A HISTORY OF SURREY 



county of Surrey was thereby disafforested. 1 The part of the Honour 

 of Hampton Court, established as forest by Act of Parliament under 

 Henry VIII., was only constructively disafforested by the Long Parlia- 

 ment. The former Act constituting it does not seem to have been 

 specifically repealed. 2 



In 1635 Charles made another smaller encroachment under legal 

 form upon some people in Surrey, at Richmond. He was desirous of 

 enclosing one large park from the smaller park and the waste at Rich- 

 mond and from certain land in the hands of private persons which lay 

 between them. He offered a high price, but some of the owners and 

 tenants and parishes which had common rights in the waste were hesi- 

 tating to sell, when he began to build a brick wall round the intended 

 circuit as a hint that he intended to have his way. The recalcitrant 

 persons then gave way and accepted his terms. But dissatisfaction was 

 caused, and the nearness of London led to comments being made in the 

 city, Laud, the treasurer, opposing the stretch of power and the extrava- 

 gance. Cottington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, opposed the 

 extravagance privately, and then when he found Laud's opposition to be 

 displeasing to the king turned round and defended the proposal with 

 absurd arguments in order to gain advantage over Laud. 3 When Charles, 

 virtually a prisoner to the army, hunted in Richmond Park in 1 647, he 

 may have remembered and regretted his neglect of the advice of the 

 murdered archbishop. Henry VIII. had done worse in the matter of 

 Cuddington and the Honour of Hampton Court, but times had changed. 



The Long Parliament met in 1640, and Surrey with the rest of 

 England became speedily involved in the Civil Wars which began in 

 1 642. The county as a whole was secured for the Parliament from the 

 beginning. The division of the country was, we must remember, partly 

 geographical. Though there were supporters of the king and Parlia- 

 ment respectively everywhere, and numbers of really neutral persons, 

 who so far as they gave willing support to either did so in hopes of put- 

 ting an end to war and confusion and restoring a legal government, yet 

 ideas and opinions were very decidedly distributed according to locality. 

 The parts of England which had accepted the Reformation by prefer- 

 ence and not by force, the sea-coast counties and the parts which had 

 been permeated by foreign Protestants and by sectarian opinions, the 

 manufacturing places where such opinions had gained ground, were 

 Puritan and Parliamentary as a rule. Where on the contrary Catholi- 

 cism had lingered longest there were fewer Puritans though there might 

 not be many recusants left. Surrey was by this time unmistakably 

 Puritan, and was influenced by Puritan and Parliamentary London. 

 There were few recusants in it now. In Charles' first year such as there 

 were had been disarmed again, and the measure had been extended not 



1 Harl. MSS. 546. 



* For the boundaries of Windsor Forest in the reign of King James see Norden, Description of the 

 Honour of Windsor, dated in 1607, in the Harleian coll., le Neve MSS. No. 3749. 



3 Clarendon, i. 208, who gives the date as 1636. But see Gardiner, Hist, of England, ch. 77. 



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