wM THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES DIOCESAN HISTORIES. SALISBURY. X DIOCESAN HISTORIES. SALISBURY. BY WILLIAM HENRY JONES, M.A. F.S.A. VICAR OF BRADFORD-ON-AVON. WITH MAP. PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. LONDON : SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS ; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, EX. ; AND 48, PICCADILLY. NEW YORK I POTT, YOUNG, & CO. 1880. WYMAN AND SONS, PRINTERS, GREAT QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS, LONDON, W.C. 5"/ 07 CONTENTS, S( ^ CHAPTER I. A.D. 634-705. THE FOUNDATION OF THE EPISCOPATE IN WESSEX. Birinus the first missionary to the West Saxons — State of Wessex at the time of his arrival — Character of an ancient bishopric — Extent of the kingdom of Wessex at the be- ginning of the seventh century — Nature of the mission of Birinus — Relations between the English and British Churches — First successes of Birinus — Establishment of the See of Wessex at Dorchester in Oxfordshire — Share of the British Church in the conversion of Wessex — Decease of Birinus — His successors in the See of Wessex — Efforts to divide the West-Saxon diocese . . Page 1 7 CHAPTER II. a.d. 705-909. first subdivision of the see of wessex. First subdivision of the See of Wessex — Ina, the king, a principal promoter of it — Aldhelm first Bishop of Sher- borne — Extent of the diocese, all "west of Selwood " — J.ife and labours of Aldhelm — Churches and monasteries .1031273 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. founded by him — The " ccclcsiola " at Bradfbrd-on-Avon> still remaining — Successors of Aldhelm in the See of Sherborne — State of the people, and various efforts made for their religious instruction— Alfred the Great — His account of the general ignorance, and his attempts to remedy it Page 35 CHAPTER III. A.D. 909-IO75. SECOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. Second subdivision of the See of Wessex — The Sees of Sherborne, Ramsbury, Wells, and Crediton — First cathedral at Sherborne — Successive Bishops of Sher- borne — Bishops of Ramsbury — Odo, Siric, and M\£rvc successively promoted to the Primacy — The homilies of ^Elfric — Herman the last Bishop of Ramsbury — The two Sees of Sherborne and Ramsbuiy united and re- moved to Old Sarum — Churches named in the Domesday Record as existing at the Norman Conquest — Notes in the same record as to the Clergy — Religious houses — Malmesbury, Ambresbury, Wilton, Shaftesbury — Their use and influence in ministering to the moral and ma- terial wants of the people — Mischief arising from special exemptions claimed by them .... Page, 50 CHAPTER IV. A.D. IO75-II94. THE SEES OF SHERBORNE AND RAMSBURY UNITED^ AND THE "BISHOP-STOOL" REMOVED TO OLD SARUM. Osmund, Bishop of Old Sarum — He founds a Cathedral and a Cathedral Chapter at Old Sarum— The " Use of Sarum" — Life and character of Osmund— Successors of CONTENTS. 7 Osmund — Roger, Jocelin de Bohun, and Hubert Walter — Progress of the Church in Sarum in the eleventh cen- tury — Churches and castles built at Sarum, Malmesbury, and Devizes — The Cistercians in the diocese of Old Sarum — Principles of their order, and effect of their preaching and example . . . , . Page 67 CHAPTER V. A.D. II94-1257. THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. State of the Church at the close of the twelfth century — The country under an interdict — Bishop Herbert Poore — Additional endowments of the Cathedral — Richard Poore becomes Dean of Sarum — The cathedral system at Old Sarum and its various purposes — Originally, a cathedral was of a missionary character — Richard Poore becomes Bishop of Sarum — Designs entertained of removing the see from Old to New Sarum — Various means resorted to for accomplishing it — The New Cathedral designed and its foundations laid — Service first held in it — The clergy of the Cathedral who were the fellow-workers of Bishop Richard Poore — Heniy of Bishopeston, Edmund Rich, Robert Grosseteste, Robert Bingham — State of the clergy generally — Visitation of the prebendal estates by the Dean — Influence of the building of the New Cathedral on other parishes — Early English archi- tecture — Churches of that date still remaining to us — Religious houses founded at this period, Lacock, St. Nicholas-at-Sarum, Easton — General state of ignorance and neglect — Churches unconsecrated — Foreigners pro- moted to English benefices — The Friar Preachers at Wilton and Salisbury Page 84 8 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. CHAPTER VI. A.D. I250-I380. COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION, AND THE DEiMANDS AND EXACTIONS OF ROME. Canonization of Edmund, Archbishop of Canterbury, once treasurer of Sarum — Claim of the Bishop to visit the Cathedral resisted — Chantries founded in the Cathedral — Colleges of " de Valle Scholarum " and St. Edmund founded — Rights of the Chapter in a vacancy in the See — Churches of St. Edmund and St. Thomas the Martyr — Gifts in lands and houses to the Cathedral — Ecclesiastical organization of the diocese completed — Number of churches — Encroachments of Rome and abuses from non-residence — Suffragan Bishops — Code of Cathedral statutes — Claims of monasteries for exemp- tion from episcopal jurisdiction — Papal " provisions " and their evil effects — The Knights Hospitallers and their estates in the diocese— Bishop Robert Wyville — He enlarges the cloisters and completes the wall of the close — He recovers Sherborne Castle for the See — The Nonal Inquisitions for Wilts, Berks, and Dorset — William of Edington and his foundation — Bishop Ralph Erghum founds a hospital near Sarum — Inquiry as to foreigners holding benefices and dignities in the diocese Page 109 CHAPTER VII. A.D. 1380-1500. OPS, APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. The "statesman" class of bishops — Low condition of the Church as a spiritual agency — Wycliffe and his fol- CONTENTS. 9 lowers, the itinerant preachers or Lollards — Bishop John Waltham — Growth of outward observances — -The claim successfully maintained of visiting the Cathedral — Bishop Mitford — His costly memorial in the Cathedral — Car- dinal Hallam— His death at the Council of Constance — Evidences of the influence of the Church of Sarum at this period — Diocesan bishops and their suffragans — " Brothers of the Chapter " — Mode of appointing them — Bishop Aiscough — His death at Edington — Low con- dition of the Church at this period — -Bishop Beauchamp and his five suffragans — Canonization of St. Osmund, founder of the Cathedral at Old Sarum — Building of the Church of St. George's, Windsor — The Bishops of Sarum made Chancellors of the Order of the Garter — Progress in church-building at this time — Increase of outward ceremonies — General character of the bishops — Their inability to cope with the real needs of the people — Increasing influence of the trading classes in the towns — the " Merchants of the Staple " — Churches built or restored by them — Deplorable state of the religious houses and of the clergy — Jersey and Guernsey for a few years included in the diocese of Sarum . . Page 132 CHAPTER VIII. A.D. 1500-1571. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. The dawn of the Reformation — Probable number ot churches and chapels in the diocese — Extension of ver- nacular teaching — John Colet, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, a prebendary of Sarum — Lorenzo Campegio, the last of our foreign bishops — His deprivation by Act of Parliament — Nicholas Shaxton, his injunctions to the clergy of his diocese in 1538 — Sad state of things re- IO ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. vealed by the injunctions — He resigns the See of Sarum — Bishop Salcot (or Capon), his unscrupulous conduct — Change in the diocese, by the creation of that of Bristol — Licensed preachers in the diocese — Visitation of monasteries and churches — Inventories of Church goods and ornaments belonging to chantries — Number of com- municants in principal parishes — Undue pressure put upon bishops by the State for the surrender of lands — Independent succession to the See of Sarum for a time kept up at Rome — The Cathedral visited in 1558 by certain Royal Commissioners — Injunctions issued by them as to services in cathedral and other churches — Report of Jewel, as one of the Royal Commissioners, of the state of the church in the west of England — Their aim to establish a preaching clergyman in each parish to instruct the people — John Jewel advanced to the See of Sarum — His reluctance at first to accept the responsi- bility — His "Apology" for the Church of England — ■ His controversy with Harding — His work and ministra- tions in his diocese — Jewel and Richard Hooker — He builds a library for the Cathedral — Account of his de- cease at Monkton Farleigh .... Page 152 CHAPTER IX. A.D. 1570-164O. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION ON THE CHURCH OF SARUM. Immediate effects of the Reformation — Influence of the Puritan element — Lax notions as to the absolute need of episcopal ordination — General character of Jewel's suc- cessor — Bishops Gheast and Piers — Revision of the statute book of the Cathedral — Taxation of prebends for CONTENTS. I t its reparation— State of many of the parishes through the ignorance or disaffection of the vicars— The case of Bintield cited in illustration— Deprivations of clergy on various grounds — Slovenliness in Cathedral services — Bishop Davenant, his sympathy with the Puritan party —The story of Henry Sherfield, the Recorder of Sarum, and the stained glass window in St. Edmund's Church — Famous men connected with the Cathedral, John Fox, William Camden, Richard Hooker ; George Herbert, Rector of Bemerton, the influence of his life and writ- ings ; William Chillingworth, John Pearson, afterwards Bishop of Chester, Thomas Fuller, the Church historian — Character of Bishop Davenant, his ordinance con- cerning the Church of Aldborne . . . A§? 