to some of the assemblies at Basingstoke. Hardly less important than
these magnates were the Mildmays of Dogmersfield and the Chutes of The
Vyne. The Mr. Chute of that day was not only one of the two M.P.'s for
the whole county of Hampshire, but was also a well-known and popular
M.F.H., and the husband of an excellent and cultivated wife. Then came
other squires--Portals at Freefolk, Bramstons at Oakley Hall, Jervoises
at Herriard, Harwoods at Deane, Terrys at Dummer, Holders at Ashe
Park--with several clerical families, and other smaller folk.

But there were three houses which meant to the Austen sisters far more
than any of the others. The Miss Biggs[53] of Manydown Park--a
substantial old manor-house owned by their father, Mr. Bigg Wither,
which stands between Steventon and Basingstoke--were especial friends of
Cassandra and Jane. One of these, Elizabeth, became Mrs. Heathcote, and
was the mother of Sir William Heathcote of Hursley Park--a fine
specimen, morally and intellectually, of a country gentleman, and still
remembered by many as Member for Oxford University, and as _sole_ patron
of John Keble. Catherine, another sister, married Southey's uncle, the
Rev. Herbert Hill; and Alethea, who never married, was probably for that
very reason all the more important to the Steventon sisters. One of the
latest of Jane's extant letters is addressed to Alethea.

A still closer friendship united Jane and Cassandra to a family named
Lloyd, who for a short time inhabited their father's second house, the
parsonage at Deane. Mrs. Lloyd had been a Craven--one of the unhappy
daughters of a beautiful and fashionable but utterly neglectful mother,
who left them to shift for themselves and to marry where they could. In
this respect Martha Craven had done better than some of her sisters,
having become the wife of a beneficed clergyman of respectable character
and good position. With him she had led a peaceful life, and, on his
death in January 1789, she spent the first two or three years of a quiet
widowhood at Deane. Her second daughter, Eliza, was then already married
to a first cousin, Fulwar Craven Fowle; but the two others, Martha and
Mary, were still at home. Both became fast friends of Cassandra and
Jane, and both were destined eventually to marry into the Austen family.
For the present, their near neighbourhood came to an end at the
beginning of 1792, when Mrs. Lloyd removed to Ibthorp, eighteen miles
distant from Steventon.