Elizabeth; besides the love passages of Dr. Donne, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, but sometime' an inmate of the Fleet Prison, to which he was consigned for a clandestine marriage with Mistress Anne More. Dibdin's wonderful book Paradise may yet be seen in the library of Ham House, the residence of the Earls of Dysart, which rivals even that of Lambeth, with its fourteen Caxtons and other black-letter treasures. The house itself is a fine old James I. mansion, built close to the river, in the midst of gloomy clumps of fir-trees, and interminable elm avenues, one of which leads out through ornamental iron gates of Charles II.'s time to Ham Common. The hall and carved oak staircase are especially fine. The former, as well as the picture closet and gallery, are crowded with Vandykes and other historical portraits. Among them is that of the beautiful and eccentric Lady Dysart, afterwards Duchess of Lauderdale, whose cipher appears on many of their tables and inlaid floors, and to the time of whose occupancy of the mansion the furniture belongs. Her charms, if we may believe Burnet, proved too much for the virtue of the stern Protector, who was certainly fond of her, and she took great care to entertain him in it, and his intrigues with her were not a little taken notice of.' Cromwell was much at Ashley Park in the neighbourhood, and may have visited Ham House when, during the controversy between the Parliament and the army, Fairfax was quartered at Putney, where the councils of war were held in the church, being usually, according to the Putney projects,' a political squib of the day, opened by a sermon from Hugh Peters or some other favourite preacher.

Farnham was not the only place in the county which bore a part in the annals of the Great Rebellion. Kingston, with its wonted loyalty, declared at the outset of the struggle for the king. So early as the month of January 1642, it was the scene of the first attempt by Colonel Lunsford to enlist troops for his Majesty, and to seize the county magazine of arms, which was deposited there. In October, Lord Essex's troops, amongst whom were the train-bands of Southwark under Sir Richard Onslow, were quartered there, much to the disgust of the inhabitants, 'who would afford them no entertainment, calling them Roundheads, and wished the Cavaliers would come.' Their wish was soon gratified. The king marched in, after the battle of Brentford, in November of the same year, amidst every demonstration of loyalty, and his whole army lay there several days. The Derby House Committee took care' of Merton Abbey, Sterborough and Reigate castles, and dismantled Farnham, but the tide ran strong in favour of the king in Surrey. On the 26th of

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November, 1647, eight regiments quartered at Kingston, startled Fairfax by handing in a declaration of loyalty to his Majesty,' and in May of the ensuing year, the famous Surrey Petition,' initiated by county meetings at Dorking, and on Putney Heath, was presented to Parliament. Its tenor was in favour of episcopacy, and the non-disturbance of ministers; and it prayed the restoration of the king, and the disbandment of the army. As the petition was presented in person by a large body of the men of Surrey, on horseback, as well as on foot, we are not surprised to learn that the result was a fray, within the precincts of Westminster Hall itself, between the petitioners and the soldiers on guard, in which some lives were lost. Both sides had their own accounts of the quarrel; but it is probably to be attributed to the general dissatisfaction created in the county by the proceedings of the Parliament, that Kingston, which had previously witnessed the first, was selected as the scene also of the last attempt to strike a blow for King Charles. In July 1648, when that unhappy monarch was already a prisoner at Carisbrooke, the Earl of Holland and the Duke of Buckingham (the Zimri of Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel') having issued a manifesto in favour of the king, which was probably suggested by the celebrated Christian Countess of Devonshire, then resident at Roehampton, mustered a body of horse on Banstead Downs. After a demonstration at Reigate, which Major Audeley, commanding the Roundheads, had not sufficient force to prevent, and one or two preliminary skirmishes at Ewell and in the neighbourhood of Nonsuch, a smart cavalry action was fought on a hill between the latter place and Kingston. The issue was for some time doubtful; but, after a gallant defence, and as sharp a charge as ever I saw in these unhappy wars,' writes Audeley, the Royalists gave way. Covered by their cavalry, the infantry, which had taken little part in the action, made good their retreat into Kingston; but the game was up, and they evacuated the town the next morning in disorder. The Duke of Buckingham eventually escaped to Holland. His brother, Lord Francis Villiers, having had a horse killed under him, stood with his back to a tree, and, refusing all quarter, sank under his wounds. His body was not discovered until he was dead, and stripped, and good pillage found in his pocket.' Lord Holland was afterwards taken and executed. Livesey's troopers were, in consequence of this outbreak, quartered all over the county, and we find, in the next year, grievous complaints from Witley, Thursley, Peper Harow, Puttenham, and other parishes, of their acts of violence and disorder,' embodied in a petition for their speedy

