A HISTORY OF SURREY 



in some other counties. From the date of the great pestijence the 

 nurXr of the clergy ordained in the diocese falls off, and the rule of 

 Ird^bTshop Langton, that there should be two or three clergy attendant 

 on each church, must of perforce have ceased to have been earned out 

 The Lollards were not speciaUy troublesome m Surrey ; certain of 

 WiclifF's friends were inhibited from preaching there with the rest 

 of the diocese. Sir John Oldcastle (Lord Cobham iure uxoris) the 

 Lollard martyr, had the advowson of Worplesdon in 1408.' The rector 

 at the time was John Everdon, who had licence to celebrate mass in 

 his rectory 26 May, 1408.* He was not probably of Oldcastle's appoint- 

 ing. If the latter put in a Lollard no trace of it remains. What heresy 

 there was in the county made little show before the sixteenth century. 



The occasional residence of the bishop at Farnham, and the care 

 of his park there, give occasion for entries in the registers concerning 

 what we should consider secular matters. Ecclesiastical history is elu- 

 cidated however by the light thrown on some uses of ecclesiastical 

 censures. William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester from 1367 to 

 1 404, was a good, learned and active prelate. But one of the longest 

 entries concerning Surrey in his register concerns the launching of 

 the Greater Excommunication against 'certain sons of perdition who, by 

 night as well as by day, with their machines, nets, snares, dogs, bows, 

 arrows and other mysteries {misteriis) framed for the catching of rabbits, 

 have taken, abstracted, caught, carried off and consumed, to the great 

 peril of their souls, rabbits and other wild beasts out of the bishop's 

 parks, chases, warrens, and woods at Crondall and Farnham.' The ex- 

 communication was to be published in the parish churches ofGodalming, 

 Compton, Puttenham, Peperharow and Witley, and in the chapels con- 

 nected with them.' It is to be observed that the bishop is confident 

 that ' the sons of perdition ' lived in Surrey, not upon the equally close 

 Hampshire side of Farnham. Also they lived south of the Hog's Back, 

 on the sand. They were ' heathers,' the disorderly men of whom we hear 

 so much in secular history. 



The actual presence of the mediasval bishops was apparently con- 

 fined to west Surrey and Southwark. By the places whence their 

 instruments are dated they were often at Farnham and Esher on their 

 way to and from Winchester House, at that place itself, but seldom else- 

 where in the county. Wykeham seems by this evidence to have been 

 once in Guildford,* once at Stoke and once sojourning at Merton Priory. 

 Visitations were usually carried out vicariously. The Bishops of Win- 

 chester were too great men to be able to have much to do with an 

 outlying part of their diocese. Besides the great men of an earlier period, 

 such as Henry de Blois and Peter des Roches, every bishop who succeeded 



1 Feet of F. Div. Co. Trin. 9 Hen. IV. No. 36. * Winton. Epis. Reg., Beaufort, i. pt. 3, 3S»- 

 3 Ibid. Wykeham, 2, 1 1 la, dated 10 Aprrl im- ^j^ ^^^^ ^ ^ 



* A ^tnall mrcel of land on the end of the Hog s BacK, ay uic »■" r ■ • • . , * j 



into Gutldford w^aid is, in Farnham manor. It was no doubt a lodg.ng of the b.shop s on one road 



from Farnham to Southwark. 



