road or sorts from Maidstone and beyond to London
passed through an outlying part of the parish may account for Ann Williams
having died in Ash. It was not, however, a route much followed in those
days, since only between Farningham and London was the road reasonably
good; most people journeying between London and Maidstone went by way of
Rochester.*
In the period from 1700 to 1745, six or seven children
were christened and seven travellers were buried. In most cases their
surnames were known and recorded. John Heart, whose son was christened in
1703, was perhaps an higgler rather than a traveller; he was described
with unusual particularity as a ‘Haberdasher of Small wares in ye Parish
of St Martins-in ye Fields’. There took place a week or two later the
baptism of ‘Mary d of William Cross a traveller of ye Parish of |
|
Euerton
in Northamptonshire & Mary his W b. Sep. 13’. These detailed entries suggest a
wish to record, whenever possible, a settlement elsewhere. That purpose
was more easily achieved in the case of baptisms than of burials and
perhaps of more significance. From the Burial registers come such entries
as ‘Anne Lewes A Traveller’, in 1717, ‘A Traveller whose Christian
name was John but his surname & place of abode unknowne’, in 1724,
and ‘Owen an Irish Traveller’, in 1733.
The problem greatly escalated about 1746, in which year five
travellers, of whom at least three were Irish, were buried. To 1746
belongs also the christening of John, son of Elizabeth Sofe, Traveller,
‘whose husbands settlement she says is in the Parish of Aldgate his name
* AC XLIII, 98, citing Ogilby’s Britannia (1675). |