42 BOROUGH OF LEWISHAM. 
the hill between Forest Hill and Brockley, which has ever since 
been called Honor Oak; but from its nearness to Greenwich she 
doubtless was often in the parish, and there were legends of 
her visiting the Earl of Essex at Place House, near Catford Bridge. 
The accession of James I brought ultimately another master 
to Lewisham. Amongst the followers who accompanied him from 
Scotland was John Ramsay, Viscount Haddington, who when a 
page attending him at the house of Earl Gowry at Perth on the 5th 
August, 1600, was instrumental in discovering and frustrating 
the attempt that was made there on the life of the King. Ramsay 
was created Viscount Haddington for this service, and in 1620 
was further made Baron of Kingston-on-Thames and Earl of 
Holderness, and as a special honour he and his heirs male were 
to bear the sword of state before the king on the 5th day of 
August as a memorial of his act. In 1624 King James announced 
to his Council at Westminster that in consideration of the great 
services rendered to him by the Earl of Holderness, and at the 
- earl’s request, he intended to bestow the Manor of Lewisham upon 
Edward and Robert Ramsay; and this he did on 29th June in that 
year, the grant apparently to take effect on the expiry of the lease 
held by Sir Francis Knolles. Edward and Robert Ramsay con- 
veyed the manor to Sir George Ramsay, the brother of the earl 
and his heir, who died in 1629, when it descended to his eldest 
son, John Ramsay of Winlaton in co. Durham, who sold it on 
23rd May, 1640, to Raynald Graham, of Humington in Yorkshire, 
citizen and draper of London. 
The history of Lewisham during the first half of the 17th 
century is largely the history of the vicariate of that remarkable 
man, the Rev. Abraham Colfe, who filled the office for nearly fifty 
years. The son of the Rev. Richard Colfe, Prebendary of Christ 
Church, Canterbury, he was born in that city on 7th August, 1580. 
He was educated at the King’s School, Canterbury, and Christ 
Church, Oxford, and taking holy orders he came to Lewisham 
in 1604 as curate to the saintly Hadrian de Saravia, the friend 
and confessor of Richard Hooker. King James had granted the 
next presentation to the vicarage to William Beeston, of Canter- 
bury, evidently a friend of the family, and when in 1610 Saravia 
resigned Lewisham for the rectory of Great Chart, which was 
nearer Canterbury, Abraham Colfe was appointed Vicar, being 
instituted on 1st May of that year. Most faithfully did he fill 
the office, and until his death in 1657 he spent his whole time in 
labouring for the spiritual and temporal welfare of his parishioners. 
His first great public work was his successful resistance of 
the attempt that was made to enclose Westwood or Sydenham 
Common. This consisted of about 500 acres, covering the part 
of the parish now occupied by Sydenham and Forest Hill. These 
common lands—which, such as Blackheath, are now largely used 
for recreation—were, in the period with which we are now dealing, 
the mainstay of the poorer inhabitants, who not only had pasture 
