POLITICAL HISTORY 



sacred place hallowed by the crowning of the first Christian king of a 

 nation. It was probably then, as later, a royal possession. A possible 

 origin of the custom is that this happened to be the place of meeting 

 of the Council in 836 or 838, when Egbert and Ceolnoth the arch- 

 bishop seem to have made a lasting league between the West Saxon 

 crown and the metropolitan see, with the aim and the result of ruling 

 all southern Britain between them. 



The first wave of the Norman invasion necessarily broke upon 

 Surrey, along with the other counties between the coast and London, 

 the objective point of all invaders. William, after securing the coast of 

 Sussex and Kent, turned the flank of the forest of the Weald and came 

 from the eastward to Southwark. He probably had divided his forces 

 and sent part due west along the Pilgrims' Way into Surrey, on the road 

 to Winchester, his second most important point. London however was 

 always impregnable in the Middle Ages to an enemy attacking from the 

 south. The fortified end of the narrow bridge was a very strong posi- 

 tion of defence and no ships could pass the bridge to aid an attack from 

 the river, nor could boats pass it against the will of those who manned 

 it. William burnt some houses outside the bridge head, ravaged the 

 neighbourhood as far up the Thames valley as Walton, and specially 

 Harold's lands at Mortlake and Battersea, but then went down the Stone 

 Street to join the rest of his forces near Dorking. The marches of the 

 two bodies had devastated most of east Surrey between them. From 

 Dorking westward the line of ravage is narrow and along the road 

 towards Winchester, sparing the lands of the only considerable English 

 Surrey tenant in Domesday, Oswold, who evidently at once made his 

 peace with the invader, 1 and the lands of Edith the widow of the Confessor. 

 Winchester anticipated a visit from the Normans by a surrender, and 

 London gave in when William had crossed the Thames and was coming 

 down upon it from the north-west. 



Two men stand out prominently among the tenentes in capite of 

 Domesday as great local lords in Surrey : Richard son of Earl Gilbert, 

 called Richard de Tonebrige, and Odo Bishop of Bayeux, the king's half- 

 brother, Earl of Kent. Kent was Odo's earldom, and he, an ecclesiastic, 

 would in no case have become the founder of a territorial power in 

 Surrey. 2 His quarrel with the Conqueror led to his arrest. Odo's release 

 under William Rufus was followed by his rebellion in favour of Robert, 

 which led to his final exile from England. His lands lapsed to the 

 Crown. 



Richard de Tonebrige founded one of the two houses which dis- 

 puted the pre-eminence among the baronage of Surrey. He held 38 

 manors in Surrey, forming a fairly compact territory towards the south- 

 east of the county, with outlying possessions reaching north-westward 

 by Cobham to the Thames at Walton and Moulsey, and westward to 



1 See 'The Conqueror's Footprints in Domesday,' Baring, EngKsb Historical Review, January, 1898 ; 

 History of Surrey, Maiden, p. 63, and the Introduction to Domesday in this History. 



1 The collateral heir of the younger half-brother of the king would, in practice, have been the king. 



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