1S6. CHAPTER X. A.D. 1640-1660. THE CHURCH OF SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. Bishop Duppa translated from Chichester to Sarum— The ordinances of the Parliament respecting cathedrals and parish churches— Strong element of Puritanism at Salis- bury—Sir Edward Hungerford, leader of the Parlia- mentary forces, enters the city — Sequestration of the episcopal and capitular estates— Extent of mischief done to the Cathedral itself— Comparatively tender treatment of Salisbury Cathedral— Names of ministers authorized to preach in the Cathedral and city churches— Abolition of names as well as of offices of Deans and all other dignitaries— Purchases made of Chapter property by the Corporation of Salisbury — Numbers of the ejected from the Cathedral and various benefices in the diocese— 12 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Action of the various Parliamentary Committees — Dr. Edward Pocock, Dr. Thomas Fuller, Thomas Aylesbury, William Bartlett, Guy Carleton, and others ejected — The cases of Anthony Sadler and Walter Bushnell — Parishes left destitute of all spiritual provision — Measures contemplated for continuing the succession of bishops in England Page 207 CHAPTER XL a-d. 1 660-1 688. the church of sarum at the restoration. State of the diocese and Cathedral at the Restoration — Nonconformists in Wilts — Numbers ejected in 1662 by Act of Uniformity — Peter Ince, Thomas Rosewell, John Pinney — Richard Brideoak becomes Dean of Sarum — Bishop Seth Ward translated from the See of Exeter — His character and opinions — Letter of Archbishop Sheldon respecting Deans and Chapters — Misuse of opportunities at the Restoration — Bishop Seth Ward's " Notitire " — Number of churches and chapels — Strict carrying-out of penal laws against Nonconformists — His list of Popish Recusants and obstinate Separatists — Instances of the Bishop's severity, how extenuated by his biographer — Restoration of the Palace and the Cathedral ■ — Sermon in the nave of the Cathedral — Thomas Pierce, Dean of Sarum — Fierce controversy between him and the Bishop — Ultimate submission of the Dean — Excite- ment caused by the "Protestant Reconciler," published by Dr. Daniel Whitby — Replies to the pamphlet — The state of the Church that of lax indifference — Last illness of Bishop Seth Ward — Utter failure of his intellectual powers Page 230 CONTENTS. 13 CHAPTER XII. A.D. 1688-1800. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REVOLUTION AND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Royal visitors at the Palace at Salisbury, King James II., the Prince of Orange — Gilbert Burnet with the Prince as his chaplain — The flight and abdication of the King- Burnet becomes Bishop of Sarum — General state of the diocese when he succeeded to it — His plans for the good of his diocese — The Non-jurors in Wilts and Berks — His scheme for the regular visitation of all the parishes and promoting the more reverent observance of Confirmation — His endeavours to train fit candidates for the ministry and to abolish pluralities — Joseph Kelsey, afterwards Arch- deacon of Sarum, resigns the living of Bemerton after hear- ing the Bishop's primary charge — Schools and hospitals founded during his episcopate — The successors of Bishop Burnet — Famous men connected with the Cathedral, Edward Chandler, afterwards Bishop of Durham ; White Kennet, author of " Parochial Antiquities " ; John Bampton, founder of the Bampton Lectures ; Joseph Butler, author of the "Analogy of Religion" — The work of John Wesley in the West of England— Attempts at restoration of the Cathedral — Reckless treatment of it at the hands of Wyatt — Destruction of the Hungerford and Beauchamp Chapels and of the bell-tower — General state of the Church and diocese at the close of the eighteenth century Page 252 14 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. CHAPTER XIII. A.D. 1800-1880. THE CHURCH OF SARUM IN OUR OWN TIMES. Steady progress of the Church in the diocese since the commencement of the present century — Bishop Burgess translated from the See of St. David's — He founds and endows the Church Union Society — The episcopate of Bishop Denison — Organization of the diocese — Forma- tion of Board of Education and Church Building Society — General advance in Church restoration and education of the poor — Bishop Hamilton — Revival and utilization of the office of Rural Bean — Annual meetings at the Palace for conference — Bishop Moberly — Constitution of the Diocesan Synod — Concluding remarks as to the thankfulness and truthfulness taught us by a general history of the Church of Sarum .... Page 272 Index 279 x Ifl H 5 3 M O CO 5 £ Q u C/3 x 5> C/3 • C4 D o bo P3 1— 1 OJ r^ en Q (U O "cn < w .2 o t s fcj CO a H3 z . ^ H o o < w co co o x" tf W3 CO itf PEI p" i-T ^1 '*• J .■ s> *i < Pi Q 3 — ■& >5 ^ ti ^ o > - 1 w 4J " 1! %i H CO < >-> w c . V ^ O S *1 - K |Z — X „ (— < » * fc to £ 5 a in o ^ w • CO rt en _g > " 2 w w IT. a, a - h-3 £ co !2 HH m O 'u, < _ u : g H : : CJ l>-> ON C\ u-1 O J--. <^ r^ t-^ ON ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY, CHAPTER I. a.d. 634-705. the foundation of the episcopate in wrssex. The Saxon Chronicle, under the year 634, has this entry — "This year Birinus preached baptism — bodade fulluht — to the West Saxons, under King Cynegils." Brief as is this notice, its importance cannot be over- estimated ; first of all, in consideration of the great results in the permanent Christianising of a great portion of the west of England, which followed that visit of a missionary bishop, — and, in the second place, as forming an exact starting-point for a history of the diocese of Sarum. For that diocese was originally a portion of that immense district over which Birinus had nominal jurisdiction, and the see of which was first fixed at the little village of Dorchester, in Oxford- shire. It will be well, at the outset, to try and realize the state of things existing at the commencement of the / 1 8 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. seventh century in the south-western parts of England; for it is to those times, and those portions of our country, that our inquiry is to be directed. Let it be borne in mind, then, that barely one hun- dred and fifty years had elapsed since, after an occu- pation of well nigh five centuries, the last of the Roman legions quitted our shores. The religion of the empire at that time was, nominally at any rate, Christian, and we have conclusive evidence of the existence of a British Church, with its goodly number of bishops, in our country, though the details respect- ing it from the absence of trustworthy records are too often of doubtful authority. Moreover, the first land- ing of Cerdic, the founder of the kingdom of the west Saxons, was but little more than one hundred years distant. Of course the mission of Augustine in Kent was quite recent, and his interviews with British bishops, so graphically described by the chroniclers, which took place at some spot not far from the banks of the Severn, afterwards called " Augustine's oak," brought him very near the confines of Wessex. Ne- vertheless, at the time we are speaking of, Wessex was practically heathen. In the two hundred years pre- viously, from the days when the Romans left till the accession of Ina the throne of Wessex, the annals of our country are simply records of confusion and anarchy ; of vain, though gallant struggles against the advance of the invaders, of the gradual casting away on the part of the Britons of their primitive Chris- tianity ; of their subjugation to heathen lords, whose aim was not simply to wrest from them their land, but " to stamp out " their faith, and in the place of their FOUNDATION OF THE EPISCOPATE IN WESSEX. 1 9 simple worship of the one true God to substitute that of Woden, Thor, and the " gods many " that are found in the Teutonic mythology. And too suc- cessful they were in their onslaught on this primitive Christianity of Britain. Bede, writing of the " Ge- wissse," or west Saxons, calls them at this time " most confirmed pagans, or heathens j" the word he uses concerning them is paganiss'iinos. And so in truth they were — dark as the dark and impenetrable forests that then abounded everywhere in that portion of our country. A few words may be useful in passing, as to what was comprehended in the kingdom of Wessex at the commencement of the seventh century. Here we can, after all, only speak in general terms : for we are dealing with a period when the limits of the two great rival kingdoms of Wessex' and Mercia were hardly defined. To say the truth, their border- line was continually shifting during the first half of the seventh century. Thus we learn from the Saxon Chronicle, that, in the year 577, Cuthwin and Ceawlin took the three cities of Gloucester, Ciren- cester, and Bath from the Britons, and added them to the kingdom of Wessex. The two former cities were shortly afterwards in Mercia ; and a battle fought, in 628, between Cynegils of Wessex and Penda of Mercia at Cirencester, was no doubt caused by a dispute about the northern and southern frontiers of their respective kingdoms. And as regards Bath, the foundation of an abbey there by Offa, king of Mercia, in 757, seems to imply, that, though eighty years before it had been in Wessex, it was at c 2 20 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. all events subsequently in Mercia. So too with regard to Dorchester, in Oxfordshire ; — in early days it was undoubtedly in Wessex, and became the seat of its bishopric, — it was afterwards passed over to Mercia, and became the seat of the bishopric which was finally settled at Lincoln. In the kingdom of the west Saxons, at the beginning of the seventh century, was included what we now call Hampshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire, besides, as seems pretty certain, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire. In addition to these last-named Counties — which were not retained by Wessex for any long time, for as her dominion was extended westward, so it became contracted northward — there was included at all events the eastern portion of Somerset and Dorset. Cornwall and Devon, even till a much later period, were called Weala-Cyn, i.e., Welsh-kind ; and, without all doubt, the western parts of Somerset and Dorset had a large Celtic population, and might fairly be included in that district. The laws of King Ina, promulgated at the close of the seventh century, imply the existence in his dominions — most probably in Somerset — of two races, for they define with much exactness the relations between the conquering Englishman and the conquered Briton. Indeed, local names still remaining in Wilts and Somerset preserve the tradition of those early days, when Briton and Englishman lived side by side as neighbours. Thus, to give an illustration or two, — near Bath we have, close by one another, Wal-cot, i.e., Weala-cot, or the dwelling of the Wealas (or Welshmen), and English-combe, i.e., the "combe," or dell, in which FOUNDATION OF THE EPISCOPATE IN WESSEX. 