delicate blossom, and in
the white blossom, with the hot blue of a May sky beyond and between, a
nightingale's throat throbbing with singing.

Alfold almost touches the Sussex boundary, and is perhaps the most
out-of-the-way little village in Surrey. I find Mr. Ralph Nevill,
writing in 1889, lamenting that it was once charmingly rural, but that
"the breath of the pestilence has passed over and vulgarised it." There
are new houses in it, and new generally means hideous; but the
pestilence has left some old work worth looking at. At the eastern end
of the village stands Alfold House, a sixteenth-century timbered
building; at the western end is the church, grey with its shingled
spire, built like Thursley and Elstead on massive oak beams. A broad
stone causeway leads to the door; in May, the springing grass shines
with daffodils.

Alfold, like Shalford, Abinger and Newdigate, still has its village
stocks. They stand at the churchyard gate, better worth sitting in, so
far as appearance goes, than the other three. Alfold, too, has a great
old yew-tree, one of a row of three in the Fold churchyards. Has it ever
been noticed that the Alfold, Dunsfold, and Hambledon yews stand almost
in a mathematically straight line? From Alfold to Hambledon is five
miles as the crow flies, and Dunsfold is almost exactly half way between
the two.

Three Alfold villagers, perhaps, made the journey to London, or to some
halting-place in the royal progress, to seek the grace of King James II.
The parish register-book contains the entry of their names on the
title-page:--

2 May } { I gave certificates to Jane Puttock, Henry
4 -- } 1687 { Manfield, Elizabeth Saker, to be touched
19 July } { for the [King's] Evil.

Whether Jane Puttock, Henry Manfield and Elizabeth Saker were cured of
the scrofula by the highly medicinal contact of the royal hands does not
appear; but in 1710 another patient, James Napper, was certified to be
"a legal inhabitant of our parish of Alfold in the county of Surrey
aforesaid and is supposed to have the disease commonly called the Evil."
Perhaps not one of the four had much more than the country bumpkin's
natural desire to see the King and be able to talk about it afterwards;
perhaps they coveted the little gold tokens which royal physicking hung
round the sufferer's neck. Not all those who were touched for the Evil
were languishing with a fell disease. Charles II operated on nearly a