PREFACE 



FOR the general design and scope of the History of Surrey the 

 reader is referred to the General Advertisement of the Victoria 

 History. 



One history of the county of the first class exists already, 

 Manning and Bray's, published in three volumes in 1814; the first 

 volume had appeared alone earlier. But not only has something been 

 learned in the last hundred years in history and archasology, but certain 

 features of the county, which are treated in this volume, scarcely 

 occupied the attention of those very learned and painstaking writers at 

 all. The various sides of Surrey Natural History, which are dealt with 

 by specialists here, lay outside their plan altogether. Geology was an 

 unknown science then, for if a beginning had been made yet the 

 geology of to-day is practically new knowledge. 



Manning and Bray have the distinction of having started this 

 Topographical History upon the right lines, by translating Domesday 

 and engraving a map of the Domesday Survey of the county. But the 

 literature of the Domesday Survey is now something very different from 

 what it was. Mr. J. Horace Round, the unrivalled authority upon 

 Domesday and the age of Domesday, has contributed an Introduction 

 to the Survey of Surrey, and the Editor has executed an entirely new 

 translation of the whole of the text, with notes, with the invaluable 

 assistance of the same specialist. 



The general sketch of the Political History is included in the 

 present volume. One of the aims of the series is to ' show what 

 part the county played in the larger History of the Empire.' The 

 geographical position of Surrey, between London and the south coast, 

 has made the county the scene of events, especially of the march of 

 armies, connected with the most important crises of our histories. Yet 

 the reader will find that local considerations have ruled the scope of 

 treatment of political events. The Great Charter was granted in 

 a Surrey meadow ; but it is not of local interest. Had John and 

 the Barons adjourned across the Thames its effects would have been 

 the same. The Chartist meeting of 1848 was in Surrey ; but the bad 

 local choice of its promoters had a good deal to do with the peaceful 

 fiasco which ensued. The Political History is amplified about the age 

 of Elizabeth. The existence in a Surrey manor house of a vast mass 

 of unpublished papers, the Loseley MSS., which the courtesy of the 

 owner, Mr. More Molyneux, has placed at the disposal of the Editor, 



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