21 the Englishmen lived. And again, not far from Salisbury, on opposite sides of the stream, at the spot where one of the earliest struggles between the Britons and the English took place, we have Brit-ford, i.e., the ford of the Brits (or Britons), and Chard-ford, originally Cerdices-ford, a memorial of Cerdic, the first chieftain who gained a real footing here, and the founder of the kingdom of Wessex. In our opening sentence we have briefly referred to Birinus, as the founder of that episcopate in the west of England, out of which the diocese of Sarum, together with others, was, in the course of centuries, taken. He was in effect, as he has been rightly termed, the " Apostle of Wessex." Of his previous history we know little or nothing ; and the statement that he was a Roman — the Saxon chronicle, under the year 649, speaks of him as " Romanised biseop" — may be only a conjecture. He appears to have lived at Genoa, and to have laboured in some sort as a missionary among those with whom he then came into contact, and for that purpose to have made a special study of the Teutonic languages. Many people from the north of Europe frequented that mart, and from them he had opportunities, of which he availed himself, of learning their native tongue. Naturally enough, when an agent for so important a work as the propagation of the Gospel, in those por- tions of England that were still heathen, was needed, the lot fell on Birinus. The reigning Pope, Hono- rius I., laid this solemn charge upon him, to go forth and " sow the seed of the holy faith in the inner parts beyond the Angles, where no teacher had 2 2 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. been before him." Straightway he received conse- cration as a bishop at the hands of Asterius, the arch- bishop 1 of Milan, who resided at Genoa. He was not consecrated to any particular see, but was made a " regionary," or " missionary " bishop, and left free to choose within certain limits his own centre of opera- tions. On his arrival in this country he first landed in Hampshire, and at once entered the nation of the west Saxons. There he found a state of things which called for the immediate efforts of the missionary. They were sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death. His determination was soon taken ; he felt that there was a call upon him " to preach the Word of God there, rather than to proceed further in search of others to whom he might preach it." When we speak of a distinct mission given by the Pope to Birinus, our thoughts naturally revert to an earlier mission of the same character sent forth some forty years previously, with a sanction of a similar kind, for the purpose of converting the English nation to the faith. The story of Pope Gregory, in the year 596, sending forth Augustine and his forty companions from Rome on this holy mission, is too well known to justify its repetition here. Suffice it to say, that, during that comparatively long interval of some forty years, little, if anything, in reality had been attempted for the conversion of the west 1 Pagi in his "Annotations on Baronius" (No. 635, § 3) says : — " Birinum nulli sedi ascriptum ab apostolica sede missum esse," &c. This had been the case with Ninian, Suidbert, Boniface (at first), Amandusand others. See Maclear, "Ap. Med. Eur.," P- 77- FOUNDATION OF THE EPSICOPATE IN WESSEX. -O Saxons, either by Augustine or by his successors in the see of Canterbury. In truth, their efforts had hardly overstepped the boundaries of the little kingdom of Kent. No doubt, Augustine, as we have intimated, met British bishops at some place not far from the borders of Wessex, and, it is only fair to say, that one account states that among the first hearers of Birinus were some who had been converted by Augustine. Still the fact remains, that the west Saxon Church was founded by an independent mission from Rome to Wessex, a mission that had the direct sanction of the Pope himself, and was carried out without any communication with Honorius, who at the time was Archbishop of Canterbury. The conver- sion of Wessex was really first commenced by Birinus in 634, and finally effected by a Frankish bishop from Ireland, ^Egelbyrht, in 650. And so the Church •of Wessex was, as it were, a distinct colony of Rome, quite independent of Augustine. The submission of its church to that of Canterbury, in the days of Archbishop Theodore, was, as has been well remarked, " the natural result of the influence of Rome, and the general working of affairs in England ; but it was not perhaps without some shadowy memory of the original independence of the Church of Wessex, that Henry of Blois, ages afterwards, strove to attain metropolitical rank for his church at Winchester." l 1 More on this point may be read in a Paper by Mr. E. A. Freeman on King Ina (p. 2.), in the Magazine of the Somerset Archaeological Society, vol. xx. (note 13), and in " Fasti Eccl. Sarisberiensis," p. 5. 24 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. It would hardly seem unfair to draw the conclusion, that this independent mission from Rome to Wessex was a tacit rebuke to those, who, boastingly claiming to be in an especial sense the founders of the church in England, wasted their time and their energies in vain disputes with the British bishops whom they found in the country, and who refused to acknowledge their superiority, in such comparatively trifling matters as the tonsure and the right day of observing Easter ? For there is certainly some reason for thinking, that, at the time when Birinus was sent into England, the Canterbury mission had come to be regarded at Rome, by those who took interest in such matters, as a com- parative failure. The prospect before Birinus was by no means a hopeful one. For some years before his arrival stirring scenes had been going on in Wessex. A war, almost of extermination, had been waged by the English settlers, or rather conquerors, against the British inhabitants of the island. It assumed that most bitter form of conflict — the struggle of heathen- dom against Christianity. In the interval between 605 and 613 a great battle took place at Lega-ceastre (Chester), in which not only numberless Welshmen, but two hundred priests who came to pray for the army of the Welsh, were slain. Shortly afterwards, King Cynegils and Cuichelm his son, fought at " Beandune," and again more than two thousand Welshmen were slaughtered. As we have already indicated, long before either Augustine or Birinus landed on our shores there was a British Church, with a native episcopate, flourishing FOUNDATION OF THE EPISCOPATE IN WESSEX. 25 here. But the haughty Englishman had not only trampled upon, but refused all along to listen to the despised and persecuted Briton, — a fact that may, in part at least, excuse the Celtic bishops from the blame cast on them by Bede, for not effecting the conversion of their heathen conquerors. And without all doubt, the heathenism of the latter had well nigh effaced at last all outward traces of the primitive Christianity of what now was Wessex, so that its- inhabitants, in the middle of the seventh century, were themselves practically heathen. And yet, when the attempt was made to bring the English in Wessex to a knowledge of the faith, the difficulties were found to be more apparent than real. There is in Christianity such an element of vitality, that although for a time it may seem well nigh ex- tinguished the flame soon bursts forth again from the smouldering embers, when, in God's providence, the oppressor's hand is loosened or his heart becomes softened. Then we learn that the seed, though trampled under foot, has all along lived and germinated in secret,ready again to give forth its blossoms, when circumstances favour their development. So it was in the case of Birinus. Within a year of the commencement of his mission, he was suc- cessful in winning a royal convert to the Christian faith. Cynegils, the king of Wessex, had now reigned for twenty-four years, — years of continued strife and bloodshed. Weary of the din of war, he longed for peace. He listened to the foreign teacher, who offered, and promised him peace, though in a way he little expected. By degrees Woden, Thunor, Tiw, — 26 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISPAJRY. the gods whom he had been worshipping as the deities of war, of strife, and of death — lost their hold upon him. He felt the strong " drawings " of the Gospel, and after a while asked to be prepared for admission into the Christian Church. Other circumstances helped forward this move- ment on the part of the rulers in Wessex. Oswald, the successor of Edwin, in Northumbria, who was now Bretwalda, was desirous of living on friendly- terms with the. West Saxon princes, and asked for the daughter of Cynegils as his wife. Consent having been given, Oswald, probably in 635, towards the end of the first year of his reign, came to Wessex in order to claim and take home his bride. Her father was at the time being prepared for baptism, and so it was agreed that Cynegils should himself become a chris- tian before the christian Oswald became his son-in- law. The chroniclers are especially careful to note this most important event in the history of the Church of Wessex. Thus in the Saxon chronicle we have this entry under the year 635 : " This year king Cynegils was baptized by Birinus, the bishop of Dorchester, and Oswald king of the Northumbrians was his spon- sor." And Bede narrates the same event in the following words : " Now as Birinus preached in the province of the west Saxons, it happened that the king himself, having been duly instructed, was washed in the font of baptism with his people ; and Oswald the most holy and victorious king of the Northum- brians, being present, received him as he came forth from the laver, and by an alliance most pleasing and FOUNDATION OF THE EPISCOPATE IN WESSEX. 