ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



bishop from 1734 to 1 761, is well known elsewhere. His name reminds 

 us at once of the decay of church hfe. It seems that nonconformity 

 was not very vigorous either. In 171 5 a list in a MS. book compiled 

 by a Surrey Independent minister' gives twenty-one congregations of 

 Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists. The numbers are put against 

 nine of them, ranging from 350 to 50 persons. In the only case where 

 the numbers given in 1669 and 171 5 can be compared, Dorking, they 

 have fallen off in the latter year. But there were 150 Independents in 

 Ockley, where in 1669 was 'no conventicle,' but where two were 

 licensed in 1672. Yet all the farmers" in Ockley had seats in church, 

 and in answer to the visitation questions of Bishop Richard Willis in 

 17^5, it appears that there was no meeting then in Ockley.' Elsewhere 

 too it appears from this visitation that nonconformist meetings had very 

 greatly diminished. Many parishes return ' no nonconformists,' others 

 two or three families. 



It so happens that there is a return of Roman Catholics having 

 estates in Surrey about the same time," under an Act of i George I., by 

 which all recusants had to register their estates and their values. There 

 were nineteen left in Surrey, but they were not by any means all resident. 

 Few of the old names are there. Weston of Sutton is one, Copley no 

 longer of Gatton and Leigh, Gage no longer of Haling, Henry Viscount 

 Montague, once a Jacobite minister at St, Germain, are others. Mon- 

 tague's estate in Surrey is only ^(^lo annual value. Weston's, upwards of 

 j^goo, is worth more than a fourth part of the whole nineteen. 



Quiet times ecclesiastically had come to Surrey as to other counties. 

 We may be allowed to suppose that Surrey was no worse off than the 

 rest of England in clerical neglect of duty, want of episcopal control, 

 nepotism and jobbery, and in the ruin of church fabrics by the neglect 

 and ignorance of rectors and churchwardens. These latter probably did 

 more mischief to the fabrics of parish churches than all the Reformers 

 and Parliamentary Commissioners and soldiers ever perpetrated. Well 

 into the nineteenth century it was possible to pull down a partly Norman, 

 partly fourteenth century church, as at Egham in 1 8 1 7, and to build a 

 Bath brick erection, with stone dressings, a pediment supported by pilas- 

 ters at the west end, and a tower surmounted by a dome — ' a neat and 

 commodious edifice,' in the language of the time. The original church 

 was partly ruinous, that is, had been neglected. Shalford, Albury, St. 

 Nicholas Guildford, Holy Trinity Guildford, Titsey, Merrow, St. Mary 

 Overie and many other churches had a similar history in the eighteenth 

 and nineteenth centuries. Yet at the beginning of the dark ages it was 

 possible for a local builder to rebuild the tower of Ockley Church in 

 1699 perfectly plainly, but in a style which is easily mistaken for that of 

 the thirteenth century. At Ockley there is also evidence of a fashion in 



* Add. MS. 32057, quoted by Mr. A. R. Bax in Surrey Arch. Colkct'ms, xiv. 2. There is no 

 return of Southwark, where surely there were congregations. 



* Vide infra. * 1725 returns at Farnham Castle. 



* Aubrey's Surrey, App. 



43 



