Historian Edward Hasted, in the third volume of "The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent" published in 1798, dismissed the legend of the Biddenden Maids. He claimed that the Bread and Cheese Lands were the gift of two women named Preston (although he elsewhere described the lands as having been "given by persons unknown"). Hasted stated that the Biddenden cakes had only begun to be moulded with the imprint of two women in the last 50 years (i.e. since 1748) and that the figures were intended to represent "two poor widows, as the general objects of a charitable benefaction". While he mentioned a legend that the figures represent two conjoined twins who died in their 20s and bequeathed the Bread and Cheese Lands to the parish, he dismissed it as "a vulgar tradition".