1560-1. which was Robert Horn, Doctor in Divinity, once Dean of AN. REG. 3, Durham, but better known by holding up the English Liturgy, and such a form of discipline as the times would bear, against the schismatics of Franckfort1; preferred unto the See of Winchester, and consecrated Bishop in due form of law, on the 16th of February2-of which we shall speak more hereafter on another occasion. On which day also Mr Edmond Scambler, Bachelor of Divinity, and one of the Prebendaries of the new Collegiate Church of St Peter in Westminster, was consecrated Bishop of the Church of Peterborough. During the vacancy whereof, and in the time of his incumbency, Sir William Cecil, principal Secretary of Estate, possessed himself of the best manors in the Soake which belonged unto it; and for his readiness to confirm the said manors to him, preferred him to the See of Norwich, anno 1584. Next follows the translation of Dr Thomas Young, Bishop of Saint David's, to the See of York", which was done upon the 25th of Februaryin an unlucky hour to that city, as it also proved; for scarce was he settled in that See, when he pulled down the goodly hall, and the greatest part of the episcopal palace in the city of York, which had been built with so much care and cost by Thomas the elder, one of his predecessors there, in the year of our Lord 10907. Whether it were for covetousness to make money of the materials of it, or out of sordidness to avoid the charge of hospitality in that populous city, let them guess that will. Succeeded in the See of St David's by Davis, Bishop of St Asaph, translated thither the 21st of May, 15618; as he was by another of the same name, Dr Thomas Davis, within few months after". 5. The province of York being thus fitted with a new 1 Sup. p. 181. 2 Godwin, 238. Bramhall, iii. 224. 3 Eliz. viii. 1-3. Godw. 559. Bramh. iii. 225. Scambler was also chaplain to Archbishop Parker. 5 See Browne Willis, Survey of Cathedrals, iii. 496. • He had refused the archbishoprick, which was then offered to May, dean of St. Paul's; but, on May's dying before consecration, Young accepted it. Bramh. iii. 228. 7 Stow, 602. Godw. 710. Fuller, iv. 344. 8 Godw. 586. 9 Consecrated May 26, 1561. Godw. 643. It was in the see of St Asaph that Richard Davis (who held St David's till 1581) was succeeded by Thomas. 1560-1. AN. REG.3, Archbishop, it was not long before the consecration of Dr 13 James Pilkington to the See of Durham, which was performed 311 by the hands of his own Metropolitan on the second of March1. At whose first coming to that See, he found it clogged with an annual pension of an hundred pound, to be paid into her Majesty's Exchequer yearly, toward the maintenance of the garrison in the town of Barwick,-first laid upon this Bishoprick when that town seemed to be in danger of such French forces as had been brought into that kingdom, or otherwise might fear some practice of the Popish party, for the advancing of the interess of the Queen of Scots. The Bishop's tenants were protected in their corn and cattle by the power of this garrison, and consequently the more enabled to make just payment of their rents; and it was thought to be no reason that the Queen should be at the sole charge of protecting his tenants, and he enjoy the whole benefit of it without any disbursement. But this was only a pretence for raising some revenue to the Crown out of that rich patrimony; the pension being still charged upon it, though the garrison was removed in the first of King James2. On the same day, that is to say the second of March, Dr John Best was consecrated Bishop of Carlisle3, after the See had been refused by Bernard Gilphin, Parson of Houghton in the Spring, betwixt Durham and Newcastle. The offer made him with relation to his brother George1, a man much used in many employments for the State; but on what ground declined by him, is not well assured. Whether it were that he was more in love with the retirements of a private life, or that he could not have the bird without he yielded to the stripping of it of the most part of its feathers (as it came to Best)-may be sooner questioned than resolved3. 1 1560-1. Godw. 756. Pilkington had been nominated and elected to Winchester, but made way for Horn in that see. Bramh. iii. 224—6. * See Heylyn's Examen Historicum, 103-4; Browne Willis, i. 228. 3 Godw. 771. Bramh. iii. 226. 5 See Wordsw. Eccl. Biog. iii. 404. Bp Carleton, in his Life of Gilpin, states that he was recommended for the bishoprick by the Earl of Bedford, and by Sandys, then Bishop of Worcester. The latter, in a letter urging him to accept it, writes, "I give you to understand that the said bishoprick is left unto you untouched, neither shall anything of it be diminished (as in some others it is a custom); but you shall receive the bishoprick entire as Dr Ogle 1561. And finally, on the fourth of May comes in the consecration AN. REG.3, of Mr William Downham (the Queen's Chaplain, when she was but Princess, and afterwards made one of the Prebendaries of St Peter's in Westminster,) to the See of Chester,-by this preferment recompensed for his former services1. By which last care the vacant Sees were all supplied with learned pastors, except Oxon, Glocester, and Bristol; of which we shall speak more in the following year. tics. 6. But neither this diligence and care in filling all the More, fanavacant Sees with learned pastors, nor the Queen's proclamation for banishing