Third of the three villages which group themselves south and south-west of Leith Hill is Newdigate, separated from Capel by over two miles of a zig-zagging road, though the distance for a steeplechase cannot be much more than a mile from church to church. Newdigate church is the chief part of the little village. The tower is wholly built of oak, and the beams supporting the belfry are almost as fine as those of the Thursley tower; possibly they are the work of the same craftsmen. Like other Wealden churches, Newdigate has an abiding charm in her peal of bells. They have been re-cast, but the Newdigate bellringers have long records of changes rung in the little tower. Some of the records are painted on wooden panels in the belfry. To the layman who has never rung a bell the names of the changes are stimulating. Colledge Singles, Grandsire Doubles, College Exercise, and College Pleasure are fairly simple; but Without a Dodge provokes thought, and Woodbine Violet must have been named by the village poet.
Newdigate Church.
Surrey autumns invest the shingled spires of these Wealden churches with a peculiar beauty. Grey and white, black-streaked and shining, weatherbeaten and weather-conquering, there is nothing in architecture lighter or more graceful than the patterned sheaths of native oak surmounting belfries which, sometimes for centuries, have called the villagers to church. But in late autumn, when the swallows and martins are practising starts for their long journey, the shingled spires turn themselves to fresh uses. On a sunny day the birds come about them in scores, pressing their bodies flat against the warm, dry wood, darting out for short flights, hawking gnats and midges, and flitting back again, keeping up through it all the sweetest and gentlest of anxious twitterings, and, when they are clinging to the chequered wood, resembling it so closely in colour and texture as to make it hard to count a dozen birds quickly. Martins near their time for going enter on all kinds of engaging habits, especially just before and just after dusk, when bands of a dozen or so seem suddenly to make up their minds to trial flights of the most amazing speed, utterly unlike their ordinary, quiet flittings. But there is nothing prettier in all the pageant of the migrants' year, than a dozen score martins with the unrest of autumn on them darting round a shingled spire.
CHAPTER XXXIII
REIGATE
Reigate Castle.—De Warenne.—A Swashbuckler and a Swordsman.—The Reigate Caves.—Lord Holland's soldiering.—Pilgrims at the Red Cross.—General of the Royale Navey.—Olde Dutchesse Norf.—"W. W."—Reigate Politics.—The Marble Hall.—The White Hart.—A Race against Time.
Four castles stood along the ridge of the Surrey downs when the barons were at war, and of the four nothing worth the name of a castle remains. Farnham's keep was broken down by Cromwell: Guildford is a shell, Reigate and Bletchingley have disappeared altogether. Betchworth, never fortified for war, was built later than the others, but Betchworth is an insignificant ruin. The kings and the captains have passed, and their buildings have followed them. The castles have gone down with the palaces. Surrey never had a castle like Arundel; but she has not been able to keep even a Pevensey or a Bodiam.
Yet Reigate castle and its owners shaped a great deal of English history. It belonged to the great Earls de Warenne, the rival family to the de Clares through all the early wars and intrigues of the kings and the barons. It stood on the ancient British track, the "Way" which runs east and west across the country. Its place on the Way was within reach of the Roman road, the Stone Street that ran from Chichester to London. Its possessor held the strongest strategic position between London and the coastline, or between Canterbury and Winchester, and when there was any fighting forward the lord of the highway cross roads, the ridge gate, was the first person to be taken into account. The curious thing is that there was so little fighting along the ridge. Reigate Castle never saw a pitched battle. When Louis of France was riding by the ridge to Winchester after King John, Reigate surrendered to the French, and de Warenne only got his castle back by changing sides from John to Louis. That was in 1216, and forty-seven years later, when Simon de Montfort took the baron's army by the ridge to Rochester, Reigate could do no more than watch the army march by. The de Warenne of the day was at Lewes with the king, and when the king had lost all in the battle of Lewes that followed, the lord of Reigate castle fled to France. He came back the next year, and when de Montfort fell at Evesham, Reigate was once more de Warenne's.