27 acceptable to God, being about to take his daughter as a wife, first of all took him thus dedicated to God by a second birth {secunda generatione Deo dicatum) as a son." The ancient church of Dorchester, in Oxfordshire, stands, it may be, on the traditional spot that witnessed the christianizing of the dynasty which grew into the royal line of England. The immediate consequence of this important event, hardly second in interest — at all events in Wessex — to the baptism of Ethelbert in Kent, was the first organization of a west Saxon Church. The little village of Dorchester, insignifi- cant as it may be now, holds, as the cradle of Chris- tianity in Wessex, a high place in the annals of the Church of England. For from that bishopric of Wessex, of which it was the see in earlier days, have proceeded the episcopates of Winchester, Sherborne, Ramsbury, and Sarum. In a life of Oswald, contained in the " Acta Sanc- torum," it is distinctly stated that the conversion of the West Saxons was procured in part through the agency of Oswald. This is to us a fact of no little interest, because it shows not only the indirect influence of the Celtic Church in bringing to pass so important a result, but also explains why that antagonism, which existed between Augustine and his successors and the Celtic bishops, was not found in the Church of Wessex. For Oswald, when he determined to esta- blish Christianity in his own kingdom of Northum- bria, sent to Scotland, where he had himself, when an exile, been baptized into the faith ; and obtained his missionaries from the Celtic bishops. It is no forced 28 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. supposition, surely, to think that his influence with Cynegilswas exerted favourably in behalf of the ancient church of Britain, and that this may have kept the church in Wessex independent of Canterbury. Cer- tain it is, that the two immediate successors of Birinus were consecrated in France and not at Canterbury. Moreover, Ceadda (or Chad), afterwards bishop of Lichfield, was consecrated to the see of York by Wina, bishop of Wessex, assisted by two British bishops, so that at that time — towards the close, that is, of the seventh century — the Church of Wessex was in communion with both the British and Saxon bishops. And this success must have been specially welcome to Birinus. In the year following that in which Cynegils professed himself a Christian, his example was followed by his son Cuichelm ; and two years afterwards, in 639, Cuthred, the king's grandson,, who, like his father, Cuichelm, had been a " sub-king" under Cynegils, made a like profession, and was bap- tized by Birinus, the good bishop then taking upon himself the office of sponsor. Remarks that have been made in passing will have given our readers ample reason for understanding that in speaking of Birinus as the " Apostle of Wessex," we by no means ignore the existence of the ancient British Church. The influence of that Church, oppressed though it was, has probably been much undervalued by the general historian. We should, perhaps, be nearer the exact truth, if we were to describe, both Augustine in Kent and Birinus in Wessex, as the ?-estorers rather than the first planters of the faith in the south of England. FOUNDATION OF THE EPISCOPATE IN WESSEX. 2 The Celtic Church in Ireland, as we well know, was so renowned for the excellence of its institutions and the piety of its clergy, that the island received the ap- pellation of " Insula Sanctorum," or the Isle of Saints. It was to the zeal of Irish missionaries — among whom stands pre-eminently S. Columba — that Scotland was indebted for its conversion ; and when Oswald deter- mined to introduce Christianity into his dominions he sent to Scotland and thence obtained S. Aidan and a band of missionaries as preachers of the faith. And of those who lived in what are now called the Midland, and Eastern Counties, we know that they were in- debted for their conversion to no Italian or Frankish bishops, but to those earlier missionaries who passed through Bernicia and Deira into East Anglia and Mercia. Down to a much later period than this of which we are now writing, the Britons retained not only Wales but Cornwall and Devon, and probably much of the western parts of Somerset. And we have already seen the indirect influence of the Celtic Church, in inducing Cynegils and his people to embrace Christianity. Admitting all this, from the absence of trustworthy records the task of tracing the episcopal succession in Wessex higher than Birinus is impossible. At the same time, as is well observed by Dean Hook, in his " Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury" (i. 13), it is satisfactory for us to know that the various branches of the Celtic Church " gradually merged into the Anglo-Saxon, and that whether through Augustine or Birinus we deduce that succession of the christian ministry which con- nects the present Church of England with the primi- 30 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. tive and Apostolic Church, it is the main stream that we trace to its source ; and that the rills which have swollen its waters, though by no means to be despised, become only of secondary importance, except to the local geographer. The English people are formed by the fusion of the Celtic and Teutonic races : they are undistinguishably united, although the Saxon element predominates. And so also in the Church of England ; we do not ignore the Celtic Church, but, as an historical fact, we regard it as ab- sorbed into the patriarchate of Canterbury." It was at Dorchester, or as Bede terms it Dorcic (dwr-gwk), or " village by the river," that, in the year 650, the good Bishop Birinus was called to his rest, after having, as Bede expresses it, "gone up and down among the west Saxons," — that is, from Dorset to Buckingham, from Surrey to the Severn, — " preach- ing, catechising, baptizing, calling many people to the Lord by his pious labours, and building and con- secrating many churches." He was buried " in his own city," and " among his own people." Many years after, whilst Headda held the see of Wessex, his body was translated to Winchester, and deposited in the church of S.S. Peter and Paul. Birinus was afterwards admitted into the calendar of saints, the third day of December being devoted to the com- memoration of his holy example. Though this work does not profess to be a history of the episcopate, or of the cathedral church when in due time it was established, but of the progress of the church in the diocese at large, yet, in all that we have to say, the figure of the Bishop, as the central one FOUNDATION OF THE EPISCOPATE IN WESSEX. 31 of the picture around which all others are grouped, must ever be more or less prominent. And certainly, of any Episcopate that we may attempt to sketch, none can be of greater interest than that of Birinus ; especially when we view him as deriving his special commission from the Pope, and his episcopate from the great see of St. Ambrose, and hallowing, in the sacred rite of baptism, his most important convert, and so laying securely the foundation of the church in the kingdom of the \Yest Saxons. No less than four bishops succeeded one another during the next half century in the diocese of Wessex, which had been thus founded, and nominally ruled over, by Birinus. The first of them, /Egelbyrht by name, soon became distasteful to Cemvalch the king, and in a few years resigning the see retired to Paris, where he became bishop of that diocese. Wina, who next became Bishop of Wessex, was also in a short time driven out by the same capricious king, although he had been a bishop of his own choice. Then came a dreary period of some four or five years, during which Wessex was without a bishop at all. Hlothere and Headda, both of whom were in turn consecrated by Archbishop Theodore, then followed in quick succession ; but their lot was cast in stormy times, for certain "under kings" (sub-rcguli) seized the government and held it for ten years. Nor was peace assured in any degree, nor any real progress made in the sub-division of this great diocese until the year 688, when Ina as- cended the thone of Wessex. For a little while, during the seventy years which wc 32 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. have been reviewing, Winchester, rather than Dor- chester, would seem to have been the seat of the bishops of Wessex. King Cenwalch, as early as 664, made an effort to remove the see, and Wina, no doubt, for a portion of his episcopate, lived at Winchester. But the motive that influenced Cenwalch was possibly not so much a desire to divide the see, as to set up the city of Winchester, in which he had built a church, as a rival to Dorchester. Moreover, Headda lived at Winchester during the greater part of his episcopate, which extended from 676-705. Indeed, it seems more than probable, that when, at the very time he succeeded to his bishopric, the west Saxons were de- prived, through the conquests of Wulfhere, king ot Mercia, of all their settlements north of the Thames, the old "bishop-stool" at Dorchester was perma- nently removed to Winchester, which then became the new capital of this shrunken realm. One thing is certain, that it was not until the days of Headda that the see was finally removed to Win- chester. Moreover, no sub-division of the diocese, however it may have been contemplated, actually took place till the year 705, when Headda died. There is, indeed, a fragment of a decree, said to have been passed in a synod held by Archbishop Theo- dore about the year 679, which expressly forbade any change being made in the boundaries of the diocese during the lifetime of Headda, and for this strange reason, because he had brought the relics of S. Birinus to Winchester. The question was really raised again in 704, the year before Headda's de- cease, for in a letter written by Waldhere, bishop of FOUNDATION OF THE EPISCOPATE IN WESSEX. 