Earl of Surrey; a century later
the manor came to Lord Somers, the great Lord Chancellor of William of
Orange; to-day the modern house, built on the site of the old convent,
belongs to one of Lord Somers's descendants, Lady Henry Somerset. It
holds a famous oak chimney-piece, said to have been brought from Henry
VIII's vanished palace of Nonsuch.

Reigate Priory to-day means Reigate cricket, played on the Priory
ground. Three of the most famous of all Surrey cricketers belong to the
town. Stephen Dingate, first of Surrey players before Beldham, was born
there; so was William Caffyn, of the days of the giants Fuller Pilch and
Alfred Mynn, Tom Lockyer and Julius Caesar; and so, too, was W.W. Read,
one of the very few Englishmen familiar to millions by their initials
alone. "W.G." and "W.W." belong to the great years of the game.

Politics in Reigate are a mixed memory. Like Gatton, Reigate was a
pocket borough, and sent two members to Parliament until 1832, when the
two were reduced to one. Even the one disappeared in 1867, when the
borough was disfranchised for bribery and treating--a subject of
conversation which Mr. Louis Jennings, writing three years later in
_Field Paths and Green Lanes_, notes as dangerous if introduced too
suddenly in social circles in the neighbourhood.

But an even more remarkable political record belongs to one of Reigate's
neighbours. Gatton, once a borough and now a park, had the privilege
granted to its owner in 1451 of sending two members to Parliament. The
Copleys of Leigh were lords of the manor in the days of Henry VIII, and
Sir Richard Copley was at one time the only inhabitant of the borough,
so that his voting power was considerable. When Cobbett was abroad on
his _Rural Rides_, there were Reigate, Gatton, and Bletchingley within a
few miles of one another, all of them rotten boroughs, and each of them
returning a couple of members. Cobbett, of course, boiled whenever he
heard the names; Gatton in particular, was "a very rascally spot of
earth." He lived to see a very bad bargain for Gatton's privileges. Lord
Monson, in 1830, bought the estate with its votes for two members for
L100,000. Two years later, Gatton as a borough was ended by the Reform
Bill and all Lord Monson had for his L100,000 was the land.

Lord Monson started with the intention of making Gatton House one of the
most superb in the kingdom. He began with the hall, which he built on
the lines of the Corsini chapel in