removal.

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The disappearance of two royal palaces may be traced to this stormy period. A brick gateway, and some vaults, are all that the civil wars have left of the fine old palace of Oatlands, built by Henry VIII., and to which extensive additions were made under Inigo Jones. Two mansions have, since the time of its destruction, successively occupied the site. The first, built by Lord Lincoln, was burnt down in 1794. The present house is but a portion of that which was so long the residence of the Duke of York. It is now converted into a hotel; the fine old trees which surrounded it are fast disappearing, and the park itself is in process of conversion into building sites for villas.

Richmond still retains its noble park of 2,300 acres, with its woodland glades, its splendid timber, and its fine herds of deer. Like Oatlands, it has to thank the Puritans for the destruction of its historical palace. The entrance gateway, called 'Old Palace Yard,' and surmounted by the arms and supporters of the founder, is all that remains of those walls within which, during the reigns of Henry VII. and of the five following sovereigns, the court spent almost as much time as at Windsor itself. The original old palace of Shene, which had witnessed the conference of Edward I. with the Scottish nobles, and the death-bed of Edward III., was demolished, in grief for the death of his queen, Anne of Bohemia, by Richard II.; whereas the former kings of this land, being wearie of the city, used customarilie hither to resorte, as to a place of pleasure, and serving highly to their recreation.' Its successor was the dower-house of the lovely Elizabeth Woodville, and her residence, when the death of Richard III. permitted her to leave St. Saviour's Priory in Bermondsey, where she had taken sanctuary. It was burnt down by accident in 1499. Henry VII. died at the palace which rose under his auspices upon its foundations, and which was afterwards, for some time, the prison-house of his granddaughter Elizabeth. She never lost her affection for it. Here she was present at the ill-fated Amy Robsart's marriage; here she received Eric of Sweden, when he made proposals for her own hand; and here, on the morning of the 24th of March 1603, closed her long reign. Two small lakes ornament the park, and drainage has done much, for what was in Horace Walpole's time 'a bog, and a harbour for deer-stealers and vagabonds.'

In the lower part of the old-fashioned town of Croydon, remarkable, like Guildford, for its long High Street, are the hall and chapel which formed a part of the former archiepiscopal palace. The massive timbers of the roof of the hall may still be seen through the steams of a monster laundry. The chapel is more appropriately occupied as an industrial school. Scattered

over the whole face of the county are many curious old manorhouses, several of them now in the occupation of farmers. They are usually, as at Crowhurst Place, built partly of brick, partly timbered in panels. Slyfords, on the banks of the Mole, must once have been a James I. mansion. Bramley, with its picturesque gables, and Moushill, with its oriel windows, are good types of their class. There is an old moated house near the church at Lingfield, two farmhouses at Crowhurst, and several in the parish of Blechingly, which come under the same head. Aubrey's 'extraordinary good parsonage-house' may still be seen at Shere. It is of timber, but the large and deep moat' has been filled up.

