Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/269

 1922 SEVENTEENTH EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 261 The country living of Folke, a small village near Sherborne in Dorset, may now be examined. William Hymerford (Hemerford), rector, who died in 1583, belonged to a family seated at East Coker, Somerset, as early as the reign of Richard II, if not earlier, of which a branch was in possession of the manor or a moiety of the manor of Folke in the time of Henry VIII, when Henry Hemerford was escheator of Dorset and Somerset ; and one of his daughters, Elizabeth, was married to Thomas Molyns, esquire, of West Hall. The family also intermarried with the Trenchards of Wolveton, Dorset. 1 Of his successor Walter Chubb, 1583-1614, nothing is known except that he had been curate to Hemerford, but Abraham Forrester, 1614-68 (B.A. Caius College, Cambridge, incorporated M.A. Oxford), married as his third wife Mrs. Joane Paulet, widow, and his grandson, born in 1666, married Bridget, daughter of Henry Seymer, esquire, of Hanford. At a later date, Thomas Curgenven, M.A., rector 1694-1714, had been master of Sherborne School, and his successor, John Martin, B.A., rector 1714-17 (previously vicar of Long Burton and rector of Lillington), was a persona grata with the Honourable Mrs. Thynne, of Leweston in that neighbourhood. 2 These undoubtedly held a good position in the county, and the same may be said of the Highmores of the retired parish of Caundle Purse, where Edward, Nathaniel, Edward, and Richard Highmore, all masters of arts of Oxford and descended from a gentle Cumberland family, held the benefice in succession from 1603 to 1717, the second of the name being the father of a distin- guished anatomist, Nathaniel Highmore, M.A., D.M. One of the poorer benefices, Fisherton Delamere, a small Wiltshire parish, was fortunate in having an incumbent, appointed in 1613, who left in the parish register a biographical sketch of his predecessor : 1613 Joel Doughty, clericus, huius ecclesiae vicarius, hos habuisse vitae mortisque gradus testimonio minime dubitando perhibetur. Patria Cantianus, ex oppido sive vico'Marden, parentibus ingenuis, pueritiam in schola Petroburgensi, adolescentiam in Academia Cantabri- giensi, ubi gradum Baccalaureatus est adeptus, exercuit. Valedicens Academiae ad Australem Hantoniam est profectus ; ubi cum Scholae Gratuitae vixerat aliquantisper Hypodidascalus, coniugio sese implicuit, et scholam relinquens, ministerium ingressus, in clientelam Honorandi viri Guilelmi domini Marchionis Winton. est admissus, cuius benignitate hanc obtinuit vicariam, quam cum annos fere septem decem, aerumnarum non immunis, tenuerat, commendavit animam Deo, corpus humo, opes propinquis, locum successor!, et placide expiravit decimo nono Octobris : sepultus autem fuit in choro ecclesiae suae primo Novembris. 1 J. Batten, South Somerset, pp. 170-1.
 * See Plumptre, Life of Bishop Ken, ii. 174.