1565.

AN. REG.7, accompanied with such irreverence, this opposition drew along with it so much licentiousness, as gave great scandal and offence to all sober men; so that it was high time for those which had the care of the Church to look narrowly unto them, to give a check to those disorders and confusions which by their practices and their preachings they had brought into it, and thereby laid the ground of that woeful schism which soon after followed. And for a check to those disorders, they published the Advertisement[s] before remembered', subscribed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London, Winchester, Ely, Lincoln, Rochester, and other of her Majesty's Commissioners for Causes Ecclesiastical, according to the Statute made in that behalf.

Protestation exacted of

7. This was the only present remedy which could then be the Clergy. thought of. And to prevent the like confusions for the time to come, a Protestation was devised, to be taken by all parsons, vicars, and curates in their several stations, by which they were required to declare and promise, "That they would not preach, nor publicly interpret, but only read that which is appointed by public authority, without special license of the Bishop under his seal; that they would read the service plainly, distinctly, and audibly, that all the people might hear and understand; that they would keep the register book according to the Queen's Majesty's Injunctions; that they would use sobriety in apparel, and especially in the Church at Common Prayers, according to order appointed; that they would move the parishioners to quiet and concord, and not give them cause of offence; and help to reconcile them that be at variance, to their utmost power; that they would read daily at the least one chapter of the Old Testament, and another of the New, with good advisement, to the increase of their knowledge; that they would in their own persons use and exercise their office and place to the honour of God and the quiet of the Queen's subjects within their charge, in truth, concord and unity; as also observe, keep, and maintain such order and uniformity in all external policy, rites and ceremonies of the Church, as by the laws, good usages and

1 Sup. p. 408.

Published at the end of the Advertisements. Wilkins, iv. 250.

1565.

orders, are already well provided and established ;" and finally, AN. REG.7, "that they would not openly meddle with any artificers' occupations, as covetously to seek a gain thereby, having in ecclesias73 tical livings twenty nobles or above by the year." Which pro15 testation, if it either had been generally pressed upon all the clergy (as perhaps it was not), or better kept by them that took it, the Church might questionless have been saved from those distractions which by the Puritan innovators were occasioned in it.

AN. REG. 8, 1565-6.

ANNO REG. ELIZ. 8,

ANNO DOM. 1565, 1566.

Suit between 1.
Bishops
Horn and
Bonner.

THUS

HUS have we seen the public Liturgy confirmed in Parliament, with divers penalties on all those who either did reproach it, or neglect to use it, or wilfully withdrew their attendance from it; the doctrine of the Church declared in the Book of Articles, agreed upon in Convocation, and ratified in due form of law by the Queen's authority; external matters, in officiating God's public service and the apparel of the Clergy, regulated and reduced to their first condition, by the books of Orders and Advertisements. Nothing remaineth but that we settle the episcopal government, and then it will be time to conclude this History. And for the settling of this government by as good authority as could be given unto it by the laws of the land, we are beholden to the obstinacy of Dr Edward Bonner, the late great slaughter-man of London1. By a Statute made in the last Parliament, for keeping her Majesty's subjects in their due obedience, a power was given unto the Bishops to tender and receive the Oath of Supremacy of all manner of persons dwelling and residing in their several dioceses2. Bonner was then prisoner in the Clink or Marshalsea, which being in the Borough of Southwark, brought him within the jurisdiction of Horn, Bishop of Winchester, by whose Chancellor the oath was tendered to him. the refusal of which oath he is indicted at the King's Bench upon the Statute; to which he appeared in some term of the year foregoing, and desires that counsel be assigned to plead his cause, according to the course of the court. The court assigns him no worse men than Christopher Wray, afterwards Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas; that famous lawyer Edmond Ploydon, whose learned Commentaries do sufficiently set forth his great abilities in that profession; and one Mr Lovelace, of whom we find nothing but the name.

3

Or Plowden. This learned lawyer was himself a Romanist.

On

1566.

