64 HISTORY OF HARTING. 



bourn in Essex : and in 1582 a division of the manors 

 was made which ultimately severed the Hartings into 

 two chief holdings, one, the Western, Roman Catholic, 

 and, to use a later nomenclature, Tory ; while the 

 Eastern manor, joined with the South, pursued a 

 Protestant and Liberal policy ; a state of things which 

 lasted for nearly two centuries. By the agreement 

 Francis Fortescue was to write all the demesne lands 

 and tenements on two papers with a manor to each, 

 and John Ford was to pay him 40 and take his 

 choice.* John Ford took the manors of East Harting 

 (including Up Park) and South Harting. To Fortescue 

 there remained the lot of the manor of West Harting 

 and all the lands therein, together with the Royalty 

 of the hundred of Dumford. The advowson of the 

 Rectory seems to have gone to the holder of the West 

 Harting estates ; but the tithes were divided into two 

 moieties, each lord taking one.f 



Neither of the two brother-in-law squires lived long. 

 John Ford died in 1584, and was buried among the* 

 Benchers in the Temple Church, leaving his son 

 William, aged ten years, to succeed him in the East 

 Harting estate. In 1 597, at the age of twenty-three, 

 this son married Ann, the daughter of a new comer, 

 Sir Edward Caryll, and formed the only union between 



* Deed at Up Park. 



f Mr. Weaver has in his possession a beautiful posy-ring of 

 this date, which was found in grubbing a hedge at Casey's, East 

 Harting, near the Beacon, and bears the legend engraved within : 

 " If vertue I finde, 

 My choyse is to my mind." 



This may have been the betrothal ring of John and Magdalene 

 Ford, of East Harting. Sir Jervoise Clarke Jervoise, of Idsworth, 

 has a very similar posy bearing the legend 



" If love can merit, 

 I shall inherit ; " 



which Sir Jervoise thinks might have been given to some fond 

 supporter of his Sacred Majesty when hiding in these parts pre- 

 paratory to his escape. 



