one for Hodges. Longfield was odd man out; four out of five voted and all four were Hodges’ men.
   With Sir Edmund Filmer and Mr Hodges going their several ways to and no doubt in the House of Commons, a new Register of Voters was prepared for the parish of Ash. By this time, 1848, the electorate numbered thirty-two, of whom about half lived in the parish and another five or six in adjacent parishes.
   Including for the purpose the rector, there were thirteen resident freeholders, most of them quite small freeholders but including  John Swaisland of Idley and James Fletcher of Randes House. The Fletcher family was the most enfranchised. Joseph Flitcroft Fletcher, who lived with old James at Rand’s House, owned a cottage and land at Seafields, James Fletcher, junior was at Ridley Court but owned Malt house farm and Michael Fletcher, also of Ridley Court, was blessed with a freehold rentcharge out of Rand’s House farm. There were also several, voters from the Crowhurst family. William and John Crowhurst owned

properties at Hodsoll Street, where they lived, and Thomas Crowhurst, owned lived in Meopham, owned land in Ash at Culverstone Green,
   Some zeal would have been needed voting-wise by six freeholders living at or in the environs of London; they were Sir James Cockburn, Bart. of Harley Street, who owned ‘Rosermary & Goose’s Farm at Hodsoll Street, Joseph Cox of Keston (West Yoke farm), Thomas Nunn Gladdish of Lambeth (Pettings); Richard Ware, junior, of Hampstead (Jincombs) and John Wild of Clapham and William Wild of East Dulwich, the lords of South Ash,
   Only five voters qualified as occupiers. Three of them, George Munyard of Terry’s Lodge farm, Robert Olive of North Ash farm and John Slaughter of Ash Place farm, lived in the parish; the other two were William Hollands of Stansted, whose ‘Joine’s & Kettle’s farms' presumably spilled over into Ash, and Jeremiah Jeal, who seems to have crept into the list as occupier of the Vigo public