POLITICAL HISTORY 



country gentlemen considered their preserve. When the elections were 

 held for the first Parliament of James II. John Evelyn complains that 

 the election was hurried on in an irregular way at Letherhead to secure 

 the return of his cousin, Sir Edward Evelyn, and of Sir Adam Brown to 

 the exclusion of his own brother George and Onslow. The charter of 

 Guildford was among those confiscated at this time, and restored in a 

 form amended to suit Crown influence by James II. It was regranted, 

 and the corporation restored in its original form, when the king was 

 alarmed by the preparations of the Prince of Orange. Monmouth's 

 insurrection was far from the county, but its unfortunate leader was 

 brought a prisoner to Guildford, and was lodged for a night in Abbot's 

 Hospital on his way to London. When the Prince of Orange came 

 over fighting was expected in Surrey. The advance of the prince from 

 the west would, it was apprehended, bring his army into much the 

 same positions as those held by the king's army in 1642. Some of 

 James' troops were sent forward to Farnham. Sir William Temple, 

 among others, withdrew from the scene of possible warfare, abandoning 

 his house at Moor Park, near Farnham, the house where he entertained 

 Swift as his dependant. But James let his crown go without a struggle. 

 It was from Lambeth on the Surrey side that his queen and the Prince 

 of Wales embarked on the river to share his ruinous flight to France. 



The history of any English county takes a new and less picturesque 

 form when civil wars have ceased, and when the struggles of contending 

 parties are waged at Westminster, by intrigues at the Court of St. James', 

 by pamphlets and in the press. In Surrey a change, which had begun 

 to be seen before, was becoming more marked in the days after the 

 Restoration. London was invading the country. Besides the growth 

 of the suburbs and of the villages on the Thames, the fashionable 

 world had descended upon Epsom. The discovery of the wells in the 

 seventeenth century, and the growing taste for horse-racing, a taste of 

 which we seem to know nothing before the time of James I., which 

 Charles I. neglected, but which both Cromwell and Charles II. affected, 

 made Epsom one of the most famous country resorts of Londoners. It 

 vied in popularity with Tunbridge Wells, and had the advantage of 

 being nearer to London. The crowd who resorted thither were the 

 true precursors of the London folk who have finally transformed the 

 face of rural Surrey in the last two generations. 



As dynasties succeeded one another upon the throne of England, so 

 did families rule in succession in English counties. 



Another house emerges as the typical leading house in Surrey at 

 this time with a supremacy different in kind and method from that of 

 the de Clares or de Warennes or Arundels or even Mores as the times 

 differed. The era of Whig rule had come, and the descendants of the 

 Long Parliament men were in many cases the Parliamentary chiefs 

 under the Revolution monarchy. The Onslows had only become con- 

 nected with Surrey by marriage in Elizabeth's reign. Sir Richard 

 Onslow, whom we have met before as a staunch member of the Long 



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