THE HISTORY OF SURREY.t THE favourite among all the Home
Counties and with all classes, Surrey owes its attraction almost entirely to its scenery and soil. In the rural districts it is not a county of large properties, nor do country seats of the first or second magnitude abound. But it has still as large a proportion of wild to enclosed land as has Yorkshire, and much of this is of an absolutely unique kind in the South of England, the wooded Surrey commons and such heights as Leith Hill and the dis- tricts round Hindhead having no parallel even in Hampshire.
The first volume of the "Victoria County History" of Surrey, edited by Mr. H. E. Malden, deals with all and sundry of its natural productions, from the geology of the shire to the smallest moss upon its heaths or the minutest beetle which crawls upon its sunny soil. It contains also the text of the Domesday Survey by the editor and an intro- duction by Mr. Horace Round, chapters on early man, and the Anglo-Saxon remains, by Mr. G. Church and Mr. Regi- nald Smith, and an essay on the political history of the
• Always excepting the London corps, who were, as Mr. Firth says, "the reserve on which the Parliament relied in every emergency."
t Surrey. Vol L Edited by H. E. Malden. MA. The Victoria History of the Counties of England." London : Archibald Constable and Co. [El 5s.]
shire, the first example of the proposed treatment of this subject which has yet appeared in the volumes of the series.
The natural history is all good, especially the chapters on the entomology of the county. More than a hundred pages are devoted to the insecta, which are even more exhaustively dealt with by Mr. Herbert Goss, joint secretary of the Entomological Society, and himself a resident in Surrey, than in the volume on Hampshire. Besides acting as editor of the whole section, Mr. Goss contributes a very full and readable article on the butterflies and moths, the latter of which are still numerous, not- withstanding the encroachments of the London suburbs. Though Surrey is so full of woods and wild ground, it has nothing like the number of butterflies found in Hampshire, and some which were seen there fifty years ago have dis- appeared. Among these is the purple emperor, which Mr. E. Newman remembered as not uncommon near Godalming, but which has now practically vanished. Of the beautiful Clifton blue, or Adonis, Mr. Goss tells an interesting story. It had quite disappeared from Reigate Hill twenty-six years ago, but was restored by importing females from Folkestone and setting them free on the chalk quarry banks. Most of the hawk moths, including the true hawk-eyed hawk moth, the poplar hawk moth, and very many others, are quite common near the suburban districts, and the convolvalus hawk moth is frequently found.
Most people's knowledge of insects stops at butterflies and moths. But here will be found quite a small encyclopaedia of general and part icular information as to equally, or even more, interesting races : the dragon-flies, wasps, cicadas, aphides, flies, and ants. To each of these chapters is prefixed an account of the character and peculiarities of the class of creature dealt with, an excellent addition, which is also carried out in regard to some of the less-known vegetable forms. Accord- ing to Mr. E. Saunders, out of the three hundred and eighty- four species of bees, wasps, and ants found in Britain, no less than three hundred and twelve have been noted in Surrey. Miss Ethel Chawner and the Rev. F. D. Morice contribute interesting articles on the less-known insects, such as the curious chrysids, sawflies, wood wasps, and gall flies, and Mr. Buckton on the cicadas and aphides. The chapters on botany include one of a most readable as well as exhaustive kind on the fungi by Mr. W. H. Beeby. Five thousand species are found in Britain, and of these two thousand in the county.
Surrey is still the paradise of small birds, though the invasion by London, and the settlements made all over its wild heaths by well-to-do residents, have driven away several of the larger kinds. The author of The Birds of Surrey, Mr. Bucknill, deals with the present state of the bird population, and inci- dentally refers to the not distant past. The blackcock, which was a native bird on the Hindhead heaths, has now dis- appeared, owing to the increase of population, it is thought. If the neighbourhood would combine to preserve them they might probably be restored. In the same way nearly all the hawks and many of the owls and nightjars have gone, Surrey game preservers having a very bad reputation for this, though they have nothing very considerable to show in the way of game. The stone curlew, which used to breed on some of the chalk hills and heaths, has also disappeared, and the Montagu's barriers, for which the great heaths of Hindhead were a congenial bunting-ground. Buzzards and hobbies might be fairly common, especially the latter, but they are shot at sight. Ospreys also occasionally visit Frensham Pond and other of the Surrey lakes, and have met with the same fate. Perhaps the new rules for preserving them may enable the next osprey which visits them to stay unmolested till it leaves for its next resting-place.
