THE HUNDRED OF EFFINGHAM 



CONTAINING THE PARISHES OF 



EFFINGHAM 



GREAT BOOKHAM 



LITTLE BOOKHAM 



The Hundred of Effingham is usually classed with Copthorne and 

 described as a half-hundred : i.e. perhaps 50 hides, for in the time of Edward 

 the Confessor the total assessment worked out at 47 hides. In 1086, in 

 addition to the three parishes of Effingham, Great Bookham, and Little 

 Bookham, which compose it at the present day, it included the two unidenti- 

 fied places of ' Driteham ' and ' Pechingeorde.' l It was a royal hundred, and 

 in a document of the reign of Edward I is stated to have been farmed formerly 

 for half a mark per annum, but then for los. 

 per annum. 2 The same document states that 

 all the free tenants of the Abbot of Chertsey 

 used to come twice a year to the sheriffs 

 tourn at ' Lethe Croyce,' but had for five 

 years past withdrawn their suit, and that the 

 abbot had royal liberties in Great Bookham, 

 including gallows, assize of bread and ale, and 

 other things pertaining to the view of frank- 

 pledge. A Subsidy Roll dated 1428 includes 

 Fetcham in this hundred, probably by a 

 scribal error, as no other instance of it occurs. 8 

 In 1628 the borough of Kingston received 

 a grant of jurisdiction within the hundred of 

 Copthorne and Effingham in compensation for 

 their loss of the privilege of court leet in Richmond and Petersham, 4 and this 

 grant was confirmed by Charles I to Kingston in 1638, and held good until 

 within recent years. In a survey taken in 1651 Effingham Hundred is described 

 as late parcel of the possessions of Charles I, and was found to include Little 

 Bookham, Effingham, and ' the township or tithing of Churchlond,' the last 

 undoubtedly representing Great Bookham, which in the early Subsidy Rolls is 

 more usually entered as ' the vill of the Abbot of Chertsey.' The survey also 

 states that the court leet for the two hundreds of Effingham and Copthorne 

 was kept at Leithepitt at the usual times, ' and the lord thereof may call and 

 keep a court leet within any of ye towneshipps or tithings which payeth any 



1 V.C.H. Surr. i, 3090, 309^, 318^, jzoa, 32 la, 327^. The neighbourhood of the latter can be 

 surmised from Pickett's Hole, the hollow in the chalk in the place where the old road comes up from Wotton. 

 ' Assize R. 897. 

 1 Subsidy R. bdle. 1 84, no. 75. 

 1 Cal. S.P. Dom. 1628-9, p. 399. 



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