ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



on Thames, the chapel at Tooting Bee, and the manor of Dedswell in 

 Sende had been appropriated to the support of chantries outside the 

 county. Edward's commissioners also found land set apart for obits, 

 tapers, etc., in Ashsted, Cranleigh, Effingham, Godalming, Letherhead, 

 East Horsley, Blechingley, Ewhurst, Southwark, Home and Shalford,' 



The detail of the history of chantries is better treated in another 

 part of this work, under the places to which they belonged. The obvi- 

 ous point, with regard to the general ecclesiastical history of the county, 

 is the comparative frequency in the returns of 1547 of foundations made 

 after the fifteenth century had begun, and down to the eve of the Refor- 

 mation. The record of Surrey chantries bears out what we find to be 

 the rule elsewhere, that the fifteenth century was the age of chantries. 



Yet it would be rash to associate this excessive care for the provision 

 of masses in perpetuity for certain people with the last hundred and fifty 

 years before the Reformation alone. Belief in Purgatory and in the 

 efficacy of masses for the dead was certainly not confined to that period. 

 The absence of any record of such foundations earlier may be susceptible 

 of a diffi£rent explanation. They may have been made and have been 

 forgotten or misappropriated or diverted, for there had certainly been 

 others not reported upon by Edward's commissioners. A priest was 

 ordained to a chantry in Ashsted in 1 346. There are what look like 

 chantry chapels in Wonersh and Compton churches for instance, the 

 latter with a room for the priest. There are similar remains elsewhere, 

 such as Weston's chapel in Ockham church ; the Loseley chapel in St. 

 Nicholas, Guildford, which is older than the time when the Mores of 

 Loseley began to use it as a mortuary chapel ; the north aisle of Cater- 

 ham old parish church ; and the side aisles of Coulsdon and Warling- 

 ham. The chapel or chantry of La Vacherie was in the north aisle 

 of Cranleigh church ; it existed in 1297,'' ^^^ there was another chan- 

 try in the south aisle. These seem to have been annexed to the rectory. 

 Manning and Bray^ say that there was another chantry at Lambeth 

 founded by Thomas Romayne before 1 326. The chapel on St. Catherine's 

 Hill near Guildford was in the hands of the rector of St. Nicholas, 

 Guildford. It had a room for the priest. It existed in the thirteenth 

 century, though the present building is later, and had it not been attached 

 to the rectory would probably have been considered in 1547 to be a 

 chantry chapel. There were at least six altars in St. Mary's Church, 

 Guildford ; and evidence that two of these were separately endowed. 

 John de Warenne founded a chantry in Reigate Church in 1315, which 

 does not appear in 1 547. Bishop William Edyngdon founded a chantry 

 in Farnham in 135 1.* A mere obit, or anniversary, with masses said by 

 the parish priest, would be in still greater danger of being forgotten, or 

 its emolument of being annexed without service rendered, in the course of 

 time. The pious care for the perpetuation of tapers and of lamps, for the 

 saying of a Placebo or a Dirige by a clerk in minor orders, was still more 



1 Chant. Cert., Surrey. 2 inq. p.m. 25 Edw. I. No. 50a. 



3 History of Surrey, iii. 496. * Pat. 25 Edw. III. pt. 3, m. 11. 



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