ministry of one William Noakes, an interloping Puritan, who in consequence has achieved inclusion in the list of rectors on a handsomely embellished board displayed in the church. Noakes has no business to be there, for his interloping was at Ash-next-Sandwich.¹²  From Ash by Wrotham the proper incumbent was never ousted. The Commission of enquiry of 1650 found ‘one master Thomas Morris enjoying’ the parsonage of Ash,¹³  as he had enjoyed it since his institution and was to enjoy it well into the reign of Charles II. Throughout that time, the entries in the registers are in his handwriting¹⁴  and some relate to his own family. Amongst those is one of the burial of his wife, Mrs Susann Morris, on Christmas Eve, 1655. Another entry in the Burial register relates to his mother, ‘Mris Margaret Morris, Widdow’, who died in 1659.
   Thomas Morris had, as has already been mentioned, a stepdaughter, Frances, who was married in 1654 to 

John Collinvell of Otford. The rector’s wife, as also his mother, must have been of independent means, for shortly before Frances’ marriage Morris entered into an agreement with her prospective husband under which he covenanted to make Collinvell his sole executor and to leave him his whole estate, whatever that should be at the time of his death. In so doing, he was not offering hostages to fortune entirely without consideration; Collinvell, for his part, agreed to leave Frances, if she survived him, one third of the rector’s estate and one third of his own estate. Unfortunately, best laid plans can go astray and this plan was not perhaps best laid.
   In the event, Collinvell died in the rector’s lifetime and so never got the rector’s estate. That was no sufficient reason for not implementing so far as possible his side of the bargain, but it was found on his death that he had left Frances a third part