LIST OF THE INHABITANTS OF MELBOURNE, 1695. 29 
Henry, who died in 1613, is so named in his monument in 
Melbourne Church ; whilst Sir Robert himself is described as Mr. 
Robert Hardye, in 1652, in the marriage register of Highgate 
Chapel.* His brother Nicholas was an attorney of Furnivall’s Inn, 
and amassed a considerable fortune by practising the law. He 
purchased, in 1691, the Manor of Canbury, in Surrey, with the 
impropriate Rectory of Kingston-on-Thames, and in the next year 
presented Sir Robert’s youngest son, Gideon Hardinge, to the 
vicarage. Gideon does not sound a likely name for the son of a 
Cavalier knight ; but Sir Robert Hardinge’s wife was the grand- 
daughter of Gideon de Laune, the famous apothecary. Gideon 
Hardinge was vicar of Kingston-on-Thames twenty-one years, and 
married 6th May, 1699, Mary Westbrook, daughter of Caleb 
Westbrook, gent., of Kingston, who was baptized there on 4th 
March, 1669-70. Her parentage is unknown to all the peerages, 
but is of some interest, as showing how Gideon’s younger son, 
Dr. Caleb Hardinge, the Queen’s physician, came to be christened 
by a Puritan name. Gideon’s eldest son, Nicholas, became the 
head of the family in 1729, on the death of his cousin, John 
Hardinge, of King’s Newton. He was Clerk of the Parliaments, 
and afterwards Joint-Secretary of the Treasury, and married a 
sister of Earl Camden, the Lord Chancellor. He was the great- 
grandfather of the present Viscount Hardinge, by whose courtesy 
I am enabled to print this assessment. 
The 44 labourers enumerated in the assessment evidently be- 
longed to a class of better standing than the agricultural labourer 
of our own times. They were, as I have shown before, better fed 
and better paid, and were often poor relations of local freeholders 
and shopkeepers. For example—the Cantrells were probably the 
oldest family in the parish, and had intermarried with the 
Hardinges in the reign of Henry VI. Their pedigree can be 
traced, beyond question, from John Cantrell, of King’s Newton, 
who died in 1615, although the parish register of Melbourne is 
not of earlier date than 1653. They formed, in 1695, seven 
* Register of Highgate Chapel, Middlesex. :—‘‘ 1652, April roth, Mr. 
Robert Hardye and Mrs. Anne Sprignell married.” 
