A HISTORY OF SURREY 



' Rob. Cecyll ' below. 1 The lord admiral was still lord lieutenant ; Sir 

 George More, as he had become, was his deputy ; Sir William More 

 was gone in 1600. But Sir George was never of quite the same im- 

 portance as his father in the county, though he played some part at 

 Court. Surrey again got an earl in 1603. Thomas Howard, son of the 

 last Earl of Arundel, grandson of the last Duke of Norfolk, was restored 

 in blood as Earl of Arundel and Surrey by James, and recovered most of 

 the ancient Arundel property and some of his ancestral position. He 

 was ultimately created Earl of Norfolk in 1 644. He was lord lieutenant 

 of Surrey in 1635. He was a Romanist, as might be expected from 

 his ancestral relations with the Tudors. Surrey had gained another 

 Parliamentary borough under Elizabeth. The small town of Haslemere 

 had been part of the possessions of the Bishop of Salisbury from the time 

 of Henry II. to that of Henry VIII. It was in the manor of Godalming 

 and in the parish of Chiddingfold, evidence that it was not a place of 

 great importance formerly. But in 1584 Elizabeth summoned it to 

 send two burgesses to Parliament, and in 1596 she incorporated it by 

 charter, declaring therein that the inhabitants had sent members to 

 Parliament since the days before the memory of man. It was pure 

 fiction, meant to cover the deliberate creation of a borough to support 

 the Crown. The manor was in the hands of the Crown. It is possible 

 that neighbouring ironworks had made Haslemere slightly more impor- 

 tant than it had been formerly. It was not of course singular in having 

 its choice of burgesses controlled. 



The interest of the reign of King James, so illustrious in literature, 

 important in colonial expansion and trade, ominous in Parliamentary 

 strife, is not reflected in Surrey history. The king often resided in the 

 county, at Nonsuch chiefly, but also at Oatlands and at Richmond, and 

 Surrey grumbled as usual under the expenses of royal purveyance. But 

 the most lasting result of the royal residence was the establishment of 

 horse racing in the county. The king used to ride over to witness the 

 sport of ' running horses ' on Banstead Downs. Judging from the old 

 maps the name included what we call Epsom Downs. The old four 

 mile course, finishing near the present grand stand on Epsom Downs, 

 began far away on Banstead Downs as we call them. It is curious how 

 little if anything is heard of horse racing before this date, and how con- 

 stantly popular it remained from the early seventeenth century onwards. 

 James was a lover of sport, but he did not care for unnecessary risks. 

 He found that the holes made by swine rooting in the ground in the 

 Surrey bailiwick of the forest of Windsor endangered his neck when 

 hunting. The Earl of Nottingham wrote to Sir George More and the 

 other verderers of the forest that his highness in his reasonable dis- 

 pleasure ordered his keepers to kill all hogs found in the riding grounds, 

 but to spare the loss to the owners the earl would have them remove 

 their swine and fill up the holes. 8 The consequences of the king's harsh 

 order were evidently averted by his more considerate minister. In 1 6 1 1 



1 Loseley MSS, March 25, 1603, vii. D. 82. * Ibid. June 8, 1608, i. 55. 



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