about 1681, and John, who while a labourer of ‘ye burrow of Holiwell’ was the father of three daughters born in the early years of the eighteenth century.
   In 1703 Richard Wallis married Jane Bright of Ash and when Mary, their first-born, was christened in the following year, Richard was described as ‘tayler, of ye burrow of Ash’. Whether he inherited, became a partner in, or started the tailor’s business does not appear.
   When Richard was left a widower in 1722, he was already the father of two sons and four daughters, of whom one of the sons, born in 1709, was also named Richard. Thereafter, the family pedigree becomes a 

little uncertain, because in 1730 there was christened the first of thirteen children born to a Richard and Mary ‘Wallace’ and in 1731 a Richard ‘Wallis’ married an Ann Fulman. No particular significance attaches to the different spellings of the family name, which was always indiscriminate, and it is difficult to know whether the thirteen children, all but one of whom apparently survived, were a second family of the elder Richard or the progeny of the younger Richard. If they were the elder Richard’s, he achieves with nineteen children the record for Ash fecundity. Not for longevity also, but he reached eighty-six.