gs. The first of the line of
these Kings was one Peter, the son of an Exeter grocer. He came up to
London, soon made his mark as a lawyer, and died Lord Chancellor. There
are several of his descendants buried with him, and their coronets hang
above the arch of the chapel. They add a peculiar tawdriness; but the
chapel itself, with its dull blue paint, and the strange, bath-like
sarcophagus below Rysbrach's statues of the first Lord King and his
lady, is the main offence.

[Illustration: _Ockham Church._]

Ockham itself, even with that humming white highway not a mile distant,
is untouched and unspoiled: nothing more than a half-dozen or so of
half-timbered or brick cottages and farm-buildings, rain-bleached and
creeper-veiled, and fronted with some of the prettiest and brightest
gardens in Surrey. One of the sleepy little buildings bears the legend
"County Police," forbidding in new blue enamel. What should anyone do
with police in Ockham?

But Ockham, perhaps, lies a little too far from the old waterway to join
the group of villages and churches which cluster along this winding
stretch of Wey. Still it belongs to Ripley, if not to Ripley's group
along the river. Rivers, here, would be the better word, for the Wey has
hardly yet made up its mind as to its right channel north of Woking, and
by Ripley runs actually in seven streams almost parallel with one
another, some of them cut artificially, but others tiny remnants of the
broad watercourse which once rolled through Surrey to the sea. No doubt
it was this abundance of water which first attracted the founder of
Newark Priory, whose ruins stand almost in the centre of the seven
streams. The monks must have had plenty of choice of fishing.

Newark Priory is generally supposed to have been founded as a house of
Black Canons by Ruald de Calva and his wife Beatrice de Sandes in the
reign of Richard I. But Ruald de Calva as a fact only re-founded or
endowed the house, which was founded long before, probably by a Bishop
of Winchester. Its older name was Aldbury, and Newark--or Newsted, as it
was once called--which for us is an aged ruin, was Aldbury rebuilt with
a new church and a new name. It is in some ways a rather uninteresting
ruin. Of the tracery of the windows, or any of the lighter and more
delicate architectural work, not a stone remains. I believe much of the
more easily used stone-work found its way into the building of
neighbouring houses, perhaps into the pav