Churchwardens of Priors Dean. 233 ject to the payment of the above sums, which, the auctioneer remarked, had not been demanded for many years. ANTHONY BROMAN was churchwarden in 1697. A notice of the Bromans will be found on pages 79 and 81. RICHARD SILVESTER, churchwarden in 1754, was the great grandson of Richard and Elizabeth Sylvester, who came from Froxfield to the Manor House, Priors Dean, after the death of Compton Tichborne. His great great grandmother died there. Margaret Sylvester widow was buried the 14th day of December 1669. Richard, the elder, had four sons and one daughter, born in 1670-79. Elizabeth his wife was buried on August 10, 1680; in November he married again :— Richard Silvester and Joane Beel both of Priorsdeane were married the 28th day of November Anno Dni 1680. There were four daughters by this second marriage, born in 1682-7; Richard Silvester died in 1688 and was buried on the 5th of April. Edward, his eldest son, succeeded, who had three children, Olive, Richard and William, born in 1693-7. In the latter year he lost Olive his wife; he survived until 1728. Richard, the churchwarden, was Edward's grandson, born at Froxfield in 1724; he married in 1755 Olive Randal, by whom he had four sons and five daughters. Mary, the eldest daughter, was married in 1783 to John Steele; Maria, the youngest, married John Peryer in 1793; and Anne, the third, married Thomas Blackmore in 1795, the family then removed to Froxfield. HH RICHARD CHASE was probably the next churchwarden; he was married by licence in 1769 to Elizabeth Lilly white, by whom he had six children, born in 1771-84. His wife died in 1801; he died in 1815 at the age of seventy-eight and is then described in the Register as a labourer. WILLIAM SHAFT, churchwarden in 1811-16, had three sons and four daughters, born in 180c-11. THOMAS WHITEAR, who was churchwarden in 1818-23, had two daughters, born in 1819-21. WILLIAM RIVERS of Goleigh, was churchwarden 1824-31. He died in 1831 at the age of sixty-five, and Mary his widow died in 1832 at the age of 67. He was succeeded at Goleigh by his son, John, who had by Harriet his wife, three children, born in 1846-53. John Rivers died in 1864; there is a cross at the head of his grave with the inscription : jbc MEMORY OF JOHN RIVERS WHO DIED OCT 18, 1864 IN THE 69TH YEAR OF HIS AGE. IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH. JOHN ALLAM, churchwarden in 1853-75, was brother to Francis Allam of Colmer; he lived at Windmill Farm where he had by Elizabeth, his first wife, two sons and two daughters, born in 1819-26. The burial of his first wife is not entered in the Register. On December 2, 1830 he married Harriet Munday, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. He Churchwardens of Priors Dean. 235 removed to Old Place, in the parish of East Tisted, before his youngest child was born, but retained Windmill Farm, and when George Smith, Junior left Slade, he took that farm also; he was churchwarden of Priors Dean until his death which took place in 1875. WILLIAM ALLAM, the elder of the two last born sons of the above, was churchwarden in 1876-7: he married first, Sophia Matilda Aburrow on April 21, 1862; by this marriage he had three sons born in 1863-6. He went to live at Slade in 1863, and his wife died there in 1868. He then married Mary Anne Smith of Cranleigh, by whom he had a son who died in infancy, and a daughter, born at the end of 1876. He died in 1877. STEPHEN MUNDAY, of the Manor Farm, churchwarden in 1878 and to the present time, came from Dorsetshire with his father who died in 1847 at the age of eighty-nine. His mother died the year before at the age of seventy-three. By Sarah, his wife, Stephen Munday has three sons and one daughter, born in 1836-45. His second son, Maurice, married Phoebe Emma Durman on April 17, 1862 and has four sons and five daughters. The father of Mrs. Maurice Munday, William Durman, lived at Church Farm; he came to the parish a widower with several children. In 1823, when fifty-four years of age, he married Amelia Clark aged twenty-three, by whom he had five sons and four daughters; two of the boys died in June 1830. He died in 1854, at the age of eighty-five. A headstone with cross upon it, near the grave of John Rivers, marks the place of his burial. His widow carried on the farm until 1871, when she was obliged to leave in consequence of the rent being raised. She died at Hawkley in 1879 and was buried at Priors Dean. Philip Foot James was tenant the next seven years. Slade Farm was occupied from about 1816-51 by James Gale who married Charlotte Bennett in 1814. She died the following year at the age of twenty-three; he married again and had six children, born in 1816-25, by his second wife, Elizabeth Anne, who died in 1826 at the age of twenty-five, and was therefore about fifteen when she was married. The next year he married Sarah Munday,, by whom he had five children. He died at Headley in 1858 at the age of seventy; his widow died at Rogate in 1879 at the age of eighty-five; they are both buried at Priors Dean. The last four or five parish clerks were-John Porter in 1755-68 probably, in the latter year he lost his wife; Robert Vokes in 1769-1811; John Buckle, perhaps, in 1812-20; Richard Hall of Hawkley in 1820-58, when he met his death by falling from a ladder; and Elijah Kemp, from April 1858 to, the present time.. THE LAST QUARTER OF A CENTURY. As the wild ocean wears away the shore, MALL as our two parishes are-only forty houses scattered in twos and threes over the whole area, and the population but 280, and now much lesssome things have happened here during the last twenty-seven years which are note-worthy and may not be uninteresting even to outsiders. The unobservant might say, surely nothing worthy to be called an event could occur here once in a whole century! And it is but natural to imagine that in this secluded spot life must ever flow on peacefully, like the still outlying waters of some large river. Yet, from the tumultuous midstream of the busy world which rushes headlong over every obstacle, some ripples, some straws, reach the lagging, almost motionless pools under the trees; so shall we find it here. There have been some remarkable medical cases. Early in the period of which we are writing, Mrs. James Langrish of |