CHAP. XXXI. the Sovereign. About 300 acres, including the Maison Dieu Estate at Dover, have been of late appropriated to building purposes. The manors in Kent still held by the Crown are now reduced to two!! both comparatively small -Eltham and East Farleigh.

Iron Trade.

The parks, warrens, and chases in the county must be left for the second volume.

We have seen that no reference is made in Domesday to the iron works in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, and we may imagine that in the disturbed times which followed, especially during the days of Stephen and of John, no extensive iron trade was carried on in the Weald; it was not until the next reign (Henry III.) that these works began to be fully developed.

I

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE CHURCH IN ANGLO-NORMAN TIMES.

PROPOSE now to refer to the state of the Church

in the Weald; following, however, the course pursued in Chapter XVIII., I will first briefly notice its general position at this period of our history.

The extension of the power of Rome, and the gradual increase of its wealth from the Norman conquest, can be contemplated only with wonder.* Innocent III. died shortly after publishing a sentence of excommunication against Prince Louis of France, for invading England, and while he was preparing a similar anathema against his father, King Philip. If it is conceded that the Church then consisted only of Pope and Clergy, these were its triumphant days; but if the term Church is to include the Laity, then the power gradually acquired by ecclesiastics was shamefully abused, and the great body of Christians was exposed to slavery and oppression. Spiritual power thus exercised, accompanied by a vast accumulation of worldly riches, produced strife, until "the offspring almost destroyed the parent." I would here observe, that we commit a grave error in this our day when we suppose

#

Macaulay says, "The spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope at this time, was productive of far more good than evil."-History of England, Vol. I., p. 9.

"The Abbey of St. Augustine, dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul, but generally called St. Augustine, was the primitive centre both of intellectual and religious illumination, for the Southern shores of England, and was endowed with 11,680 acres of land; while the original object of its founders was only to secure an appropriate burial place for themselves and their successors. The pilgrim who stopped to gaze on Fyndon's gateway might easily have mistaken the vast pile of buildings for some royal or imperial residence; it had a frontage of 250 feet."--Hardwick's Introduction to Thomas of Elmham's History of this Monastery.

CHAP. XXXII.

CHAP. XXXII. that the religious and doctrinal strife which now exists in England commenced at the Reformation. The contrary is the case; and so it has continued, even in the Romish Church with all its boasted unity. Human nature is the same in every age. Pride and the love of power are ever striving for the ascendancy, as well between ecclesiastics in the same church, as between Churchmen and Nonconformists; all alike forgetful of the declarations of our blessed Lord.

Ante, p. 348.

Lower's

Battel Abbey, p. 72.

We have recorded the jealousies which arose at Canterbury between the Abbot of St. Augustine's and the Prior of Christ Church; these jealousies were never entirely allayed, for the monks of St. Augustine were for centuries of superior reputation to those of Christ Church, much to the discontent of the latter.

We have also briefly noticed the long-pending struggle between the Archbishop and his monks of Christ Church, in the attempt to found a college of secular clergy at Hackington, near Canterbury, which extended over portions of the lives of two Sovereigns (Henry II. and Richard I.), and two primates (Baldwin and Hubert), and which Professor Stubbs says may be regarded as the last attempt to utilize the property of the monasteries, before the reformation.*

We must now add the Abbot and monks of Battel to the long list of ecclesiastical disputants in a matter again affecting the chief manor of Wye; for we find it recorded in the chronicles of the Abbey that during the reign of King Stephen a great storm happened on our coast, and a vessel belonging to the Port of Romney, within the jurisdiction of the Archbishop, was wrecked upon the land of the Abbey, in Dengemarsh, belonging to Wye, when the crew with difficulty saved their lives. This wreck led to a

* Readers interested in these controversies will be amply repaid by a perusal of Professor Stubbs' Introduction to the Epistole Cantuarienses, which records the seizing, by Archbishop Hubert, of "the Marsh of Appledore," and the oblations of the high altar, as two of the acts of aggression of this Primate.

conflict between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the CHAP. XXXII. Abbot of Battel. William de Ipres (then Earl of Kent) sided with the Archbishop; but after a long controversy it was decided that the Abbot had made good his cause, and in disposing of the salvage he pacified the Archbishop and his friends with a portion of it, and took the remainder.*

But we must do justice to the missionary spirit which prevailed, with all this strife, and extended even to the Weald, for its spiritual destitution during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was not lost sight of. Of the manors, &c., returned in Domesday as possessing churches, in the shires of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, one would have supposed that the greatest number, in proportion to the number of manors, would have been found in Kent; but it would appear that this was not so. Surrey has rather the advantage. Adopting Mr. Hussey's Lists, in his Notes on the Churches, we find :

Kent, with its 360 Manors, possessed 183 Churches.

Neither the owners nor the occupiers of the denes, alone, could secure the erection and endowment of a parochial church; but by the creation of new manors by the Sovereign and his subjects, to many of which churches were soon appendant, and the conversion of ancient denes into manors, with the aid derived from the lay-barons, the existing spiritual wants were supplied. Timber was most abundant, and often was used with no niggardly hand, while stone was supplied from the neighbouring quarries.

When a layman wished to found a church, he obtained. a licence from the Bishop, the site was then selected, and when approved of, a cross was erected by the Diocesan

"The pages in the histories of these and other similar foundations," says Mr. Hardwick, "are darkened by the narrative of feuds, broils, and jealousies, of furious charges, and as furious countercharges, of stubborn lawsuits and envenomed bickerings, which are sometimes thought to be the special characteristics of these later and less favoured ages."—Introduction to the Hist. of St. Augustine's Monastery, p. vi.

CHAP. XXXII.

or his Commissioners. The materials were next provided, the Bishop in his robes attended, and, having offered a prayer, perfumed the ground with incense, and the people sang a collect in praise of the saint to whom the church was dedicated. The corner stone was crossed, and the proceedings terminated with a feast.

Benenden, Hadlow, Palster, and Tudely (only an oratory it is supposed), we have seen, were the only four places in the Weald returned in the Survey as possessing churches; though it is probable from the great antiquity of Newenden that there was one there also, for, as has been before remarked, Domesday is not to be entirely relied on respecting its return of churches. Over the porch of Newenden church, says Hasted, there was formerly a room with iron grates to the windows, which constituted a gaol for the township (then exempt from the Hundred), and was taken down about two centuries ago. The ancient steeple and chancel of the church were also removed as ruinous about the beginning of the last century. The church of Tunbridge was erected by Richard de Tonbridge or his descendants, and one of them is said to have given it to the monks of Lewes. The possession of it was afterwards resumed by that family who continued to hold the Lowy, and in the reign of Henry II. the church was given, with the advowson, by Richard, Earl of Clare, to the Friars of the Holy Hospital of Jerusalem. King John, in the first year of his reign, confirmed this gift in frankalmoigne for ever "for the salvation of his own soul and the souls of Henry II. and his consort, and of all their ancestors and successors."

Tenterden, then part of the ancient possessions of the monastery of St. Augustine, like other churches in the Weald, was appendant to a newly-created manor, often formed out of denes. Cranbrook was held of the See of Canterbury. Hawkhurst of Battel Abbey. When the

*The patrons of Benenden, Hadlow, and Tudely, are now laymen, and Palster no longer exists as a parish; it is merged in Wittersham, which is in the gift of the Archbishop.