Highways and Byways in Surrey Part 27

7^ber ye 4^th. Allowed to Goodwife Cole to fface Jn[=o]. Songhursts Girl's Boddice and to graft her Petty coate 00 01 06

December 26. Paid Thomas Simmonds and Rob^t Lisney for killing a fox In y^e parish Customary 00 03 04

March 18. Paid for Bread and Cheese and Bran [funeral of R^d Bashford] 00 05 06

Paid for 7 Galls. and of Beer 00 07 06

1729.

Sep^r 1. Paid Francis Heathfield for Brandy Boundwalking 00 04 00

1731.

Paid Goody Rapley on account of ayring and cleansing her Daughter of the Small Pox 00 14 00

1739.

Expenses carrying Sarah Rapley to Limpsfield 01 05 0

Paid for four Horses and a Side Saddle 00 13 00

Paid for a Warrant for Sarah Rapley 00 01 00

Paid for a Marriage Licence for D^o Rapley 01 08 00

Paid for her Wedding Ring 00 06 00

Paid Horsehire to Dorking for D^o Rapley 00 01 00

Paid Tho. Rapley's wife for nurseing Sarah Rapley's child this month 8

1740.

Paid the Clark's Fee at Sarah Rapley's Marriage 00 02 06

Paid M^r Pearson for marrying Sarah Rapley and burying Jno. Lips...o...b..y^e blind man 00 11 00

1745.

Expences having Henry Rapley to ye Sea when bitt by a Mad Dog (Paid to Richard Rapley) 00 12 06

How many village families could show so long a written history as that of the Rapleys, or so engaging a record? The entries of 1739 and 1740 are a perfect climax of hopes and fears, ending, it is impossible to doubt, in the enjoyment by Sarah Rapley of every conceivable happiness.

But the joys hidden under the cold print of the last Rapley entry are only dimly to be imagined. Henry Rapley's return from the sea, cured of his dog-bite, must have brought out the whole village.

Two miles south-west of Ockley, a short way off the Stone street, stands the lonely little chapel of Oakwood. It is one of the old forest chapels, and dates back to the thirteenth century, but was enlarged in the fifteenth, the happy result of an accident. Sir Edward de la Hale was hunting wild boar with his son in the forest hard by. They had wounded a boar, the boy was thrown from his horse, and the boar charged down. His father spurred forward, too late to save him, when suddenly an arrow whizzed through the trees and the boar fell dead. In his joy, the father vowed on the spot an offering to the service of G.o.d, and Oakwood chapel was restored and endowed. The little building lies apart, sequestered in cornfields and deep woods, the quietest treasure of sudden discovery for the stranger walking idly by country lanes.

Beyond the railway to the east of Ockley, approached by quiet oak-shaded roads, lies the little village of Capel, not much more than a half-mile of main street lined with cottages. Capel instils a pleasant restfulness. Almost its chief buildings are the admirably designed almshouses built in memory of Mr. Charles Webb of Clapham Common. In an age when "improvements" generally mean the destruction of something old, and "additions" to village housing accommodation mean yellow brick boxes and slate lids, it is a pleasure to set eyes upon a modern building instinct with the spirit of country places. Capel people have long had proper views as to the right rate of progress through the business of life. They are skilled, or some of them, in topiary, and when the garden of a tiny, red-tiled cottage contains a shaven yew tree recognisable as a fair-sized bird, the tenour of village life must be agreeably even.

Third of the three villages which group themselves south and south-west of Leith Hill is Newdigate, separated from Capel by over two miles of a zig-zagging road, though the distance for a steeplechase cannot be much more than a mile from church to church. Newdigate church is the chief part of the little village. The tower is wholly built of oak, and the beams supporting the belfry are almost as fine as those of the Thursley tower; possibly they are the work of the same craftsmen. Like other Wealden churches, Newdigate has an abiding charm in her peal of bells.

