years 1604 to 1610 but he records no wide-spread feeling of alarm over the contemplated loss of the preachers he listened to so gladly, no lament over their removal or over the cruel treatment they endured. Instead we learn from time to time, that he had heard Mr. Knewstubbs, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Bird or Mr. Culverwell as visiting preachers. It is very unlikely that he would have been ignorant of any considerable agitation among the people over the predicament of their clergy or that, if known, he would have failed to record it. Had these men been silenced, suspended, or deprived, they could not have continued to preach undisturbed all the succeeding years, nor, had they lacked a cure, could they have been regularly presented to the Bishop for their nonconformity. Most astonishing of all, the Bishop apparently took no notice of these frequent presentments, which would certainly have provided him with every necessary pretext for the deprivation of all these nonconformists, if he had really desired to proceed against them.

If only sixty were deprived and a hundred suspended, silenced, and admonished, out of three hundred and fifty ministers, the bishops could hardly be charged with carrying matters to an extreme. Moreover, the treatment of the men who were deprived seems to have been lenient. On March 12, 1605, the Archbishop directed all the bishops to arrange matters with the next incumbent "that the party so deprived may have two or three months liberty to remain still in the parsonage or vicarage house, if he have no other of his own: that so he may have that time to provide for himself, and not be thrust out into the streets upon a sudden."1 Fuller tells a story of Bancroft which he affirms he had from the minister himself who was concerned.2 This man went to the Archbishop privately and told him that "it went against his conscience to conform, being then ready to be deprived. Which way, saith the Archbishop, will you live, if put out of your Benefice? The other answered, he had no way but to goe a begging and to put himself on Divine Providence. Not that, (saith the Archbishop) you shall not need to doe, but come to me, and I will take order for your maintenance." "It is a greate greife to us all," wrote the Bishop of Lincoln, "(if ther were any other remedie) to remoue them from theire Lyvinges, by reason whereof theire wyves and children, whoe haue geuen noe cause of offence, nether yet are hable to shift for 1 Cardwell, Annals, II, 101. 2 Church History, Bk. X,

P. 57.

themselves, shold be distressed."1 A petition from the gentry of Lancashire, of much the same tenor as the ill-fated Northamptonshire petition, was presented to Salisbury; yet, although he might easily have punished the writers, he wrote them a courteous letter explaining that, if they would only show the ministers that they themselves preferred conformity to nonconformity, they would be astonished to see how soon those men would submit.2

At least half a dozen of the men deprived were at once readmitted, showing either that they conformed or that the bishop was lenient enough, having satisfied policy by demonstrating his ability and will to deprive them, to be content with half assent. Robert Travell and Thomas Gibson were deprived by the Bishop of Peterborough and readmitted on the very same day. On February 1, George Pike, the vicar of Dunnington, had been deprived by the Bishop of Lincoln, who on March 14 inducted a new incumbent. But on March 29, we find "George Pike, M. A. lately vicar of Donington, in Com: Lincoln: admitted preacher," and on May 15 read of his readmission to his benefice. Thomas Forman, rector of Cotes Parva, was sequestrated on April 26 and reinstated on May 24: but Anthony Nutter, deprived in February, 1604-5, waited till September, 1606 for his reinduction. Among all the Puritans none had been more notoriously disobedient and active than Arthur Hildersham. He had been one of the instigators of the early Classis movement; had disseminated the Millenary Petition, the Advice tending to Reformation, and the Manifesto of 1604; was strongly suspected of having had a hand in the writing of those documents and of instigating the Sussex petitioners of October, 1603. Apparently, no one had less reason to expect clemency than he. He had been silenced by the Bishop of Lincoln in December, 1604, suspended in February, 1605, and later in the year, deprived. Yet the very next year, the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield allowed him to preach at a sort of prophesy in Repton, in Derbyshire, and Burton-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire, and the year 1608 found him once more in his own pulpit at Ashby-de-la-Zouche. Alexander Cooke had achieved notoriety by his public declaration that he would put a curb into Bancroft's jaws, and, being very obstinate, 3 April 30, and June 25.

1 Hatfield MSS. 110, f. 74, April 12, 1605.

2 Hatfield MSS. 110, f. 117, draft of Cecil, April 30, 1605.

4 Brook, Lives of the Puritans, II, 382.

had been deprived; but by 1606, he had been restored and, astonishing enough, we learn from the Visitation Books of that year, that he had "provided his habit according to the canon." John Harrison of Histon, Cambridgeshire, was about to be deprived, and sentence, in fact, was on the point of being pronounced, when it was recalled.1

One of the chief Puritans in Essex, Richard Rogers, threatened with deprivation, was saved by the intercession of Lord Knollys. "It greatly troubles me," he wrote, "that after labouring betwixt thirty and forty years in the ministry, I am now accounted unworthy to preach." He seems to have been temporarily suspended, however, for May 30, 1606, we read, "if I preach no more, I heartily thank God for my liberty, both at home and abroad for this year and a half and I hope with some fruit. The bishop hath been my friend." On April 2, 1607, he recorded the "painful news of our Bishop Vaughan's death, who for twenty-eight months, being all the time he continued, he permitted all the godly ministers to live peaceably and to enjoy liberty in their ministry. 2 Elizabeth Mountagu was very loath to present any one to a benefice from which a Puritan had been deprived, until he had time to think over his stand, and so, having waited until her right of presentation had nearly expired, she sent word to the Bishop of her desires, who at once resigned to her his right of presentation which would become valid as soon as hers lapsed. Mr. Collins wrote to John Coke, a Puritan gentleman, "The Bishop of Hereford has not taken away my letter of orders, he has only hindered my ministry in his dio.. I pray you be my remembrancer for what liberty in the ministry may be had above with the Archbishop." One good lady, Sarah Venables, was so touched at the thought of the needs of the deprived ministers that she bequeathed all her property for a fund to be administered in their behalf, and we do not learn that the Archbishop gave her relatives any countenance in their attempt to break the will.

cese

.

