IX WILLIAM BRAY III with the country was William Bray, the second of the two classical writers of the county history. William Bray was born in 1736, and was a scholar whose learning was only equalled by his astonishing vitality. He began his main work at an age when most men's work is done. When the Rev. Owen 112 AN EDITOR AT SEVENTY-EIGHT CHAP. Manning, after years of labour at the history of Surrey, went blind and had to give up the hope of a lifetime, William Bray finished the book. He was untiring. The first volume appeared in 1804, when he was sixty-eight, and when the second volume was published, five years latter, he wrote in his preface" that there was not a parish described in it which he had not visited, and only two churches the insides of which he had not seen, and the monuments in which he had not personally examined, once at least, but to many he made repeated visits." The third volume came out in 1814, and then, at the age of seventy-eight, he edited John Evelyn's Memoirs from the original MSS. at Wotton. He was to live nearly twenty years after that, and he died at Shere at the age of ninety-seven; a tablet stands to his memory in the chancel of the church. Mr. Granville Leveson-Gower, in a paper on "Shere and its Rectors" in the Surrey Archaeological Collections, gives the items of a will he discovered by accident, interesting as show IX A YEOMAN'S WILL 113 ing the amount of stock kept upon his farm by a yeoman of the sixteenth century. The will is dated 27th October, 1562, and the testator is John Risbridger-one of the good old Surrey yeoman names, like Evershed and Whapshot and Enticknap. He describes himself as "John Risbridger of Shere, yeoman, sicke of bodie and yet walkinge. His body to be buried in Parish Church of Shere, 'without my seats ende.' I calf and 2 shepe, with sufficient breade and drinke thereunto to be bestowed and spent at his burial towards the reliefe of the poore there assembled. To every man and maid servant, I ewe shepe; to Alice Stydman his maid, one herfore (i.e. heifer) bullocke, of two years and 15s: to his son William all his lease or terme of years in lands called Stonehill, and to him 4 oxen, 2 steares of 3 yeres, 2 horse beastes, a weane (wagon) yoke, cheynes to draw withal, 2 keyne, half a hundreth of shepe. Children, John, William, and Edward. To daughter Dorothie, £6. 13s. 4d. ; all residue to wife Katherine. Proved 3rd May, 1654, by William Risbridger." Some extracts made by Mr. Leveson-Gower from the Parish Registers have an interest which is not peculiar to Shere, but the Registers are a good example of village history written in the names of its inhabitants. You begin with the simplicity, almost the affection, of the early entries, the Johns and Anns and Marys repeated year after year, and the few words describing the older people; then comes the Georgian day when Fielding and Richardson were on the bookshelves, and children were named after the heroines of the novels. Here are a dozen entries out of hundreds : Elizabeth Gatton (widow), neer 100 yeeres old, was Buryed 13 of July, 1691. Buried 23 Mar., 1715. 1732. Old Edward Stone, yeoman. 1739. William Wood, a poor unfortunate lad, being drown'd, was buried Ap. 27. Mary, daughter of Thomas Evershed, bap. Ap. 30, 1729. Ann, daughter of Thomas Evershed, bap. Aug. 17, 1733. Mary, daughter of Thomas Evershed, bap. May 14, 1736. Ann, daughter of Mr. Robert Parkhurst, bap. Feb. 23, 1741-2. 1779. Gosling, Tho., son of Thomas and Dinah. May 25. (Note) -married, child christened, wife churched the same day, by me, Thos Duncumb, Rector. 1817. Carbetia Hall, of Shere, gentlewoman. Sep. 2, 68. 1821. Servilla Briscoe, of Abinger. April 17, 23. One of the later entries in the Registers is interesting to 114 STARVING A RETAINER CH. IX historians. Harriet Grote, widow of George Grote, died at Shere in 1878, aged 86. Her grave is south of the church: Grote lies in Westminster Abbey. Shere and Gomshall are only divided by an avenue of elms -half a mile of the pleasantest and shadiest of roads. Gomshall is a village scattered round many lanes; it has a Black Horse inn near the station, but the prettiest Gomshall cottages are away from the Black Horse, down the lanes off the main road. Gomshall Manor, now a boarding-house, has traditions of the Middle Ages. There is a story of a door leading to a secret chamber which ought to be somewhere in Martin Tupper's books, but I cannot find it. King John was annoyed with a retainer, shut him in this room and turned the key in the door, and there the miserable retainer starved to death. It was just like King John to do it, but what he did at Gomshall only tradition knows. CHAPTER X GUILDFORD TO LEATHERHEAD Merrow. The Horse and Groom.-Mr. Kipling on Surrey downs.Clandon Park.-The village mole-catcher.--A fearful battle.February sunshine.-Wide Ploughs.-Thomas Goffe and Thomas Thimble.-Locked churches.-An atmosphere of war.-Effingham and its admirals.-Little Bookham.-General d'Arblay in his garden. - Mistletoe. Of the two roads which run parallel to the downs east of Guildford, doubtless the road south of the ridge runs through the prettiest villages. Albury, Shere and Gomshall are a more charming trio than any three that lie on the northern road, if only because of the woods about them and the clear trout stream that runs under their walls and bridges. The villages north of the ridge hardly have a good-sized pond between them. But the walk from Guildford to Leatherhead, which can be shortened at any railway station you please from Clandon to Bookham, is for all that a walk through delightful country and villages of unchanging quiet. Merrow is the first of the little hamlets that dot the Leatherhead road, and though the Guildford villas are stretching out their gardens further and further to the polite east, Merrow is still a mere group of downside cottages. The church might have been better restored; but the chief feature of the village is the old Horse and Groom Inn, with its gabled front and its noble stack of chimneys, three sister shafts of peculiar grace and mellow colour. The date, 1615, which records the age of the inn above one of its bay windows, reads a reproach to the aggressively modern porch and doors; and the white rough-cast with which the walls are 115 |