Sir John Hartopp, as we have seen, became by marriage connected with the family of Cromwell; he married Elizabeth, one of the daughters of the Lord General Fleetwood, and his sister married a son of the old general—thus there was a double connection. When Fleetwood’s house was first built in the village of Stoke Newington it must have been a stately mansion. In his day it was probably divided, and had all the characteristics of the old mansions of the earlier part of the seventeenth century. Hither the General retired after the Restoration, and here, singularly enough, he was permitted to pass his days in tranquil obscurity. He died while Watts was studying at the adjoining academy. Watts no doubt knew the old Ironside, for he was on terms of close intimacy with his son, Smith Fleetwood. Such were some of the collateral connections of the Hartopp family. And there was another. Sir Nathaniel Gould, to whom Watts inscribes a poem, who married Frances, the daughter of Sir John and Lady Hartopp. Such was the circle in which it appears he moved to and fro with a pleasant and indulged affability. All of these people were members of the church over which Dr. Owen had presided, and of which Watts was hereafter, and shortly, to be minister. It was no doubt owing to the intimacy he sustained with all these eminent persons, that he by-and-bye received the invitation to become their pastor, in which relation he preached a funeral sermon, as we have seen, for Sir John, so also for Lady Hartopp, and Lady Gould, of whom he remarks, “I would copy a line from that most beautiful elegy of David, and apply it here with more justice than the Psalmist could to Saul and Jonathan, ‘Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives, and in their death they were not divided,’ silent were they and retired from the world, and unknown except to their intimate friends; humble they were and averse to public show and noise, nor will I disturb their graves by making them the subject of public praise.”