Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/734

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��found on Broad Street Common in the neighbourhood. It was a royal possession under Alfred, and is named in his will. It was the scene in 1036 of the arrest of the Etheling Alfred by Earl Godwine. Alfred had sailed from Wissant to the coast of Kent, and was travelling to Winchester to join his mother, Emma. His way was evidently the great east and west road on the chalk dowi s, and if Geoffrey Gaimar is correct he had passed through Guildford and was stopped on Guildown, and brought back into Guildford, where apparently the decimation of his followers was made. The castle is not mentioned in connexion with the story, as is erroneously asserted by many writers. The only building in Guildford which might possibly be contemporaneous with the event is the lower part of the tower of St. Mary's Church, which is Anglo- Saxon, but more likely of the reign of Edward the Confessor. Guildford was the seat of a mint under the Anglo-Saxon kings. Coins struck at Guildford of the kings Ethelred the, Unready, Cnut, Hardicnut, Edward the Confessor, Harold, and William I, have been found.

The greater part of St. Nicholas was an extensive country parish on the outskirts of Guildford and was in Godalming Hundred (q.v.). The part outside the borough is called Arlington as early as 1 664.' The immediate vicinity of the west end of the bridge was, however, in Guildford borough from an un- known date, and may be the holding in Guildford of the church of Salisbury mentioned in the charter of Henry II. 4

The village of Stoke has become a northern suburb of Guildford, and little remains to' show what it was once like. West of the church is a small plain half- timber building with red brick filling, probably of i jth-century date. Except for this and one or two buildings of an even plainer nature the old buildings have been replaced by modern. The church is situated on the road to Woking, which forms the principal axis of the place, and is within the boun- daries of Stoke Park. On the south, the road running north and south, Stoke merges imperceptibly into the streets of Guildford. The appearance of the village in the bottom of the valley of the Wey has a degree of picturesqueness unusual in so new a place, on account of the fine timber, and Stoke Park is also well wooded.

Except the castle, which will be noticed later, perhaps the most important building in Guildford from the archaeolo- gical point of view is TR1N1TT HOSPITAL, otherwise known as ABBOT'S HOSPITAL. It stands at the top of the High Street on the north side, on the site of an old inn, ' the White Horse.' It was founded by Archbishop Abbot, a native of Guildford, for decayed towns- folk. The hospital consists of four sides built about a courtyard and placed approximately to the four points of the compass. It is constructed of red brick with some rubbed and moulded work, and with dressings originally of chalk but now almost en- tirely replaced in stone. Accommodation is provided

���ABBOT. Gules a the- veron between three pears or.

��for twelve brethren, ten sisters, the master, and a nurse, and there is a chapel, common rooms, offices, &c. The whole building is of early l/th-century date, and there have been no important structural alterations. The first stone was laid in 1619, and the hospital was incorporated as the Master and Brethren of the Hospital of the Blessed Trinity in Guildford in 1622. The statutes were completed in 1629. They are closely modelled on those of Whitgift's Hospital at Croydon. Whitgift had been brought up as a child in a monastery before the Dissolution, 6 and the foundation represents the post-Reformation evolu- tion of the monastic ideal, at a time when only the old and infirm needed the shelter of an asylum. The foundation was for twelve brethren and eight sisters, over sixty years of age, unmarried, natives of Guildford or resident for twenty years. There was a master, also a native of Guildford or resident for twenty years, except in the case of a rector of Holy Trinity, who might be master without these qualifications. In the case of a vacancy an unmarried rector might take the office, otherwise the mastership was filled up by election by governors and the two elder brethren. If they failed to elect it lapsed to the archbishop, on his failure it went to the Bishop of Winchester, to the heirs of Sir George More of Loseley, and to the original electors successively. The endowment was increased by Mr. Thomas Jackman of Guildford in 1785. The original scheme of the archbishop included a further endowment for reviving manu- factures in the town, and his brethren and sisters were to wear gowns of blue Guildford cloth. But the decaying cloth manufacture was not revived by the encouragement. By a decree in Chancery, 3 July 1656, the money was ordered to be distributed among poor tradesmen of the town. As this naturally had a bad result, the poor tradesmen in receipt of the outdoor relief living idly, another decree was obtained after Mr. Jackman's benefaction had been made, on 14 December 1785, whereby half only was to be used in this way, and the other half added to Mr. Jackman's gift to support four more poor sisters. The moiety still devoted to pauperizing was diverted in 1855 and added to the endowment of Thomas Baker's Blue Coat School, founded by him in 1 5 79, which had been suspended for many years. The school was called Archbishop Abbot's School. It was formerly carried on in the tower of Holy Trinity Church, now in buildings in North Street. The cor- porate life of the hospital has much decayed. The in- mates meet now only in chapel, but live in their own rooms. The common rooms are used for parish and other meetings. There are some pictures of no great merit ; a portrait of Archbishop Abbot is the most valuable, but there is also a curious view of Wotton House as it was in John Evelyn's lifetime, and of Leith Hill behind it with a semaphore upon it. The archbishop is said to have been the son of a poor clothier, and to have been born in a house near the bridge in St. Nicholas's parish.* His brother Robert became Bishop of Salisbury, his brother Maurice a knight and Lord Mayor. They were all educated at Guildford School. It is questionable, however, whether his father was in such a humble condition as is usually said. The archbishop's mother, Alice March, was daughter of a gentleman of coat-armour, and his

��' In the first extant county rate.

< Reg. of St. Osmund (Roll) Ser.), i, zoj.

��* Diet. Nat. Blag. S4 8

��6 Parish register* of St. Nicholas con- tain his baptism.

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