A HISTORY OF SURREY 



Manwood (Treatise and Discourse of the Laws of the Forest, 1598, p. 266) 

 printed another version of the latter part of this boundary produced by 

 the county in the first year of Edward III. 



From Bredeford along the road from Frimley to Wishmere 

 By Ralph's cross to Gonerichford, formerly called Batechesford 

 Through the middle of la Shete to Horton 

 From Horton by la Lee towards the Watercourse 

 Thence along the water called Sideway to Thornhull 

 From Thornhull to Harpesford 



Harpesford along the water to Inggfield 



Inggfield to Loderlake-huch, where the counties of Surrey, Berks and 

 Buckingham meet 



The latter part of the boundary is clearly to be traced. Bredeford is the 

 old name of the ford of the Blackwater at the place so called, Bromhull 

 is Broomhill, Sorbeshull is Shrubshill, Bagsete is Bagshot, Wishmere is 

 close to Bagshot Park, Horton is north-east of Bagshot Park, Harpesford 

 was a place where Virginia Water is, Inggfield seems to be Englefield 

 Green, Loderslake is on the Thames. Before Bredeford, the boundary 

 is that of Surrey and Hampshire. 



In 1280 however the Crown made a new attempt to extend the 

 forest into Surrey. Commissioners were appointed to make a new 

 perambulation, and a court was held at Lambeth before Philip de Say, 

 chief justice of the forests, where twelve sworn men of the county 

 declared that Henry II. died seised of the whole county as forest, that 

 Richard I. had disafforested only such part of it as was east of the Wey 

 and south of Guildford Down, and that no part of the county had been 

 made forest by Henry II. The effect of this verdict was intended to 

 be that the country west of the Wey and north of Guildford Down could 

 not be touched by a charter annulling the afforesting of new forests, but 

 that it was an ancient forest, excluded from the list of encroachments 

 which the Great Charter was intended to restrain. The verdict of 

 1226 was of course completely reversed. 



It is quite impossible now to arrive at the exact rights of the 

 case. The assertion that Henry II. newly afforested no part of the 

 county is not the fact, but on the other hand it would be rash to assert 

 positively that the north-western part of the county was never counted 

 as forest before Henry's reign. Some part of it apparently was. In 

 1327 the sworn men of the county certainly mixed up fiction in their 

 condemnation of the judgment of the court of 1280, when they affirmed 

 that the inquiry had been set on foot by Hugh Despencer without the 

 privity of the county. A jury had been sworn, and Hugh Despencer, 

 who was only twenty years old in 1280, was not chief justice of the 

 forests south of Trent till 1294. It is of course possible that he may 

 have done something to sustain the judgment of 1280 afterwards. On 

 the evidence of these same sworn men of 1327 it is said that no per- 

 ambulation was made after all in 1280. The Wey and Guildford Down 

 seem however to have been taken as the bounds of the forest, and the 

 extension was among those complained of under Edward I. At last in 



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