The Thomas Comfort who bound Sandy Croft may have been of an earlier generation. The reference to 'the Kings highe waye’ is unlikely to have any significance in this respect; probably it merely reflected the fact that the entry was made in the register book after Elizabeth's reign, assuming such to have been the case. The memorandum reads as if it was made de novo rather than copied from a previous record; if so, ‘ye ancient people’, however great their antiquity, were apparently still around, though it does not necessarily follow that the gift was actually made in their day. As for ‘time out of minde’, there is no telling how long that was. The precise purpose of the gift is not stated and may have been forgotten; it was merely referred to as ‘belonging to this Parish’. Comfort’s could well have been the oldest of Ash’s perpetual charities.
   Sandy Croft lay to the north of the road ‘leading from Ash Church to Faukham Green’, which was the road now known as Billet Hill. White Croft had by 1792 become White Lands, a field of some nine and a half acres, but the original name survived in that of a coppice called White Croft Shaw. The reference to ‘Faukham Green’ is of interest inasmuch as this may be the earliest surviving example of the use of that name. In medieval 

times, the hamlet of Fawkham Green was known as Ilkyngdenne or Elkenden and as late as the reign of Elizabeth I it appears in a legal document as Iltenden’.¹
   The only ‘once for all’ gift recorded in the register book was a sum of twenty shillings, ‘the whole legacye & Bequest of John Sidley of Southfleet ... esquiere to be bestowed & imployed vppon the repairing’ of the ‘Churche of Ashe’. The entry takes the form of a copy of the receipt for the legacy on 6 June 1585 ‘by or from hands of Jeames Krippes of Hartley ... yoma’ and which was given by the churchwardens, William Kyppes and William Due.
   The Southfleet branch of the Sedley family, who had been settled there at Scadbury since the fourteenth century, had acquired about the year 1550 the manor of Hartley; this they were to hold for about two hundred years. John Sedley died in August 1581, so no remarkable expedition had attended the winding up of his estate. He was survived by his wife Anne, born a Colepeper of Aylesford, and three sons of whom the eldest, William, later lived at Aylesford Friars and was created a baronet by James I. William's grandson was that