Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/509

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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.

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