II.

BOOK pound their doubts and questions, collected out of that place of Scripture that day expounded; and signify the same unto Anno 1571. the President and the other brethren, and declare the same in writing unto the first speaker. And order was taken for the satisfying of the said question at the next exercise.

The consultation,

The consultation to be ended with some short exhortation, how ended. to move each one to go forward in his holy office, to apply his study, and to increase in godliness. The exercise finished, the next speaker was nominated publicly; and the text he should expound, read. If any presumed to break these orders and rules, and seemed to be contentious, the President was presently to command him in the name of God to silence. And after the exercise, the unadvised person to be censured by the brethren there gathered together, that he and others, by his example, might learn modesty hereafter.

CHAP. III.

181 The Bishop's letter concerning the Lord President of the north. Writes for an Ecclesiastical Commission. Writes to the Lord Treasurer against concealments; and concerning a High Sheriff for Cheshire. His thoughts of a proclamation for orders in the Church; and the Council's letters thereupon.

faction in

the Lord President.

Anno 1572. HENRY Earl of Huntingdon was in the year 1572 His satis- made Lord President of the Council in the north, a pious and sincere Protestant; and one, of whose coming to that place the Archbishop of York was very glad, that he might have one heartily and affectionately to back his labours in the Church. And indeed they cordially loved one another, and drew one way. The Archbishop in one of his letters to Sir William Cecil, now Lord Burghley and Lord High Treasurer, gave this account of his government : "My Lord President's good government here among us

.III.

"daily more and more discovereth the rare gifts and virtues CHAP. "which afore were in him, but in private life were hid from "the eyes of a great number. That the old proverb was Anno 1572. "verified in him, magistratus probat virum." Then the Archbishop interceded for him for his more easy living there; wishing that some of her Majesty's houses and grounds in those parts might be procured for him towards his necessary provision for without that, as he added, he could not see but that he should far overcharge himself. He knew, he said, his Lordship was his good friend; which made him [the Archbishop] bold sometimes to put his Lordship in mind thereof.

count of his

came to be

After this we may hear, if we please, what account the His own acsaid Earl gave of himself, in one of his letters to the same doings Lord Treasurer, who indeed had been the means of his since he sending into the north in that honourable station, which Lord Presi some about the Queen had not much liked of. "Whereas," dent. saith the said Earl, "some seemed to dislike his Lordship's "haste in preferring him to that place, he [the Earl] was sorry for it with all his heart; yet he trusted he had done nothing to the offence of any but if he had, before they "should grieve at his Lordship for his favour shewed to "him, they should tell him his fault. That he had com"mitted indeed many errors; but this," he said, "he dared "boldly to affirm in the fear of God, that since his coming "thither, he had in all causes had a mind to do that which

66

might advance the glory of God, best further the good "service of her Majesty, and be most fit for the common

That if he had failed in

good and quiet of that people. "the performance of any of those, it was want of skill, and "not of good-will to do the best, would be his fault."

sires a new

sion Ecclesi

The Archbishop now wrote to the Queen (and so he The Archsignified to the Lord Treasurer in the month of January he bishop dewould do) for the renewing of the Ecclesiastical Commission Commisfor his province; a thing highly necessary for those parts, astical. for the more effectual suppressing of corrupt religion, and 182 giving encouragement to the Gospel. And among other reasons why he desired a new Commission, this was one,

BOOK that the Lord President might be put in, as others were; II. that some of the old Commissioners were dead, and others Anno 1572. of them removed out of the province; whereby the number

Young.

ham.

was diminished. And perhaps other reasons might have Archbishop been added by our Archbishop, as I find were by Young his predecessor, who had but a few years before requested of the Secretary the same thing: as, that there was not due regard had in placing such as might serve in all the places of that Commission, by reason he was not acquainted with the state of that country at the time of the granting of the Notting- said Commission. And particularly, that whereas Nottingham was parcel of the diocese of York, and more subject to the malicious practices of the enemies of God's true reli gion; yet there was none of that country put into the said Commission. Nottingham, as the said late deceased Archbishop shewed, was the extreme part of his diocese, and so further from due means of reformation and correction. That it was a nigh neighbour to the counties of Derby and Lancashire, where the most part of the lewdest sort had remained and were cherished. There were also within Nottingham some places where these seditious people received great relief, having already infected very grievously some of good calling in that country. And the case so falling out, he thought it very requisite that a special regard should be had thereto.

