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).