The Coveney charity was recorded by an undated. extract, obtained from the Diocesan Registry, of a bequest by ‘N’cholas Courney of Ash next Kingsdowne’ to ‘the Collectours of the Parish of Ash and their Succissours for ever of one Tenement with the Appurtenances leased unto Thomas Thurrocke for certain yeares, to be bestowed with the profitte and commodities thereof to the vse pf the Poore People of the sayd Parish of Ash yearely for euer’.
   Nicholas Coveney, ‘weake in body’ when he made his will, was buried on 23 August 1593. Joan, his widow, seems to have found quick solace; on 8 November of the same year she was married to Thomas Jetar. Only on these occasions are Coveneys mentioned in the registers. Nicholas’ tenant could have been the Thomas Thurrocke already mentioned in connection with William Warren’s charity, but perhaps more probably was of the next generation. The names ‘Thurrock’ and 'Durrock' both appear in the registers and it seems likely that the latter was a variant which replaced the former. In that case the Thomas first mentioned may have been the ‘Thomas Durrock’ who died in 1592.
   The survey of the parish made some two hundred years later described two cottages on the west side of Rosemary Lane, then in the occupation of Thomas Ashenden and William Hall, as belonging to

‘The Poor of Ash’. It seems probable that these cottages, long since demolished, represented a conversion or replacement of the tenement given to the poor by Nicholas Coveney.
   Next noted was ‘another Charitable Benefaction’, but for this one no chapter and verse could be given. It consisted of an annual sun of twenty shillings ‘given by one Thomas Comfort as ye ancient people affirm & ye piece of ground bound for the payment of it is called Sandy Croft lyeing at ye upper end of a certain field called White Croft adjoyning to the Kings high way leading from Ash Church to Faukham Green’, which twenty shillings had ‘been constantly paid time out of minde without any dispute’.
   A Thomas, son of John Comfort was christened. at Ash in 1562 and a Thomas, son of Anthony Comfort was christened at Fawkham in 1568. One or other of these, more probably the first, is likely to have been the ‘Thomas Comfort gen(tleman)’ who was one of the witnesses to a memorandum copied into the register book recording ‘that Wm. Hodsoll was Church Warden in the yeare of 0ur Lord 1593 but he receaved not the church stock nor anye part thereof but he laid out 2. 111^s 11^d'. Thomas was a favourite Comfort name; one so called was buried in 1608, another in 1628 and a third in 1649.