The Red Lion, Betchworth.
Other outdoor life has survived; Brockham still plays good cricket. Cricket was a favourite game on Brockham Green very early in its history. Cotmandene was not far away, and no doubt Cotmandene cricket encouraged smaller games. One of the customs of Brockham players was to wear straw hats of a pattern made in the village, and when the eleven went to play over at Mitcham there were derisive shouts—"Here come the Brockham straw yards." But the straw yards won, and in an innings.
It would be quite easy for a stranger to pass through the Betchworth that lies on the main road between Dorking and Reigate, and to believe he had seen it all. But the best of Betchworth is by the little church, south of the main road on a bend of the Mole. The church, cool and white, stands deep in a ring of beeches, elms, and ash-trees, and the baker and grocer of the village lives among roses in a little street of cottage gardens opposite. At least one of the bequests to the parish is curiously described on the church wall. Mrs. Margaret Fenwick left £200, which was to be used partly in binding out poor children as apprentices, and partly "in prefering in marriage such Maid Servants born in this Parish as shall respectfully live Seven Years in any Service and whose friends are not able to do it." The intention is clear, but friends unable to live respectfully seven years in one service would, one would think, be numerous.
The real centre from which to see the country east and south of Betchworth is Reigate, but a walk from Dorking to Reigate might very well take in Leigh, which is a little out of the beaten track. But if you ask the way, do not inquire for "Lee." "Lie" is the name. The village is very small, but it stands round a pretty little green, and one of the old timbered cottages with a Horsham slab roof sets the right grace to a group with the church and its trees. Leigh church has fine brasses of the Arderne family, who had Leigh Place, once an ancient and moated house half a mile north of the village, now a rather nondescript but quaint building; the moat remains, the house has been partly pulled down, partly rebuilt. Leigh Place belonged first to the great family of de Braose, but its earliest legends are of the Ardernes. There was a Sir Thomas de Arderne who wooed Margery, the wife of Nicholas de Poynings, in a very rough manner; he saw no way to making her his own wife except by making her widow of de Poynings, and so killed him. Tradition says that she died of a broken heart, and haunts Leigh Place, a sad lady in white; but it was probably not Sir Thomas, but a descendant of his, who first had Leigh Place. Still, to Leigh belongs the story. After the Ardernes, Leigh Place came to the Copleys, who were also of Gatton. One of them, Sir Thomas Copley, had original notions as to the proper bearing and attributes of an English gentleman. Mr. John Watney, writing in the Surrey Archæological Collections, gives a long letter which Sir Thomas wrote to Queen Elizabeth in 1575, defending himself, among other things, for having taken to himself titles to which he had no right. His defence is ingenious:—
"As to the other point, where your Majesty showed to be informed, that I had attributed to myself in those letters of marque greater titles than became me or than I could well avow, that must needs be either in that I termed myself nobilis Anglus, or in that, for more credit both to myself and your service, I was bold to set down Dominus de Gatton, Roughey etc., naming certain my Lordships. To the first I beseech your Majesty to consider, that there is no other Latin word proper to signify a gentleman born, but nobilis. As for generosus, as I have read in good writers Vinum generosum, for a good cup of wine and equus generosus for a courageous horse, so I never heard generosus alone so used, to signify a gentleman born, but only on the gross Latin current in Westminster Hall, and, if I had set down generosus Anglus, it would have then construed rather a gentle Englishman than an English gentleman. And as for armiger, it had yet been more barbarous, for surely the world here abroad would rather have understood by that strange term a page or a sword-bearer than a gentleman of the better sort, as custom has made it to be construed in England; that this is simply true, I doubt not, but that your Majesty, excelling in your knowledge of good letters, will easily judge a gracious sentence on my suit.... So that in setting down the term nobilis used through the world for a gentleman, I had no intention to make myself more noble than I am, but to take only that which was due unto me."
Buckland.
I have taken Leigh on the way to Reigate. But the best way to see Leigh on a short walk is to reach it from Reigate travelling west. The introduction is by way of Reigate Heath, a wide and breezy common on which an old black windmill stands high above heather and bracken, a gaunt and wild neighbour to the orderly villas of the town.
Last of the little villages under the downs between Dorking and Reigate is Buckland—a handful of cottages, a pond, and a noble barn with upper-works like a tower. Buckland keeps tranquilly apart from Reigate, and Reigate, considerately enough, builds her new houses towards the railway and Redhill.
