A HISTORY OF SURREY county of Surrey was thereby disafforested. 1 The part of the Honour of Hampton Court, established as forest by Act of Parliament under Henry VIII., was only constructively disafforested by the Long Parlia- ment. The former Act constituting it does not seem to have been specifically repealed. 2 In 1635 Charles made another smaller encroachment under legal form upon some people in Surrey, at Richmond. He was desirous of enclosing one large park from the smaller park and the waste at Rich- mond and from certain land in the hands of private persons which lay between them. He offered a high price, but some of the owners and tenants and parishes which had common rights in the waste were hesi- tating to sell, when he began to build a brick wall round the intended circuit as a hint that he intended to have his way. The recalcitrant persons then gave way and accepted his terms. But dissatisfaction was caused, and the nearness of London led to comments being made in the city, Laud, the treasurer, opposing the stretch of power and the extrava- gance. Cottington, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, opposed the extravagance privately, and then when he found Laud's opposition to be displeasing to the king turned round and defended the proposal with absurd arguments in order to gain advantage over Laud. 3 When Charles, virtually a prisoner to the army, hunted in Richmond Park in 1 647, he may have remembered and regretted his neglect of the advice of the murdered archbishop. Henry VIII. had done worse in the matter of Cuddington and the Honour of Hampton Court, but times had changed. The Long Parliament met in 1640, and Surrey with the rest of England became speedily involved in the Civil Wars which began in 1 642. The county as a whole was secured for the Parliament from the beginning. The division of the country was, we must remember, partly geographical. Though there were supporters of the king and Parlia- ment respectively everywhere, and numbers of really neutral persons, who so far as they gave willing support to either did so in hopes of put- ting an end to war and confusion and restoring a legal government, yet ideas and opinions were very decidedly distributed according to locality. The parts of England which had accepted the Reformation by prefer- ence and not by force, the sea-coast counties and the parts which had been permeated by foreign Protestants and by sectarian opinions, the manufacturing places where such opinions had gained ground, were Puritan and Parliamentary as a rule. Where on the contrary Catholi- cism had lingered longest there were fewer Puritans though there might not be many recusants left. Surrey was by this time unmistakably Puritan, and was influenced by Puritan and Parliamentary London. There were few recusants in it now. In Charles' first year such as there were had been disarmed again, and the measure had been extended not 1 Harl. MSS. 546.
- For the boundaries of Windsor Forest in the reign of King James see Norden, Description of the
Honour of Windsor, dated in 1607, in the Harleian coll., le Neve MSS. No. 3749. 3 Clarendon, i. 208, who gives the date as 1636. But see Gardiner, Hist, of England, ch. 77. 404
