Reigate.
The kings must have found this particular de Warenne a little difficult to deal with. He was a bit of a swashbuckler as well as a swordsman, and once when he found himself getting the worst of a lawsuit at Westminster with one Alan de la Zouche, he ran him through the body in the king's own chamber and was off to Reigate before anybody could stop him. King Henry was furious, and sent Prince Edward, the great de Clare, and an archbishop to bid him come out of his castle and be punished. He came out at last, and was fined ten thousand marks for the king and two thousand for Alan de la Zouche. But Prince Edward was not done with him. As Edward the First he held a Court of Assize to inquire into the warrants by which the barons held their lands. De Warenne was asked for his warrant for Reigate. He drew a rusty sword and struck it on the council table. "By this instrument," he said, "do I hold my lands, and by the same I intend to keep them." He kept them, but he had to amend his plea into something a little less swaggering.
A Reigate Byway.
Of Reigate Castle not a stone remains. But under the great mound which bore the keep you may see what local tradition has named the Baron's caves, where, as the story goes, the Barons met before the signing of Magna Charta. Martin Tupper, indeed, has written a whole chapter in Stephan Langton describing the interesting scene, though as a mere matter of history it never took place. To begin with, the de Warenne of the day was an adherent of King John, and not of the barons, and in the next place the barons marching to Runemede never came near Reigate at all. Mr. Tupper errs. But the passages and chambers hollowed out of the yellow sandstone are interesting, and so are the rough carvings of heads of horses which ornament the walls. Mr. Malden, the Surrey historian, thinks the caves are merely sand-quarries, sand being valuable for making mortar. It is pleasanter, though probably wholly incorrect, to imagine them as dungeons, or homes of early man, or even cellars. The gardener exhibits them with a candle, and in the dark they can be eerie enough for cave-bears.
Park Lane, near Reigate.
Long after the de Warennes' reign was over, Reigate Castle saw more fighting. We met the leaders on both sides at Kingston. It was nearly at the end of the Parliamentary wars, and Lord Holland, commanding the Royalist troops, conceived the idea of a rising near London. There was to be a horse-race on Banstead Downs, to draw the people together, and he was to lead them. Unhappily for his followers, he was a thoroughly incompetent soldier. He hoisted his standard at Kingston, and marched through Dorking to Reigate, where he held the castle and posted his vedettes on Red Hill. Sir Michael Livesey, commanding some Kentish horse for the Parliament, was ordered up from Sevenoaks to meet him; Major Audley, one of Livesey's officers, was moved out from Hounslow, where he had three troops, to clear Banstead Downs. Audley reached Reigate first, and engaged Lord Holland, but found him too strong: he drew off, and Holland, for no soldier's reason, fell back on Dorking. He came on again to Reigate next day, but by that time Livesey and Audley had joined, and when Holland knew who was before him he turned again for Kingston. As we saw, his horse faced the Parliament's troops on Kingston Common, and he died without glory on the scaffold.
Not much remains even of the Reigate which Lord Holland's troops saw on that luckless July day in 1648. The Parliament tumbled the old castle in ruins, and as at Bletchingley, anybody who wanted to build a house or a barn helped himself from the stones. To-day the steadiest modern business fills the High Street and Bell Street, the two roads running west and south along which old Reigate lay. Here and there the quaint slope of a red roof, or the lichen on weather-worn tiles, has a hold on the past, and in Slip Shoe Street, itself echoing the days of pilgrimages, care and good paint have preserved the beams of delightful old cottages. The Swan Inn, which may have liquored Holland's cavaliers, has borne much from later builders, but it stands on the old site. Nearly all the rest of old Reigate has gone. The Red Cross Inn, where thirsty pilgrims dropping down from the chalk highway drank ale and rested, has made way for brand-new brick and rough-cast, painted a bright pink. The market which the pilgrims used to find at the western end of the town was moved to the centre cross-roads at the Reformation, and the little chapel at the cross-roads, where the pilgrims said their Aves, came down in George the First's day to make room for what is now called the old Town Hall. It is only two hundred years old, but even it is not as its Georgian builder left it.