Harriot came from a well-to-do family. Her father, William Thorold, was a gentleman vicar with a 1,600 acre estate in Lincolnshire. Harriot was 32 when she married the younger Rev. Joseph Gedge in 1824. Appointed by Lord Carrington as a schoolmaster and vicar and installed in a newly built house that came with the job, Gedge was an ambitious young man with illusions of grandeur and so was never content with his lot. When Harriot was expecting their second child, he tried to commandeer the schoolroom as a family nursery demanding that a new school be built elsewhere. Resorting to litigation, he lost that particular battle though he won others, including a sizeable pay rise and the right to appoint an assistant teacher to lighten his workload. Events came to a head in 1848 when Gedge finally resigned as the schoolmaster, though not as the vicar. This ruse allowed him to continue living in the schoolhouse cum vicarage until he was ready to move his family to a recently inherited property ...