[Footnote 6: Mr J. P. Collier (_Bibliographical Catalogue_, i. 365) has little doubt that the verses at the back of the title-page of Harman’s _Caveat_ were part of “a ballad intituled a description of the nature of a birchen broom” entered at Stationers’ Hall to William Griffith, the first printer of the _Caveat_.]
[Footnote 7: Cp. Kente, p. 37, 43, 48, 61, 63, 66, 68, 77, &c. Moreover, the way in which he, like a Norfolk or Suffolk man, speaks of _shires_, points to a liver in a non -_shire_.]
[Footnote 8: In _Martin Mark-all, Beadle of Bridewell_, 1610, quoted below, at p. xvii.]
[Footnote 9: Compare his ‘ride to Dartforde to speake with a priest there,’ p. 57.]
Thus much about Harman we learn from his book and his literary contemporaries and successors. If we now turn to the historian of his county, Hasted, we find further interesting details about our author: 1, that he lived in Crayford parish, next to Erith, the Countess of Shrewsbury’s parish; 2, that he inherited the estates of Ellam, and Maystreet, and the manor of Mayton or Maxton; 3, that he was the grandson of Henry Harman, Clerk of the Crown, who had for his arms ‘Argent, a chevron between 3 scalps sable,’ which were no doubt those stampt on our Thomas’s pewter dishes; 4, that he had a ‘descendant,’—a son, I presume—who inherited his lands, and three daughters, one of whom, Bridget, married Henry Binneman—? not the printer, about 1565–85 A.D., p. vi–vii, above.
Hasted in his description of the parish of Crayford, speaking of Ellam, a place in the parish, says:—
“In the 16th year of K. Henry VII. John Ellam alienated it (the seat of Ellam) to Henry Harman, who was then Clerk of the Crown,[10] and { x} who likewise purchased an estate called Maystreet here, of Cowley and Bulbeck, of Bulbeck-street in this parish, in the 20th year of King Edward IV.[11] On his decease, William Harman, his son, possessed both these estates.[12] On his decease they descended to Thomas Harman, esq., his son; who, among others, procured his lands to be disgavelled, by the act of the 2 & 3 Edw. VI.[13] He married Millicent, one of the daughters of Nicholas Leigh, of Addington, in the county of Surry, esq.[14] His descendant, William Harman, sold both these places in the reign of K. James I. to Robert Draper, esqr.”—_History of Kent_, vol. i. p. 209.