all Anabaptists and other sectaries which had resorted hither out of other countries, could either free the land from those dangerous inmates, or preserve the Church from the contagion of their poisonous doctrines. Too many of those fanatical spirits still remained behind, scattering their tares, and dispersing their blasphemous follies amongst simple people. In which number they prevailed so far upon More and Geofrys, that the first professed himself to be Christ, the last believed him to be such, and did so report him. Continuing obstinate in this frenzy, Geofrys was committed prisoner to the Marshalsea in the Borough of Southwark, and More to the house of mad men, (commonly called Bethlem), without Bishop's Gate, in the City of London. Where having remained above a year, without shewing any sign of their repentance, Geofrys was whipped on the 10th of April from the said Marshalsea to Bethlem, with a paper bound about his head, which signified that this was William Geofrys, a most blasphemous heretic, who denied Christ to be in heaven. At Bethlem he was whipped again in the presence of More, till the lash had extorted a confession of his damnable error. After which More was stripped and whipped in the open streets till he had made the like acknowledgement, confessing Christ to be in thorpe left it." The reason of Gilpin's refusal is thus given by the biographer, from the remembrance of his conversation,-" If I had been chosen in this kind to any bishoprick elsewhere, I would not have refused it; but in that place I have been willing to avoid the trouble of it, seeing I had there many of my friends and kindred, at whom I must connive in many things, not without hurt to myself, or else deny them many things, not without offence to them: which difficulties I have easily avoided by refusal of that bishoprick." Wordsw. Eccl. Biog. iii. 396. 1 Godw. 770. Bramh. iii. 226. AN. REG. 8, heaven, and himself to be a vile, miserable, and sinful man. 1561. Which being done, they were again remitted to their several 1 Stow, 647. 2 Matth. xxiv. 23. 3 Acts viii. 10. Bingham, xi. 3. 5. Menander seems really to have asserted, not that he was identical with our Lord, but that he was a being of the same class with Him, as represented by the heretic's system. "It appears from the testimony of Irenæus, Justin Martyr, and Tertullian, that he wished to be thought one of the ons, sent from the upper world or the Pleroma, to succour the souls that were suffering miserably in material bodies, and to afford them aid against the machinations and the violence of the demons who governed our world." Mosheim, by Murdock and Soames, Lond. 1841, i. 115. Comp. Fleury, l. ii. c. 42. 5 "Though Montanus has been charged with the blasphemy of calling himself the Paraclete, it seems certain that he only meant to say that the Holy Ghost, or Paraclete, had given to himself and his followers an extraordinary measure of spiritual illumination." Burton, Hist. of the Christian Church, 141. Comp. Newman on Arianism, p. 131. 6 Sce Stow, 178; Baker, ed. 1674. p. 89. 1561. the other that she was the Virgin Mary. So that the Refor- AN. REG.3, mation is to be excused from being accessory in the least degree to these men's heresies; or else the apostolical age, and the primitive times, yea, and the Church of Rome itself, (which they prize much more,) must needs come under the necessity of the like condemnation. St Paul's. 7. Nor did the Zuinglian Gospellers, or those of the Gene- Fire of vian party, rejoice much less at a most lamentable accident which happened to the cathedral church of St Paul, on the 4th of June; on which day, about four or five of the clock in the afternoon, a fearful fire first shewed itself near the top of the steeple, and from thence burnt down the spire to the stonework and bells, and raged so terribly, that within the space of four hours the timber and lead of the whole church, and whatsoever else was combustible in it, was miserably consumed and burnt, to the great terror and amazement of all beholders. Which church, the largest in the Christian world for all dimensions, contains in length 720 foot, or 240 tailor's yards, in breadth 130 foot, and in height from the pavement to the top of the roof 150 foot. The steeple, from the ground to the cross or weathercock contained in height 520 foot, of which the square tower only amounted to 260, the pyramid, or spire, to as many more1. Which spire being raised of massy timber, and covered over with sheets of lead, as it was the more apt to be inflamed, so was the mischief more incapable of a present remedy. The terror being over, most men began to cast about for the first occasion of such a miserable misfortune; the generality of the Zuinglian or Genevian party affirmed it for a just judgment of God upon an old idolatrous fabric, not throughly reformed and purged from its superstitions, and would have been content that all other cathedrals in the kingdom had been so destroyed. The Papists, on the other side, ascribe it to some practice of the Zuinglian faction, out of their hatred unto all solemnity and decency in the service of God, performed more punctually in that church, for example's sake, than in any other of the kingdom2. But, generally, it was ascribed by the common people to a flash of lightning, or some such sudden fire from heaven, though neither any 1 Stow, 647. Camd. 72, Lat. 2 See Pilkington's Works, ed. Park. Soc. 479-648. |