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Of the many modern mansions that have succeeded their more picturesque predecessors, the greater part were built in the eighteenth century. The orangery at Kew, and Peper Harow, were the work of Sir William Chambers, the architect of Somerset House. Capability Brown built for the great Lord Clive that house at Claremont, upon which the peasantry of Surrey looked with mysterious horror,' and which was afterwards the scene of the Princess Charlotte's death. It was probably his only perfect essay in bricks and mortar, but he has left his mark upon the grounds at Clandon. Clandon itself, Botleys, Ottershaw, Hatchlands, Burwood, Titsey, are all of the same date. West Horsley and Ockham were all but entirely rebuilt then, although parts of both may claim to date back to the times of James I. East Horsley Tower, the Deepdene, Denbies, Monk's Orchard, Addington; and a host of others, are of a far later period.

But the real glories of Surrey must ever be of the present rather than of the past, of nature than of art. Description must fail to do adequate justice to the exquisite beauty of its scenery, or to the charms of those 'gentile habitations' whose numbers turn whole districts of the county into one continuous pleasureground. There is variety enough to please the taste of the most fastidious. The terraces and gardens of Albury, bordered with their yew hedges, remain as they were designed by Evelyn for Thomas Howard, Earl Marshal of England, who would have sold any estate in England, Arundel excepted, before he would have parted with his darling villa.' They have won the especial praise of Cobbett. The woodland glades of Losely, the 'witchery' of the Peper Harow pleasure-grounds, with their distant view of Hindhead and the Surrey moors; the wild and romantic dells about Hascombe and Haslemere; Waverley, with its grey Cistercian ruins, its broad green meadows encircled by lowwooded hills, and the still glassy lake that sleeps beneath the

gloomy shadows of its pine-trees, have each a surpassing loveliness of their own, which can be equalled by few other counties. Nothing can exceed in magnificence the views from Shere, the Denbies, Norbury, and Reigate Parks, Gatton, Boxhill, and the rest of the long line of gentlemen's seats which fringe the southern slopes of the North Downs. Marden Park overlooking Godstone, Titsey nestling amidst its extensive plantations, Rooksnest, and the numberless gables which peep out from amongst the wooded knolls of that valley which stretches up to the chalk hills beyond Reigate, are the peculiar characteristics of a county, which boasts, notwithstanding its narrow limits, upwards of thirty enclosed parks, and a host of minor places.' Moorpark has little left but its canal to attest the taste of Sir William Temple, who withdrew thither after his son's death in 1686. The trim gardens are gone where an 'eccentric disagreeable young Irishman took lessons from William III. in cutting asparagus,' and divided his time between the Battle of the Books,' and the more dangerous pursuit of making love to Lady Giffard's pretty waiting-maid,' ill-fated Stella.

The delicious streams and venerable woods of Wotton' must ever be sacred to the memory of that perfect model of an English gentleman,' John Evelyn, author of the Sylva,' and Charles I.'s ambassador to Paris. Many of the woods which remain, to justify its old Saxon name of Wode-toun, were planted under his own eye. In the library are preserved his collection of books, his own annotated Bible, and his drawings with a black-lead pencil.

There is a curious account still extant of his father's shrievalty, the last of the united counties of Surrey and Sussex. He attended the judges, with an hundred and sixteen servants in livery;' while thirty gentlemen of tank, to whom he was uncle, or great uncle, all clad in the same colours, came with several others to do him honour.' The roll of sheriff's and of knights for the shire, both swarm with Evelyns, in company with Westons, Mores, Carews, Newdegates, Brocases, Howards, Gaynesfords, D'Abernons, Onslows, and many a name now unknown in the county. Of the last family, was the well-known Speaker Onslow,' who held that office for upwards of thirty years. Four Onslows in succession filled the lord lieutenancy of the county throughout a whole century, until the spell was at length broken by the appointment of a Brodrick.

The old Howard seat of The Deepdene' has passed into the hands of Mr. Hope, but the grounds still retain the beauty which captivated Evelyn. Close to the house opens the Dene' mentioned by him, which gradually changes its character as it