A HISTORY OF SURREY 



half of the sixteenth century. The old royal apartments outside the 

 keep must have been ruinous, for Mr. Carter took up his abode in the 

 keep, opening windows and making chimneys to render it habitable as a 

 house. 



The manor and royal park of Guildford were granted to John 

 Murray, afterwards Earl of Annandale, for life in 161 1, and in 1620 in 

 fee simple. The friary house was included. The grant was confirmed, 

 with rights of free warren, in the sixth year of Charles I. This ended 

 royal residence in Surrey, except at the houses in the Thames valley and 

 for awhile at Nonsuch. 



The earlier part of the reign of Charles I. saw of course levies of 

 soldiers, on no great scale, for the wars in Germany and with the French. 

 But mismanaged war, under the direction of a mistrusted minister like 

 Buckingham, was unpopular. The troops intended for the expeditions 

 which sailed from Portsmouth were quartered mostly on the coast or 

 along the roads leading to Portsmouth. Some were at Farnham, on 

 one road to the Hampshire coast from London. The grievance of 

 the billeting of soldiers was one of those taken up in the Petition of 

 Right in 1628, and Farnham seems to offer an instructive example of 

 the worth of the Petition. On June 7, 1628, the king had answered 

 the Petition favourably with the ancient form Soit droitfaict and the rest. 

 On July 10, Parliament having been dissolved on June 26, the lords of 

 the Council wrote to the deputy lieutenant of Surrey to suppress the 

 discontents in Farnham which had arisen from the billeting of soldiers, 

 and to see that the soldiers continued in their billets. The Farnham 

 people had in some cases turned them out of doors, but they were to be 

 reinstated. 1 



The letter exemplifies the doctrine of the king and Council that 

 the Petition laid down general rules, but that their application must be 

 determined by the discretionary authority of the Crown as cases arose. 

 Nor indeed, though the doctrine seemed to annul the use of the Peti- 

 tion, could it well be otherwise. The whole Petition laboured under 

 the drawback of being merely a negative instrument, protesting against 

 abuses, but devising no means by which the abuses could be avoided if 

 Government continued to be carried on. War was being waged with 

 the approval of Parliament in principle, though they might object to 

 the means employed. The relief of La Rochelle was ardently desired. 

 The soldiers intended for the service had to be somewhere ; no barracks 

 existed, and no money was voted for providing quarters of any kind. 

 No means existed for putting the soldiers under canvas. It was inevit- 

 able that for a time at least they should remain in their billets. When 

 the Parliament had an army of its own it had to be billeted in the same 

 way. In the late autumn of 1628, when Buckingham was dead, La 

 Rochelle taken, and the force which had failed to relieve it dispersed, 

 the Council wrote to the deputy lieutenant of Surrey to see after the 

 transport back to Scotland of Scottish troops who had been employed 



1 Loseley MSS. July lo, 1628, vi. 132. 

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