A HISTORY OF SURREY 



wrongfully annexed it to his manor, ' and hitherto the King has lost the 

 dues, while the Bishop has them ' ; of another, ' the jurors say ' that the 

 Bishop's reeve has annexed it to Bramley simply because he had been a 

 friend of the man who used to hold it ! Again, at Gomshall, the jurors 

 found that bishop Odo had ' wrongfully ' annexed to his manor of 

 Bramley half a hide which had been part of Gomshall not only under 

 king Edward, but even after it had come into king William's hands. 

 It was also after William's coming that an outlying estate belonging to 

 Merton was seized by bishop Odo and given to the bishop of Lisieux, 

 but this case was so glaring that Odo's reeve did not venture to uphold 

 his lord's right (fo. 30). The King's interests suffered also through the 

 action of the reeves (or, as we would say, the bailiffs) of his manors. 

 ' The men of the Hundred ' deposed that at Ewell these gentry had 

 obliged their friends by making over to them two and a quarter hides of 

 the manor with appurtenances. At Tiling, they said, the land, which 

 had been part of the Crown demesne, had been alienated from it by the 

 reeve even in king Edward's days (fo. 31). 



One is not surprised that the Church's lands suffered, like those of 

 the king himself, at the hands of bishop Odo. He took from West- 

 minster Abbey two hides of Battersea and gave them to the bishop of 

 Lisieux, while two hides at Clandon, belonging to Chertsey Abbey, 

 were annexed by him wrongfully, the jurors said, to his own manor of 

 Bramley. 



Of light on Norman administration or finance there is in Surrey 

 little or none. It should, however, be noted that, among the king's 

 manors, Woking and Stoke are both entered as paying the sheriff, apart 

 from the King, twenty-five shillings a year, while Bermondsey paid him 

 twenty. Of Gomshall, on the other hand, we read that its villeins are free 

 ' ab omni re vicecomitis' (fo. 30^), an entry as obscure as is the character 

 of the payments from the three manors above. No less obscure is the 

 entry, also on the King's land, that the sheriff has seven pounds from the 

 three manors in Surrey which queen Edith held, because he gives them 

 help when they need it. The entry is made the more puzzling by the fact 

 that these manors were four, not three, in number. Here also may be 

 mentioned the entry, on the King's manor of Kingston, that Humfrey 

 the chamberlain has charge of a villein ' for the purpose of collecting 

 the Queen's wool, and took from him twenty shillings as "relief" when 

 his father died.' The wording seems to imply that this was an act of 

 oppression, but * relief was not a Norman innovation, for it had been 

 paid by the Berkshire thegns (fo. 56^). 



The one great industry was that of the plough, but it offers in this 

 county no special features. It should, however, be observed that Clan- 

 don clearly seems to have been ' farmed ' of Chertsey Abbey, which held 

 it, by villeins, in 1086, and that they had there seven ploughs, although 

 the record states (fo. 34) that there was only land for five. Its annual 

 value was given as four pounds only, and yet these villeins paid a rent of 

 six pounds, an excess which may imply that they were ready to pay for 



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