1559. AN. REG.1, Watson did not put them to it; but such was either their fear or modesty, or a despair of doing any good to themselves and the cause, that there was nothing done by the Bishops at all, and not much more by the lower Clergy than a declaration of their judgment in some certain points which at that time were conceived fit to be commended to the sight of the Parliament: that is to say, "1. That in the sacrament of the altar, by virtue of Christ's assisting, after the word is duly pronounced by the Priest1, the natural body of Christ, conceived of the Virgin Mary, is really present under the species of bread and wine, as also his natural blood. 2. That after the consecration there remains not the substance of bread and wine, or any substance save the substance of God and man. 3. That the true body of Christ and his [true] blood is offered for a propitiatory sacrifice for the quick and the dead. 4. That the supreme power of feeding and governing the militant Church of Christ, and of confirming their brethren, is given to Peter the Apostle, and to his lawful successors in the see Apostolic, as unto the vicars of Christ. 5. That the authority to handle and define such things which belong to faith, the sacraments, and discipline ecclesiastical, hath hitherto ever belonged, and only ought to belong, unto the pastors of the Church whom the Holy Spirit hath placed in the Church2, and not unto lay-men." These Articles 1! they caused to be engrossed, and so commended them to the 28 care and consideration of the higher house. By Bonner afterwards, that is to say on the third of March, presented to the hands of the Lord Keeper Bacon, by whom they were candidly received3. But they prevailed no further with the Queen or the House of Peers when imparted to them, but that possibly The Bishops they might help forward the disputation which not long after oath of Su- was appointed to be held at Westminster, as before was said. 21. It was upon the eighth of May that the parliament ended, and on the 24th of June that the public Liturgy was to be officiated in all the Churches of the kingdom. In the This is Fuller's translation of the Latin which he gives,-" Virtute Christi, verbo et a sacerdote debite prolato, assistentis." The words in Wilkins are "virtute verbi Christi, a sacerdote debite prolati existentis." "Quos Spiritus Sanctus in hoc in ecclesia Dei posuit." all but one refuse the premacy, "Qui articulos prædictos, ut apparebat, gratanter accepit, sed nullum omnino responsum dedit." Mr Brewer erroneously substitutes the name of Archbishop Heath, the Chancellor, for that of Bacon, the Keeper. See above, p. 269. 2 1559. performance of which service the Bishops giving no encourage- AN.REG.1, ment, and many of the Clergy being backward in it, it was thought fit to put them to the final test, and either to bring them to conformity, or to bestow their places and preferments on more tractable persons. The Bishops at that time had been reduced into a narrower number than at any other time before. The sees of Salisbury and Oxon had been made vacant in the year 1557, by the death of Capon in the one, and of King in the other; neither of which Churches had since been filled, and that of Oxon not in ten years after1. Purefew of Hereford, Holyman of Bristow, and Glyn of Bangor, died some few weeks before the Queen; Cardinal Pole of Canterbury on the same day with her; Hopton of Norwich, and Brooks of Glocester, within few weeks afters. Griffin of Rochester departed this life about the beginning of the parliament'; about which time also Pates of Worcester forsook the kingdom, and was followed by Goldwel of St Asaph in the end of May; so that there were no more than fifteen5 living of that sacred order. And they, being called in the beginning of July by certain of the Lords of the Council, commissionated thereunto in due form of law, were then and there required to take the oath of Supremacy, according to the law made in that behalf. Kitchin of Landaff only takes it, who, having formerly submitted unto every change, resolved to shew himself no changeling in not conforming to the pleasure of the higher powers. By all the rest it was refused; that is to say by Dr Heath, Archbishop of York, Bonner of London, Tonstall of Durham, White of Winchester, Thirlby of Ely, Watson of Lincoln, Pool of Peterborough, Christopherson of Chichester, Bourn of Wells, Turbervile of Exeter, Morgan of St David's, Bayne of Lichfield, Scot of Chester, and Oglethorp Bishop of Carlisle. And yet these men (which makes it seem the greater wonder) had either taken the like oath as Priests or Bishops in some part or other of the reign of the two last Kings. The delay as to Salisbury has been explained, p. 215. King having died Dec. 4, 1557, Bishop Goldwell, of St Asaph, was nominated to Oxford in the reign of Mary, and received the temporalities, Oct. 25, 1558. Thomas Wood was nominated as his successor in St Asaph, Nov. 5, 1558. Richardson, Notes on Godwin, 545, 642. The death of the Queen interfered with the execution of these arrangements. Edd. 1, 2. "Pacefew." 3 Sup. p. 227 5 Fourteen. See p. 295, n. 1. AN.REG.1, 1559. and are de prived. 22. But now they had hardened one another to a resolution of standing out unto the last, and were thereupon deprived of their several Bishopricks, as the law required-a punishment which came not on them all at once, some of them being borne withal (in hope of their conformity and submission) till the end of September. And when it came, it came accompanied with so much mercy that they had no reason to complain of the like extremity as they had put upon their brethren in the late Queen's time. So well were they disposed of and accommodated with all things necessary, that they lived more at ease, and in as prosperous a condition, as when they were possessed of their former dignities. Archbishop Heath was suffered to abide in one of his own purchased houses', never restrained to any place, and died in great favour with the Queen, who bestowed many gracious visits on him during this retirement. Tonstall of Durham spent the remainder of his time with Archbishop Parker, by whom he was kindly entertained, and honourably buried. The like civility afforded also in the same house to Thirlby of Ely3, and unto Bourn of Wells by the Dean of Exon, in which two houses they both died about ten years after. White, though at