"M.S. Under the middle stone that guards the ashes of a certain fryer, sometime vicar of this place, is raked up the dust of William Quelche, B.D., who ministred in the same since the reformation. His lot was through God's mercy to burn incense here about 30 years, and ended his course Aprill the 10, an. dni 1654, being aged 64 years." Mr. Quelche was vicar in troublous times, and the distractions of the Civil War led to a hiatus in the parish registers. The fault lay with the parish clerk, but the conscientious Mr. Quelche felt bound to clear himself in the eyes of future ages by a long apology in the Register of baptisms, which begins beseechingly enough:-- "Good Reader tread gently: For though these vacant yeares may seeme to make me guilty of thy censure, neither will I symply excuse myselfe from all blemishe; yet if thou doe but cast thine eie uppon the former pages and se with what care I have kepte the annalls of mine owne tyme, and rectifyed sundry errors of former times thou wilt beginn to thinke ther is some reason why he that begann to build so well should not be able to make an ende." But the entries for the years before the war broke out were occasionally a little vague. Here are three full years' records of marriages:-- "1640. A Londoner married mr. Kepps sister of micham on Easter monday. 1641. Mr. Meece married a couple who came from fishsted whose names he could not remember. 1642. Not one marryed woe to y^e vicar." Some of the names and surnames sound odd:-- Epaphroditus wood. Epaphroditus Wandling. Anne Waweker. Hevedebar Hill. Wroe. Buttonshere. Dilcock. Gander. Mustian. Thunderman. Nep. Milfe. Carshalton House, a massive pile of red brick, was built by Sir John Fellowes, one of the directors of the South Sea Bubble. It stands on the site of a house which belonged to the most famous doctor of his day. He was John Radcliffe, founder of the Radcliffe Library, and so much run after as a physician that he felt able to be intolerably rude to his patients, even if they happened to be kings and queens. William the Third never forgave him for telling him that he would not own his Majesty's dropsical legs for the three kingdoms. Queen Anne refused to make him her court physician, but sent for him when she was dying. He would not leave Carshalton, pleading the gout; and he lived and died in angry remorse. The Queen never recovered, and the doctor did not dare to show his face in London. [Illustration: _Sutton._]