33 London, to Archbishop Beorhtwald, in 705, he refers to a decree made in the previous year for the " ordi- nation of West-Saxon bishops," which can hardly mean anything except a division of the West-Saxon diocese. For want of documentary annals it is not possible to give any exact statement as to the real progress ot the church in Wessex during this period. It in- cludes the time, a most important one for the English Church, when Theodore held the see of Can- terbury. To him especially is due, it is said, the establishment of parish churches, and the giving the right of patronage to their founders. No doubt his efforts were successful in brinsrins: the church of Wessex, during the days of Headda, to a more com- plete acknowledgment of the supremacy of Canterbury. That bishop had been a monk and abbot under Hilda at Whitby, and was consecrated by Archbishop Theodore in London. It was at a synod held at Whitby, in 664, that the question of Easter was decided in favour of the Roman reckoning, and -so one stumbling-block was removed from the way of the church in Wessex in its dealings with the ancient British Church, inasmuch as the course to be taken by it was made clear. Not that the bishops of the old church of the country yielded on the point, still, the efforts of Theodore and Headda paved the way to the ultimate supremacy of the church of Augustine, and the final " absorption of the Celtic Church into the patriarchate of Canterbury." The "penitential" of Theodore, which was pro- mulgated during the episcopate of Headda, shows by implication a sad state of demoralization among D 34 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. those bearing the name of Christ. It is, indeed, a grave question, how far by assigning specific penances to each offence against the law of God, it helped for- ward personal purity and holiness. Two of the Bishops of Wessex, Birinus and Headda have, by a sort of common consent, been admitted into the calendar of saints. It was not till the tenth century that the popes claimed for them- selves the right of adding new saints to the calendar. Of old, canonization seems to have been the result of an irregular popular, or monkish suffrage, of an instinct which recognised a life of peculiar usefulness or holiness. The first founder of a church in Corn- wall was very frequently, indeed, commonly, regarded as a saint, and so spoken of. So, too, with regard to St. Etheldreda, the foundress of Ely, and St. Erken- wald, practically the founder of the see of London, both of whom lived in the seventh century. It was just this instinctive feeling that at once raised Birinus and Headda to the rank of saints ; indeed, Bede speaks of Headda as not so much a man of learning, as one of holiness of life and earnestness in his work ; and Birinus, as we have narrated, was the first mis- sionary and the founder of the Church of Wessex. ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. 35 CHAPTER II. A.D. 705-909. FIRST SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. Allusion has been made to the various efforts made to divide the diocese that was nominally ruled by Birinus and his successors, the Bishops of Wessex, the bounds of which were co-extensive with that kingdom. The see was, it is true, removed from Dorchester to Winchester, but the diocese remained as it was until the beginning of the eighth century. The great promoter of its subdivision was King Ina, who in the year 688 ascended the throne of Wessex. Of King Ina — one of the most famous names in the history of the English people — we must say a few- words, before dwelling on his great work, the sub- division of the unwieldy diocese, and the placing in the see of Sherborne (that one of the newly- created sees which especially concerns us) the saintly Aldhelm, who was not only his near kinsman, but among the worthiest of his subjects, and, in any case, certainly the most eminent churchman in his dominions. King Ina comes before us not merely as a con- queror, — for during nearly the whole of the thirty-six years of his reign in Wessex he was engaged in wars or contests, foreign and domestic, — but also as a D 2 36 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. christian ruler and lawgiver. He was also eminently a Church benefactor ; not only a lavish giver to eccle- siastical bodies, but an enlightened promoter of eccle- siastical changes for the good of his people. It was Ina who was the second founder of British Glaston- bury, and possibly the first founder of English Wells. And it was he that first issued a code of laws in which the law of God was distinctly recognised as the basis of all moral obligation. These, which are happily still preserved to us, are the earliest monuments of West Saxon jurisprudence, and as such are among the most precious monuments of our early history, and in reality the beginning of the laws of England. They come to us in the manuscripts incorporated with the laws of the great Alfred, who tells us that " those things which he met with, either of the days of Ina his kinsman, or of Offa, king of the Mercians, or of Ethelbert, who first among the English race received baptism, he had gathered together," and they are numbered with them so as to form one code. They are prefaced with a recital of the Ten Command- ments, and throughout imply a deep conviction that obedience to God's law is the foundation of all moral and social virtues. They represent both these great kings, Ina and Alfred, as true Church-workers, jealous for the honour of God and the advancement of His Church in the world. It was in the year 705, during the reign of King Ina, that the subdivision of the great diocese of Wessex actually took place. Two sees were formed out of it, the " bishop-stool " of the one being fixed at Winchester, and of the other at Sherborne. FIRST SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 37 The bishops appointed were Daniel to the former, and Aldhelm to the latter see. They had both of them been brought up at Malmesbury; their principal instructor there having been Maildulf, a Scottish, or perhaps Irish hermit, who settled there in the earlier part of the seventh century, and who is the traditional founder of the monastery established in that place. It is by no means easy to define accurately the pre- cise limits of these two new dioceses. The truth would seem to be, that the large forest of Selwood, which stretched through their central portion, was fixed upon as a rough and convenient border-line between them. This is tolerably clear from statements both in the Saxon Chronicle and other authorities. Thus, in the former, under the year 709, we have this entry: — " This year Bishop Aldhelm died : he was bishop on the west of Selwood" Henry of Huntingdon, more- over, under the year 705, says : " Ina, in the twentieth year of his reign, divided the bishopric of Wessex, which used to be one, into two sees ; the portion east of the woods Daniel held ; that which was west of the woods Aldhelm held." Moreover, in Ethelwerd's Chronicle the diocese, the see of which was at Sher- borne, is expressly called Selwood-shire (" provincia qua? vulgo Sealuudscire dicitur"). There is no doubt that at one time the forest of Selwood extended over no inconsiderable portion of the western division of Wilts, so that though Hamp- shire, Berkshire, and the eastern parts of Wiltshire, were retained in the newly-constituted diocese of Win- chester, much of the western portion of Wiltshire (con- taining not only Malmesbury, but Bradford-on-Avon, 38 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. and Bishopstrow), together with the whole of Dorset and Somerset, were included in that of Sherborne. We of the diocese of Sarum are of course con- cerned chiefly with the last-named see, which em- braced, as we have said, all that lay " west of Selwood." It included all that country which must be ever first in our thoughts when we speak of the first Bishop of Sherborne, the saintly Aldhelm. Geographically speaking, Sherborne was a well- chosen spot ; indeed, for a region which took in Bridport and Bedminster, and Poole and Porlock, no more central place could be found. Even in the days of William of Malmesbury it was but a small and unimportant place, for he speaks of it as a little town (viaehts), "pleasant neither by multitude of inhabitants, nor by beauty of position," in which, he adds, "it is wonderful, and almost shameful, that a bishop's see should have remained for so many ages." 1 But, as Mr. Freeman remarks, "William of Malmes- bury wrote in the spirit of an age which had adopted the continental notion of a bishopric, and which therefore despised the lowly seats in which so many of the earlier bishoprics were placed." Of the early days of Aldhelm we have but little in- formation. Though he was of royal lineage, we know neither the year nor the place of his birth with cer- tainty. He was educated at what was afterwards called Malmesbury, a monastery to which King Ina 1 See William of Malmesbury, Gcsta Pontif., p. 175. His words respecting Sherborne are, "viculns, nee habitantium frequentia nee positionis gratia suavis, in quo mirandum est et pudendum sedem episcopalem per tot durasse srecula." FIRST SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 39 was in course of time a generous benefactor. He became first of all a monk, and ultimately head of that religious house. And so, whilst Ina was ruling in Wessex, and promulgating his laws for the better government of his people, Aldhelm was no less really, though silently, carrying on