They have been re-cast, but the Newdigate bellringers have long records of changes rung in the little tower. Some of the records are painted on wooden panels in the belfry. To the layman who has never rung a bell the names of the changes are stimulating. Colledge Singles, Grandsire Doubles, College Exercise, and College Pleasure are fairly simple; but Without a Dodge provokes thought, and Woodbine Violet must have been named by the village poet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Newdigate Church._]

Surrey autumns invest the shingled spires of these Wealden churches with a peculiar beauty. Grey and white, black-streaked and shining, weatherbeaten and weather-conquering, there is nothing in architecture lighter or more graceful than the patterned sheaths of native oak surmounting belfries which, sometimes for centuries, have called the villagers to church. But in late autumn, when the swallows and martins are practising starts for their long journey, the shingled spires turn themselves to fresh uses. On a sunny day the birds come about them in scores, pressing their bodies flat against the warm, dry wood, darting out for short flights, hawking gnats and midges, and flitting back again, keeping up through it all the sweetest and gentlest of anxious twitterings, and, when they are clinging to the chequered wood, resembling it so closely in colour and texture as to make it hard to count a dozen birds quickly. Martins near their time for going enter on all kinds of engaging habits, especially just before and just after dusk, when bands of a dozen or so seem suddenly to make up their minds to trial flights of the most amazing speed, utterly unlike their ordinary, quiet flittings. But there is nothing prettier in all the pageant of the migrants' year, than a dozen score martins with the unrest of autumn on them darting round a shingled spire.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

REIGATE

Reigate Castle.--De Warenne.--A Swashbuckler and a Swordsman.--The Reigate Caves.--Lord Holland's soldiering.--Pilgrims at the Red Cross.--General of the Royale Navey.--Olde Dutchesse Norf.--"W.

W."--Reigate Politics.--The Marble Hall.--The White Hart.--A Race against Time.

Four castles stood along the ridge of the Surrey downs when the barons were at war, and of the four nothing worth the name of a castle remains.

Farnham's keep was broken down by Cromwell: Guildford is a sh.e.l.l, Reigate and Bletchingley have disappeared altogether. Betchworth, never fortified for war, was built later than the others, but Betchworth is an insignificant ruin. The kings and the captains have pa.s.sed, and their buildings have followed them. The castles have gone down with the palaces. Surrey never had a castle like Arundel; but she has not been able to keep even a Pevensey or a Bodiam.

Yet Reigate castle and its owners shaped a great deal of English history. It belonged to the great Earls de Warenne, the rival family to the de Clares through all the early wars and intrigues of the kings and the barons. It stood on the ancient British track, the "Way" which runs east and west across the country. Its place on the Way was within reach of the Roman road, the Stone Street that ran from Chichester to London.

Its possessor held the strongest strategic position between London and the coastline, or between Canterbury and Winchester, and when there was any fighting forward the lord of the highway cross roads, the ridge gate, was the first person to be taken into account. The curious thing is that there was so little fighting along the ridge. Reigate Castle never saw a pitched battle. When Louis of France was riding by the ridge to Winchester after King John, Reigate surrendered to the French, and de Warenne only got his castle back by changing sides from John to Louis.

That was in 1216, and forty-seven years later, when Simon de Montfort took the baron's army by the ridge to Rochester, Reigate could do no more than watch the army march by. The de Warenne of the day was at Lewes with the king, and when the king had lost all in the battle of Lewes that followed, the lord of Reigate castle fled to France. He came back the next year, and when de Montfort fell at Evesham, Reigate was once more de Warenne's.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Reigate._]

The kings must have found this particular de Warenne a little difficult to deal with. He was a bit of a swashbuckler as well as a swordsman, and once when he found himself getting the worst of a lawsuit at Westminster with one Alan de la Zouche, he ran him through the body in the king's own chamber and was off to Reigate before anybody could stop him. King Henry was furious, and sent Prince Edward, the great de Clare, and an archbishop to bid him come out of his castle and be punished. He came out at last, and was fined ten thousand marks for the king and two thousand for Alan de la Zouche. But Prince Edward was not done with him.

As Edward the First he held a Court of a.s.size to inquire into the warrants by which the barons held their lands. De Warenne was asked for his warrant for Reigate. He drew a rusty sword and struck it on the council table. "By this instrument," he said, "do I hold my lands, and by the same I intend to keep them." He kept them, but he had to amend his plea into something a little less swaggering.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A Reigate Byway._]

Of Reigate Castle not a stone remains. But under the great mound which bore the keep you may see what local tradition has named the Baron's caves, where, as the story goes, the Barons met before the signing of Magna Charta. Martin Tupper, indeed, has written a whole chapter in _Stephan Langton_ describing the interesting scene, though as a mere matter of history it never took place. To begin with, the de Warenne of the day was an adherent of King John, and not of the barons, and in the next place the barons marching to Runemede never came near Reigate at all. Mr. Tupper errs. But the pa.s.sages and chambers hollowed out of the yellow sandstone are interesting, and so are the rough carvings of heads of horses which ornament the walls. Mr. Malden, the Surrey historian, thinks the caves are merely sand-quarries, sand being valuable for making mortar. It is pleasanter, though probably wholly incorrect, to imagine them as dungeons, or homes of early man, or even cellars. The gardener exhibits them with a candle, and in the dark they can be eerie enough for cave-bears.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Park Lane, near Reigate._]

