Edward Skeete, "one shorte Cloake, called the
Dutch cloke, of Black Damaske furred with squirrell, faced with
caliber, and garded with velvett."

To Elizabeth, his eldest daughter, L40, "but she not to troble
molest or disquiett my saide wyfe, her mother, my executrix."

To his grandson Edmond one of his great bowls of silver.

The last item is one of the most interesting. It ought to be read in
conjunction with an earlier item in the same will, in which special
directions are left to the executors not to pull down or to deface any
manner of wainscot or glass in or about the house of Slyfield. For the
end of the Slyfield family as a power in Surrey came with bitter
suddenness. Henry, the Sheriff's eldest son, succeeded his father in
1590, and died in 1598. He was succeeded by his son Edmond, who had been
left one of the "great bowls of silver." Within sixteen years Edmond
Slyfield had sold every stick and stone of the Slyfield manors, the
Slyfield house was razed to the ground to make room for a new building,
and in the new building and on the old tombstones alone the name of
Slyfield remains.

The new manor-house is nearly three hundred years old, and was built for
the possessor of another great Surrey name, George Shiers. He was the
grandfather of Sir George Shiers, baronet, who was one of the most
generous of testators to Surrey villages. Among other bequests, he left
a sum of money to the parish of Great Bookham, which was to be thus
devoted:--

In preferring in Marriage such Maids born in this Parish as have
lived and behaved themselves well for seven Years in any one
Service, and whose friends are not able to do it.

To dispose of the surplus to such Poor as by Sickness, Age, a great
Family of Children, or otherwise, shall be in Danger of coming under
the common relief of this Parish.

The "danger of coming under the common relief" of the parish was
evidently felt to be real--a strange dislike forerunning the hatred
which the modern English villager feels for "the House." When Louise
Michel, the leader of the _petroleuses_ of the French Revolution, was
shown over one of the great London Unions not long before her death, she
was filled with wonder and admiration. "If we had had _that_ in France,"
she said, "we should have had no revolution." The Englishman leaves
legacies to enable poor parishioners to escape from the danger.

Slyfields Manor, picturesque though