admired for the beauty of their designs, and their fidelity to the subjects they were intended to present to the reader's eye.

The Seats of the nobility and gentry will be found to form a prominent feature of the embellishments. Than these, no subjects can be more interesting to all who consider the cultivated demesne, and ornamental mansion, the evidences of the wealth and prosperity of a country, as indeed they so eminently are. And at the same time that they tend, by their attractions to the man of opulence and taste, to procure the neighbourhood of wealth and refined manners for spots where these prove an inestimable advantage, while in the aggregate they must add vastly to the store of national utility, their representations by the pencil are certain to convey pleasurable feelings to the contemplative mind, not less than to the regaled sight.

It may be necessary to add, that the projected length of each of these volumes has been diminished one half. This has been done at the expressed wish of several persons, who conceived that every thing worthy of remark in the several counties might be brought within the reduced form, and that thus the expense of the volumes might be lessened, without detracting from their usefulness. The one of these objects is certainly attained by this arrangement, and it is confidently hoped that in the other the Editor has been equally successful.

EXCURSIONS THROUGH SURREY.

SURREY is an inland county, bounded on the north by the Thames, which separates it from Middlesex, on the south by Sussex, on the east by Kent, and on the west by Berkshire and Hampshire. Its greatest length from north to south is about twenty-six miles, its greatest breadth from east to west about thirty-eight; from which will be seen, that in point of size it is inferior to the majority of the counties of England.

So long as the Romans maintained their power in our island, this county formed a part of that large province southward of the Thames and Severn, which they distinguished as Britannia Prima. But on the new partition of the country which took place under the Saxon heptarchy, it assumed the title of the kingdom of the South Saxons, and contained, by estimation, according to Camden, 7000 hides of land. This kingdom, founded by Ella about A. D. 491, continued until Ina, king of the West Saxons, completed its conquest, together with that of the adjoining county of Kent, in the year 725. The people whom the Romans found in possession of this county, and of Sussex, on their arrival, were the Segontiaci, by Ptolemy called Regni, who originally came from Belgium.

The word Surrey, or at least that from which the modern appellation is derived, is as old as the reign of Alfred; that monarch, upon his division of England into counties or shires, having, from the situation of this on the southern side of the Thames, called it by the

VOL. I.

B

Saxon name, from which the various modes of writing it, as Suthriea, Suthereia, Suthregia, Suthrie, Suthereye, Suderige, and Sudrei, are natural and obvious deviations. In Domesday Book, it is written Sudrie; and from this latter document it appears that the Norman Conqueror gave very unequal portions of the county to eleven of his followers, among whom Richard de Tonebruge, or de Clare, was principally favoured, receiving for his share of the spoil thirty-eight manors.

It being the policy of William, and that of too many of his immediate successors, to reserve as large a portion of the country as possible, as demesnes of the crown, for the purposes of hunting (an amusement to which those princes were particularly addicted), the whole county at length, by the enclosures of the royal manors in the reign of Henry II., became afforested. And though Richard, his son and successor, in consequence of the general disgust excited by this innovation, found himself obliged to disafforest no less than three-fourths of it, yet King John, we are told, "followed the example of his brother and father in afforesting the lands of his subjects, so that the forests were every where so much enlarged, that the greatest part of the kingdom was turned into forests; the boundaries whereof were so large, and the laws so very severe, that it was impossible for any man who lived within these boundaries to escape the danger and thus it continued till the 17th year of his reign, A. D. 1215*;" when the king, however unwillingly, signed the Charter of the Forests, together with Magna Charta, at Runnemead.

:

Still, however, the terms stipulated for at this famous conference were by no means fulfilled; and successive struggles between the monarchs and the people ensued, until in the first year of Edward III. a full confirmation of the above charter was obtained.

Attempts were made, even so late as the reign of * Manwood, p. 243.