sons which were conditional on their releasing all right and title and of and in his manors and lands in favour of his eldest son;⁴  those, no doubt, were his way of settling by anticipation any claims that the younger sons might have in gavelkind. William II was buried in the nave of Ash church, as had been his uncle before him.
   In the event, Eleanor Hodsoll’s boarding activities were by no means confined to William III. He was twice married, first to Hester, daughter of Henry Seyliard of Ightham, she dying in 1624, and secondly to Elizabeth, daughter of John Gratwick of Jarvice, Cowfold in Sussex. Both unions were blessed and the second family had already started by the time Eleanor died. It continued to grow for another twelve years.
   The three children born to William III and Nester included two sons, but the elder, to mention whose name could only serve to confuse, died perhaps in infancy and certainly during his father’s lifetime. It was to the younger son, John (‘John I’), born in 1622, that the succession was eventually to pass. Amongst the more numerous second family was the Edmund Hodsoll who witnessed Richard Miller’s will, practised as a London attorney and helped to prove the will, such as it was, of Edmund Fowler.

   Unlike so many others of the Hodsoll family, William III achieved a good old age and his lordship of South Ash continued into and through the Cromwellian era. Long after his time there was buried at Ightham one ‘ffear God ffinch, alias Hodsoll’, but there is nothing in the Ash records to suggest that the family at South Ash were addicted to Puritanism nor that William III was any less pleased than most other people to see the King come into his own. By then, however, he was into his seventies and nearing the end of his life. He died on the last day of 1663.
   During William III’s long regime, Ash Place had been built and the Hodsolls had ceased to be the only manorial family resident in the parish. Moreover, the rather grand new family next the church had appropriated to themselves a private chapel there. Some amour propre may be reflected in the fact that William III was buried not with his predecessors in the nave but in what had once been the Lady Chapel and now became the Hodsoll chancel. Many Hodsolls were to follow him thither.
   Despite the funerary chapel, it was only as ‘Gent’ that they described William III in the Burial register. In that respect, his