unsuccessful in keeping the business.
Charles I was struck with the idea of turning shopkeeper himself, and
gave the sole Government contract to one Cordwell, from whom he bought
powder at 7-1/2d. the pound and sold it to the lieges at eighteenpence.
That did not last long. The Long Parliament assembled in 1641, and the
monopoly was abolished. From that date anybody might make gunpowder, and
Surrey ceased to be the single centre of the industry. But the Chilworth
mills still did a great deal of business--sometimes bad business. Sir
Polycarpus Wharton, who had a twenty-one years' lease under Charles II,
James II and William III, is said to have lost L24,000 over the mills,
simply because he could not get paid by the Government, and actually
went to a debtor's prison. Fifty years ago the industry had declined
almost to a vanishing point. It revived in 1880, when experiments were
made in new powders for heavy guns, and to-day the Chilworth Mills make
cordite, without the miserable consequences which befel Sir Polycarpus
Wharton.

It seemed worth while, at the risk of spattering the page with dates and
facts of gunpowder dryness, to attempt this short sketch of the Surrey
gunpowder industry, if only to escape from the confusion of current
legends. Chief among the traditions of the Chilworth mills is that which
makes them the property of John Evelyn of Wotton. No Evelyn owned a
powdermill at Chilworth, and John Evelyn of Wotton, though he may have
owned a casual mill or so elsewhere, is not the John Evelyn who owned
and worked the Godstone mills. Those mills belonged to the diarist's
grandfather, George Evelyn, and to George Evelyn's son and grandson,
both named John. The latter was the diarist's cousin. I ought to add
that I am indebted, for most of this history of gunpowder, to the
admirable article on the subject by Mr. Montague Giuseppi, published in
the Victoria History of the County.

Albury is nearly two miles from Chilworth station, and the Tillingbourne
runs through and under it. Albury has a number of beautiful chimneys;
chimneys that are tall and graceful, of red brick, shaped and moulded in
ingenious spirals, with patterned sides and columns, and crowsteps and
other ornaments and uses. You would not guess all that a chimney can be,
until you have seen Albury. A year or two ago there was another charm in
the village. You looked in from the main street at what seemed like half
a road, half an entrance to a square