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having, it is said, suffered an early disappointment in
love, died unmarried. He left his estate to a distant kinsman, but with
remainder to his medical attendant, Dr Thomas Lane, to whose heirs it
eventually came.10
Leonard Bosvile's death had left his wife Jane with a young
and fatherless family for the second time in her life. Her youngest child,
James, died in the following year; he was only three years old. Jane
survived her second husband many years. Happier events at Ash that she
lived to see were the wedding of her daughter Margaret Bosvile to a young
London lawyer, Thomas Harris, and the christening in 1699 of her
grandchild, Jane Fowler. Then, in the next year, came the premature death
of the child’s father, Edmund Fowler. His daughter, not yet a year old,
became heir to the Fowler fortune.
Edmund Fowler, whose short life was marred by a serious
impediment in his speech, had married into an old Kentish family, the
Petleys. His wife, Jane, was the daughter of Ralph Petley of Riverhead,
who was Sheriff of Kent in 1680, and the granddaughter of Thomas Petley of
Filston in Shoreham. Jane’s brother, Thomas Petley, had married one of
the daughters of Thomas Gifford of Pennis, which may explain how, she and
Edmund Fowler met. Edmund apparently divided his time between Ash and
London and it was in London, |
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where he had lodgings in Old Southampton Buildings in
Holborn, that he died.
When Edmund Fowler was taken ill he sent for Thomas Harris,
Margaret Bosvile’s husband, to make his will, but owing to his
impediment had difficulty in making clear his wishes. Harris accordingly
asked him to write down what he intended, which he started to do but, ‘his
paines increasing’, he gave the paper unfinished to Harris. After noting
on this some further wishes of which Edmund told him, Harris then left to
prepare a draft will, with which he subsequently returned. At this point,
a technical difficulty arose that could net be resolved without reference
to Edmund's marriage settlement deed, which was at Ash. Edmund promised to
send for the document, but in the event deferred doing so ‘in hopes he
should goe into the countrey himself’. His hopes unrealised, he died at
his lodgings a few weeks later.
It was in those days possible to prove an unwitnessed
holograph will, a circumstance that led to the curious result that the
parts of the paper that contained Edmund’s instructions in his own
handwriting, but not his further wishes as noted thereon by Thomas Harris,
were admitted to probate. To that end Edmund Hodsoll of the South Ash |