body of the clergy it bore no higher proportion than one to five.* In depriving these conjugated clergymen, the distinction was made, though to little purpose, between regulars and seculars for of the former monks, canons regular, and friars, many still existed among the beneficiates of the Church of England fourteen years after the dissolution of the monasteries. But the seculars were caught, if not for breaking the profession of an order, for breaking the canons and laudable customs of the Church: and were dealt with rather in the spirit of an Anselm than of a Lanfranc. "You have been priests for many years," so, for example, ran the Articles ministered in the diocese of Lichfield, "and not only in the profession of the rule of St. Benedict, or St. Augustine, or St. Francis, or St. Dominic, or of the Cistercian, the Præmonstratensian, the Carthusian or other order, as the case may be, but in the very taking of the priesthood, according to the decrees of the holy fathers, according to the canons and constitutions, according to the laudable customs observed by the Church Catholic, and especially by the Latin and Western Church, you have made and uttered a solemn vow of chastity and continency. And you know perfectly well that any person professing any rule, and likewise any person taking holy orders, is bound, as by his profession so by the act of taking holy orders, to perpetual continency; and has no right to return to the world, and marry a wife, and so on. And yet you, one, other, all of you, to the scandal of the clerical order, have in act, for in right you could not, rashly and damnably taken that criminal liberty. * Wharton put it at one to five, after having looked through the Canterbury register. In that diocese there were about 380 benefices and other promotions, and 73 clergymen were deprived. Specimen, 137. Lingard concurs in this proportion. And so does Burnet in the Supplementary Part III. of his History. In You deserve to lose your livings, and you shail." * that diocese the number of the deprived was forty-three, which if the total count of promotions, prebends included, be approximately fixed at five hundred and fifty, was one * See the Articles themselves in Strype, Orig. No. XII.: in vol. vi. p. 2c9. I have omitted and suppressed much. As to the position maintained in these Articles, that secular priests in the taking of their orders make a vow of chastity, that is celibacy, Collier remarks that “it is highly probable that the secular clergy had made no vow of single life at their ordination for some time before the Reformation" (ii. 366). But he refers to the Council of Winchester under Lanfranc in 1076, where it was ordered, as he says, that "none should be ordained deacon or priest without making a declaration against matrimony." The words however scarcely bear this construction. Lanfranc ordered that no canon should have a wife, and that priests living in castles or villages, having wives, should not be compelled to dismiss them : but not having wives should be forbidden to take them and that in future none should be ordained deacon or priest without first declaring that they had no wives. (Ut nullus canonicus uxorem habeat. Sacerdotum vero in castellis vel in vicis habitantium habentes uxores non cogantur ut dimittant, non habentes interdicentur ut habeant : et deinceps caveant episcopi ut sacerdotes vel diaconos non presumant ordinare, nisi prius profiteantur ut uxores non habeant. Parker, De Antiq. 173, or Spelman, vol. ii. 13, or Johnson, vol. ii. 18.) This wise and merciful regulation was however soon afterwards under Anselm, in 1102, made more stringent and extensive: when it was ordered that no archdeacon, priest, deacon, or canon marry a wife, or retain her if he have one: that this rule be extended to subdeacons also: and that none be ordained subdeacon or to higher orders without a profession of chastity. "Ut nullus archidiaconus, presbyter, diaconus, canonicus uxorem ducat aut ductam retineat. Subdiaconus, si post professionem castitatis uxorem duxerit, eadem lege constringatur.-Ut nullus ad subdiaconatum vel supra ordinetur sine professione castitatis." Canons II. and VI. Parker, 179, 80. Spelman, ii. 23 Johnson, ii. 26. It may be questioned whether this old canon about a profession of chastity (or single life) was remembered or referred to in these Marian times. It was not kept in memory by being included in Lyndwood's Provinciale. Lyndwood begins no earlier than Langton's Constitutions, from which he gives one forbidding beneficed clergymen to keep concubines on pain of deprivation after admonition. Lyndw. p. 125. Johnson, ii. p. 114. The word concubine, as Lyndwood laid down (p. 10), could only have a dishonest signification, in regard to a subdeacon and higher. There are other subsequent canons on the subject of clerical marriage in the English collections: but in none, I think, is it ordered that at ordination there should be made a professio castitatis. Anselm's canon seems to be alone in that requirement, and never to have been repeated. in twelve. Among them was the Dean himself of Lichfield, and two of the vicars choral. Hugh Symonds the Vicar of St. Michael's in Coventry was another of them, whom we have seen committed to prison in the first months of the reign: another was Pope, the Vicar of Warmington, who, it is remarkable, appealed to the Queen, as Defender of the Faith and Supreme Head on earth of the Church of England, against the informal manner of his deprivation, and the haste with which he had been ejected before the time allowed.