bought the North Cray manor about 1738 and it seems likely that Idleigh came into the family at the same time, Jeffery died unmarried in 1767, devising his estates to the Revd William Hatherington, a Fellow of Eton College and the rector of Farnham Royal in Buckinghamshire. This gentleman, ‘whose universal benevolence and liberality of mind gained him the praise of. every one’, was likewise a bachelor and the object of his benevolence when he died in 1778 was, at least so far, as North Cray and Idleigh were concerned, Thomas Coventry. Coventry was. in Hasted’s, time, a childless widower. ¹¹ He appears to have died about 1799, in which year the Ash Land Tax assessment showed Idleigh as held by the Earl of Coventry in trust for his son, the Honourable Thomas Coventry. This Thomas held Idleigh until his death about 1815, after which it remained in the Coventry family for another ten years or so.
   Whether or not the fact that No. 5 bell of the Ash church ring bears the. inscription ‘Ralph Selby the son of William Selby Esq 1717’ reflects a Selby presence 

in the parish at that time, the Selbys of Ightham Mote were certainly important landowners in Ash for much of the eighteenth century. Their major possession in the parish was Pettings, or, as they called it, Pettins, which estate extended into Ridley and also included land in Meopham. It was sold after William Selby of The Mote died in 1712, being the most substantial of a number of properties that he had given by his will to trustees for sale by them, primarily for the payment of his debts. The will recorded the name of the then tenant of Pettings as ‘Gooding’ and the name of Gooding’s predecessor as ‘Martin’; the yearly rent was forty pounds. ^11a
   The purchaser from the Selby trustees of the Pettings estate, or at least of the principal farmhouse and attendant land that was or became known as Lower Pettings, was, most likely, the William Kebble who is found paying Land Tax there in 1780. Kebble’s tenant Henry Thorpe, held, the farm, or those parts of it that were either in Ash or in