of Warren, by his attorney, to have the third part of all toll in the towns of Guildford and Southwark, howsoever arising; and the knights summoned thereupon say, upon their oaths, that the said Earl and his ancestors had from time immemorial all the aforesaid liberties. They also say that the King's bailiffs, and the bailiffs of the said Earl, have a certain common box (pixis) in the town of Guildford, and another box in the town of Southwark, in which they collect and were accustomed to collect the toll, from time immemorial; and that the boxes were always in the hands and custody of the King's bailiffs, and the keys in the custody of the bailiffs of the Earl; and they say that the same bailiffs, at the same time, and together, come and open the same boxes, and then two parts of the money collected remained to the King, and the third part to the said Earl.
A short account of the three manors in Southwark (now called the Guildable Manor, the King's Manor, and the Great Liberty Manor,) will be found in the Archæologia, Vol. XXV. p. 621. The Guildable Manor comprised the ancient town of Southwark, and extended from the dock near the west end of St. Saviour's Church, on the west, to Hay's Wharf on the east, and southward nearly to St. Margaret's Hill, including within its limits the site of the buildings described by Mr. Gage Rokewood and Mr. Gwilt. That the Earls of Warren and Surrey were lords of this manor we learn from the deed cited by Stow in his Survay of London (Ed. 1633, p. 458), whereby John Earl of Warren and Surrey, in A.D. 1281, released to Nicholas, Abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, and his convent, suit of court, which they owed to the Earl's Court in Southwark, for the house which the abbot and convent had of the Earl's fee in Southwark, situate upon the Thames, between the Bridge-house and the Church of St. Olave.[1]
The town of Southwark remained vested in the do Warrens, and was afterwards in William de Blois, and the Plantagenets, successively Earls of Warren and Surrey, until the death of John Plantagenet in 1347, notwithstanding the grant of a jurisdiction in that town to the citizens of London, for the purpose of pursuing felons and criminals escaping out of London into Southwark; which grant was made by King Edward III. with the assent of Parliament, in the first year of his reign; but we shall see that this grant did not supersede the right of Earl Warren to appoint a bailiff of his own liberty.
- ↑ This deed seems to have been taken by Stow from the Chronicle of Wm. Thorn, Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores, x. p. 1932. The Church of St. Olave, Southwark, was granted by William, second earl of Warren and Surrey, to the Priory of St. Pancras at Lewes, by a charter, to which Gundulph, Bishop of Rochester (who died in 1108), was one of the witnesses.
