d the
Corporation in debt.

One other distinction Guildford owes to its associations with kings. It
has been selected as the scene of a remarkable novel by a remarkable
writer. Martin Tupper, in his preface to _Stephan Langton_, takes a
devoted public into his confidence as to the manner in which such a book
should be, and indeed actually was, completed. He set out to write a
historical novel dealing with Guildford in the days of King John,
weaving into it various local legends and a love-story of an abbess and
an archbishop; he "began the book on November 26, 1857, and finished it
in exactly eight weeks, on January 21, 1858, reading for the work
included." The list of books which he consulted in Mr. Drummond's
library at Albury must be read in full for the mere physical labour of
the business to be appreciated; but after such abstruse searchings, to
have crammed into ninety thousand words of solid print such a
concatenation of murders, arsons, slayings, swoonings, drownings and
burnings must always remain a considerable achievement. The story itself
is sad stuff.

Apart from palaces, Guildford's history, until comparatively recent
times, has been the history of the wool trade and cloth manufacture. The
beginnings of the industry go back to the settlement in the south of
England, in the reign of Edward III, of Flemish weavers and dyers.
Guildford naturally attracted the trade, for sheep could be successfully
farmed on the downs, water-power for the fulling-mills could be had from
the Wey, and the best fuller's earth in the country was to be had from
Nutfield and elsewhere, only a few miles away. The fuller's teazle, and
woad for dyeing, also grew, and still grow, I learn from Dr. Williamson,
though I have not found either, in the neighbourhood. Before the end of
the fourteenth century the cloth industry had come to the dignity of
legislation. Nobody might buy cloth before it had been "fulled and fully
performed in its nature"; this was to prevent dishonest people from
stretching the cloth and so giving the public short measure. Later,
under the Tudors, nobody might manufacture cloth except in a market-town
where cloth had been manufactured for ten years past. This was no doubt
for the convenience of the ulnagers, officers deputed to measure and
seal all cloth brought to market. It was highly illegal to stretch cloth
in any way. Thomas West, of Guildford, in 1607, was charged with having
used "a certain instrument (a t