A HISTORY OF SURREY Manwood (Treatise and Discourse of the Laws of the Forest, 1598, p. 266) printed another version of the latter part of this boundary produced by the county in the first year of Edward III. From Bredeford along the road from Frimley to Wishmere By Ralph's cross to Gonerichford, formerly called Batechesford Through the middle of la Shete to Horton From Horton by la Lee towards the Watercourse Thence along the water called Sideway to Thornhull From Thornhull to Harpesford Harpesford along the water to Inggfield Inggfield to Loderlake-huch, where the counties of Surrey, Berks and Buckingham meet The latter part of the boundary is clearly to be traced. Bredeford is the old name of the ford of the Blackwater at the place so called, Bromhull is Broomhill, Sorbeshull is Shrubshill, Bagsete is Bagshot, Wishmere is close to Bagshot Park, Horton is north-east of Bagshot Park, Harpesford was a place where Virginia Water is, Inggfield seems to be Englefield Green, Loderslake is on the Thames. Before Bredeford, the boundary is that of Surrey and Hampshire. In 1280 however the Crown made a new attempt to extend the forest into Surrey. Commissioners were appointed to make a new perambulation, and a court was held at Lambeth before Philip de Say, chief justice of the forests, where twelve sworn men of the county declared that Henry II. died seised of the whole county as forest, that Richard I. had disafforested only such part of it as was east of the Wey and south of Guildford Down, and that no part of the county had been made forest by Henry II. The effect of this verdict was intended to be that the country west of the Wey and north of Guildford Down could not be touched by a charter annulling the afforesting of new forests, but that it was an ancient forest, excluded from the list of encroachments which the Great Charter was intended to restrain. The verdict of 1226 was of course completely reversed. It is quite impossible now to arrive at the exact rights of the case. The assertion that Henry II. newly afforested no part of the county is not the fact, but on the other hand it would be rash to assert positively that the north-western part of the county was never counted as forest before Henry's reign. Some part of it apparently was. In 1327 the sworn men of the county certainly mixed up fiction in their condemnation of the judgment of the court of 1280, when they affirmed that the inquiry had been set on foot by Hugh Despencer without the privity of the county. A jury had been sworn, and Hugh Despencer, who was only twenty years old in 1280, was not chief justice of the forests south of Trent till 1294. It is of course possible that he may have done something to sustain the judgment of 1280 afterwards. On the evidence of these same sworn men of 1327 it is said that no per- ambulation was made after all in 1280. The Wey and Guildford Down seem however to have been taken as the bounds of the forest, and the extension was among those complained of under Edward I. At last in 358
