at all events, mentions Guildford in his will; he spells it
"Guldeford," one of the dozen old ways of spelling a name that has
always been a puzzle and a pleasure to the etymologists. What does
Guildford mean? Naturally "The Ford of the Guild." The town had a guild
of merchants, and there was a ford; nothing could be simpler. But the
simple explanations are usually wrong; and the most convincing
derivation is one which has been suggested by Mr. Ralph Nevill, who
discovered a river named Guilou in Asser's _Deeds of Alfred_, and points
to several other names along the Wey which may be traced to the same
source. There is Willey House, and Willey Mill near Farnham; Wilsham
Farm near Alton, and Willey Green on another branch of the river.
Guildford, then, is probably the "ford of the Guilou," which in Welsh is
presumably Gwili. Where, then, did the name Wey come from? It may
originally have been Wye. The corruption would be easy; indeed, Cockney
boating parties very likely get the right pronunciation, by accident,
to-day.

Older than St. Mary's tower in associations, if not in stone-work, is
Guildford Castle. The Castle stands on a mound, partly natural, perhaps,
and almost certainly partly artificial. Originally, perhaps, the mound
was used for an early English fortification; it was heightened by
scraping up earth from a ditch at its bottom, and round it was built up
a palisade of wood; possibly there was a wooden house on the top of it,
and then it would have looked precisely like one of the fortified mounds
in the Bayeux Tapestry. Later, it was enclosed in a shell keep; later
still, a Norman square keep was built inside the shell keep; to-day,
except the walls of the square keep, almost all the Castle is gone. It
was never a Castle in much more than name. It has no associations of
great battles; it never stood a siege; it never even held a royal
prisoner. In King John's reign it was already used as a gaol, and a gaol
it remained until James I, in 1612, gave it to one Francis Carter of
Guildford, who used it as a private residence. Four hundred years before
it had seen all its fighting. That was when the French Dauphin, invited
by John's angry barons, marched against it and took it from defenders
who seem to have cared little whether they kept it or not.

But the Castle still has its legend--a legend only--of cruelty and
bloody massacre. In 1036, when Harold Harefoot was king, Alfred the son
of Ethelred was travelling fro