POLITICAL HISTORY 



In 1381, according to the poll tax returns, there were 11,778 persons 

 in rural Surrey above fifteen years old, and 844 lay persons above that 

 age in Southwark. 1 These may be at least doubled for the whole 

 population. The Black Death had come three times since 1339, and 

 though there was time for some recovery since the last visitation in 

 1369, there was not a chance of much increase since the earlier date. 

 The pestilence had no doubt raged in Surrey as elsewhere. In 1349, 

 during the first visitation, the Prior of Reigate died, and it is said the 

 prior and all the brethren of the hospital at Sandon. In the second, 

 in 1361-2, a baron, the Abbot of Chertsey and the Prior of Merton 

 died. In the third, 1369, the Prior of Merton. Only one of these 

 deaths, apart from the great mortality at Sandon, is recorded as owing 

 to the pestilence, but the coincidences of date suggest other deaths from 

 this cause. In the year of the first visitation the benefices in Surrey 

 changed occupants about twice as often as usual. At all times changes 

 were frequent, and every change did not mean a death by any means. 

 The mediaeval chronicler habitually exaggerates numbers, whether of 

 soldiers, population, victims of a plague or sums of money. The certain 

 exaggeration of the number of knights' fees in England may perhaps 

 be distantly imitated by the statement that half of the population died 

 of the Black Death. We can correct one statement more easily than we 

 can check the other. But the phenomena of mediaeval social life and 

 the accidents of the time, the military system, the dominance of great 

 landowners, the splendour of ecclesiastical establishments, the busy life 

 of petty trading towns, under the protection of king, lord or abbot, the 

 absolute insignificance of the mass of the suffering population, the diffi- 

 culties of travel, the miseries of civil war and the ravages of disease 

 all find their expression in the records of mediaeval Surrey. 



In 1381, when social discontent, commercial depression, unsuccess- 

 ful war, bad government and religious agitation all combined to produce 

 insurrection, Surrey, being close to Kent, one of the foci of the rebellion, 

 and lying between Kent and London, was sure to be involved. 



Early in June Essex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex were up in arms, the 

 labourers compelling, we are told, others to join with them, slaying 

 men and burning houses. The country parts of Surrey were as back- 

 ward as any part of England. Though we need not believe Aubrey 

 when he says that the very worst outrage of feudal oppression existed 

 in the customs of the manor of Dorking, 3 yet villenage was not extinct 

 in Surrey in the middle of the sixteenth century. In Kent it was 

 practically extinct before 1381, and it is in accord with analogy to 

 find most violent social uprisings in countries near a better state of 

 things. 



At Chertsey there was a riot among the tenants of the abbey, who 



Q. R. Lay Subsidies, -^ and ^. 



* See on Dorking Aubrey's Perambulations. The alleged right is probably mythical in 

 England. 



3 6l 



