POLITICAL HISTORY burgesses thence to Parliament. There was no population to speak of. In 1 547 Sir Roger Copley described himself as ' burgess and oonly inhabitant of Gatton,' and had no difficulty in returning two burgesses
- freely elected and chosen.' The manor had been in the hands of the
Crown between the time of John Tymperley and the Copleys, who got it in 1540, whence perhaps the right of returning members had been continued. The Tudors liked to have members in their interest in the Lower House. In the reign of Edward IV. the king was once more residing for a time at Guildford. He concluded there, August 16, 1479, a treaty with Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy for the marriage of his daughter Anne to their son Philip, as a further tie in their alliance against the French. 1 Anne was four years, Philip fourteen months old. The former subsequently married Thomas Howard, who became Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey. Under Richard III. Surrey was the scene of an abortive insurrection. When the murder of his nephews had driven his former ally Buckingham to conspire with the Lancastrians against Richard, a general insurrection was planned for October 18, 1483, in conjunction with an invasion by the Earl of Richmond from Brittany. The rebellion broke out pre- maturely in Kent before October io, 2 giving Richard warning. But on the appointed date the Surrey insurgents met at Guildford. The rapid march of the king from the midlands westward and the collapse of Buckingham's own force beyond the flooded Severn, his capture and execution, led to the breakdown of the attempt everywhere. Richard returned from the south-west through the disturbed districts of the south, being at Winchester on November 26 and reaching London on the 2 8th. The movement in Surrey had been probably under the direction of his brother-in-law Sir Thomas St. Leger, the husband of the widowed Anne Duchess of Exeter, Richard's sister. But St. Leger, who held property at Field Place, Compton, was not personally at its head. He was taken in the west apparently and beheaded at Exeter. Sir George Browne of Betchworth in Surrey had joined the Kentish rising at Maidstone and was executed. Nicholas Gaynsforde of Carshalton was attainted for his share in the rising but was pardoned. A far more dangerous agent in the insurrection was left at large. Reginald Bray not yet a knight was not yet a Surrey man, but he received lands in Surrey in Henry VII. 's reign. He had been acting in these matters as negotiator between conspirators in England and the Earl of Richmond abroad. He became the powerful and able minister of the new Government. Part of his reward was the Surrey manor of Shiere- Vachery. The question of previous ownership has difficulties about it which are discussed elsewhere, but it had certainly been granted by Edward IV. to John Lord Audley who was a Yorkist. Audley was buried at Shiere as late as 1491, but his successor did not hold the manor. His son James Lord Audley was a ruined man, and when the Cornishmen rose in rebellion in 1497 against the king's 1 Rymer, xii. no. 2 Paston Letters, iii. 876. 365
