Cobbett is dead, and the Reform Act is an old story, but the Jews and the jobbers swarm more than ever.
THE CASTLE CAVES
The tunnel through the castle hill was made by consent of the then owner, Earl Somers, as a tablet informs all who care to know. The entrance towards the town is faced with white brick, in a style supposed to be Norman. Above are the grounds, now public, where a would-be mediæval gateway, erected in 1777, quite illegitimately impresses many innocents, and below is the so-called Barons’ Cave, an ancient excavation in the soft sandstone where the Barons are (quite falsely) said to have assembled in conclave before forcing their will upon King John at Runnymede. Unhappily for that tradition, the then Earl Warenne was a supporter of the tyrant king, and any reforming barons he might possibly have entertained at Reigate Castle would have been kept on the chain as enemies, and treated to the cold comfort of bread and water.
THE TUNNEL, REIGATE.
There are deeper depths than these castle caves, for dungeon-like excavations exist beside and underneath the tunnel; but they are not so very terrible, exuding as they do strong vinous and spirituous odours, proving that the only prisoners languishing there are hogsheads and kilderkins.
Reigate, dropping its intermediate name of Cherchefelle on Ridgegate, became variously Reigate, Riggate, and Reygate in the thirteenth century. The name obviously indicates a gate—that is to say, a road—over the ridge of the downs; presumably that road upon which Gatton, the “gate-town,” stood. Strongly supporting this theory, Wray Common and Park are found on the line of road between Reigate and Gatton. If we select “Reygate” from the many variants of the place-name, and place it beside that of Wray Common, we get at once the phonetic link.
When Reigate lost the two members it sent to Parliament, it lost much more than the mere distinction of being represented. It lost free drinks and money to jingle in its pockets, for it was openly corrupt—in fact, neither better nor worse than most other constituencies. What else, when you consider it, could be expected when the franchise was so limited that the electors were a mere handful, and votes by consequence were individually valuable. In short, the best safeguard against bribery is to so increase the electorate that the purchase of votes is beyond the capacity of a candidate’s pockets.
Modern circumstances have, indeed, so wrought with country towns of the Reigate type that they are merely the devitalised spooks of their former selves, and Reigate would long ere this have been on the verge of extinction, had it not been within the revivifying influence of the suburban area. It is due to the Wen, as Cobbett would call it, that Reigate is still at once so old-world and so prosperous. It is surrounded by semi-suburban estates, but is in its centre still the Reigate of that time when the coaches came through, when royalty and nobility lunched at the still-existing “White Hart,” and when fifty miles made a long day’s journey.
Reigate town was the property, almost exclusively, of the late Lady Henry Somerset. By direction of her heir, Somers Somerset, it was, in October, 1921, sold at auction in several lots.