A HISTORY OF SURREY 



local priests with local offerings, and towards the practical allocation of 

 duties within their respective boundaries to the priests who served in 

 each settlement, or on each estate of a great man. But before the 

 country was furnished with churches for every group of the population, 

 the matrices or baptismales ecclesia, commonly called monasterta, or m 

 English minsters, were the centres for the administration of the sacra- 

 ments in districts larger than parishes. Even when village or manorial 

 churches, capellce, were existing, men were supposed to resort to the 

 mother church three times a year, and to make offerings to it. The 

 dignity of these greater than parish churches continued down to the 

 eleventh century, perhaps later.^ That there were such churches in 

 Surrey is certain ; where they were is a matter of conjecture. Alfred 

 the ealdorman in the year 889 left by will specific gifts to the abbey of 

 Chertsey, and then to all the minsters (mynsterhamas) of Kent and 

 Surrey.* This does not mean monasteries in the later restricted sense, 

 for there is no reason to suppose that there were any monasteries in 

 Surrey in 889 except Chertsey, which was probably in ruins at the 

 time, and it certainly does not mean merely parish churches. The 

 minster in Southwark, named in Domesday, St. Mary Overie of later 

 days, was probably one of them. There was perhaps another in Woking 

 Hundred, Brordar an ealdorman in jjj desired to give a minster of 

 his called Wocingas to the abbey of Peterborough. The grant was 

 allowed by Offa in a charter given at Feoricburn in regione Suthregeona* 

 Though Peterborough in later days held neither Woking Church nor 

 Guildford in Woking Hundred, nor anything in Surrey, there are both 

 time and occasions for the loss or transference of property since jjy, 

 and no other Woking is known to exist in England besides that in 

 Surrey, and that this is meant is borne out by the place where Offa's 

 charter was given. The four ancient deaneries of Surrey were Croydon, 

 Southwark, Guildford and Ewell.* The advowson of Ewell belonged 

 to Chertsey Abbey under Richard I, and for an unknown time before." 

 It is supposition only but not impossible that the ' mynsterhamas * of 

 Surrey were Croydon, St. Mary Overie, a church in Woking Hundred 

 perhaps St. Mary's Guildford, and Ewell, or Letherhead Church which 

 was in the manor of Ewell in 1086. If so, they might be in fact 

 the central churches of the ancient deaneries. Perhaps Farnham was 

 another. The old parish of Farnham was co-extensive with the Hun- 

 dred. These churches would form centres for the different inhabited 

 districts of the county, as revealed to us by the Domesday Survey and by 

 ancient names. When Christianity was recent in Surrey most of the 



1 See the summing up of many passages by Lord Selborne, Ancient Facts and Fictions about Churches 

 and Tithes, pp. 56, 57, 303. 



« Kemble, Codex Diflomaticus, ii. 3 1 7. 



3 Ang'.o-Saxon Chron. (Roll Series), i. 92 ; Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus, No. 168. 



* If deaneries were ever collections of ten churches, as has been suggested, there is no trace of 

 it in Surrey. There were four deaneries, and in Domesday there are churches named at fifty-eight 

 places, excluding monasteiia, and counting three on Bramley Manor as at one place. 



* The church of Ewell is not mentioned in Domesday. 



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