In a field close by the village once took place a remarkable battle. A correspondent of the Gentleman's Magazine of 1796 gives the following account of it, which he had verbatim from an old inhabitant. "A serpent once infested a back lane in the parish of West Clandon for a long time. The inhabitants were much disturbed and afraid to pass that way. A soldier who had been condemned for desertion promised, if his life was spared, he would destroy this serpent. Accordingly he took his dog with him. A fierce battle ensued, the dog fastened him and the soldier killed it with his bayonet in a field belonging to the glebe called Deadacre." According to the magazine's correspondent, an "ancient piece of carving in wood" representing this frightful struggle, had been "preserved for many years in the parsonage house."
Between the two Clandons, West and East, the road runs by what is surely the finest ploughland in the county. A single field of over a hundred acres stretches up the side of the down to a belt of firs—a field for Cincinnatus himself to plough. I remember standing to stare at that great reach of shining stubble and furrow when first I saw it from the road on a day of marvellous February sunlight. Farm labourers were topping and tailing turnips two hundred yards away; partridges newly paired whirred up from the roadside; beyond the white stubbleland lay the pines of Netley Heath, a thin line of palest blue; a hundred larks filled the sky with singing, and I heard suddenly behind me the impetuous thrill of a chaffinch, that most summery of carols. The ploughland is Lord Onslow's, and it must need a Minister of Agriculture to look after it.
East Clandon lies under that broad ploughland, a mile from Clandon Park. Everything in East Clandon is what it ought to be, and everybody does what he ought to do. The timbered cottages are old and quiet; the barn roofs by the churchyard are long and lichened; the churchyard is bordered by a thick holly hedge, and about its graves, little clipped yew-trees stand like chessmen, perhaps meant to suggest a text; the cottage gardens are full of simple flowers and fruit-trees, and the cottagers work in them as if it were the best work to do, which doubtless it is. There could not be a happier looking village. One building only in the village knows, or shows, much suffering. At East Clandon is the country branch of the Queen Alexandra Nursing Home for children with hip disease. In fine weather the children lie in their cots on the verandah, like broken toys, and wave happily from their red blankets to passers-by.
In the days of Charles I East Clandon boasted a poet. He was Thomas Goffe, a writer of tragedies, and most unhappily married. Aubrey tells the story:—
"His wife pretended to fall in love with him, by hearing of him preach: upon which, said one Thomas Thimble (one of the Squire Bedell's in Oxford, and his Confident) to him: 'Do not marry her: if thou dost, she will break thy heart.' He was not obsequious to his friend's sober advice, but for her sake altered his condition, and cast anchor here. One time some of his Oxford friends made a visit to him she looked upon them with an ill eye, as if they had come to eat her out of house and home (as they say), she provided a dish of milk, and some eggs for supper, and no more: They perceived her niggardliness, and that her husband was inwardly troubled at it (she wearing the breeches) so they were resolved to be merry at supper, and talk all in Latin, and laughed exceedingly. She was so vexed at their speaking Latin that she could not hold, but fell out a weeping, and rose from the table. The next day, Mr. Goffe ordered a better dinner for them, and sent for some wine: they were merry, and his friends took their final leave of him. 'Twas no long time before this Xanthippe made Mr. Thimble's prediction good; and when he died, the last words he spake were: 'Oracle, Oracle, Tom Thimble,' and so he gave up the ghost."
