'Dame Susan Everard, as she is styled in the Testament, left her estate, in
the event of her eldest son's dying without heirs, (which proved to be the
case), to her two daughters, Susannah Meade, and Ann Everard, a spinster, but
who unadvisedly married Lathbury, who held some office in the Tower, and who
dissipated her estate. By the will, all her jewels and furniture of a house
in London were left to my mother. the furniture of Broomfield Hall is not
mentioned. the real property left to the two children consisted of Broomfield
Hall, in the Parish of Much Waltham and County of Essex, a farm, called the
Walnut Tree Farm, in the same county, also a copyhold farm in Hardfordshire,
also the freehold of Heathfield, in Sussex, with a handsome mansion on it,
which is said to be the precise spot on which the Battle of Hastings was
fought, between the Saxon King Harold and William the Norman, and from which
place Lord Heathfield makes his title. It was afterwards sold by my mother
and her sister. Also Tower-head farm, in , near the city of Wells, which was
devised solely to my mother, Susannah Meade, and was sold by my father. On
this farm was built by her grandfather, Dr. Richard Kidder, Bishop of Bath and
Wells, a mansion with a chapel, for his wife's accommodation, in the event of
her surviving him, which did not happen, for they were both killed in bed
together in the Episcopal Palace of Wells, by the fall of a stack of chimneys,
on the night of the great storm of 1703. Langleys, in Essex, once a royal
residence, afterwards became the seat of the Everards, and was sold by my
maternal grandfather. ' "