2IO HISTORY OF HARTING. 



owner being the first of the Hussey tenants, about the 

 time of the battle of Cressy. "John" was a name much 

 cherished, partly, perhaps, as being safe from the 

 political associations of Charles, Edward, James, 

 George, or William, partly from the jingle of honest 

 John, which always had a good sound, and was on 

 the whole better than "jolly Joe," or "sober Sam," or 

 "fidgetty Phill." John Hall was a thrifty man, and it 

 was his boast, that when he came to Hurst Mill and 

 had paid justly for his first load of wheat, he had only 

 one farthing left in his pocket and his wife only a half- 

 penny. In the end he saved enough to retire and to 

 live in a house of his own at West Harting, now 

 belonging to his descendant Josiah Oliver. Sarah 

 Hall (Sarah a name much in vogue since Sarah 

 Duchess of Marlborough, but now never chosen) was 

 his only surviving daughter. The portrait was taken 

 at Portsmouth, where Sarah Hall was visiting ; she 

 complained that she had stayed so long away thai 

 her friends at Harting would not know her ; on which 

 a gentleman at the table made an impromptu sketch, 

 adding that it did her little justice, and told her to 

 send it to her mother. The original, a real work of 

 art, was hanging in the cottage of her grandson, 

 Joseph New, a shepherd at Hurst Farm, in 1876. 

 Sarah Hall was married first to John Wild by license, 

 Jan. 29, 1784 ; and the signatures of bride and bride- 

 groom are unusually good. The name of John Wild 

 is also a very old fixture in Harting ; as a landholder, 

 one John Wild, sold Fleetsholt, W. Harting, to Sir 

 Edward Caryll, in 1608.* The gallant bridegroom's 

 (1784) posy-ring contained the legend 

 " I will have her 

 Love the giver," 



and he must have ha'd no fear of a blue stocking 

 for the tradition amongst her descendants is, that 

 Sarah Hall had read Josephus through at twelve 



Add 1 - 28,529, p. 45. A John Wild lived at the Crose or 

 Cross, East Harting, now East Harting Farm, 26th Dec., 1624. 



