that, thanks are due to Sir Martin's predecessor; parish registers were invented, or at least initiated, by Thomas Cromwell.
   The parson of Ash who would have greeted Bowes when he came, as presumably he did come, to inspect his newly acquired manors was one William Wyels. Wyels, who was the last rector of the parish to be presented by the Hospitallers, was instituted on 7 April 1533. He was no stranger to the district, as he had been rector of Ridley for more than a decade. Seemingly, he had exchanged benefices with Thomas Slaughter or Slater, who was but briefly at Ash and who may have felt that he could better weather the gathering storm in the obscurity of Ridley.⁴
   Wyels came to the parish at what could hardly have been a more difficult time. On the day of his institution, there ended the fifth session of the ‘Reformation Parliament’. Three days later, Archbishop Cranmer opened his inquiry into Catherine of Aragon’s marriage 

to the King and, before the month was out, pronounced it void. Within a year came the final breach with Rome, whereupon the clergy were called upon to renounce the papal authority by subscribing a declaration that ‘the Bishop of Rome hath no greater jurisdiction committed to him by God in this realm of England than any other foreign bishop’.
   That demand inevitably led to much heart-searching and much anxious consultation amongst the clergy, in which Wyels and his brethren in the locality of Ash no doubt participated. Wyels’ signature to the declaration follows immediately the signatures of William Myrd, rector of Kingsdown, and Richard Edmondson, rector of Fawkham, which suggests that these three may have been acting in consort. There is no signatory from either Ridley or Hartley and, of the remaining six of Ash’s immediate neighbours, Wrotham, Kemsing, Stansted and Ightham each only mustered a curate. Others who signed