A HISTORY OF SURREY 



1239/ so was presumably built, as well as then rebuilt, by the abbey. 

 The advowson of existing churches at Leigh and Newdigate was granted 

 by will to St. Mary Overie by Hamelin de Warenne in 1202. But 

 Frensham, Horley, Ewhurst, Charlwood, Burstow ' and Capel churches 

 were probably founded by ecclesiastical corporations after the Conquest. 

 Many earlier churches were probably founded by Chertsey. The church 

 at Cheam, on an archiepiscopal manor, dedicated to St. Dunstan, was 

 almost certainly the foundation of one of Dunstan's successors. 



In Pope Nicholas' taxation there appear fifteen vicarages in Surrey, in 

 churches belonging to religious houses, or in the case of Frensham to the 

 archdeacon, and in the case of Godalming to the church of Salisbury. These 

 had increased to thirty-eight in the Va/or of 26 Henry VIII. The vicar- 

 ages seem to date from the time of John de Pontoise, immediately after 

 1 29 1, down to the end of the next century, and do not belong to the 

 episcopate of any single reforming bishop. There were also seventeen 

 chapels in the hands of religious houses, and three in the hands of the 

 archdeacon, seventeen of which were to become parish churches in time. 



The monastic and collegiate organizations of the county, probably 

 influenced the formation of many of the Surrey parishes. Ultimately 

 their absorption of parochial revenues, and the loss of these at the dis- 

 solution, dealt the heaviest blow at the efficiency of the parochial system 

 which it has ever suffered. 



Benedictines, Cluniacs, Cistercians, Carthusians, and Augustinian 

 canons existed in several places ; all the orders common in England were 

 represented in Surrey, except friars, who were found in only two small 

 houses, one at Guildford and one at Sheen, a late erection. The Hospital- 

 lers too were absent, though they possessed some lands. But if a line be 

 drawn diagonally across the county, from the south-west to the north-east 

 corner, sixteen out of the nineteen houses, great and small, which have 

 been enumerated in the Religious Houses section, will be found north- 

 west of it, and three only south-east. Lingfield College was the only 

 religious community in the Surrey Weald. The Chalk country, east of 

 the Wey, north of the downs, and south of the Thames valley, which 

 there is reason to believe was the earliest inhabited part of Surrey,^ has 

 no religious house on it. A possible explanation is the complete want 

 of water carriage there. The larger houses, which had considerable 

 buildings, Waverley, Newark, Chertsey, Sheen, Merton, St. Mary Overie 

 and Bermondsey, were all on the banks of rivers, up or down which 

 stone and timber could be conveniently towed or floated. Even 

 Lingfield might have had water carriage on the upper streams of the 

 Medway ; and Tandridge and Reigate had building stone on the spot. 



But though the religious houses were somewhat unevenly distributed 

 about the county, their lands were scattered all about it, and their influ- 



' ^riti. Mm. (Rolls Series), ii. 323. 



» Burstow afterwards was in the gift of the archbishop (see inter aSa Pat. 2 1 Edw. I. m. 1 2), and 

 had been perhaps at an earlier date, for it was in Croydon deanery. 

 » r.CH. Surrey, i. 330. 



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