The ways leading to these intricacies all start from the two principal streets, so that a stranger beginning at the beginning soon learns to unravel the difficulties of the locality for all purposes of business or pleasure. How this complicated irregularity of position and outline came about, which makes the old town unlike any other, and how, from a hill village of five wattled huts, shut in by the great Forest of Middlesex, it grew to be a place of fashionable resort, and gradually enlarged to its present extent and settled respectability, with its tens of thousands of inhabitants, claiming municipal rights, will be set forth in the following chapters. CHAPTER III. _THE DESCENT OF THE MANOR._ From the earliest times until after the Reformation we find Hampstead an appanage of the Church. At the dissolution of the Abbey and Convent of Westminster, Henry VIII. granted the Manor of Hampstead, combined with those of North Hall and Down Barnes, in part support to the newly-made bishopric of Westminster. In 1551, two years before the death of Edward VI., they were surrendered to the Crown, and in the same year granted to Sir Thomas Wroth as a mark of the young King’s favour. This gentleman, who, ‘amongst the divers sober and learned men of the King’s privy chamber, by whose wise and learned discourse he was much profitted,’ stood highest in his estimation, and in proof of it, with boyish generosity, we find the King, who had knighted him, making him rich presents from the royal wardrobe, and bestowing on him, not only the Manor of Hampstead and the others above-mentioned, but a plurality of manors in several counties. On the death of Edward, and accession of Mary, Sir Thomas fled to Strasburg, where he remained till the succession of Elizabeth, when he returned to England, where he was ‘received into the Queen’s favour, and employed by her in the concerns of State.’ In Hakluyt’s ‘Voyages,’ Park tells us, ‘there is an account of a merchandising voyage to Barbary in the year 1552, set forth by Sir Thomas Wroth and others.’ His name appears in the catalogue of Middlesex gentry,[53] and ‘it is observable,’ says Fuller, ‘that of all in this catalogue, he who went away for his conscience hath alone his name remaining in the County.’ He retained a high reputation to the last, and died at his Manor of Durants, in Enfield, co. Middlesex, October 9, 1573. The Manor of Hampstead remained in this family till sold by one John Wroth to Sir Baptist Hicks in 1620. This Sir Baptist Hicks was a wealthy silk mercer of Cheapside. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard May, of London, who outlived her husband, and at her death left £200 for the purchase of land, the produce of which was to be appropriated to apprenticing children and assisting the poor of Hampstead.