the good work of promul- gating the truth among them. Of Aldhelm's life as a member of the religious house at Malmesbury we know but little. One anec- dote related concerning him is too characteristic of his earnest zeal to be omitted. Observing with pain that the country-people who came to hear divine ser- vice could with difficulty be persuaded to listen to the exhortations of the preacher, Aldhelm determined to seek to impress the truth of Christianity upon them in another way. He was a good musician as well as a poet, and so, watching the occasion, he stationed himself on the bridge over which the people had to pass, and in the character of a minstrel recited and sang to them some popular songs. A crowd of listeners gathered round him, and when he had gained their attention he gradually introduced words of a more serious character, till at last he succeeded in impressing on their minds a true feeling of devo- tion. The Reformation was advanced in this country and elsewhere, it is sometimes said, by the use of singing psalms, though few perhaps are aware that in the commencement of Christianity among our English forefathers it was occasionally the same use which pro- moted the knowledge of religion with them, the psalm itself being frequently called by them "harp-song." But Aldhelm was diligent as a church-builder. At 40 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Malmesbury he is said to have built two churches, — one within the monastery, for the use of its inmates, and the other without its walls for the townsfolk or villagers. Moreover, he built a church near his own private estate, "not far from Wareham in Dorset, where Corfe Castle stands out in the sea," the remains of which were to be seen in the days of William of Malmesbury. He is said also to have founded a church at Briwetune (Bruton), in Somerset. For the realm of Ina was adorned with a number of churches, the work of his saintly kinsman. In addition to those good works, Aldhelm founded two smaller monasteries, and two churches also, at Frome and at Bradford on Avon respectively. By a " smaller monastery " is meant, a missionary settle- ment or centre, from which the blessings of Christi- anity might be conveyed to the surrounding people. Indeed, the word "monastery," for some centuries after the time of which we are writing, frequently meant only a church with a dwelling-house attached to it, in which lived and worked the little band of missionaries who gave themselves up to the holy task of seeking to win to Christ some of the sheep that were wandering far off in the wilderness. Many of these lesser monasteries had in the first instance very much the character of those stations established in Africa by the late Bishop Gray, of Cape Town, or of those missionary brotherhoods which have been lately advocated as a means, especially needed in India, for the propagation of the truth. In the time of William of Malmesbury, the two little churches erected by Aldhelm at Frome and • FIRST SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 4 1 Bradford-on-Avon were still standing. And now, 1200 years since Aldhelm lived, all his buildings have passed away save one of these churches, a most precious relic of bygone days marvellously preserved to us — the " ecclesiola " (as Malmesbury terms it), erected at Bradford. There it still stands, on the anks of the Avon, telling its tale that the English of the seventh and eighth centuries, though no doubt they usually built their simple churches of wood, were nevertheless quite able when materials were close at hand to build them also in stone. Without doubt the especial interest attaching to this "little church" at Bradford-on-Avon arises from the fact, noticed by Mr. Freeman, that it may be regarded as a type of those larger churches which Aldhelm built elsewhere. To use his words,— " we must picture to ourselves the abbey-church at Malmesbury and the cathedral-church at Sherborne, as they came from the hands of Aldhelm, as build- ings presenting what we may suppose to have been the likeness of a greater Bradford." " The time of Ina," adds Mr. Freeman, " was one of remarkable activity in the way of church-building. It was, in fact, one of the most flourishing periods of the ancient English Church. And the West Saxon Bradford may fairly be set against the two famous churches of the North, the churches of Benedict at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth. If we have but one church to set against two, we may say that Bradford is all but perfect, while Jarrow and Monkwearmouth • have been largely altered in later, though still ancient times. In mere workmanship Bradford altogether 42 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. surpasses the contemporary parts of the North- umbrian buildings. And as for their personal memo- ries, if we must yield the first place among the worthies of the early English Church to the North- umbrian Bede,we may fairly claim a place only second to his in the West-Saxon Aldhelm." Allusion has been more than once made to the bitter and long-continued enmity that existed between the old British churches and those which recognised the authority of Augustine and his successors at Canterbury. But in Wessex, where that antagonism had never been of the same violent character as else- where, Aldhelm was able to do much as a " Peace- maker" towards healing the breach altogether. The laws of King Ina, in which even justice was meted out to all his subjects, Welsh and English alike, together with the efforts of Aldhelm and others to remove those grounds of difference, which, exaggerated into undue importance, had been a barrier to com- munion between the two churches, began at last to produce their natural result. The British bishops, whose determination was not to be broken by the haughty demands of Augustine, at last showed some willingness to yield on the question of Easter, and expressed a desire for reconciliation and union. In Cornwall, indeed, the bishops persisted for a while in retaining the old usage, but the efforts of Aldhelm, who was commissioned by Brihtwald, at the time Archbishop of Canterbury, to act the part of mediator between the churches, were at length successful. He wrote a letter to Geraint, whom he styles King ol Damnonia (Devonshire) and Cornwall, and addresses as FIRST SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 43 " the glorious lord of the Western realm," by which many of the objections to union between the two churches were removed. Still, though open anta- gonism ceased, there was no complete acknowledg- ment by the Welsh of the English Primate till some centuries afterwards,— till the country, in fact, was subdued under the Norman dynasty. Even with regard to the Church of Wessex, though it was nomi- nally subject to the Church of Kent, it was always mindful of its independent origin, and yielded no servile obedience to Canterbury or even to Rome. What Lappenberg says of the English at this time, generally, is especially true of those in Wessex, — "even though they were no longer anti-catholic, they were always anti-papal." The appointment of Aldhelm to the high office of Bishop of Sherborne, when that diocese included all " west of Selwood," approved itself to all. Every- one we are told turned instinctively to him, and the people were active and urgent in his election. He was himself present at the " witena-gemot " at which the choice was made. He would fain have declined the honour. " I am too old,— I need rest," was his expostulation with those who announced the decision to him. But instantlyand by acclamation came the reply, "The older, the wiser." With no unfeigned reluctance he yielded to their decision. He was shortly afterwards consecrated at Canterbury by his friend and kinsman, Archbishop Brihtwald. Aldhelm held the see at Sherborne for the short space of four years. His biographer dwells lovingly on the earnestness and self-denial of the holy bishop. 44 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Though threescore years and ten, and by no means of a vigorous constitution, he travelled about from place to place, as one of the most devoted of mission- aries, nearly always, it seems to be implied, on foot, with his " ashen-stock," to help him forward, and wherever he had the opportunity, preaching the gospel to the people, and planting the church in their midst. The chronicler indeed tells us, that when he halted he planted his "ashen-stock" in the ground, and from such spots trees afterwards sprang forth ; and he adds that the name " Bishopstrow," which he explains as meaning " Bishop 1 s-tree" was thus called from having been the scene of one of the bishop's ministrations. We smile at the credulity of the mediasval chronicler, though there is nevertheless a fragment, nay, more than a fragment, of truth under- lying his interpretation. He is right, too, in the main, ■even in his etymology; though he did know, per- chance, that the old Anglo-Saxon word " treow " meant not only " tree " but also a " cross," — as it is employed indeed in our authorized version of the Bible in Acts v. 30 : " whom they slew and hanged on a tree " ; and so that the name " Biscopes-treow," as it used to be written, might fairly be interpreted as " Bishop's-cross," the place where he literally planted the cross, and preached to the people " the word of life." Perhaps, like Augustine, he carried before him a simple wooden cross, and held up before the people, or fixed in the ground, this symbol of our faith, whilst he proclaimed to them the truth of Christ crucified. The very name, at all events, tells us of the earnest FIRST SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 45 efforts of this holy man and true missionary, if it only brings before us the scene of his labours, when, stand- ing under some tree for shelter, he preached to the people the Word of Life. And there can be no doubt that Bishopstrow is a memorial to the good bishop, for the church there is dedicated to him. It was whilst engaged in his sacred work, at no very great distance from Bishopstrow, that Aldhelm