56 HISTORY OF HARTING. 



preserved in the British Museum. Edmond Ford 

 covenants to "yerly mainteyn the chancell of the 

 Church of Hartynge in all things necessary, forasmuch 

 as the charges of the reparacions of the said Rectory 

 and parsonage hath heretofore, and hereafter is likely 

 to be so chargeable unto the Person of the s d - Rectory." 



Hence Edmond Ford's broad purse had to sustain a 

 dilapidated Church in his new purchase. In Queen 

 Elizabeth's reign, and probably in Edmond Ford's 

 lifetime, the Church of Harting was destroyed by fire, 

 an event recorded in an entry in the first register, 

 which states that the Feoffees sold some acres near the 

 Leeth (a hill, as the name signifies, and in the direction 

 of Petersfield) to rebuild their parish Church. Probably 

 the tower of the Church was struck by lightning, as 

 was the tower of the neighbouring Church of St. John 

 Baptist, Durford, in 1417, when the eight bells, the 

 largest of which weighed 14^ cwt, were fused. In like 

 manner the tower of Buriton was struck in 171^ 

 towards the restoration of which John Caryll of Lady 

 Holt, stout Roman Catholic that he was, gave Dr. 

 Lowth, Rector, the sum of 2 13 : o.* Of late we have 

 had none of these old fatal thunderstorms. Probably 

 the constant shaving off of forests, and the com- 

 paratively drier soil consequent upon this denudation,- 

 and above all the progress of drainage, have caused 

 the modern thunderclouds to take the line of the 

 Southdowns, and thus to be innocuous. 



At any rate the chancel and south transept of 

 Harting Church seem to have been burnt at this time, 

 and to have been, with the tower, restored and re-roofed 

 in 1577, as is cut upon the finials of the timber in the 

 chancel, a very fine specimen of its date the Tudor 

 rose marking the time of Queen Elizabeth. This 

 remarkable chancel is of itself a complete answer to 

 Dalloway's very gratuitous assertion that the style of 

 Harting Church is "of the coarsest parochial archi- 



* Caryll's Account Book, May 4, 1714. 



