By E. 0. Pleydcll-Bouverie. 447 



The other docuiiieiit, to which I will now draw attention, shows 

 how in 1742 for poor law purposes Easterton became a distinct 

 parish. This, though a deed, is a document redolent of human 

 nature, though our modern human nature may, perhaps, stand hat 

 in hand to our forefathers, who were able in 1742 to obtain a con- 

 currence of opinion on a subject fraught with so many points of 

 difference. For the subject matter of the deed and the operative 

 part are an agreement under seal by apparently all the owners and 

 occupiers of " Markett " Lavington and Easterton that each such 

 geographical area would thereafter support its own poor, and not — 

 as heretofore — that each area should be responsible for the paupers 

 having a settlement in such area. The lubricants — tact and 

 management — must have been well to the fore in the early days 

 of George XL, at all events in this district. 



The signatures, some of them illegible, mainly through the 

 creases in the deed, have each a seal opposite to them, though the 

 same seal was used in all cases. There are strangely few " marks- 

 men," I think, having regard to the date. I have starred those 

 patronymics which to my knowledge are still existent in the 

 vicinity, though of course I cannot say if the signatories are the 

 forefathers or fore-mothers of those whom I know. 



The originals are now in the custody of the Vicar of Market 

 Lavington— the Eev. J. A. Sturton. 



^n Assault at JHarket Habington. 



Dramatis Personce. 



AXFOED — overseer, probably, of Urchfont, of which Eastcot was 

 then a hamlet. It may be that a custom had sprung up of 

 burying infected corpses in a parish that had had previously 

 to bury them on payment of a fee, but I am unable in the 

 old law books to trace any law on the subject. Generally 

 each parish has and always has had to bury its own dead. 

 This Axford was the grandfather of a very clever joiner, 

 Thomas Axford, latterly of Littleton Panell, who died at a 

 great age a few years back. 



