Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/270

 262 SOCIAL STATUS OF THE CLERGY IN THE April Doughty sprang from ingenui parentes, not generosi, and his descendants, as the parish registers testify, returned to the cultivation of the soil, some as yeomen, others for they were a prolific race as labourers. Thomas Crockford, Doughty's successor, has left a longer narrative of his own career, which begins : ' Cui proxime in vicaria successi ego Thomas Crockford, patria Bercheriensis, parentela ingenuus.' He was born in October 1580, the last and only surviving son of Richard Crockford, agricola, ' ex ingenua Crockfordorum Pepperensium familia prognatus '. He learned grammar ' in choro Templi patrii ' under Thomas Baker, B.A., vicar of Dorney in Buckinghamshire. At sixteen he entered the service of John Mockett, lord of the manor of Cronstry in Ship- lake, and after two years entered on a course of liberal study, and by the aid of his patron was admitted to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1597, in "attendance upon Isaac Pococke, fellow of the college. In 1602 he came into Wiltshire as schoolmaster at Stockton, where for five or six years he studied under John Terry, M.A., the rector, to whom he acknowledges his great indebtedness. Here also he gained the friendship of two gentlemen by birth, Mr. Topp and Mr. Potticary, by whose favour he obtained the degree of B.A. (8 July 1603) and was ordained deacon and priest, the latter in 1603 by Bishop Cotton of Sarum. He served various neighbouring churches as curate, and on 13 January 1612 he married a lady ' optima parentela generosam, me tamen illamque curis domesticis praematuris implicui ; nihil fere habens adhuc certi praeter amicos illos Stoctonienses'. These, however, obtained for him from the marquis of Winchester the living of Fisherton Delamere (' hanc exiguam vicariam '), to which he was inducted 19 November 1613 at the age of thirty- three. He died 26 March 1634/5. The evidence afforded by an examination of single benefices may be confirmed from the records of a clerical family of repute in Dorset from the time of Elizabeth to that of Charles II. The family of Kelway alias Clerke, using at times the single name of Clerke or Kelway indiscriminately, were tenants at Marnhull, under Glastonbury Abbey. William Kelway's will was proved in 1492, in the prerogative court of Canterbury, and George Kelway was still there when Queen Elizabeth granted him a tene- ment, by copy of court roll, in the fourth year of her reign. At the close of the sixteenth century it was represented by six brothers. Of these, (1) Roger, of Marnhull, described in his will, proved in 1597 in the prerogative court of Canterbury, as yeoman, was father of Roger, B.A., rector of Todbere, who matriculated from Gloucester Hall 1601, suffered severely at the hands of the rebel army, and died in 1665. He married