text by the context. Another clamour arose; and the same epithet was applied again. As soon as he could be heard, Hooper denied that marriage was forbidden to priests by the old canons, and mentioned the Decrees. Gardiner sent for the later part of the pontifical law, the Clementines or the Extravagants; which Hooper said not to be the book that he named. "You shall not have any other until you be judged by this," cried Gardiner. Another tumult began, many speaking together, with much noise, no order, no charity. Then Judge Morgan, who had been perhaps called as a witness, railed at Hooper with foul and abusive words of his doings at Gloucester in punishing men: that there never was such a tyrant as he was. Day alleged the Council of Ancyra,* earlier than that of Nice, to be against the marriage of priests. "Master Hooper has never read the Councils," cried the Lord Chancellor: and the cry was echoed by many. "The great Council of Nice, my lord," said Hooper, "as my lord of Chichester knoweth, decreed by the means of one Paphnutius that no minister should be separated from his wife." + But the cries and clamour drowned him. Then Tunstall asked Hooper whether he believed the Corporal Presence in the Sacrament. Hooper answered that there was none such, and he believed none such. Cries and clamour rose again. Tunstall was stopped by the noise in reading something * It is well known that the Council of Ancyra, A.D. 314, decreed that if deacons declared at the time of ordination that they would marry, and did marry, they should not be deprived of their functions: but that if they made no such declaration at the time of ordination, and married afterwards, they should be deprived. (Canon 10.) The contemporary Council of Neocæsarea ordered that if a priest married after he had been ordained, he ought to be degraded. (Canon 1.) The story of bishop Paphnutius, who at the Council of Nice prevailed to defeat the proposal that any bishop, priest or deacon who was married before taking orders should be separated from his wife, is in Socrates, i. 11. out of some book. Then Gardiner asked upon what authority Hooper disbelieved the Corporal Presence; and was answered with a text. Gardiner said that the text in affirming the Presence in heaven denied it not to be in the Sacrament also. Hooper would have responded, but cries and clamour put him to silence, all the men round Gardiner shouting and exclaiming, lest he should say more against the bishop. "Write down," cried they to the notaries, "that he is married, and says he will not go from his wife; and that he believes not the Corporal Presence in the Sacrament; wherefore he is worthy to be deprived of his office." And so it was written.* To the sees thus voided a sixth may be added in Bath and Wells through the voluntary resignation of Barlow, which took place in probability before this Commission: † a seventh may be enumerated in the long vacant Rochester. To fill them all a great consecration was held by Gardiner, Bonner and Tunstall in the church of St. Mary Overy: when the severe White, Warden of Winchester College, chaplain of Gardiner, a poet in Latin, was consecrated to Lincoln; Gilbert Bourne the preacher to Bath and Wells; Morgan the disputer to St. David's; Brooks to Gloucester; to Chester Cotes; Griffith to Rochester: while Parfew of St. Asaph's was translated to Hereford. Add that the death of Goodrich laid open the see of Ely: that the see of Coventry and Lichfield was left destitute by the death of Sampson: and that if * Fox. The anonymous eye-witness (ap. Fox) has a long preamble, in which he says that he was led to write his narrative because there was a rumour of very different nature concerning the interview between the Commissioners and Hooper. It is to be regretted that we have not this rumour alive to compare withal. It is from this eye-witness that we learn that the place was Winchester's house. Harmer says that Barlow resigned between December 1553 and March 1554. He was married and had five daughters who all afterwards married bishops. Specimen, p. 135. Thirlby of Norwich was translated to Ely, Hopton, the tried chaplain of Mary, took his place. Add Holyman, the controversialist, consecrated to Bristol, and the learned Hebraist Baines to Lichfield, before the end of the year." "The first day of April my lord chancellor did consecrate six new bishops at St. Mary Overy's before the high altar; and a goodly mass was said. And when all was done they yede unto my lord chancellor's for as great a dinner as you have seen," &c. Machyn, 58. Also Strype, v. 180 : also Heylin, 127. Holyman's consecration followed on November 17: Baines was consecrated with him. Machyn, 75. It may possibly be worth notice that in the congé d'élire of the new bishops a clause was contained that they should have sufficient knowledge of Scripture. "Mandantes quod talem vobis eligatis in episcopum et pastorem, qui sacrarum Literarum cognitione ad id munus aptus, Deo devotus, nobis et regno nostro utilis et fidelis, ecclesiæque nostræ predictæ necessarius existat." Rymer, xv. 369, 374. The marked words were wanting in the ancient form. They had been added in the late reign, and first appeared in Holbeach's appointment to Lincoln, and of Scory to Rochester in 1547. Rymer, xiv. 153, 163. It is to be added that later on, July 6, a Consistory was held at Rome, when some of these new bishops were provided, in the papal sense of the term. Raynaldus, Ann. 1554, § 5, or Poli Epist. v. p. 134. These arrangements may be seen thusDeprived in March. Taylor of Lincoln. Hooper of Gloucester Holgate of York. Bird of Chester. Already vacant Sees. Goodrich of Ely. Sampson of Lichfield. Thirlby of Norwich. Consecrated or translated in April. White to Lincoln. Brook to Gloucester Morgan to S. David's. Cotes to Chester. Bourne to Bath and Griffith to Rochester. Thirlby to Ely from Baines to Lichfield (in Hopton to Norwich. Provided in July. Add Tunstall restored to Durham some time before: remember Gardiner extruding Ponet, Bonner Ridley, Day Scory, Voysey Coverdale, from their respective sees and there are emptied and filled again by extrusion, deprivation, resignation, or death, by restoration, consecration, or translation, sixteen bishoprics. Meanwhile Canterbury and York lay void: and Bangor and St. Asaph. The disturbance of the married clergy throughout the kingdom, which accompanied or instantly began to follow the deprivation of the bishops, was a trouble of wide extent. But it seems incredible either that there were sixteen thousand clergymen then in England, or that twelve thousand of them had made themselves liable to deprivation by getting married within the space of the five or six years since clerical marriage had been allowed by statute of law.* The whole number of benefices having cure of souls fell far short of the lower number named † many of them were standing vacant through the Reformation, and many had become united to others. The holders of prebends and other such promotions were deprived not less than other incumbents: two or three prebends and such other were often held by the same man, who was separately deprived of each, and thus the same man may have been counted two or three times over in reckoning the tale of the deprived. It seems safe to conclude that the sum total might be as conveniently given in hundreds as in thousands: and that to the whole * Burnet says that Parker says that there were 12,000 out of 16,000 clergymen deprived for marriage. But Wharton says that Parker says that another writer says it: and that Parker quoted hypothetically this other writer, the author of an anonymous Defence of Priests' Marriages, which appeared at the time. Specimen of Errors, p. 137. + Speed gave the total number of parishes in England and Wales as 9285 in the time of Henry VIII. See his Catalogue of Monasteries, &c. 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. |