Politics in Reigate are a mixed memory. Like Gatton, Reigate was a pocket borough, and sent two members to Parliament until 1832, when the two were reduced to one. Even the one disappeared in 1867, when the borough was disfranchised for bribery and treating--a subject of conversation which Mr. Louis Jennings, writing three years later in _Field Paths and Green Lanes_, notes as dangerous if introduced too suddenly in social circles in the neighbourhood. But an even more remarkable political record belongs to one of Reigate's neighbours. Gatton, once a borough and now a park, had the privilege granted to its owner in 1451 of sending two members to Parliament. The Copleys of Leigh were lords of the manor in the days of Henry VIII, and Sir Richard Copley was at one time the only inhabitant of the borough, so that his voting power was considerable. When Cobbett was abroad on his _Rural Rides_, there were Reigate, Gatton, and Bletchingley within a few miles of one another, all of them rotten boroughs, and each of them returning a couple of members. Cobbett, of course, boiled whenever he heard the names; Gatton in particular, was "a very rascally spot of earth." He lived to see a very bad bargain for Gatton's privileges. Lord Monson, in 1830, bought the estate with its votes for two members for L100,000. Two years later, Gatton as a borough was ended by the Reform Bill and all Lord Monson had for his L100,000 was the land. Lord Monson started with the intention of making Gatton House one of the most superb in the kingdom. He began with the hall, which he built on the lines of the Corsini chapel in the church of San Giovanni in Laterano at Rome, though he did not add the dome. The floor he had laid of coloured marbles, patterned in the most delicate designs; the marble had been designed for Ferdinand VII of Spain, and cost L10,000. The walls and arches are as richly decorated as the floor. There are four frescoes by Joseph Severn; Eleanor of Castile represents Fortitude; Esther, Prudence; Ruth, Meekness; Patience could only be Penelope. The effect of the shining stone and painted arches is of extraordinary brilliance and completeness--the completeness of an unrivalled collection. But there is somewhere something bizarre; perhaps it is the setting. Marble demands marble neighbours, and the setting of these exotic treasures is the simple beauty of English parkland. The little church fits better with the great trees and the green grass. The building is nothing; the interior has the grace and the light of a cathedral chapel. Lord Monson decorated Gatton Church with the magnificence with which he imagined the hall, but his ideal for the church was quieter. He bought carved wood of the most exquisite workmanship and set it wherever the church could hold it; a pulpit and an altar from Nuremberg, said to be by Duerer, but the critics dispute it; the elaborately fitted stalls came from a monastery in Ghent, and altar rails from Tongres.