grades of ecclesiastical censure, of which deprivation was the last and most severe and alone voided the benefice. Comparatively few might have been deprived and yet a large number might have been suspended and admonished. Both statements, properly understood, may be true, for they refer to different things. A very careful compilation of figures has been made by selecting from the most trustworthy sources1 the actual number of ministers who had been summoned or who were thought to be nonconformable, with a view of finding how many men might have been proceeded against. It should not be forgotten that every minister, who was properly Puritan, felt himself threatened by the orders to enforce conformity and that therefore very nearly the whole strength of the party ought to be found in the estimate. The tally of 297 men2 gives nearly the figure we meet so often in Puritan accounts, and is very near the 281 men whose names are now known as adherents of the party. The figure 300, therefore, which we meet so often, is more likely the number of men who believed themselves to be threatened than the number who were actually proceeded against by the bishops. were ejected. In his footnote, he adds, "the number has been estimated as low as forty-nine; but the arguments in Vaughan's Memorials of the Stuarts seem to me conclusive in favour of the larger number. То the authorities quoted there may be added the petition of the Warwickshire ministers (S. P. Dom. XI, 68) who speak of twenty-seven being suspended in that country alone; though the Bishop expressed his sorrow for that which he was forced to do." This last is not quite literally true. The petition reads: "who are allreadie for ye most part suspended . . . and doe all expect presentlie to be fullie depriued. The reference is wrongly given to volume XI instead of to volume XII. It will be noted that Dr. Gardiner has made no use of the voluminous correspondence at Hatfield. The passage from Vaughan referred to seems to be the following: "It was affirmed during this reign and apparently without contradiction (?) that more than three hundred preachers were at this time deprived of their livings, or silenced and exposed with their families to the 1 The holograph reports of the Bishops to the Council, the original petitions of the ministers and gentry. 2 The list is included in the table already printed in Book I, Chap. XI. Some of the figures seem to be very much too large, but probably only make good the deficiencies elsewhere. After all, such estimates were, in 1604, precisely what they are now, guess-work. No complete census of the Puritan party had been made and probably they now themselves first obtained accurate information. The number of the deprived, as gathered from the Institution Books and from the bishops' reports to Bancroft and Cecil, is under the archbishop's estimate, rather than above it. Fifteen were deprived in the diocese of Peterborough, and the Bishop thought it necessary to apologize to the Council for his severity by explaining that the great bulk of the obstinate Puritans were in his diocese. Some five or six in London, eight in Lincoln, five in Exeter, eight in Norwich, six in Chichester, and one in Canterbury,' make up a total of forty-eight men actually deprived and probably some dozen over the rest of England, for which we have no explicit information, would easily bring the total to about sixty. The apology of the Bishop of Peterborough adds credit to this estimate, for according to it, he did deprive two or three times as many as the other bishops, and the agreement of the episcopal records with the Bishop's letters increases our faith in his veracity. Several men deprived were later allowed to resume their cures, and thus it became clear that about sixty men were at first deprived, but that, in 1609, when the final returns were given in by the bishops, the number certified was forty-nine. Further to confirm this verdict, we may examine the records of institutions. Might it not be true that the bishops only deprived sixty and that Bancroft added considerably to the total during the Archiepiscopal Visitation which followed from May to October, 1605, and when, as a matter of law, the bishops were suspended from exercising their functions and the complete control of the whole Church passed into the hands of the Archbishop and his Visitors? But the record of the institutions made by Bancroft during this Visitation, as preserved in his official Register at Lambeth Palace, shows eight deprivations for the whole of England and Wales, six of which were in the diocese of Chichester and have been already counted in the figures above given. The Bishop of Chichester died before depriving the Puritans and the Archbishop took the final steps during the vacancy of the See. In all, Bancroft made fiftytwo institutions, eight because of deprivation, one because of cession, twelve from resignation, twenty from death, and eleven because the cure was vacant. Even had the whole fifty-two been deprivations, no such total would have been reached as many of the Puri 1 These figures were compiled from the Institution Books, of the various dioceses. tans claimed. A further tabulation of the institutions in London, Norwich, Lincoln, Peterborough and Canterbury (the diocese), shows that no other total than sixty deprivations is consistent with the general trend of ecclesiastical administration. The majority of all institutions were made because of the death of the previous incumbent, and, if the forty-one institutions in the diocese of Norber would still be nine short of the ministers claimed by the Puritans as threatened in Suffolk alone. Again, it seems possible that this total of three hundred deprived was reached by the pressure put upon the ministers to resign or cede their benefices, so that the effect of deprivation was produced without the actuality. But despite the fact that the number of resignations was large during the years 1605 and 1606, especially at Peterborough, it was only a slight increase over the years which preceded and followed, and, unless the process of virtual removal was begun before the passage of the Canons and continued after 1605, as no one has yet claimed, the theory must be rejected. The number of resignations, cessions, and the like, seems plainly to be due to the attempt to exchange benefices held in plurality between