‘Hodswell’ who figured in that score-sheet was apparently William V. As he was at the crease when Kent won by one wicket, he may have made the winning hit, but his undoubted major contribution to that result had been to take four wickets in each England innings. It is good to be able to record that happy occasion in a family history which has more than its measure of sadness.¹¹
   This William lived much longer than his father, his grandfather and his two brothers, but he did not make old bones. A memorial in the Hodsoll chancel records his death in November 1776 at the age of fifty-nine. He had married a Wiltshire girl, Nester, daughter of 

Solomon Hughes of Warminster, but there were no children of the marriage. Against the odds in any family, and particularly in the Hodsoll family, none of the three sons of John II who reached manhood and two of whom married provided a son and heir.
   William V left the estate to his cousin, Charles Hodsoll, whose father of the same name had been one of the younger sons of William IV. Charles had married Mercy Kettle, of Wrotham, at Ash in 1752 and they may then have settled at Crowhurst which, although in a different parish, was hard by South Ash Manor and was one of the farms of the South Ash estate; that at least would explain why the one son and seven daughters born to them from 1755 to 1771 were all baptized at Kingsdown. There seems, incidentally, to have been some difficulty about the Christian name of Charles’ wife; ‘Mercy’ only figures once in the Kingsdown registers and, amongst sundry variants, was less popular than either ‘Mass’