Anno 1578.

cedes for

The Archbishop had now observed great abuses offered to He inter- the Clergy of his diocese by a parcel of needy, unjust men, his Clergy who pretended commissions from the Queen, to recover oppressed from them penalties incurred. She had indeed granted by ments. her letters patents to her gentlemen pensioners, penalties

by conceal

forfeited by the Clergy, under pretence of concealment of lands and rents given for superstitious uses, belonging now by act of Parliament to the Crown. Whereupon they sent their deputies about through the kingdom; who, being indigent men, used great extortion, and wofully oppressed and vexed the poor Clergy. This caused our Archbishop to make complaint thereof to the Lord Treasurer; who, however he inwardly liked not the thing itself, yet the letters

III.

pensioners.

patents being passed, he wrote back to the Archbishop, that CHAP. the gentlemen pensioners might enjoy the penalties forfeited by the Clergy, since so it was appointed by the Queen, and Anno 1578. bestowed upon them. The Archbishop then shewed his Gentlemen Lordship, that he intended not they should be abridged of it; but that he found fault with their manner of proceeding, which was troublesome, chargeable, and dishonourable; in that they summoned all the Clergy, as well faulty as innocent, and others also of good worship and credit, to appear before them, as the Queen's Commissioners, whereas they had no such Commission: and likewise that they compounded with the Clergy for offences past and to come; which tended not, as he said, to the restraint of abuses, but was rather a means to increase them. And lastly, that they were men noted heretofore for evil dealing and bribery. He desired 183 therefore, that for the preventing of these troubles, the gentlemen pensioners would send him down, in articles, form of proceeding to be observed by their said deputies, whereby the mentioned inconveniences might be avoided. I have put the letter into the Appendix, wherein the Arch- Num. II. bishop shewed this his fatherly care of his Clergy.

Sheriff.

Sir Rowland Stanley, together with his friends, laboured The Archto obtain to be High Sheriff of Cheshire for the ensuing bours to year: a person he was, doubted to be corrupt in religion; hinder one Stanley and the rather, for contemning the order of the Ecclesiasti- from being cal Commission. For upon some disagreement between him High and his wife, divers and sundry processes were issued out from the Lord President and our Archbishop, by virtue of the Ecclesiastical Commission; all which he had contemned. Of which contempts they had determined, about the end of the term, to certify the whole board of the Council, and to pray assistance. It was also taken notice of, that when the Lord President was last in Cheshire to take his vale of the Earl of Essex going into Ireland, Stanley would not vouchsafe to salute him; burdened belike with a guilt of conscience. Upon these and other reasons, to be shewn by and by, the Archbishop sent up to the Lord Treasurer to stop him from being Sherims he moved, not for

II.

BOOK respect of any private quarrel of his, nor upon any extraor dinary credit given to one Mr. Robert Fletcher, an informer Anno 1573. against the said Knight, (because he knew enmity to be between them,) but he rather chose to offer to his [the Treasurer's] consideration, whether the said Sir Rowland were a fit man to supply that office this year upon the former reasons, as also upon these that follow; viz. That there was a suit depending between him and the Archbishop and his Court and he thought that by being Sheriff, he might have power in his hands to obtain his will the better against the Archbishop; and therefore it was, that his friends sought that place now for him. The cause was this: Bebington, a benefice in Cheshire, being void, and the presentation being in certain feoffees, Sir Rowland laboured to get one Myrrick, an unlearned Welsh Doctor of Law, and one who had lived long in concubinatu, to be preferred to it, on purpose that Sir Rowland might have the profits of it. But to prevent Myrrick's coming in, one Mr. Robert Fletcher, a gentleman in those parts, (either one of the feoffees of this advowson, or that had an interest with them,) procured one Mr. Gylpin of Cambridge to be presented. By which means the choice became free to the Ordinary; and he presented Gylpin, as the best learned.

A case between Stan

Archbi

shop.

one party.

Upon this, Sir Rowland sued the Quare impedit at Chesley and the ter; and some just fear there was of indifferent justice in those particular jurisdictions; especially when a stranger is For this reason Fletcher wrote to the Archbishop, that he would use all the means he could to prevent Sir Rowland's being Sheriff, of whose ambitious and malicious mind he spake; for that he could not attain to the placing of his unworthy clerk Myrrick in Bebington, nor yet could by any manner of ways bring him to do that, that neither in truth nor honesty he might do. And that since no way 184 might serve him, he and his complices did work by all ways

and means they could to make him Sheriff in Cheshire, and thereby to deface his Grace, in admitting of Mr. Gylpin, or to work him [Fletcher] to their purpose, in making him feel his tyranny. Then Fletcher propounded to the Arch