the clergymen of different dioceses so as to lessen the scandal of nonresidence. Another possible conjecture is readily seen to be of no value. In the records, are always a number of entries of institutions where no reason is assigned for the vacancy of the benefice. Might it not be true that the Bishop, eager to conceal the actual figures, had chosen this method of secreting them? Here, however, the largest number of unexplained entries at Norwich occurred during the years 1603 and 1607, when the Bishop could not have had any such intentions, while in the years 1605 and 1606, only one and two entries respectively, out of forty and forty-one, were unaccounted for. Again, if a large number of men had been suddenly deprived, and their benefices filled with the more conformable, we should naturally expect to find the general total of institutions in these years greatly exceeding the normal number. Yet, though there were forty-one. institutions at Norwich in 1605, and forty in 1606, there were thirty-nine in 1603 and forty-nine in 1607, the difference in the total being regulated apparently by the variation in the number of 1 Only two cases of this are forthcoming and these are not clear. Thomas Hieron of Marlowe Magna, Bucks, resigned in 1604 and John Spicer of Coginshoe, Northamptonshire, ceded his benefice October 26, 1608. The dates, however, are either too early or too late. deaths-thirty in 1607 against sixteen in 1605. On all these counts, there seems to be reason to believe that the figures given by the Archbishop to Yelverton and to Spotiswood were substantially correct. Undoubtedly the whole body of Puritan ministers felt themselves in danger of deprivation, and the recurrence of the figure 300 may be interpreted as designating the number who feared deprivation. Nevertheless, the whole three hundred were not even suspended, much less deprived, and the chief evidence lies in the fact that a considerable proportion of them conformed. The Bishop of Peterborough wrote to the Privy Council that he had persuaded as many to conform as he had deprived,' fifteen, and this too, in a diocese which was supposed to contain more obstinate and wilful Puritans than any other in England. Almost all the bishops sent up to London similar reports of conversions, but failed to give figures. Still, inasmuch as the county of Essex and the diocese of Peterborough contained the staunchest Puritans in England, and, inasmuch as from one-half to three-quarters of them conformed, we shall not be far astray if we place the number suspended or silenced, in some degree for more or less of a year, at about one hundred, or a third of the number threatened, thus leaving a good margin for error. Still more pregnant evidence that there was no wholesale suspension or deprivation of the Puritans lies in the fact that the churchwardens continued after the year 1605 as before, to present large numbers of ministers for not wearing the surplice and for characteristic Puritan failings of various types. Despite the love, which it is claimed that these congregations evinced for the deprived ministers, we find the people, and even the wardens, presenting to the Bishop, at the earliest opportunity, these very men who it is said were deprived, for the very offences which are said to have caused the deprivations. The wardens of the churches served by such Puritans as Travell, Gibson, Greenwood, Allen, Chalenor, Cutbert, Smart, Sweet, Hulse, Sherman, and others, promptly reported that "their late minister continues still unconformed and disobedient to the lawes ecclesiasticall of this Realme." Those min 1 A sample of the wild rumours afloat appears in the newsletter in Hatfield MSS. 104, f. 19, stating that the Bishop of Norwich had deprived thirty in Suffolk. If this was done, it is inconceivable that no trace of it should appear in the Records. 2 Hatfield MSS. 104, f. 30. isters who preached after their suspension were, by their own wardens, brought to book with the members of the congregation who had supported them. It is inconceivable that all the pressure of the hierarchy could ever have secured such presentments, had the wardens and the great majority of the parish been really of that frame of mind which the Puritan utterances attributed to them. The men who were not deprived but still continued nonconformable shared this treatment. John Knewstubbs, the spokesman of the party at the Hampton Court Conference, neither conformed nor was deprived. "I am to entreat you to provide for Mr. Knewstubbs, yf you may," wrote Bedell to Ward on November 26, 1604, "any young man yt would be his curate to teach in his parish that would weare ye Surplice." And in the very next year after the deprivations, the wardens of Cockfield presented to the Bishop, "John Knewstubbes for not wearing the surplesse nor useth the signe of the crosse. At Watford, Hertfordshire, was beneficed a most ardent nonconformist, Anthony Watson, whose wardens were of his ways of thinking but whose congregation was not, for they informed the Archdeacon that Watson "hath not worn the surplesse : he hath omitted the cross in baptism: and he administers the communion to the people standing." Yet Watson was not deprived, though he was censured and his churchwardens compelled to do penance. By 1606, he had actually "provided his habit according to the Canons," but was nevertheless presented by the people "for not wearing his surpless always, for not having a cloke with sleeves and for not having a square cap." Similar complaints were registered against most of the Essex and Suffolk ministers with whose names we are familiar. Moreover, we have, in the diary of Adam Winthrop, a stout Puritan, and the father of that great nonconformist, John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachusetts Bay in New England, the record of the thoughts and doings of a man who lived in just that section of Essex and Suffolk where the Dedham and Braintree Classes had flourished and where these Puritans whose names are well known to us were beneficed. 1 Tanner MSS. 75, f. 129. 2 Visitation Records, Norwich, Archdeaconry of Sudbury. 1606, and also 1611. 3 Visitation Records preserved at St. Albans. His diary is complete for the 4 Printed in the Appendix to the Life and Letters of John Winthrop, I, 418. The original paper book is Additional MSS. 37419. The part here used begins with f. 30. |