ECCLESIASTICAL 

 HISTORY 



BEFORE the primacy of Theodore of Tarsus we cannot speak 

 with certainty of any ecclesiastical organization in Surrey. 

 During the last century of the Roman occupation of Britain 

 the nominal religion of the empire was indeed Christianity, 

 but whether the inhabitants of the then undefined portion of Roman 

 Britain which became Surrey, were in any sense Christian, or had any 

 ecclesiastical organization, there is no evidence to show. Among the 

 Roman coins found at Farley Heath by Mr. Tupper * there was one or 

 that singularly un-Christian emperor, Magnentius, bearing the XP mono- 

 gram between A and Q, and this is the sole monument probably of 

 Romano-British Christianity in the county. There seem to be no ancient 

 dedications of parish churches to British saints, nor any material remains 

 in church buildings belonging to that epoch. There was a bishop in 

 London, and as there was no Roman town in Surrey of a size to be 

 worthy of a bishop's seat, the district may have been ecclesiastically 

 dependent upon London. West Saxons, East Saxons and Kentishmen 

 were equally heathen when they settled or conquered in Surrey. The 

 probabilities of the source whence came the first conversion of the in- 

 habitants to Christianity are involved in the questions of the extent and 

 order of the political supremacies of Wessex, Mercia and Kent over 

 Surrey. But the subsequent inclusion of Surrey in the West Saxon dio- 

 cese of Winchester points to the nominal conversion having taken place 

 under West Saxon rule. It was in 635 that Birinus baptized Cynegils '' 

 of Wessex, and was installed as West Saxon bishop at Dorchester on the 

 Thames. As Mercian conquest southwards had not then begun Surrey 

 was probably nominally in his diocese. According to Bede, Earconbert 

 of Kent, who died in 664, ' overthrew all idolatry ' in his dominions.^ 

 It may be that his proselytizing zeal had already affected east Surrey 

 and the Thames valley, for the connexion of the see of Canterbury with 

 places in north-east Surrey is older than records go in some cases, and the 

 alleged charter of Chertsey of 666 seems perhaps to refer to Earcon- 

 bert's son Egbert as interested in Surrey. Subsequent arrangements and 

 events however confirm the idea that the county as a whole was politi- 



* Mr. Tupper's pamphlet, Farley Heath. The coins were given to the British Museum. 

 2 Anglo-Saxon Chron. (Rolls Series), i. 46. 

 ^ Bede, Eccl. Hist. bk. iii. ch. viii. 



