as the chapel of St Blaise. It has been suggested that a doorway at the east end of the south aisle, conveniently near to Ash Place, was made by, the Fowlers to give access to their family pew there.⁴  After Dame Anne’s death her stepson, Nicholas, placed a memorial to her on the south wall of this chancel. From its inscription, which records that she was the daughter of Sir Edward Brabison, baron of Ardey, and sister of William, Earl of Westmeath, there emerges the strange fact that Nicholas himself had married one of Dame Anne’s daughters and one of Dame Anne’s Sons had married Nicholas’ sister. Nicholas’ step-mother had been first married to Samuel Alymer of Akenham Hall in Suffolk, to whom she bore three sons and two daughters. The third of the sons, Anthony, had married Sir Edmund Fowler’s daughter, the second of the daughters, Alice, had married Sir Edmund’s son and Sir Edmund had married their mother.

   The marriage of Nicholas Fowler and Alice Alymer was blessed with at least three children, Thomas, Cicilia and Elizabeth. All were christened at Ash, Thomas in 1643, Cicilia in 1644 and Elizabeth in 1646. There was probably a fourth child, who makes her bow later, in the Marriage register. In 1664, ‘Mris Ann Fowler of this parish’ was married at Ash to ‘Mr. William Gantum of St Botolphs Bishopsgate’.
   Unhappily, the marriage of Nicholas and Alice was short-lived. Nicholas must have died about 1646 or 1647, not long after the birth of his youngest child. His passing is unrecorded in the Ash registers and presumably he, too, was buried with his ancestors at Islington. He was the first of three successive heads of the Fowler family to die in the prime of life. With the last of the three, the male line came to an end.