Long after the de Warennes' reign was over, Reigate Castle saw more fighting. We met the leaders on both sides at Kingston. It was nearly at the end of the Parliamentary wars, and Lord Holland, commanding the Royalist troops, conceived the idea of a rising near London. There was to be a horse-race on Banstead Downs, to draw the people together, and he was to lead them. Unhappily for his followers, he was a thoroughly incompetent soldier. He hoisted his standard at Kingston, and marched through Dorking to Reigate, where he held the castle and posted his vedettes on Red Hill. Sir Michael Livesey, commanding some Kentish horse for the Parliament, was ordered up from Sevenoaks to meet him; Major Audley, one of Livesey's officers, was moved out from Hounslow, where he had three troops, to clear Banstead Downs. Audley reached Reigate first, and engaged Lord Holland, but found him too strong: he drew off, and Holland, for no soldier's reason, fell back on Dorking. He came on again to Reigate next day, but by that time Livesey and Audley had joined, and when Holland knew who was before him he turned again for Kingston. As we saw, his horse faced the Parliament's troops on Kingston Common, and he died without glory on the scaffold.

Not much remains even of the Reigate which Lord Holland's troops saw on that luckless July day in 1648. The Parliament tumbled the old castle in ruins, and as at Bletchingley, anybody who wanted to build a house or a barn helped himself from the stones. To-day the steadiest modern business fills the High Street and Bell Street, the two roads running west and south along which old Reigate lay. Here and there the quaint slope of a red roof, or the lichen on weather-worn tiles, has a hold on the past, and in Slip Shoe Street, itself echoing the days of pilgrimages, care and good paint have preserved the beams of delightful old cottages. The Swan Inn, which may have liquored Holland's cavaliers, has borne much from later builders, but it stands on the old site. Nearly all the rest of old Reigate has gone. The Red Cross Inn, where thirsty pilgrims dropping down from the chalk highway drank ale and rested, has made way for brand-new brick and rough-cast, painted a bright pink. The market which the pilgrims used to find at the western end of the town was moved to the centre cross-roads at the Reformation, and the little chapel at the cross-roads, where the pilgrims said their Aves, came down in George the First's day to make room for what is now called the old Town Hall. It is only two hundred years old, but even it is not as its Georgian builder left it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Reigate Heath._]

What happened to Reigate Church in the early part of the nineteenth century will never be quite known. There were alterations in 1818, and it was restored in 1845; that is to say, much of its beautiful old work was destroyed. But it has kept a few of its Norman pillars, and a reverent rebuilding of much of the fabric by Sir Gilbert Scott in 1873 has left its n.o.ble relics enshrined under a fine tower. The vault holds the dust of two of England's greatest men. The first and second Lords Howard of Effingham lie there, each in his day Lord High Admiral of the English navy. Charles, the second Lord Howard, died at Haling House near Croydon, and was buried at dead of night in the family vault on December 23, 1624. Incredible as it sounds, from that day until 1888, the three-hundredth anniversary of the defeat of the Armada, not a single record of the Admiral who met and destroyed it was to be seen in Reigate Church, except the inscription on the coffin in the Howards' vault.

Then, at last, the inscription was copied and placed on a bra.s.s in the chancel. Its terseness fits the dead man's name:--

Here in the vault beneath at midnight the Dec. 23: 1624 lyeth the body of Charles Howarde Earl of Nottingham Admyrall of Englande Generall of Queen Elizabeth's Royale Navey at sea Against the Spanyards Invinsable Navye In the Year of our Lord 1589, who departed this Life at Haling House the 14 Day of December in the Year of our Lorde, 1624 Aetatis Suae 87

We saw the Howards at Effingham and Great Bookham, and shall find them again at Lingfield. Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower, in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, has brought together some interesting particulars of the antiquities of the family. The second Duke of Norfolk, who was father of the first Lord Howard of Effingham, and now lies at Lambeth, left a remarkable will. He was, as his epitaph informs us, a "High and Mighty Prince," and he writes of himself in the royal plural. He orders a tomb to be erected before the high altar of Thetford "with pictures of us and Agnes our wife to be set together thereupon."

The Lambeth Parish Registers do not read so respectfully. This is the entry recording the pa.s.sing of the Prince's widow--"Oct. 13, 1545, my Lady Agnes, olde Dutchesse Norf., buried."