first imprisoned for his hauts and insolencies, after some cooling of himself in the Tower of London, was suffered to enjoy his liberty, and to retire himself to what friend he pleased. Which favour was vouchsafed unto Turberviles also, who, being by birth a gentleman of an ancient family, could not want friends to give him honest entertainment. Watson, of Lincoln, having endured a short restraint, spent the remainder of his time with the Bishops of Rochester and Ely, till, being found practising against the state, he was finally shut up in Wisbich castle, where at last 21 he died. OglethorpR died soon after his deprivation, of an apoplexy, Bayne of the stone, and Morgan1o of some other disease in December following; but all of them in their beds, and in perfect liberty. Pool, by the clemency of the Queen, enjoyed the like freedom, courteously treated by all persons At Cobham in Surrey. Camden in Kennett, ii. 376; who, with Fuller, iv. 280-1, is generally followed in this paragraph. Comp. Strype Parker, b. ii. c. 16; Andrews, Tort. Torti, 145-7. 11 1559. amongst whom he lived, and at last died upon one of his own As.Reg.1, farms in a good old age. And as for Christopherson1, he had been in his time so good a benefactor to Trinity College in Cambridge, whereof he had been sometimes Master, that he could not want some honest and ingenious retribution, if the necessity of his estate had required the same. Bonner alone was doomed to a constant imprisonment, which was done rather out of care for his preservation than as a punishment of his crimes; the prison proving to that wretch his safest sanctuary, whose horrid tyrannies had otherwise exposed him to the popular fury. So loud a lie is that of Genebrard, (though a good chronologer) that the Bishops were not only punished with imprisonment and the loss of their livelihoods, but that many of them were destroyed by poison, famine, and many other kinds of death2. vations. 23. The Bishops being thus put to it, the oath is ten- Other depridered next to the Deans and Dignitaries, and by degrees also to the rural Clergy; refused by some, and took by others, as it seemed most agreeable to their consciences or particular ends. For the refusal whereof, or otherwise not conforming to the public Liturgy, I find no more to have been deprived of their preferments, than fourteen Bishops, six Abbots, Priors, and Governors of religious Orders, twelve Deans, and as many Archdeacons, fifteen Presidents or Masters of Colleges, fifty Prebendaries of Cathedral Churches, and about eighty Parsons or Vicars3;-the whole number not amounting to 200 men, which, in a realm consisting of nine thousand parishes, and twenty-six Cathedral Churches, could be no great matter. But then we are to know withal that many who were cordially affected to the interess of the Church of Rome dispensed with themselves in these outward conformities, which some of them 1 Fuller, in his History of Cambridge, mentions him as ejected, and Burnet supposed him to have survived the change of religion. But Strype, in Burnet III. ii. 548, and Harmer (Wharton) 153, shew that such was not the case. Machyn (184) records his burial on Dec. 28, 1558. Comp. Richardson, in Godwin, 513. 2 "Clero et episcopis carcere et rerum suarum amissione mulctatis, nonnullis etiam veneno, nece, &c. absumptis." Genebr. Chronographia, 737. ed. Lugd. 1609. 3 Camden in Kennett, ii. 376. Strype quotes a Cottonian MS., which makes the whole number 192, including abbesses. Ann. i. 72. As Christopherson was dead, the number of Bishops deprived was 13. 1559. AN.REG. 1, are said to do upon a hope of seeing the like revolution by the death of the Queen as had before happened by the death of King Edward; and otherwise that they might be able to relieve their brethren, who could not so readily frame themselves to present compliance. Which notwithstanding, so it was, that, partly by the deprivation of these few persons, but principally by the death of so many in the last year's sickness, there was not a sufficient number of learned men to supply the cures; which filled the Church with an ignorant and illiterate Clergy1, whose learning went no further than the Liturgy or the Book of Homilies, but otherwise conformable (which Puritans pre- was no small felicity) to the rules of the Church. And on the other side, many were raised to great preferments, who, having spent their time of exile in such foreign Churches as followed the platform of Geneva, returned so disaffected to Episcopal Government, unto the rites and ceremonies here by law established, as not long after filled the Church with most sad disorders; not only to the breaking of the bond of peace, but to the grieving and extinguishing of the spirit of unity. Private opinions not regarded, nothing was more considered in them, than their zeal against Popery and their abilities in ferred. 1 "Cum autem viri docti rarius invenirentur, multi ex officina mechanici, et non minus illiterati quam ipsi pontificii sacerdotes, dignitates ecclesiasticas, præbendas, et opima sacerdotia consecuti sunt." Camd. p. 39. ed. 1615. The evil consequences of admitting such persons to holy orders were very soon felt. Strype gives a letter of Archbishop Parker to Grindal, then Bishop of London, dated Aug. 15, 1560, in which it is stated, that "now by experience it was seen that such manner of men, partly by reason of their former profane arts, partly by their light behaviour otherwise, and trade of life, were very offensive unto the people; and unto the wise of this realm they were thought to do a great deal more hurt than good, the Gospel thereby sustaining slander." The Bishops are, therefore, charged "to be more circumspect in admitting any to the ministry; and only to allow such as, having good testimony of their honest conversation, had been traded and exercised in learning, or, at the least, had spent their time in teaching of children; excluding all others which had been brought up and sustained themselves either by occupations or other kinds of life alienated from learning." Life of Parker, 91. (Traded is not, as we might suppose, put by mistake for trained; in Stapleton's "Fortress of Faith," as quoted by Fulke in his Answer, reprinted by the Parker Society, 1848, the word is used in the same sense as here,-"The preachers which were traded up by them were of a virtuous conversation," p. 121.) Qu." and to?" |