finished his earthly course. His ascetic habits had probably made him prematurely old. But he abated none of them even to the last, whilst he discharged his duties indefatigably, visiting every part of his large diocese, and preaching by night as well as by day. He was so engaged near Doulting, a small village in Somerset, the church of which is also dedicated to him, when he felt himself smitten with a mortal sickness. Straightway he directed his attendants to carry him into the little wooden church, where he had himself ministered to the flock he had gathered around him as their shepherd, and there the first bishop of Sherborne peacefully breathed his soul into the bosom of the great " Shepherd and Bishop " of souls. So lived and died a true worker for God, the "good Aldhelm," as men were wont to call him. We may smile perhaps at the tales which a veneration for his memory led them too readily to believe con- cerning presumed miracles wrought by him, but there can be no doubt of his having been from his youth upwards a man of personal holiness and self-denial, and a true worker for God. As far as least as the kingdom of Wessex was concerned, his, without all doubt, was the guiding hand that impressed upon it 46 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. that character for good of which the evidences are so abundant, and that planted deeply and surely the true faith in this country. Engaged to the very last. amid the pressure of manifold infirmities, in doing his Master's work, his lips were scarce closed in delivering his message of peace before they were murmuring calmly and trustfully his "Nunc Dimittis " in the little wooden church that gave him a rude yet peaceful shelter for his last moments. Aldhelm is indeed to be reckoned among those " of whom the world was not worthy," a faithful worker for Christ even unto death, and so, we may well believe, an inheritor of the " crown of life." No less than ten bishops in succession ruled over the diocese of Sherborne as it was constituted in the days of Aldhelm. Of most of them we know little more than their names. The sole exception is that of Asser, the last of them, the friend and biographer of Alfred the Great. And yet this period of two hundred years was a very eventful one for the church and people in Wessex. Though the exclusive use of the Latin tongue had been enjoined in all church offices some forty or fifty years before its commencement, efforts had been made to give the people some knowledge of Holy Scripture in their own tongue. The Book of Psalms and also the four Gospels had been trans- lated into Anglo-Saxon. Moreover, in 728, Ina, king of Wessex, founded an English school at Rome, and made grants for its supports. A few years later, in 747, it was decreed by the council of Clovesho (the precise locality of which seems to be uncertain, but FIRST SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 47 which was probably at or near Abingdon) that people henceforth should learn the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and some portion of the Liturgy in the vulgar tongue ; and among those present was Herewald, bishop of Sherborne. Moreover, in a subsequent synod held at the same place in S03, which was attended by no less than thirteen bishops, amongst whom were those of Sherborne and Winchester, the question of the archiepiscopal dignity of Canterbury was finally determined, and the churches of Birinus became in full and complete union with that ot Augustine. But a most important act on the part of one of the kings of the West Saxons belongs also to this period which we are now reviewing. In the year 855, acting it is said on the advice of Swithun, bishop of Win- chester, whose jurisdiction, be it remembered, ex- tended over a considerable portion of Wilts, King Ethelwulf granted tithes to the church. Whether such grant affected more than the king's own estates and rights may be open to question, still the principle of so supporting the church and her ministers was admitted, and there is implied also in the gift the gradually increasing numbers of churches and clergy. And the gift was recognised by Athelstan and subse- quent kings. Ethelwulfs journey to Rome, more- over, is among the indications of the growing power and influence of that church. Long before this time, in the days of Archbishop Theodore, attempts had been made to induce England to submit to the authority of Rome. No doubt a certain deference was all along paid to that see, and it may be an 48 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. appellate jurisdiction was conceded to it, a prece- dence among equals, as to an elder Church. But it was a long time before Rome obtained spiritual supremacy in England ; in fact, the kings of Wessex always resisted such a claim when openly put forward. 1 The close of this same period was indeed disas- trous alike for the Church and people in England on account of the ravages of the Danes. More than one of the bishops of Sherborne had to bear the sword as well as the crozier. Egbert, in his conflicts with the Danes, received material aid from " Eahlstan, his bishop." Heahmund, another bishop of Sherborne, fell in a battle against them in 871. No wonder that in consequence of these calamities in part, though also from the ignorance and corruption that too generally prevailed, the church in Wessex was in a sad and deplorable condition. To this Alfred himself, in his preface to his translation of Gregory's " Pastoral Care," taken from the copy sent to Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne, bears abundant witness. " So clean was wisdom and teaching," he says, " ruined among the English people, that there were very few on this side the H umber who could understand their service in English or declare forth an epistle out of Latin into English. So few such there were, that I cannot think of a single one south of the Thames when I began to reign. We have loved only the name of being Christians, 1 It may be observed also that some years before, in S14, Wigbriht, bishop of Sherborne, was at Rome with Wulfred, archbishop of Canterbury, "pro negotiis Anglicanae Ecclesije." FIRST SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 49 and very few the duties.'' He himself did what he could, as well by example as precept, to remedy this lamentable state of things. Not only did he seek out men of learning and place them in positions of influence, — notably Plegmund, who was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, — but he established a school for the education of the princes and sons of the nobles, in which they were instructed in letters before they learnt any manly exercise, and in which both Latin and English were taught. Moreover, he found opportunity for thinking of other churches besides his own — his messengers carried his presents to Christians at Jerusalem, and to the Christians of the church of St. Thomas in India. Allowing for the legendary form in which the account of Alfred's life has come down to us, and admitting that much that is told us may be coloured by the partiality of friends and admirers, and so must be received with caution, there is no doubt, as has been well expressed, that " Alfred lived solely for the good of his people;" and that "he is the first instance in the history of Christendom of the christian king, of a ruler who put aside every personal aim or ambition to devote himself to the welfare of those whom he ruled." Though his dominions extended beyond what we are accustomed to include in the kingdom of Wessex, it was to the latter he was specially bound by the earliest associations of his life, and for the reformation and improvement of the church of Wessex it was that he strove so earnestly. 50 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. CHAPTER III. SECOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. A.D. 909-I075. We may well believe that the troubles of Alfred's reign prevented the subdivision of the still un- wieldy dioceses comprised within the limits of Wessex. There is reason for thinking, however, that assistant bishops, Asser himself possibly being one of them, were appointed for the purpose of sharing a portion of the labour involved in superintending so large a diocese as that of Sherborne. For it must be borne in mind that by the end of the ninth century Devonshire and Cornwall were included in the Sher- borne diocese. This is evident from the words of Asser, who tells us that, among other offices bestowed on him by King Alfred, was the " charge of Exeter, with the whole diocese that belonged to it in Saxony (Wessex) and Cornwall " ; in other words, he had assigned to him, first of all, the charge of the western portion of the diocese, which at that time reached to the Land's End, he succeeding to the charge of the whole on the decease of Wulfsige. Moreover, we have Forthere and Herewald, both bishops of Sher- borne, jointly signing a charter of the date of 737. So, too, the names of Herefrith and Wigthegn, both SECOND SUBDIVISION" OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 5 I of them bishops of Winchester, attest the same charters (c. 8 2 5-2 6), and it seems almost necessary to suppose that the former was a coadjutor to the latter. Mr. Haddan says on this point: " It is pos- sible, or, rather, probable, that under Egbert or Ethelwulf, the West Saxon kingdom had the number of its bishops increased. Ethelred, archbishop of Canterbury in S70, had previously been a bishop of Wiltshire, and yet there is no record of the founda- tion of a see in Wiltshire before the reign of Edward the Elder. We must, therefore, suppose that occa- sionally shi?