WOKING HUNDRED 



WOKING 



BEAUFORT. France 

 quartered ivith England 

 in a border gobony ar- 

 gent and azure. 



Edmund, Duke of Somerset, son of Margaret, was 

 slain at the first battle of St. Albans, 30 and it was 

 recorded at the time of his death that he held Woking 

 Manor of the king by the ser- 

 vice of paying him one clove 

 gillyflower a year. He was 

 succeeded by his son Henry," 

 who also embraced the Lancas- 

 trian cause, and was attainted 

 in 1 46 1, restored in 1463, but 

 beheaded after the battle of 

 Hexham in 1464, and at- 

 tainted after his death by an 

 Act annulling his former re- 

 storation. 



Woking passed to the Crown. 

 The rightful heir, Margaret 

 Beaufort, daughter of John 

 first Duke of Somerset, was restored to her lands at 

 the accession of her son Henry VII, and she seems 

 to have spent most of her time at Woking," where 

 the existing remains, though they are on the lines of 

 the moated house described in extents of the I4th 

 century, seem to be chiefly of about her date. 



At Margaret's death in 1509 the manor once 

 more became Crown property." Henry VIII appears to 

 have made it a favourite residence, to judge from the 

 number of his letters which are dated thence," and it 

 was when Wolsey was on a visit to his royal master 

 at Woking that he received the news of his nomination 

 to the Sacred College. 34 



The Tudors continued to hold Woking in demesne, 

 for it was Elizabeth's own house in 15 S3. 36 James I, 

 however, made a grant of it in 1620 to Sir Edward 

 Zouch, who died in i634. 57 From him the manor 

 passed to his son James, who married Beatrice 

 daughter of Lord Mountnorris. 38 He died in 1643, 

 leaving two sons, of whom Edward, the elder, died in 

 i658, 39 and James, the second son, succeeded to the 

 inheritance at his brother's death. 40 This James 

 became a person of mark in the county of Surrey ; he 

 filled the office of High Sheriff, and Symmes, the 

 local historian of the time, speaks of him with con- 

 siderable respect." He died in 1708. In 1671 

 James had granted the reversion of his property to 

 the king, and Charles II leased it for 1,000 years to 

 Lord Grandison, among others, to hold in trust for 

 his cousin, the notorious Duchess of Cleveland, and 

 her children." She held a court in 1709, but died 

 the same year. The trustees held courts down to the 

 year 1715, when they conveyed Woking to John 

 Walter, who held his first court in May 1716. He 

 was followed by his son Abel Walter, who in 1 748 

 obtained an Act of Parliament 4S granting him the fee 

 simple in place of the 1,000 years' lease which his 

 father purchased. He sold to Lord Onslow in 1752." 

 It has remained in the Onslow family down to the 

 present day. 



Domesday Book mentions the existence of a mill at 



Woking. At the end of the I4th century the manor 

 possessed a water-mill and a fulling-mill 45 ; it seems 

 possible, however, that one of these was really in 

 Sutton, and should be identified with the mill which 

 was there at the time of the Survey. Henry VIII 

 leased Woking mills to Thomas Spencer, 46 and the 

 water-mill was again granted out by Elizabeth " and 

 James I. 48 The fact that the two mills were separated 

 after the grant of Sutton Manor to Sir Richard Weston 

 again seems to suggest that one of these mills was in 

 Sutton. This one would then be the mill near 

 Trigg's Lock, the other the mill on the old river just 

 south of Woking village. 



Henry VI in 1451 granted to Edmund Duke of 

 Somerset and his heirs the privilege of having a fair 

 every Whit Tuesday. 49 



James Zouch in 1662 received the grant of a fair 

 on 1 2 September and a weekly market on Friday," 

 and in 1665 he built the market-house which still 

 stands in Woking village street. 



The old royal residence at Woking Park lay down 

 the river a mile from old Woking village. An early 

 14th-century survey was seen by Symmes 61 in very 

 bad condition, and copied. It has now perished. It 

 appears from it that there were extensive buildings, 

 with two chapels, within a double moat. The double 

 moat is shown in the survey of Woking Park by 

 Norden of 1607," and the remains of it are still 

 visible at Woking Park Farm. There were a corn- 

 mill and a fulling-mill on the manor, and a deer 

 park. The park extended from the manor-house 

 along the river to Woking village and up over the high 

 ground nearly to the present railway line. In addi- 

 tion to the royal visits mentioned above, 43 Edward VI 

 was there in 1 5 5 o, M and Elizabeth in I 5 69" and I 5 8 3 .** 

 In what is now a farm building is a brick gateway of the 

 earlier I5th century, much dilapidated, leading into a 

 building with a barrel vault of small bricks of a rather 

 later date, and communicating with what is now a 

 barn of old chalk, brick, and timber work. But the 

 whole is in very bad repair. Sir Edward Zouch, prob- 

 ably finding the manor-house in a ruinous state, built a 

 new house with two courtyards nearly a mile away on 

 higher ground at Hoe Bridge Place. James Zouch his 

 grandson built a third house contiguous to this, on a 

 smaller scale, the date of which is fairly determined 

 by mythological paintings on the staircase attributed 

 to Antonio Verrio, who decorated Hampton Court 

 for James II and William III, and by a painting on 

 the ceiling of a drawing-room, attributed to Sir God- 

 frey Kneller, and certainly celebrating the peace of 

 Ryswick under allegorical forms. Some part of the 

 second house perhaps remains in the stable buildings 

 and its foundations. James Zouch died in 1708, and 

 Hoe Bridge Place passed to his niece Sophia, who in 

 1718 conveyed it to James Field, who sold it in 1730 

 to John Walter ; he cleared away the remains of the 

 second house and altered the existing building. It 

 is now the residence of Mr. F. H. Booth, who has 



* G.E.C. Complete Peerage. 



H Chan. Inq. p.m. 33 Hen. VI, no. 38. 



M Diet. Nat. Siog. iv, 48. 



M Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), xxv, 46. 



M e.g. L. and P. Hen. VIII, iii (i), 357. 



Add. MSS. 6167, fol. 457. 



K Loseley MSS. viii, 59. 



7 Pat. 18 Jas. I, pt. ii. 



88 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), dxxxviii,i 36. 



* Registers, Woking. 



Add. MSS. 6167, fol. 457. 



Ibid. 



41 Pat. 23 Chas. II, pt. ix. 



48 21 Geo. II, cap. 9. 



44 Ct. R. and deeds in possession of 

 Lord Onslow. 



46 Esch. Inq. p.m. file 160, no. 16. 



< L. and P. Hen. Vlll, iv (2), g. 2927 

 (,2). 



*7 Pat. 35 Eliz. pt. ix. 



48 Ibid. 7 Jas. I, pt. xxxiii. 



49 Chart. R. 27-39 Hen. VI, no. 30. 

 60 Pat. 13 Chas. II, pt. xvi, no. 5. 

 "Adi MSS. 6167. 



M Harl. MS. 3749. 

 53 See descent of the manor. 

 " Cott. MS. Nero, C. 10. 

 Rawlinson MS. A. 195, C. 4, fol. 

 287. 



Loseley MSS. (4 Aug. 1583), viii, 52. 



383 



