A HISTORY OF SURREY 



The Independent congregations of Surrey are hard to trace from the 

 beginning, except in one case in Southwark. There, close under the 

 shadow of Winchester House, a congregation of Brownists had met in 

 1592, and men from the same neighbourhood, who met in Deadman s 

 Place, Southwark, were cited before the House of Lords on 13 January, 

 1641/ The Long Parliament had just met, and the attack upon Laud 

 had begun, but in both Houses, and more especially in the Lords, there 

 was a great deal of anxiety not to let the party of what was considered 

 true Protestant reform be associated with licence in religion. These 

 people however were not to be suppressed, and an Independent con- 

 gregation in Winchester Yard, which received a licence under the Indul- 

 gence of 1672, may be considered the representative of this of 1641, 

 and possibly even of that of 1592. Otherwise it would be hazardous to 

 say that there is any trace of congregational organization existing at the 

 time of the Civil Wars and continued without interruption, till after 

 1688 and the Toleration Act allowed the sects to exist freely. It is 

 really quite impossible to specify the opinions of the men who were in 

 possession of the Surrey parishes during the Commonwealth and Pro- 

 tectorate. The parochial and congregational organizations were confused, 

 and what was in fact an Independent congregation, attracted by a special 

 minister, might be in possession of a parish church to which the minister 

 had been appointed by Cromwell's Commissioners for Approbation of 

 Public Preachers. The two members for the Barebones Parliament 

 nominated for Surrey by the congregations were Samuel Highland and 

 Lawrence Marsh, but the congregations which they represented are 

 unknown. Subsequent persecution and licensed toleration may reveal 

 some of them. 



With the Restoration came round the triumph of the party ejected in 

 1642-5. At Charlwood and at St. Mary's Newington the formerly de- 

 prived Royalist clergy claimed immediate reinstatement. But the wear 

 and tear of twenty years had naturally made many changes, and the 

 livings vacated by the 'Bartholomew confessors,' who resigned in 1662, 

 were by no means always those into which the Parliament or the Com- 

 mittee of Plundered Ministers had put new men at the beginning of the 

 Civil Wars. Some benefices were vacant, or had been consolidated with 

 others, but all over the county men were in possession who had either 

 been put in since the beginning of the Civil Wars or had conformed 

 to the changes required. It remained a question how many would con- 

 form once more. Calamy has probably preserved the names of all who 

 were conscientiously compelled to resign. They number twenty-seven, 

 omitting four whom Calamy believed to have come from Surrey but 

 whose livings he cannot name. Their names were Beaumont, Clyde, 

 Smith and Story. The benefices vacated were Ashsted, Bermondsey', 

 Byfleet, Clapham, Coulsdon, Long Ditton, Dorking, Egham, Ewell' 

 Farnham, Fetcham, St. Nicholas' Guildford, East Horsley, West Horsley' 



* Lerdi Journali, 13 Jan. 1 640-1. 

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