Inmate and Rich for not cuminge to Church for the
space of that month for y^e fes for the same 0 9 4

1669. paid for buring a pore man that dyed brocklands farm 0 2 6

1671. Rest due to the parrish for the grass this yeare 1 2 9
Mils Bucklands bill not being holy aloud

1697. gave to John Born for a foxes hed 00 03 04

Sept. ye 16 gave ye ringers for Joy of ye pees 00 04 00

for a botel of wine 00 03 02

1701. payd for 3 botells of winde 00 08 03

The political events which brought the ringers joy and shillings seem to
have been the peace of Ryswick and the return of Charles I, then Prince
of Wales, from his journey to Spain in search of a princess. Weybridge
would have always followed royal doings with interest, for Weybridge
history, bound up with its oldest and greatest mansion, goes back to the
kings almost of the middle ages. On the ground, or near it, which now
belongs to the Oatlands Park Hotel, Henry VIII built one of his finest
palaces: Elizabeth followed her father and hunted deer in the park;
James I added to the palace a silkworm room for Anne of Denmark, planted
mulberry trees to feed the silkworms, and bred pheasants to please
himself; Charles I killed his stags and encroached on private ground to
kill more; his youngest son, Prince Henry of Oatlands, was born in the
palace. But Charles was the last English king to hunt at Oatlands. After
the Civil wars the land was disparked, and the palace fell into ruins.
To-day hardly a vestige remains. Old drawings show it to have been a
large, straggling building with one great court and a number of smaller
yards and quadrangles, turreted and gabled and quaint with tall and
delicate chimneys. The oddest neighbour for Weybridge of to-day! It is
not always difficult to re-people an old house, even if it has been
greatly altered, with the ghosts of great men who have walked its
passages and worked in its rooms. But among the newness and smallness of
modern building plots there is nothing so hard as to conjure the ghost
of a great palace, vibrating with the energy and the obsequiousness, the
simplicities and the intrigues of a hunting King and his Court.

Georgian days brought another being as a visitor. Oatlands came to the
seventh Earl of Lincoln in 1716, and he built hi