GUILDFORD,

SURRY.

GUILDFORD is pleasantly situated on the side of a chalk hill close by the river Wey, and was in the time of the Saxons, a place of considerable note: the great king Alfred frequently resided here, as did many of our succeeding monarchs.

The castle, on account of its great antiquity, claims particular attention; but neither its founder nor the era of its construction are known. The first time it occurs in history is a little before the Conquest in the year 1036, when prince Alfred, the son of king Ethelred, coming out of Normandy with his brother Edward, at the desire of his mother Emma, in hopes of obtaining the crown, was met near this place by Godwin, earl of Kent, who, with all the semblance of respect and honourable treatment, invited him to partake of refreshment in the castle. Here Godwin threw off the mask; Alfred was immediately siezed, conducted to Ely, and, after his eyes had been put out, was shut up in a monastery for life: his attendants were tortured with great cruelty, and twicedecimated; that is, out of every ten, nine were killed.. Six hundred Normans, it is said, were thus murdered.

In the year 1216, when Lewis, the dauphin of France,

GUILDFORD.

came into this country, on the invitation of the barons, he in a short time possessed himself of this castle. In the tenth of Henry III. William de Coniers was governor of it for the king, as were afterwards Elias Maunsell, about the thirtieth, and William de Aguillon in the fifty-third of the same reign; and in 1299, the twenty-seventh of Edward I. it was assigned to Margaret, the second wife of that king, in part of her dowry.

Guildford castle had been used as a common gaol, at least as far back as the thirty-fifth of Edward I. when Edward de Say, keeper of the king's prisoners there, petitioned the king in parliament that the prisoners should be removed to some stronger place, this castle being too weak for the safe custody of so many of them. In the forty-first of Edward III. it was given to the sheriff of Surry for the county gaol, and as a dwelling-house for himself; it occasionally served as a common gaol for the county of Sussex, down to the reign of Henry VII. In the year 1611, the castle was granted by James I. to Francis Carter of Guildford, whose only daughter and heir married Goodyer, esq.

of Halton, Hants: this lady had two daughters, joint heiresses; one married to Tempest, esq. the other to Rolfe Tempest had a son, and Roife a daughter, who married the reverend Mr. Loveday. It is now the property of William Tempest, esq. of Guildford, a descendant of the above heiress.

The castle stands to the south of the High Street