Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/695

Rh claim, but seven years later he and Gunnora granted the advowson in frankalmoign to Walter, Prior of Merton, who gave it back to them in exchange for some land in Malden.

The priory, in 1264, at the request of Walter de Merton, released any claim which they had in the advowson to his house of the scholars of Merton. The fine by which Simon Fitz Richard granted the manor of Malden to Walter de Merton had included a grant of the advowson, but as the advowson is not included in Walter de Merton's endowment of his college, and as the right to the advowson had been in dispute earlier, it seems that Walter had preferred to wait for a formal and conclusive settlement with the priory. The college has ever since held the advowson.

The chapel of Chessington in the same patronage is annexed to this church, though Chessington has a separate parochial existence. In 1291 at the taxation of Pope Nicholas the church of Malden was assessed at 12s. The vicarage was endowed in 1279. At the beginning of the 18th century the tithes of the demesne lands were demised by the college to the vicar, Dr. Bernard, together with a few acres of land near the vicarage house, and this lease was continued to his successors.

Smith's Charity is distributed as in other Surrey parishes.

The modern parish of Petersham is included in the borough of Richmond, and the village, which comprises a large number of good old-fashioned houses, is in fact a pleasant suburb of Richmond. It is between the Thames and the higher part of Richmond Park, which shelters it from the east.

By the 'Richmond, Petersham, and Ham Open Spaces Act, 1902,' Petersham Common and certain meadows and manorial rights in the same were vested in the Richmond Corporation for purposes of public enjoyment. The Lammas lands on the manor were also, by the same Act, taken from the commoners who had enjoyed rights of pasture, and, with Petersham Common, were placed under a Board of Conservators. The river-side, from Petersham to Kingston, has also been put under the Richmond Corporation and the Surrey County Council, in two sections, for enjoyment by the public for ever.

The chief interest of Petersham lies in its old houses, some of which are historically famous.

HAM HOUSE, the seat of the Earls of Dysart, was built by Sir Thomas Vavasour, Knight-Marshal to James I, traditionally for Henry Prince of Wales. The date 1610, the words Vivat Rex, and the initials T. V. over the door, probably relate to its completion. Owing possibly to the death of the prince it was conveyed to the Earl of Holderness, from whom it seems to have passed to the Murray family. It is mentioned in the Court Rolls of the manor of Petersham in 1634 as a house lately built on customary land by Sir Thomas Vavasour, and surrendered by Robert Lewis (probably a trustee), who was then holding it, to the use of Katherine Murray wife of William Murray.

This was by way of a marriage settlement on the marriage of Elizabeth daughter of William and Katherine with Sir Lionel Tollemache. The heir-general of the Ramsay family, Earls of Holderness, afterwards surrendered all claim in the court baron. Ham House then followed the descent of the manor of Petersham (q.v.). After the Earl (later Duke) of Lauderdale had married Elizabeth, Countess of Dysart, meetings of the Cabal ministry are said to have been held in the room still called the Cabal Room. Another name for it is the Queen's room, owing to a tradition that it was fitted up for Catherine of Braganza. In 1688 when William of Orange wished James II to remove from Whitehall he suggested Ham House as his abode; James objected to it as 'a very ill winter house, damp and unfurnished,' and preferred to stay at Rochester, whence he escaped to France.

During the life of the Duchess of Lauderdale the place was considered one of the finest near London. Evelyn wrote of it as 'inferior to few of the best villas of Italy itself; the house furnished like a great prince's; the parterres, flower gardens, orangeries, groves, avenues, courts, statues, perspectives, fountains, aviaries, and all this at the banks of the sweetest river in the world, must needs be admirable.' After the death of the duchess in 1698 the place was neglected. The excuse of James II that it was in 1688 'unfurnished' was scarcely true, for much of the furniture now is of the reign of Charles II, and peculiarly magnificent. But the surroundings of the house were possibly then neglected. When Horace Walpole's niece Charlotte was married to the fifth earl, her uncle wrote, 'I went yesterday to see my niece in her new principality of Ham. It delighted me, and made me peevish. Close to the Thames, in the centre of all rich and verdant beauty, it is so blocked up and barricaded with walls, vast trees, and gates, that you think yourself an hundred 525