During much of the eighteenth century Ash had suffered from a major influx of travellers. Travellers were of particular concern for a number of reasons, not least lest they should linger long enough to obtain a settlement and so become chargeable on the parish. There was also a public health problem. No doubt travellers had their uses at harvest time, particularly for hop and fruit picking, but at other seasons their presence in a country parish was not welcome. In view of the inconvenience and expense of obtaining an order for their removal from the justices, the lesser of two evils might be to encourage undesireables on their way with a small payment from parish funds. In the case of 

infectious illness, the urgency was the greater and the going rate the higher.
   Prior to 1650, no traveller is mentioned as such in the Ash registers, although ‘Daniell --- (a beggar)’, buried in 1622, may have been one; so may Elizabeth Steward ‘of Hornechurch in lankshire’, who was burled in 1638. In the second half of the same century two, or possibly three, travellers’ children were christened. There was also a poor woman called Ann Williams, buried in 1661; she was ‘ye d of Robert Williams living at the black-spread Eagle in Black-Man Streete in the Parish of Newington in ye County of Surrey being brought as a Vagrant'. The fact that a