Whiffen.
   A few instances of posthumous children appear, including two in successive generations of the Hodsoll family.
   An early and somewhat unusual entry is of a baptism in 1573 which reads:-
       Thomas Revs son in law unto William Reve a lawful child of Margaret his wife ‘.

   There are indications elsewhere that prolonged widowhood was not looked upon with favour and no doubt this child was Margaret’s son by a previous marriage, the expression ‘son in law' being used in the sense of stepson. The unlikelihood that Thomas would have been left unchristened for more than a few days and the fact that his surname was entered as ‘Reve’ both suggest that he was not born until after Margaret’s remarriage, in which case her widowhood must have been brief indeed.
   Presumably it was the elder Maxfield who took such care to note Thomas Reve’s undoubted legitimacy and he too who in the next year was equally painstaking in recording the paternity of ‘Alice Aueril tan: reputed of John Aueril borne unto him of Alic Sparrow his maide’.
   If the negative evidence of the baptismal registers can

be taken at or anywhere near its face value, illegitimacy  was in those days, and indeed for long after, comparatively rare in Ash. In the hundred and seventy five years from 1560 to 1735 there are only nine instances in which the entry clearly relates to an illegitimate child and only a few others in which the form of the entry may suggest illegitimacy.
   Very different Is the picture for the much shorter period from 1736 to 1812, during which fifty-five illegitimate children were christened; one of them came from another parish and it is a nice point as to whether further modest palliation is afforded by the fact that two of them were twins. It may, however, be quite wrong to assume that this apparent fall from grace reflects a decline in morals that began suddenly in the middle seventeen thirties. Other, and imponderable, factors could have had their effect, not least the diligence of clergy in ensuring that no child should die unbaptised.
   For some years from about 1696 it became usual to note in the register the date of a child’s birth; the explanation is no doubt to be found in legislation passed in 1694 and 1695 whereby, for a five year period, births, marriages and burials were to be taxed in order to provide funds for carrying on ‘with vigour’ the war against