* In the diocese of Canterbury on March 7 (the day seems early) there were cited to appear in Bow Church, London, before Harvey the Vicar-General of Canterbury, John Joseph, rector of St. Mary le Bow, a former friar and a fanatic preacher; Stephen Green, Rector of St. Dionys; Lawrence Saunders, Rector of All Hallows in Bread St.; Peter Alexander, Rector of All Hallows, Lombard St.; Christopher Ashburn, Rector of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane; Thomas Mountain, Rector of St. Michael's in Riolane; John Turner, Rector of St. Leonard's in Eastcheap; Richard Marsh, Rector of St. Pancras: all charged with marriage contrary to the laws of the Church, the decrees of the holy fathers, and the laudable customs generally observed. Two only of these made, on March 19, a personal appearance: for Joseph was gone, Saunders and Mountain were both in the Marshalsea: Peter Alexander may be presumed to have departed the realm like other foreigners: the rest responded not, though the citation was fixed upon the church doors of all of them. The interrogations that were put to Marsh and Turner, the two who appeared, were such as would be addressed to persons who had made the monastic profession: and such indeed they * Strype, v. 170 and vi. 212, Orig. No. xiii. appointed to examine his case. There was a commission acknowledged themselves. They were thereupon deprived, suspended, divorced, and set to do penance in their late churches with tapers in their hands.* A few days afterwards, March 15, at the Chapter House, before Harvey and Richard Thornden, Bishop Suffragan of Dover, there were cited Cranmer's brother Edmond, Archdeacon and Prebendary of Canterbury, three other prebendaries, two preachers, and two minor canons: who confessed their marriages, and being asked what they had to say why they should not be deprived, made answer that they had nothing to say, the decrees of the holy fathers and the ecclesiastical law standing in full force, but that by the law of God they thought that they had lawfully married their wives, and might not forsake them with a safe conscience. Sentence of suspension, sequestration, deprivation, and prohibition to live with their wives was pronounced upon them. Edmond Cranmer lost his prebend, his rectory of Tekham, and his archdeaconry; in which last he was succeeded by Nicolas Harpsfield. John Joseph and Peter Alexander had been cited again, in their capacity of prebendaries: and with them the eminent Italian Bernardino Ochino: and the preachers Lancelot Ridley, Richard Turner, Richard Beseley, and Thomas Becon. Not appearing, they were pronounced contumacious. Becon, who had been committed to the Tower as a seditious preacher early in the reign, was set free about this time, and took the sea to Strasburg. Thus was Cranmer's nest at Christchurch broken up. The * Strype's Cranmer, Bk. iii. ch. 8. The Articles ministered to them may be seen also in Harmer's Specimen, p. 178, and in Collier, ii. Records, No. LXIX. They are very curious. Strype also gives the confession made by Turner at his penance, and seems to intimate that he and Marsh were restored: but that appears very doubtful. + Strype's Cranmer, Bk. iii. ch. 8. Becon's liberation was on March 24. See his Life in the Parker Edition of his works, p. x. number of priests deprived throughout the diocese was seventy-three of whom four are known to have received restitution.* The diocese of Bath and Wells,† of which the * Harmer's Specimen, 137: Strype's Cranmer, App. LXXV. † Among the Summaries of Diocesan Registers in the Harleian Library (see Catal. vol. iii. 452) is one of Bath and Wells (No. 6964— 6968), which contains the following, E Reg. Gilb. Bourne epi. B.W. (No. 6967). I will give it in full. Commissio Joh. Cotterel, L.L.D., Vicar General. ad instituend. inducend. mandand. intrusor. in al. beneficia amovend. et privand. reformand. corrigend. puniend. &c. Insuper clericos et presbyteros tam regulares et religiosos quam seculares quos ubicunque infra sacros ordines constitut. ac mulieres pretextu ficti et pretensi matrimonii in adulterinis amplexibus tenentes, et qui in eisdem feminis illicite se conjunxerunt ac vota continentiæ fregerunt ac vilependerunt, ac matrimonium sive verius effigiem de facto cum mulieribus contraxerunt: necnon Laicos conjugatos qui pretextu et sub velamine presbiteratus ordinis sese in juribus ecclesiasticis temere et illicite immiscuerunt ac ecelesias parochiales in cura animarum et dignitates ecclesiasticas contra sacros (sic) canonum sanctiones et jura ecclesiastica de facto assecuti fuerunt, ab eisdem ecclesiis et dignitatibus deprivand. amovend. ac ipsos sic convictos a feminis sive uxoribus suis quin potius concubinis suis separand. et divortiand. penitentiasque salutares et condignas tam eisdem clericis quam feminis propter delicta sua luxuriemque insumend. Dat. 8 Apr. Breve regium pro committend. et custodiend. corpus Joh. More et Ric. Brewton, II Apr. 30 Apr. Rog. Edgeworthe S.T.P. ad cancell. Well. p. deprivationem Jn. Taylor alias Cardmaker. 4 May Egid Capell A.M. ad. eccl. de Yevelton depriv. Domini Thos. Day ad collac. episcopi. Egid Capell ad preb. de Whitlockinton p. depriv. Rob. Mag. Will. Fynche suffraganeus dni Episcopi ad eccl. de Eod. die Joh. Cowell L.L.D. ad preb. de Tymbres- Egid Hyllynge ad preb. de St. Decimano p. mortem Eod. die Thos. Sylke A.M. ad vicar. Banwell p. mort. |