ay of the Blews at Guildford." He
probably muddled up musty scandals with the effect of pure business
competition. He is not the last to make mistakes connected with a
vanished trade. There still lingers a superstition at Guildford that
Rack Close, not far from the Castle, is the place where unfortunate
prisoners (perhaps the Jews whom Martin Tupper describes as suffering
agonies of enforced dentistry and other tortures) were stretched upon
the rack. It is, of course, the plot of ground on which were set up the
wooden racks, or frames, on which the Guildford blue cloth was stretched
and dried in the wind and sun.

Guildford was singularly happy in its lack of history during the
Parliamentary wars. The battles over Farnham Castle we have seen.
Guildford Castle was not thought worth holding. Surrey gentlemen and
Surrey towns had been as backward as the rest of England in supplying
Charles with his ship-money; but during the whole of the war not a shot
was fired within hearing of the county capital. There was a question of
safeguarding the powdermills at Chilworth, and these were secured for
the Parliamentary Army. Otherwise, Guildford heard nothing more of the
war than the rattle of accoutrements; there were a few levies stationed
in the town, and a troop or two of horse rode through it. Perhaps
Guildford's unhappiest memory of war is an echo of Sedgmoor, forty years
later. The Duke of Monmouth, leaving his colliers and ploughmen to do
their best against the King's cannon, had ridden off the field into
Hampshire, turned his horse loose at Cranbourne Chase, and tried to hide
himself in some rough ground near Ringwood. Lord Lumley and Sir William
Portman were after him with the Militia; there was a reward of five
thousand pounds on his head, and for a day and a night he was hunted
through undergrowth and standing crops. Dogs were run through the high
oats and peas, and except oats and peas he had nothing to eat. He was
caught in the morning, shivering and grey-bearded, in a ditch; two days
later, he was on his way from Ringwood to London, his coach guarded by
strong bodies of troops, and sitting opposite him in the coach an
officer whose orders were to stab him if there was an attempt at rescue.
So they rode into Guildford on a Saturday afternoon, and that night the
terrified prisoner lay under the roof of Abbot's Hospital. Perhaps he
slept; perhaps he could only stride about the room feverishly scribbling
letters of abject