ish is
curiously described on the church wall. Mrs. Margaret Fenwick left L200,
which was to be used partly in binding out poor children as apprentices,
and partly "in prefering in marriage such Maid Servants born in this
Parish as shall respectfully live Seven Years in any Service and whose
friends are not able to do it." The intention is clear, but friends
unable to live respectfully seven years in one service would, one would
think, be numerous.

The real centre from which to see the country east and south of
Betchworth is Reigate, but a walk from Dorking to Reigate might very
well take in Leigh, which is a little out of the beaten track. But if
you ask the way, do not inquire for "Lee." "Lie" is the name. The
village is very small, but it stands round a pretty little green, and
one of the old timbered cottages with a Horsham slab roof sets the right
grace to a group with the church and its trees. Leigh church has fine
brasses of the Arderne family, who had Leigh Place, once an ancient and
moated house half a mile north of the village, now a rather nondescript
but quaint building; the moat remains, the house has been partly pulled
down, partly rebuilt. Leigh Place belonged first to the great family of
de Braose, but its earliest legends are of the Ardernes. There was a Sir
Thomas de Arderne who wooed Margery, the wife of Nicholas de Poynings,
in a very rough manner; he saw no way to making her his own wife except
by making her widow of de Poynings, and so killed him. Tradition says
that she died of a broken heart, and haunts Leigh Place, a sad lady in
white; but it was probably not Sir Thomas, but a descendant of his, who
first had Leigh Place. Still, to Leigh belongs the story. After the
Ardernes, Leigh Place came to the Copleys, who were also of Gatton. One
of them, Sir Thomas Copley, had original notions as to the proper
bearing and attributes of an English gentleman. Mr. John Watney, writing
in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, gives a long letter which Sir
Thomas wrote to Queen Elizabeth in 1575, defending himself, among other
things, for having taken to himself titles to which he had no right. His
defence is ingenious:--

"As to the other point, where your Majesty showed to be informed,
that I had attributed to myself in those letters of marque greater
titles than became me or than I could well avow, that must needs be
either in that I termed myself _nobilis Anglus_, or in that, for