A HISTORY OF SURREY 



liked. Mr. Cooper, the then owner of the tithes, was a Parliamentarian, 

 but he declined to pay Mr. Allen's successor ; perhaps he had been cured of 

 toothache by Mr. Allen, or perhaps he merely thought it a good oppor- 

 tunity to save money. At any rate he declined, and successfully upheld 

 his contention in a lawsuit that he was only obliged to pay whom he 

 liked, and that if he was not allowed to pay Mr. Allen he need pay no 

 one else. The successor had to be provided for out of the lands of the 

 chapter of Winchester.' It is interesting to see how even the dominant 

 party had to bow to the law. One point all the deprived clergy shared 

 in common — they had spoken disrespectfully of the Parliament,* of Puri- 

 tan practices, or of both ; and generally had obeyed the rubric by re- 

 fusing to administer the Communion except to kneeling communicants 

 and had withstood the removal of the altar and rails from the east end of 

 the church, and the taking down of ' superstitious pictures,' or in other 

 words the breaking of their church windows and the defacing of the 

 roof and walls. Unfortunately there was a strong feeling in many places 

 against the clergy, based, we may be sure, a good deal upon dislike of 

 the ecclesiastical courts and of clerical rule ; a feeling which afterwards 

 led to opposition to those who supplanted the • scandalous ministers.' 

 Theological opinion had more to do with English action in the seven- 

 teenth century than in any other before or since, but it was not all power- 

 ful even then. Its local extent and progress are as hard to define as they 

 usually are elsewhere, but there are indications of them. For the tracing 

 of the history of opinion in the county it is interesting to notice that 

 subsequently (see p. 35 below) there were two parts of Surrey in which 

 the Presbyterian organization was really established, without doubt. One 

 of these was south London, where nearly all the beneficed clergy of the 

 Laudian days were removed under the Long Parliament ; the other is 

 the south-east of the county, where there is a large block of parishes 

 whence the dominant Puritan party found it unnecessary to remove any. 

 Clearly Presbyterians were put into possession of the parishes of south 

 London, and for some reason or other the clergy of the south-east were 

 conformable to the Presbyterian organization. The attitude of the laity 

 had something also to do with the success or failure of the Presbyterian 

 experiment. London was notoriously favourable to it, and possessed the 

 numerous middle class necessary for working it successfully. Possibly 

 south-east Surrey, where the iron works flourished, and where fuller's 

 earth was dug, and where there were fewer very influential resident gen- 

 try than in the parts nearer London, was also a good middle class neigh- 

 bourhood. The north-west, the old bailiwick of the Forest of Windsor, 

 was too thinly inhabited, and with too disorderly a population, to have 

 any opmions except those of the gentry who had parks and houses there. 

 Guildford and Godalming were Puritan, but probably as much Sectarian 



perfoL!ritTe.?f^:'cTpd3e!°' ""' ^^^''^" ''"^ ^'"^ '''^'-'' •'"-^' "^ -""^S" ^^ 



' As the curate of St Thomas' Hospital, who said that aU who entered the service of the Parlia- 

 ment were rogues and rascals. 



34 