Halfway from East Clandon to West Horsley is Hatchlands, a fine country house and park with noble beeches; and next to Hatchlands one of the prettiest and completest farmsteads in the county. The building in the neighbourhood is, indeed, some of the best to be seen. West Horsley itself is a fascinating collection of old cottages, vine-bowered and fronted with clipped yews. One such yew, standing by the door of what the picture postcards vaguely designate "old cottage, West Horsley," is an extraordinarily elaborate piece of rustic topiary. Another feature of the village is the now disused workhouse, a solid old brick building overlooking a horsepond: another, the bole of a superb elm, quite rightly stationed in the carpenter's sawyard. Of West Horsley church it is more difficult to speak. It is possible to see from outside that there is a beautiful three lancet east window, but the rest of the church, with its chapel and fine monuments, is a sealed book. The door is locked, and the keys are kept at the rectory a mile away: the sexton, next door to the church, is not allowed a key. It is not easy to write soberly of an authority which compels for one who should be allowed to see the church, four journeys of a mile to ask for and to return the keys. From West Horsley to Leatherhead is a pilgrimage by locked churches: East Horsley is locked, though you can get the key; Effingham and Little Bookham are locked, but I had no time to search for more keys when I was there; possibly they are easily found. Great Bookham is open, but Fetcham is locked; Leatherhead is more hospitable.
The great families of West Horsley are those of Berners and Nicholas. The effigy of Sir James Berners, of West Horsley Place, is in the church: he was one of the followers of Richard II, and was beheaded on Tower Hill, in 1388. His daughter, according to tradition, was the famous Dame Juliana Berners, Prioress of Sopwell, and author—or part author—of the Boke of St. Albans, a "Treatyse perteynynge to Hawkynge, Huntynge, Fysshynge, and Coote Armiris." Probably she wrote no more than the hunting, but it is pleasant to think that she may have watched her greyhounds "headed like a snake, and necked like a drake" on the downs above Horsley. Another Berners, the second Baron of the name, translated Froissart. Of the Nicholas family, Sir Edward was a Royalist and Secretary of State under both the Charleses. Of other owners of West Horsley Place, its mistress, Geraldine Browne, wife of Sir Anthony Browne, is claimed to be the "Fair Geraldine" of Surrey's poem; but any other Geraldine would suit as well, if, indeed, Geraldine ever existed. Another doubtful tradition of West Horsley is that the head of Sir Walter Raleigh is buried in the church with his son Carew. Certainly no one knows that it was buried anywhere else.
Leaving West Horsley, you are immediately in an atmosphere of war. At East Horsley, the Duke of Wellington guards the cross-roads and dispenses excellent bread and cheese and beer; at Effingham Prince Blücher used to stand on the main road, quite correctly placed to the east of the Duke; he has now marched down into the village and billeted himself as comfortably as before. The atmosphere of swords and sharpness has even entered ecclesiastical precincts. In East Horsley church there is a curious fresco, painted, I am told, by the late Lady Lovelace. It shows St. Martin dressed as a soldier in high boots, cloak and hat, cutting off the skirt of his cloak with his sword, to clothe a naked beggar kneeling before him. It is curious that a second legend of a cloak should belong to a neighbourhood connected with Sir Walter Raleigh.
Horsley Towers, on the left of the road to Effingham, is a large, grey, castellated building; its entrances might be fortifications. The park holds some superb beeches. But the grey coldness of Horsley Towers is a little exotic among these stretches of southern English parkland. Good Jacobean or Georgian red-brick much better suits oaks and beeches than the chateau-like towers of a Scottish castle.
Effingham, although so small a village, has a name that will last with the history of the English Navy. It gave his title to the first Lord Howard of Effingham, the illustrious father of a still more illustrious son. The first Lord of Effingham was William Howard, son of the second Duke of Norfolk, and one of the great men of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. He was with Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold; he was Lord High Admiral; at Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion he shut Ludgate in Wyatt's face, and more than any Englishman he helped Elizabeth to her throne. But his son is an even greater figure. Like his father, he was Lord High Admiral, but the father never had the son's opportunity. For the second Lord Howard of Effingham commanded the English Navy against the Spanish Armada, and as the victor of that tremendous fleet and the captor of Cadiz he was made Earl of Nottingham, and held the office of Lord High Admiral until the green old age of eighty-three, when "he retired," we are told, "from public life, and the rest of his life was peace and prayer." He lies with his father at Reigate, which with the churches of Lingfield and Great Bookham holds the dust of many generations of the Surrey Howards. Fourteen Howards have been buried at Reigate, twelve at Lingfield, and thirty at Great Bookham; but so far as I can find, none, curiously enough, at Effingham itself.