THE HUNDRED OF WOKING

lies on the west side of the county, and is bounded on the east by Emley Bridge and Copthorn; on the south by Godalming and Blackheath; on the west by the counties of Berkshire and Hampshire, and on the north by the hundred of Chertsey.

The lordship of this hundred was granted 18 James I. with that of Blackheath, to Sir Edward Zouch, and was transmitted through the same hands to Earl Onslow, the present lord. It belongs to the deanery of Stoke, and contains seventeen parishes: Ash, East Clandon, West Clandon, Guildford, East Horsley, West Horsley, Merrow, Ockham, Pirbright, Ripley, Send, Stoke, Wanborough, Windlesham, Wisley, Woking, and Worplesdon.

GUILDFORD,

the county town of Surrey, is large, well built, and agreeably situated on the side of a considerable chalk hill, on the east bank of the Wey, thirty miles distant from London. In its present state this may justly be considered one of the best inland towns of its size in the kingdom. It consists principally of one capital street, measuring something more than three furlongs; the spaciousness of which, with the declivity of its situation, exhibits a very striking appearance, particularly to strangers. In 1801, it contained 464 houses, and 2634 inhabitants. This place gives the title of Earl to the noble family of North,

By which of our ancient kings the privileges of a corporation were first conferred upon this town cannot now be determined. It is, therefore, a corporation by prescription, and is considered as such in the earliest of its written charters, which is that of Henry III. A. D. 1256. The privileges granted by this instrument have been confirmed and extended by many succeeding sovereigns. The town is governed by a mayor, recorder, seven magistrates, and a number of bailiffs which is indeterminate, but seldom or

never exceeds twenty, by the style of the mayor and approved men of Guildford, who hold a court every three weeks, and are invested with the power of adjudging criminals to death at their general sessions.

Guildford has sent members to Parliament ever since 23 Edward I. The right of election is in the freemen and freeholders of the borough paying scot and lot, and resident within its limits, which scarcely include one half of the town.

The assizes for the county are held here alternately with Kingston and Croydon; and the election for knights of the shire always takes place in this town. It has a weekly market on Saturday, at which great quantities of corn are exposed for sale, and which is plentifully supplied with all other necessaries; and two annual fairs on May 4, and November 2, for horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs. The spring fair in 1800, was attended by an extraordinary number of cattle; the sheep and lambs alone amounting to 30,000.

We meet with no accounts of this town either in British or Ro man annals; neither do we find any mention made of it in Saxon history before the death of Alfred, A. D. 900, when that prince bequeathed it by will to Ethelwald, his nephew, on whose rebellion, or death, it reverted to the Crown. It appears to have been royal demesne at the time of the Domesday Survey, when the oc cupants of tenements in the town were 175. Tradition states, that the ancient town was situated on the west side of the river; and this account, though not confirmed by positive evidence, is countenanced by circumstances which have led Manning to adopt these conclusions: that, at the time of the general Survey, the tenements in question constituting the ancient town of Guildford, were situate on the west side of the river; that the castle was erected on the east side as the only spot capable of receiving it; that, in process of time, as the occasions of the new fortress induced people to settle in its neighbourhood, houses were gradually built in the void space above and below it, by the Testard` family, to whom the lands on that side had been granted, and

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who also erected the two churches of Trinity and St. Mary for their tenants; and that, on the demolition of the fortification and outworks of the castle, (whenever that happened) the present High Street arose out of the materials furnished from their ruins. This opinion is farther countenanced by names still in use here; the road on the cast side of the river being at this day called the Bury, i. e. Burgh Lane, as having probably been the Borough, or main street; and the adjoining fields formerly occupied by other houses, gardens, &c. of the inhabitants the Bury, or Burgh Fields.

The rest of the royal demesne that lay on the west side of the river was reserved for the king's private use; and being imparked by Henry II. soon after his accession, was occupied by his successors for many generations under the name of the King's Manor. Of that which lay on the east side some was swallowed up in the tract of ground afterwards occupied by the castle: some was alienated, and as it seems by the Conqueror himself to the family of Testard, by whose successors it was afterwards called the manor of Poyle; and the remainder disposed of to make room for the Friary.

So much of the royal demesne of this place as remained unalienated by the Conqueror and his successors was afterwards known by the name of the King's Manor. From its neighbourhood to the capital this could not but be considered as a convenient place of retirement, and as such was occupied by our princes in very early times The first step taken with this intention was by Henry 11. who, soon after his coronation in 1154, inclosed a considerable tract of land on the north side of Guildford Down, and converted it into a park. In his time also there was a mansion house in the park, probably first erected by him; and here he frequently kept his court.

From the time that this place became the occasional residence of our princes, certain wants of the household, on its removal hither, were supplied by the tenants of Crown lands in the neighbourhood. Some of these tenures afford a curious illustra

tion of the manners of the age. Thus, Robert the son of William Testard, in the time of Henry III. is called Custos meretricum in curia domini Regis. Robert de Mankesey, alias Gatton, is termed Mareschallus custodiendo meretrices de curia domini Regis; and Mareschallus 12 puellarum quæ sequuntur curiam domini Regis. Hamo, his son and heir, is styled Mareschallus meretricum, cum dominus Rex venerit in illis partibus; and Hamo, the younger, Mareschallus de communibus fœminis sequentibus hospitium domini Regis *.

Guildford was, therefore, the occasional residence of many of our kings, till, in the reign of Charles I. the Earl of Annandale obtained a grant of the manor and park in fee simple, by which he was impowered to dispark the lands, which were declared to be out of the bounds of any forest or chace. The Friary included in this grant was declared to be the principal house, or lodge of the park. On the decease of the Earl of Annandale in 1640, this estate passed through various hands; and, under a decree of the Court of Chancery, the manor and park were sold, in 1709, to the Honourable Thomas Onslow, afterwards Lord Onslow. Soon after this the lands were disparked, and are now occupied as four distinct farms †, which are the property of Earl Onslow.

The

Manning has laboured to invalidate the ludicrous reflections on the court of that time to which these terms have given occasion, and to prove, that the word Meretrix was here used in an indifferent sense, and as the description of such people in general who served for hire: but Lysons, in the Appendix to the fifteenth volume of the Archæologia (p. 399,) has quoted a record which proves beyond a doubt, that the word Meretrices is to be taken in its literal sense. In Liber Ruber Scaccurii, cited by Spelman, in his Glossary, at the word Marescallus, is this passage :-"Et si soloit estre que le Maresscall devoit avoir donze Damoisellez à la Court le Roy, qui devioient faire seirement à son Bacheler, qu'elles ne saveroient aultres putains à la Court qu'elles mesmės, no Ribaudes sans avowerie de assre, ne larron ne mesel quelles ne le monstreront au Maresscal, et il doit pourvoir la Court de tout."

In a field near Henley Grove, belonging to one of these farms, an earthen pot was found in 1781, deposited in the chalky rock, about two feet beneath

the