Yet, while we grant that not a great many were suspended or

1 Cooper, Athena Cantabrigienses, II, 477.

2 Brook, Lives of the Puritans, II, 233. (London, 1813) from manuscript diary.

3 Report on the Beaulieu MSS. p.

46, July 3, 1605.

4 Report on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Cowper, I, 63, January 1606-7.

5 S. P. Dom. Jac. I, 37, no. 113; 45, no. 147.

deprived, that many conformed and many remained in the Church without either conforming or suffering deprivation, and that those who were suspended or deprived received lenient and merciful treatment at the hands of the bishops, were not the deprivations all a mistake of policy? Did not Bancroft exclude from the Church or antagonise that great moderate wing of the Puritan party which contained the element best worth uniting with the Establishment? Did he not drive them into radical revolt instead of compelling them to conform? Such questions, often asked and often answered in the affirmative, assume, in the first place, that the Puritans were not only very numerous but were also the cream of the English clergy for piety and learning, and that they possessed the heartfelt allegiance of a large minority of the English people. They imply the presence in the situation of factors which would have been of crucial importance had they existed, but which, as a matter of fact, cannot be demonstrated to have been present.

Not only were the Puritan clergy few in numbers and by no means highly educated as a whole, but the men deprived and suspended cannot be said to have been the very best of the Puritans. The names of Travell, Gibson, Allen, Chalenor, Cutbert, Smart, Swett, Hulse, Sherman, Cooke, Ruddiard, Baldock, Ridout, Wood, all of whom were deprived, would not be known to us were it not for the Books of Institutions, and what little we can glean from the Visitation Records. They were not the leaders, nor the writers of books, nor the men of greatest learning. In truth, the bishops were careful not to deprive the prominent, pious, and learned, in order that the list of "martyrs" might have as few imposing qualities as possible. The men who suffered were, in the main, the rashest and least commendable of the radicals. Of the great majority against whom he proceeded, the Bishop of Peterborough wrote to the Privy Council, "The rest by me suspended are jurats and mercinarye readers. The most of them haue taken no degree of schooles, some are Batchelers of arts, very few masters of Arts, but all extremely willfull and contemptuous." While some allowance might be made for the Bishop's natural bias, his statement is valuable because it confirms what our list of ministers tells us, and gives us some reason for believing that our information is fairly complete.

1 Bishop of Peterborough to Cranbourn, February 16, 1604-5. Hatfield MSS. 104, f. 30. Holograph.

On the other hand, Raignolds conformed but refused to subscribe in a vigorous and courageous letter to Bancroft, and yet was not molested. Nor was Knewstubbs troubled, and Chaderton, although at one time he felt himself threatened, managed to retain his place without seriously compromising his conscience. Ward, Bedell, Sparke, Feilde, Downame, and Harrison were not molested.

If the view that the expulsion of the Puritans injured the Church rests upon the premise that they were a vital part of it, it even more depends upon their leaving the Establishment, and this they certainly did not do. Indeed, there are few facts of Puritan history better and more firmly attested than the reluctance of these men to leave the Church, although none of them were able to approve it fully. Every petition, every attempt at legal obstruction, every essay to prolong the time of probation gave only additional testimony that they were loath to be ejected from the Established Church. And they did not go. The leaders were not molested, and others descended to casuistry in an attempt to satisfy the bishop without really promising what he wished.1 Henry Jacobs published a book, and was compelled by the Government to retract certain expressions in it, and his retraction ended with the words: "Howsoever I will allways heerafter behave myselfe quietly and as one carefull of the Churches peace, God assisting me. What Jacobs took this to mean appears sufficiently from a copy he retained and underneath which he wrote, "I will allwayes heerafter behave myself quietly which also I have don alwayes heeretofore, I praise God." Such a promise was really no promise at all, and yet this man, who did a thing quite incomprehensible to us, had an unusually sensitive conscience for the year 1605. When Bedell was summoned before the bishop's chancellor at Norwich and urged to subscribe, he replied that he had already done so years before and "had not revolted from yt, yt I was conformable as much as by law I was bounde; that he had no more reason to urge me to subscribe than any minister in ye Diocesse." He received a respite of nearly two months, although he frankly told the official that he knew no reason why he should then be urged to subscribe any more than at that very moment. As he explained to Ward, "I refused not (nor doe

1 This must be owned in fairness to the Catholics and to the bishops; let us be impartial with our left hand

as well as with our right.

2 Lambeth MSS. 113, f. 243. Apri. 4, 1605.