Highways and Byways in Surrey Part 26

To the first I beseech your Majesty to consider, that there is no other Latin word proper to signify a gentleman born, but _n.o.bilis_.

As for _generosus_, as I have read in good writers _Vinum generosum_, for a good cup of wine and _equus generosus_ for a courageous horse, so I never heard _generosus_ alone so used, to signify a gentleman born, but only on the gross Latin current in Westminster Hall, and, if I had set down _generosus Anglus_, it would have then construed rather a gentle Englishman than an English gentleman. And as for _armiger_, it had yet been more barbarous, for surely the world here abroad would rather have understood by that strange term a page or a sword-bearer than a gentleman of the better sort, as custom has made it to be construed in England; that this is simply true, I doubt not, but that your Majesty, excelling in your knowledge of good letters, will easily judge a gracious sentence on my suit.... So that in setting down the term _n.o.bilis_ used through the world for a gentleman, I had no intention to make myself more n.o.ble than I am, but to take only that which was due unto me."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Buckland._]

I have taken Leigh on the way to Reigate. But the best way to see Leigh on a short walk is to reach it from Reigate travelling west. The introduction is by way of Reigate Heath, a wide and breezy common on which an old black windmill stands high above heather and bracken, a gaunt and wild neighbour to the orderly villas of the town.

Last of the little villages under the downs between Dorking and Reigate is Buckland--a handful of cottages, a pond, and a n.o.ble barn with upper-works like a tower. Buckland keeps tranquilly apart from Reigate, and Reigate, considerately enough, builds her new houses towards the railway and Redhill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Roman Road at Ockley._]

CHAPTER x.x.xII

UNDER LEITH HILL

The Battle of Ockley.--The Stone Street.--The prettiest green in Surrey.--Sweethearts and Roses.--When the Gentlemen went by.--An engaging family history.--Oakwood: a forest chapel.--Capel quiet.--Newdigate bells.--Martins in September.

Battlefields are not very numerous in Surrey. The Parliamentary wars shed a little military glory on the North and the West, and attacks on London from the Surrey side--its invulnerable side--belong to almost every century of London's history. But the great Surrey battle, which belongs to Ockley under Leith Hill, is of the battles of long ago, dim and hazy in the mist of centuries, fearful with legends of blood in rivers, and warriors laid in swathes like mown corn. Even now, country tradition a.s.serts, the rain that sweeps down Leith Hill sends the rainpools red in the plain below. The great battle of Ockley was fought when the Danes came two hundred and fifteen years before Harold fell at Hastings. They had sailed across to Kent, the historian says, with three hundred and fifty large s.h.i.+ps, and had driven in Ethelstan, who was king of Kent, Suss.e.x, Ess.e.x, and Surrey, under his father Ethelwulf. They sacked Canterbury, and went up the Thames to London; there they beat in Beorhtwulf, king of the Mercians, and before them lay but one great town, Winchester, unsacked. Down they swept over the Thames, and out of his own country, Ethelwulf, of Wess.e.x, overlord of the beaten Ethelstan and Beorhtwulf, came to meet them. Up the great Stone Street, the Roman road that runs as straight as a die from Chichester, he marched, and lay across the front of his enemy, clear of the deep forest that spread south of Ockley. The Danes came on. Perhaps they rested a night in the old British camp on Anstiebury Hill, perhaps they swept straight on: battle was joined "hard by Ockley wood." Local tradition, always apt to a.s.sociate notable deeds with easily marked places, makes the scene of the battle Ockley Green; but the armies could not have seen each other on the low ground, which must have been half swamp, half undergrowth.

They fought, no doubt, on the higher ground near Leith Hill. The slaughter was prodigious; "blood stood ankle deep," and the day ended with the great body of the Danes dead on the hills, and the rest flying where they could along the roads and through the woods. Probably not a Dane got away alive. It was a wonderful victory.

To-day the peace that broods over Ockley is born of wooded parks and sunlit s.p.a.ces. Ockley Green must be one of the largest in Surrey, and I think is the prettiest of all. Along its western side runs a row of n.o.ble elms, bordering the road, and under the shade of the elms an old inn. This road is actually part of the Stone Street up which Ethelwulf marched against the Danes; and it would be hardly possible to devise a prettier road, as it pa.s.ses under the Ockley elm trees, or a more tranquil outlook for an inn. Low-roofed cottages edge the gra.s.s, warm and sheltered; a drinking fountain on the green level suggests summer games and thirsty cricketers; though I think Ockley has contributed no great cricketers to the game. Beyond the green lie stretches of pasture and rich and smiling woodland.

The church stands nearly a mile from the green, and to its quiet acre belongs one of the prettiest traditions of bygone Surrey--the planting of rose-trees over the graves of betrothed lovers. It was still a custom in Aubrey's time:--

"In the churchyard are many red rose-trees planted among the graves, which have been there beyond man's memory. The sweetheart (male or female) plants roses at the head of the grave of the lover deceased; a maid that had lost her dear twenty years since, yearly hath the grave new turfed, and continues yet unmarried."

Rose-trees still grow in the churchyard, though perhaps the planting of them does not go back beyond man's memory.

