A HISTORY OF SURREY 



likely to lapse by carelessness or dishonesty. We must allow therefore 

 that chantries as we know them from the returns of i 547 ^'^ characteristic 

 of the fifteenth century, with the years immediately before or after it ; but 

 we may be allowed also to suspect that not only was that age specially 

 careful of individual souls, but that it was recent enough for its care of 

 them not to have become obsolete before being forbidden altogether. 



Ecclesiastical dignitaries were commonly resident in Surrey, especi- 

 ally near London. The bishop of the diocese held Farnham Castle from 

 remote antiquity, and Esher from the days of Peter des Roches ; and 

 WilHam GifFord, Bishop of Winchester, acquired Winchester House, 

 close by the foot of London Bridge, from the newly constituted priory of 

 Bermondsey in 1107. It became the usual headquarters of the Bishops 

 of Winchester, who for so many generations almost ex officio royal 

 ministers found it necessary to live near Westminster, when the king's 

 court and the exchequer had finally removed thither from Winchester. 



Similar reasons made it incumbent upon the archbishop to find a 

 home near Westminster. A quarrel with the monks of Christchurch is 

 given as a cause why Archbishop Baldwin started the design of acquiring 

 Lambeth from the see of Rochester * ; but though this may have been 

 a concurrent cause, convenience of administration in both Church and 

 State was a more permanently working reason. Baldwin's design was 

 completed by Hubert Walter, who had no such quarrel. Innocent III. 

 tried to hinder the scheme, but Hubert had effected an exchange with 

 Rochester in 1 195,* and took up his abode where his successors have had 

 their principal seat ever since. Croydon had belonged to the archbishops 

 since the Conquest, if not. before, but they did not habitually reside there 

 till the fourteenth century. Addington was a mere modern exchange 

 for Croydon, acquired in 1780. 



The Archbishop of York had a house at Battersea. It was acquired 

 by Laurence Booth when Bishop of Durham in 1 46 1 ^ He was translated 

 to York 1477, and died 1480, and apparently by his gift or bequest the 

 house became the property of the see of York. It belonged to York in 

 Grindal's time.* 



The Bishops of Rochester acquired a house in Southwark from the 

 monks of Winchester, which they had obtained from the bishop, John 

 de Pontoise.^ The date of the acquisition by Rochester is unknown. 

 Besides the bishops, the abbots of Battle, Hyde, St. Augustine's and Beau- 

 lieu, and the prior of Lewes, had their suburban houses in Southwark. 

 Three of the abbots were Lords of Parliament, and had frequent occasion 

 to be within reach of Westminster. The abbot of Beaulieu was only 

 excused attendance in Parliament in 1341 and onwards. The heads of 

 the Surrey houses were not, as a rule. Lords of Parliament, and did not 

 need London houses. But the resident ecclesiastics in Surrey, of whom 

 we were speaking, were so numerous and so important in the southern 



1 Reg. Roffense, p. 434. ^ R/mer's F<rJera, k 89, 90. 



3 Close, 39 Hen. VI. 24 Nov. 1461, * Lansd. MSS. 29, 15. 



* Stow, Survey of London, p. 77i- 



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