his landed estate for her life only. This made a pretty kettle of fish, but Morris evidently decided that it was not worth a family squabble. In any event, he himself had not long to live and would probably have felt too old or ill to embark on litigation. What he did do was to make a new will in which he put matters right for Frances, so far as he could by providing that she should have from his residuary estate the difference between the value of her life interest in her husband’s lands and the value of what ‘her said husband should have given unto her by way of the true meaning’ of the agreement. In this there was some element of robbing Peter to pay Paul, since the balance remaining was to be divided equally between Frances and her two children. Frances being made sole executrix, hers was the responsibility for implementing the mathematical niceties, but she was not left to plough a lonely furrow; the rector appointed as overseers of the will ‘my worthy nephew John 

Brewster Esquire and my good freind George Petty Gentleman they being the Executors of the Will of him the said John Collinvell’.
   George Petty was in fact one of the witnesses of Thomas Morris’ will, the others being George Gifford of Pennis and Everard Clement. If Mr Clement knew of its content, he would have been interested; he was about to receive from the rector, in so far as they were at the rector’s disposal, the hand of Frances Collinvell in marriage and, with necessary assistance from Ash Place, the living of Ash.
   Morris was still apparently in office when he made a codicil to his will on 17 June 1674, but not on 30 June, when there took place the marriage of’ ‘Mr Euerard Clement, Clerke & Rector of this Parish & Frances Collinvell Widdow of the same Parish’. Morris died in November of the same year. By his will he had