Although so quiet a little village to-day, the neighbourhood of Ockley has seen some wild doings. Holmbury Hill, to the north, was once one of the princ.i.p.al settlements of the "Heathers," or broom squires, who still survive, a more respectable and a weaker folk, under Hindhead and elsewhere. Here one of their chief occupations was smuggling; indeed, the range of hills round Ewhurst and Holmbury Common served as a kind of halfway house for the gentlemen who were riding with silk and brandy from the Suss.e.x seaboard to London. It was a Burwash mother who used to put her child to bed with the injunction, "Now, mind, if the gentlemen come along, don't you look out of the window"; doubtless the text which inspired Mr. Kipling's delightful verses. But there must have been many a Ewhurst and Ockley mother who knew "the gentlemen" by sight, and counselled confiding children to hold their tongues and look in the proper direction as the Burwash woman bids her child in Mr. Kipling's song:--

"If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red, You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.

If they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin, Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance, You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France, With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood-- A present from the Gentlemen, along o' being good!

Five and twenty ponies Trotting through the dark-- Brandy for the Parson, 'Baccy for the Clerk.

Them that asks no questions isn't told a lie-- Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!"

The memory of smuggling under Leith Hill has, indeed, lasted into the last decade. Mr. H.E. Malden, the Surrey historian to whom all Surrey writers and readers owe so much, tells us in a paper on Holmbury Hill and its neighbourhood that he personally knew an old man, a native of Coldharbour, who had actually seen the game going on. He was born, it is true, in 1802, but he lived to be a hundred years old, and to talk to Mr. Malden discreetly about what he had seen. In his conversation Mr.

Malden remarks with proper tranquillity "he indicated this and that respectable neighbour. Well, he said, his grandfather, and _his_ grandfather and so on, knew something about the smuggling. He, of course, had done nothing in that way, but he remembered his father holding open the gate at the end of Crocker's Lane, Coldharbour, for a body of men on horseback, each with a keg of brandy behind him, to ride through. A man with whom he had worked told him how he was witness of a scene when a bold gatekeeper refused to open his turnpike gate to a body of armed men on horseback, who, after threatening him in vain, turned aside across the fields." Relics of the past still remain in the district. Under Holmbury Hill there is a cottage of which the cellars run right back into the hill; tradition has placed kegs of brandy in them. A naval cutla.s.s was picked up some thirty years ago in a field by Leith Hill--possibly it was used in a smugglers' fray with King George's men. Nor was it long ago that a trackway which runs from Forest Green, two miles to the west of Ockley, through Tanhurst over Leith Hill, was known as the Smuggler's Way.

Surrey yeomen come nowhere of better stock than the oldest Ockley families. Aubrey tells a story of one of the Eversheds of Ockley, who, when the heralds made their visitation, was urged to take a coat of arms. "He told them that he knew no difference between gentlemen and yeomen, but that the latter were the better men, and that they were really gentlemen only, who had longer preserved their estates and patrimonies in the same place, without waste or dissipation; an observation very just." Aubrey adds, as examples of yeomen families who had land at the Conquest, the names of Steere, Harpe, Hether, and Aston.

Steere, like Evershed, is a name that occurs over and over again in the Registers, both at Ockley and Capel.

Ockley's Parish Account Books, from which Mr. Alfred Bax--one of the oldest of Ockley names--has made some most interesting transcripts in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, furnish some quaint glimpses into the life and customs of a Surrey village in old days. I make the following extracts, of which the first is noticeable particularly as evidence that a post office existed at Ockley at least as early as 1722:--

Dec y^e 29 day 1722. Then John ffanne And M^r John Pratts Clarke of the post offis ffanne is a Vitler at the c.o.x, corner of Sherban Lane c.o.x sid of the post house? boath bound In A bond of A hundred pound for the parish of Ockley to pay one pound for the bewrall of William Drew In case he dy In bed lam and Ly wise to pay the Surgant for Cure of his sore Legs and Lychwise to tack Drew out when cured which sayed Drew was put In by Henry Worsfold and Edward Bax overseers this year 1722.

_Reliefs and Accidentall Charges 1718._ . _s. d._

Thomas Rapley when his children had y^e measles and his wives lying in 00 05 06

Thomas Rapley more by Vestry Order 02 06

Thomas Rapley relief at a Vestry 00 02 00

Paid for Laying forth Randall's Daughter 00 01 00

Paid for Bread and Cheese at Randal's daughter's Buriall 00 05 02

_Wood delivered to ye Poor, 1718._

Paid Richard Bax for Rapley Last year 00 04 00

1719.

M^r Smith for Lying Dead in his house 00 01 00

_Reliefs and Accidental Charges 1721._

8^ber 29^th Paid Tho. Rapley to buy Tire 00 06 00

7^ber ye 11 Drink to Henry Warren 00 01 00

Paid for a pair of Garters for Jn[=o] Hide 00 00 01

_Wood Delivered to ye Poore In ye yeare 1722._

Thomas Rapley tow hundred of f.a.got by Richard Bax of brock, f.a.got 00 10 00

1723.

8^ber 30^th. To Rapley to buy a pair of Shoes 00 02 00

To Edw^d Bax to get rid of a Boy from Jn. Coles 00 12 00

1726.

7^ber ye 4. Paid for airing and Cleansing Tho. Worsfold after the Small Pox 01 10 00

ffeb. 19. Relief to Tho. Worsfold after he had the small-pox 00 01 00

1727.

Allowed Tho. Amey toward ffatting his Hog 01 00 00

To Tho. Raply for Sparr timber and Mat^rs for ye almshouse 00 01 00

[July the 10^th]. The same Day Paid for a pair of Leading Strings 00 00 06