11r. Bucknill refers to the four local naturalists of Godal. ming, one of whom rose to great eminence in his pursuit. These were Messrs. Salmon, E. Newman, Stafford, and Kidd. The present writer when a boy had the pleasure of knowing something of this eminently representative group of local naturalists living in the heart of the then unspoilt Surrey valleys and woodlands. They were of different positions and occupations, Mr. Kidd being the owner of a mill, and Mr. Stafford, whose splendid collection of birds is now in. the Charterhouse Museum, a corn-merchant. His warehousas full of corn-sacks were his museum and also his studio, for he painted the backgrounds to his cases of birds in oils, and was also a sculptor; he was, in fact, the beginner of modern taxidermy. To him were brought all the rare birds shot in the neigh- bourhood, as well as eggs and other curiosities, and all the year round his warehouse was a kind of naturalist's calendar. Up to 1874 black grouse were seen occasionally on sale in Gadalming, and specimens of the buzzard, hobby, harriers, the curlew, and the bittern were not uncommonly to be seen there. Pheasants are increasing in Surrey, as they are everywhere else; but owing to the clearing of the copses in places and over-building, the nightingale is not so common as it was, but the hawfinch is still numerous. It is time that Surrey did rather more for its rare birds. The county might be almost as prolific of some species as Norfolk. But as there are few large properties, the Surrey public must itself agree to pro- tect them.
The Surrey Domesday is the subject of one of Mr. Horace Round's admirable summaries. The main interest of the original centres in the distribution of the lands. Harold held a tenth of the whole county, and this, with Edith's manors after her death, was appropriated by the Conqueror for him- self. Apparently he did not care to touch the lands of the one great Surrey Abbey, Chertsey, though he did not respect those belonging to Harold's foundation at Waltham. Even then London partly dominated the county, Southwark, with its adjacent villages of Battersea, Lambeth, Kennington, Walworth, and Camberwell, and a long list of what are now great suburbs, being all of some importance then, and making Southwark more than a counterpoise to Guildford. Odo of Bayeux and Richard of Tonbridge, the two great men of Kent, received the lion's share of Surrey manors, and then sublet parts to other nobles. It is curious to see the same names recurring in all these Domesday lists. Hugh de Port, as usual, Geoffrey de Mandeville, Robert Malet, FitzHamon the Dapifer, and others. Wadard, whose named portrait appears in the Bayeux tapestry, did not hold Surrey land ; but Ilbert de Laci, of whom Wadard held land elsewhere, held Cuddington of Odo. Among the miscellaneous entries Eel- pie Island, or the reach of river near it, is credited with a fishery worth a thousand eels and a thousand lampreys, and it i I noted that at Limpsfield there were three nests of hawks.
The editor contributes the political history of the county to this volume. One point in the early days seems clear : Surrey was not South Saxon. The forest of the Weald divided it too completely from Sussex, though it was in touch with Kent on the high ground along the Thames. But it was not Jute,—probably West Saxon, the authorities incline to think. The Danes marched across Surrey to attack Wessex, and were well beaten at Ockley ; and later, after the renewal of the invasions in Etheldred.'s reign, another battle was fought at Merton. Sweyn in his various attacks on London from the Southwark side seems to have ravaged the county more than once, and Canute is said to have cut a canal round the fortress on the Surrey end of London Bridge, and to have attacked this barrier from above. Simon De Montfort was nearly arrested by Henry IIL in Southwark, but escaped over the bridge to his friends the Londoners. Coming to much later times, Edward III. called a Council of Merchants to sit with his Parliament. The three returned for Surrey were residents of Guildford, Epsom, and Merrow. Three Surrey ecclesiastics sat in the Upper House after the division, the Abbots of Waverley and Chertsey and the Prior of Merton. In mediteval days there is a kind of suburbanism about Surrey. The Kings found it convenient to spend a good deal of time in, not to the advantage of the inhabitants when purveyance was in full force. It sent firewood and " coals " (charcoal) to be burnt in London houses. Yet North-West Surray from beyond the Wey and Hog's Back was one great " purlieu " of Windsor Forest. Over all this the deer strayed, and the rangers of James I. were c3ncerned to see these deer driven into the forest. "As late as two hundred years ago the poaching of wild deer, and of black game, was possible within thirty miles of London." Through all the records of the county's history till the end of the Tudor period, it seems to have been free from the control for good or evil of great families, and consequently the people were never " rushed " into taking a part in civil war. The only family of steady influence wall that of the Mores of
Loweley. Sir Christopher, the faithful servant of Henry VIII., was succeeded by Sir William, whose strong and handsome face appears as one of the illustrations of this volume. Sir William practically managed Surrey till the death of Elizabeth, and the Loseley manuscripts form part of the best material for the political history of the county
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