A HISTORY OF SURREY 



owners of rural manors possessing houses or ' haws,' as might be expected, 

 in Guildford, we find, with some astonishment, that they held them in 

 Southwark and in London. As this seems to have escaped notice, and 

 as it has a very important bearing, I give the exact details. In South- 

 wark there were 1 6 ' haws ' appurtenant to Merton, 4 to Mortlake, 

 i to Banstead, and 3 to Chivington in Blechingley. Beddington also 

 possessed there 8 messuages, and Oxted i, as did Ditton and Walton- 

 on-the-Hill. In Southwark and London jointly there were appurtenant 

 to Walkhampstead (Godstone) 15 messuages, and to Blechingley 7. 

 In London itself Home Beddington possessed 1 5 messuages, Beddington 

 (Huscarle) 13, Mortlake 17, and Chivington in Blechingley 2, while 

 a ' demesne mansion ' in the city had belonged to the lord of Banstead. 

 Of London burgesses, nineteen were subject to the owner of Lambeth, 

 to whom they were worth yearly thirty-six shillings, while thirteen 

 were appurtenant to Bermondsey. As against this long list we find 

 nothing at Guildford except a single ' haw ' which is entered as appur- 

 tenant to the adjoining manor of Shalford. It was Southwark therefore, 

 not Guildford, where ' tenurial heterogeneity ' prevailed in the Surrey 

 Domesday. 



We have seen that, in what Professor Maitland has termed the 

 Burghal -Hidage, Southwark appears as ' Suthringa geweorc.' Remem- 

 bering the ' work ' that Alfred wrought, in 878, at Athelney, we are 

 certainly tempted to infer that there existed at Southwark a fortified tete 

 de pont which was the above geweorc. But although this might be held 

 to support Professor Maitland's theory that the ' haws ' we meet with in 

 Domesday Book were originally due to the military defence that rural 

 thegns had there to render, 1 the absence of any such a system at Guild- 

 ford, which he deemed the other ' burgh ' of the shire, is distinctly 

 opposed to his conclusions, while the ' haws ' and houses spoken of at 

 Southwark can be easily accounted for on other grounds. From the 

 biographer of Edward we learn that, at the crisis in 1052, Godwine, the 

 greatest man in the kingdom after the King himself, went to Southwark 

 ' where was his own house.' In Domesday we read that the count of 

 Mortain, the greatest landowner in England after the King himself, had 

 his town house (as we should say) at Bermondsey. From these two 

 instances we may guess that there were already on the south of the 

 river, as we know there were in later days, mansions of great people. 2 

 On Surrey thegns London and Southwark evidently exercised a greater 

 influence than the King's vill of Guildford. One might even, as against 

 Professor Maitland, suggest that this was due to the fact that they had, 

 in those days, other things than ' county balls ' to think of. 



Sir Walter Besant, in his South London, a book which deals with a 



1 This 'garrison theory,' as it is termed, which is maintained in Domesday Book and Beyond (pp. 

 183-192), has been subsequently, somewhat modified by the author in his Township and Borough (pp. 

 209-210) in consequence of the strictures of Mr. James Tait (English Historical Review, XII. 768). 



8 In 1130 the Archbishop of Canterbury, the King's nephew count Stephen, and the King's son, 

 the earl of Gloucester, were all holders of land in Southwark. 



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