ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



ence and that of other religious corporations penetrated the whole, through 

 their possession of the rectories of so many parishes. There is nothing 

 in modern life analogous to the influence upon its own neighbourhood of 

 a great religious corporation in the middle ages, except perhaps the 

 influence of the old universities in the city and town which but for them 

 would be of very inferior importance. The great landowners, who con- 

 trolled so much of the social and industrial and educational life of those 

 about them, who lived however a separate life, under different laws and 

 in a different position with regard to the rest of Christendom from their 

 fellow countrymen, are only distantly approached by the masters and 

 fellows of the colleges, who are often married men, who are always 

 Englishmen, who are always amenable to the ordinary courts of the 

 country, and who can pass at will out of the academic into the general 

 life of their neighbours. The parishes were in any case served by men 

 who had much in common with the inmates of the monasteries ; but the 

 appropriation of so many livings made half the parochial clergy outposts 

 of the monastic body, and the ordinary life of the church was made to 

 depend upon the zeal and activity of monks and canons. That zeal and 

 activity decayed, and practical religion decayed with them. But as it 

 turned out it was a difficult matter to destroy such an organization, and 

 not to seriously impair the whole machinery of religion by so doing. It 

 had been a mistake to allow the wide prevalence of the monastic appro- 

 priation of livings ; it was a reckless outrage to set up lay appropriation 

 instead. A mere enumeration of the Surrey parishes, the rectories of 

 which were appropriated to monastic bodies, best illustrates the extent 

 of the evil and the danger of the cure. 



Forty-six parishes in Surrey, or more than a third of the old parishes, 

 were appropriated to religious houses.' At least twenty others, whose 

 advowsons belonged to religious houses, paid them some part of their 

 revenue. ^ About one half, that is, were in one way or the other controlled 

 by the monasteries, besides those appropriated or presented to by chap- 

 ters. Of houses outside the county, St. Pancras at Lewes, a foundation 

 of the first Earl of Surrey and de Warenne, held at one time many 

 churches. In the confirmation of their charters by Henry de Blois, 

 Bishop of Winchester, 1 129—71, they appear as holding the churches of 

 Blechingley,Gatton, Dorking cum Capella, Burstow, Stokey'axto Guildford, 

 and St. Olave's Southwark, besides tithes or a share of tithes elsewhere. 

 Of these Burstow was subsequently in the hands of Canterbury, Blech- 

 ingly of the De Clares Earls of Gloucester, Gatton was alienated by the 

 priory in the time of King John.^ Dorking cum Capella was alienated to 



• It is impossible to give an exact proportion, because the number of reputed parishes was increas- 

 ing. These appropriations are none of them later than the fourteenth century, except in the cases of 

 changed appropriations, as Lingfield. Weybridge and Windlesham, both appropriated to Newark, were 

 restored as rectories in the fifteenth century. 



^ In the Taxatio of 1291 there are twenty-seven pensions mentioned, and one appropriation, 

 Carshalton to Merton. Appropriations increased later, but others besides Carshalton were appropriated 

 before 1291. 



' Inq. p.m. 21 Edw. III. No. 60. 



II 