2. By them and their advice the whole pleading chiefly is AN. REG. 8, reduced to these two heads,-(to omit the niceties and punctilios of lesser moment);-the first whereof was this,-That Bonner was not at all named in the indictment by the style and title of Bishop of London, but only by the name Dr Edmond Bonner, clerk, Dr of the Laws, whereas at that time he was legally and actually Bishop of London, and therefore the writ to be abated, (as our lawyers phrase it) and the cause to be dismissed out of the court. But Ploydon found here that the case was altered, and that this plea could neither be allowed by Catiline, who was then Chief Justice, nor by any other of the bench, and therefore it is noted by Chief Justice Dyer, who reports the case, with a non allocatur1. The second principal plea was this,―That Horn, at the time when the oath was tendered, was not Bishop of Winchester, and therefore not empowered by the said Statute to make tender of it, by himself or his Chancellor. And for the proof of this, that he was no Bishop, it was alleged, that the form of Consecration of Archbishops and Bishops, which had been ratified by Parliament in the time of King Edward, had been repealed in the first year of Queen Mary, and so remained at Horn's pretended consecration. The cause, being put off from term to term, comes at the last to be debated amongst the Judges at Serjeants' Inn ; by whom the cause was finally put upon the issue, and the trial of that issue ordered to be committed to a jury of the county of Surrey. But then withal it was advised, that the decision of the point should rather be referred to the following Parliament, for fear that such a weighty matter might miscarry by a coun74 try2 jury, of whose either partiality [or] insufficiency there had 46 been some proof made before, touching the grants made by

King Edward's Bishops; of which a great many were made. under this3 pretence, that the granters were not actually Bishops, nor legally possessed of their several Sees.

3. According to this sound advice, the business comes under consideration in the following Parliament, which began on the 30th of September; where, all particulars being fully and considerately discoursed upon, it was first declared, That their not restoring of that book to the former power in terms significant and express, was but Casus omissus; and secondly,

Dyer's Reports, 234; Bramhall, iii. 79.

1

2

Edd. 1, 2, "contrary."

Edd. 1, 2, "his."

1566.

AN. REG.8, That by the Statute 5th and 6th Edward Sixth1, it had been added to the Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, as a member of it, or at least an appendant to it; and therefore by 1 Eliz. was restored again, together with the said Book of Common Prayer,-intentionally at the least, if not in terminis. But, being the words in the said Statute were not clear enough to remove all doubts, they did therefore revive it now; and did accordingly enact, that "all persons that had been, or should be, made, ordered, or consecrate Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Ministers of God's Holy Word and Sacraments, or Deacons, after the form and order prescribed in the said book, be in very deed, and also by authority hereof, declared and enacted to be, and shall be, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, Ministers and Deacons, rightly made, consecrate, and ordered, any statute, law, canon, or other2 thing to the contrary notwithstanding." Nothing else done in this Parliament which concerned the Church, nor anything at all in the Convocation, by which it was of course accompanied, more than the granting of a subsidy of six shillings in the pound out of all their benefices and promotions. And as for Bonner, who was the other party to the cause in question, it was determined that neither he nor any other person or persons should be impeached or molested in regard of any refusal of the said oath heretofore made, and hereafter to be made before the end of that Parliament. Which favour was indulged unto them of the laity, in hope of gaining them by fair means to a sense of their duty; to Bonner and the rest of the Bishops, as men that had sufficiently suffered upon that account, by the loss of their Bishopricks.

Rastell's counter-challenge to Jewel.

4. By this last Act the Church is strongly settled on her natural pillars of doctrine, government, and worship,-not otherwise to have been shaken, than by the blind zeal of all such furious Sampsons as were resolved to pull it on their own 1 Sup. i. 173. s 8 Eliz. c. 1.

2 Edd. Heyl. " any."

These words do not really apply to the refusal, but to the Bishop's certificate of it. "By occasion or mean of any certificate by any archbishop or bishop heretofore made, or before the last day of this present session of parliament to be made, by virtue of any act made in the first session of this present parliament, touching or concerning the refusal of the oath declared and set forth by act of parliament in the first year of the reign of our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth." Gibson, 142.

Perhaps there is a reference to the puritan of this name. Sup. p. 404.