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from a grant of administration that one Dorothy Middleton
obtained to the estate of her widowed mother, Anne Sidney, in 1568,5
Dorothy was probably the wife of Thomas Middleton (‘Thomas I’), whose
son Richard was christened in 1570. The only other sixteenth century
Middleton entries in the registers are of the baptisms of three children
of the same, or another, Thomas Middleton, Hellen in 1586, Mary in 1566
and Thomas in 1590. ‘Thomas’ was a favourite family name and it is not
always possible to discover which Thomas was which. Thus, a Thomas
Middleton (‘Thomas II’) who appears on the scene at the christening of
his daughter in 1641 may have been, but probably was not, the Thomas born
to Thomas Middleton, who may or may not have been Thomas I, in 1590.
Thomas II's subsequent course can be charted in some respects
with reasonable certainty. Several more children were born to him and his
wife Ellen, who died in 1651. Two years after, he married Mary Johnson;
their marriage lasted well over twenty years, but was apparently
childless. He must have been the Thomas Middleton to whom the aged rector,
Thomas Morris, referred in his will of 1674 as ‘my beloved friend and
Tenant’, leaving him twenty shillings to buy ‘a Ring of |
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geld to weare for a remembrance of my love to him'.
Two years later, Thomas II had need of another mourning ring, when he was
left a widower for a second time.
In the early years after the Restoration, the Middleton
family were established. in at least three of Ash’s neighbour parishes, Hartley,
Longfield and Kingsdown, and those of their number in Hartley and Longfield
seem to have been enjoying greater prosperity, or at any rate living less
frugally, than those in Ash. In 1664, there were three Middleton
households in Ash, but their houses were humble, two being rated at two
hearths and the other at one; only Thomas II’s house was charged to the
tax. James Middleton, who occupied the coldest of the three abodes, had
married Joan Walter, of another old Ash family, in the early years of the
Commonwealth. They had five children of whom, inevitably, one was called
Thomas. Neither James nor the other Middleton, George, was necessarily in
receipt of parish relief, although George may have felt the need of some
when, two years later, his wife Ellen presented him with twins. Twins ran
in the Middleton family and these two, Dionysia and Alice, seem to have
survived, which did not |