-e-bishops may have been appointed in that kingdom, perhaps without distinct sees, such as are found in the next century as bishops of Berkshire, Wiltshire, &c, and that Herefrith being one of these may ) r et have taken his title from the see to whose bishop he was coadjutor." l It is not certainly known at what time the various manors were formed, which became, so to speak, the original parishes. It is commonly said that both the tithings and hundreds were instituted by Kin- Alfred. The more probable opinion would seem to be, that the institution of them was of an earlier date, though no doubt he remodelled them and utilized them for the protection and well-ordering of his kingdom. Anyhow, the gradual increase in the num- ber of manors, most of which were provided with a small church, built commonly of wood, demanded more urgently than ever a larger number of bishops for the due superintendence of the clergy and the 1 Haddan and Stubbs, m. $96. E 2 52 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. providing the people with those blessings which chief pastors alone could supply. The second subdivision of the see of Wessex, however, did not actually take place till the year 909 — eight years after the death of King Alfred. And then, to use the words of William of Malmesbury : " King Edward and the bishops chose for themselves and their followers a salutary council, and, heeding our Saviour's words, ' The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few,' elected and appointed one bishop to every province of the West Saxons, and divided that district which formerly possessed two into five bishoprics." The sees thus formed were fixed at Winchester, Wells, Crediton, Ramsbury, and Sherborne. Our concern is, of course, with the two last-named sees, those of Ramsbury and Sherborne, as consti- tuted at the beginning of the tenth century. For within some 150 years of that time they formed one united diocese, comprising Berks, Wilts, and Dorset, under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Sarum. The diocese of Sherborne, as now reconstituted, comprised Dorsetshire only. Its bishop-stool, which when Somerset was included in the diocese had been central enough, was by no means so when the latter county was taken out of it and provided with a separate bishop of its own at Wells. But so it con- tinued till the year 1075, when Herman, who had been allowed to hold both these bishoprics, com- prising Dorset, Wilts, and Berks, and who seems for the most part to have resided at Sherborne, forsook both it and Ramsbury to place his throne on the SECOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 53 waterless hill of Old Sarum, just as, five-and-twenty years before, the sees of Devonshire and Cornwall were finally united under Leofric of Exeter. There is no doubt that a cathedral church was at all events commenced, if not completed, at Sherborne by Aldhelm. Indeed, some part of what may well be deemed Aldhelm's work may be traced there to this day. And after Sherborne ceased to be an epi- scopal see, the minster continued to be the church of a priory which was still specially connected with the bishopric. In the time of Ethelred the church of Sherborne was served by secular canons. Whether such had been the case all along there is no evidence to show ; and to say the truth, in these early days the distinction between monks and canons was not so sharply drawn as it was afterwards. But about the year 999 Wulfsige, then Bishop of Sherborne, changed his canons for monks ; and such an arrangement was continued after the removal of the bishopric to Old Sarum. No doubt, many of the estates that belonged to the see of Sherborne formed the endowment of the see of Sarum, and possibly also of the cathedral body constituted there by Osmund. At the time of Domesday, the Bishop of Sarum remained temporal lord of Sherborne, but nine of the manors which he held were for the " maintenance of the monks " — (de victu monachorum Scirburnensium). And the bishop and monks are named as acting together in an entry which records that William the Red took away lands at Staplebridge, which belonged to Sherborne, without their consent. All this sounds as if, even after the removal of the see to Sarum, Sherborne was still a 54 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. kind of secondary church, somewhat as Ripon, Southwell, and Beverley were to York. Some years afterwards, in the time of Bishop Roger (c. 1122), it was made an abbey. The abbot and. convent then became an independent corporation. No long time afterwards the church of Sherborne came to be held as a " prebend " in the church of Sarum, the abbot for the time being duly installed as a canon of the cathe- dral and entitled to a "place in choir and voice in chapter." Of the bishops of Sherborne during this period, some 160 years, we know little except their names, and even of these it is difficult to give a really trust- worthy list. There seem to have been no less than sixteen of them in all. The seat of their bishopric, according to William of Malmesbury, in a passage we have already quoted, was but an insignificant place, for he speaks of it as a small village, pleasant neither by multitude of inhabitants nor by beauty of position. He adds, " Now it has been turned from a bishopric into an abbey, by a change not unusual in our time, in which all things are perverted by fac- tion and fancy, and in which virtue is held in con- tempt and disgrace." The bishops of Ramsbury are usually termed " Episcopi Corvwensis Eccleske." The little town chosen as their see is in the north-east of Wiltshire, and was originally called " Hraefenes-byrig," that is, Mavens-hwcy, ultimately corrupted into Ramsbury. The Latin name was a simple translation of the Anglo-Saxon. Some confusion has arisen from writers not being aware of the real meaning of the name, SECOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 55 and so, mistaking it for a corruption of " Coritubi- ensis" speaking of the bishops of Ramsbury as though they were bishops in Cornwall and not in "Wiltshire. In the catalogue given by Florence of Worcester, these early bishops are styled " Episcopi Sunning- ensis." They had an estate and a residence at Sun- ning in Berks, as had also their successors the bishops of Sarum, to a comparatively recent period, and hence the designation given to them. It is by no means easy to define the limits of the diocese of Ramsbury. In the time of Edward the Confessor it would seem to have comprised the two counties of Wilts and Berks. This is pretty well proved by the fact that Herman signs as " Wiltoni- ensis Episcopus, 1 ' and is also spoken of as a "bishop in Berkshire" (biscope in Bearrucsyre). Nevertheless, some 150 years before the days of Herman, we have Cynsige expressly called " Bishop of Berkshire " {biscope of Bczrrocsire), and he must have been a co- temporary of no less than two bishops of Ramsbury, viz., vEthelstan and Odo. It is, of course, possible that Cynsige may have been an assistant or suf- fragan bishop, with jurisdiction over the Berkshire portion of the diocese. But the truth is more pro- bably this, that in Ramsbury diocese were included, at all events in the first instance, only such portions of the present counties of Wilts and Berks as were, in the beginning of the tenth century, in the territory of the West Saxons. Even here we are met with a difficulty, for about this period the boun- dary-line of Wessex and Mercia was continually 56 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. shifting. Dorchester in Oxfordshire, for example, the cradle of West-Saxon Christianity, when chosen, in 634, by King Cemvalch as the seat of the bishopric of Birinus, was undoubtedly at that time within the limits of his kingdom. But when, towards the close of the ninth century, it became, in succession to Leicester, the see of the bishops of Mercia (afterwards removed to Lincoln), it seems evident that mean- while Mercia had extended its boundary in a southern direction, and included some portions of Oxfordshire,. Berks, and possibly Wilts, which had previously been in Wessex. We may, moreover, with great probability believe that by degrees the portion of Wiltshire which lay '•' west of Selwood," and which belonged to the original diocese of Sherborne as it was ruled by Aldhelm, was added to that of Ramsbury. It was certainly so in- cluded in the days of Bishop Herman, as may be inferred from his all but successful attempt to make Malmesbury his see, and to annex that well-endowed abbey to his bishopric. And when in the eleventh century the two sees of Sherborne and Ramsbury were united and constituted one diocese, with its see at Old Sarum, the jurisdiction of its bishops extended over Berks, Wilts, and Dorset. And so it continued till the Reformation, a period of well-nigh five hun- dred years. The see of Ramsbury was, we are told, but small in value. Its bishops seem to have ruled it single- handed, for though there may have been a small cathedral, there was, as far as we know, no body of canons, forming a " chapter," connected with it. SECOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 57 And more than once the see would seem to have been left vacant for a few years. Bishop Herman, moreover, as will be presently noticed, when smarting under disappointment at the ill-success of some of his plans, retired for a time to the monastery of St. Bertin in France. But, notwithstanding the obscurity of this little Wiltshire see, it could reckon on its roll of bishops, during the 160 years of its existence, some distin- guished names. No less than three of them — there were ten in all — became ultimately archbishops of Canterbury. Of each of these we may be allowed to say a few words. First of all there was Odo, styled " Severus," who held the see of Ramsbury for sixteen years. A warrior as well as a bishop, he rendered signal help to King yEthelstan in the battle of Brunanburg, in 938. A cotemporary of Dunstan, and his immediate pre- decessor in the metropolitical see of Canterbury, he was with him especially active in forcing Benedictine rule, not only on monasteries but even on secular cathe- drals and large churches; and both prelates charged the secular clergy generally with a great departure from purity of life, as well as from faithfulness to their duties. Their efforts, even though mistaken, were well meant, and there is no doubt that during ^thelstan's reign the church gradually gained a firmer footing. Then there was Siric, first of all a monk of (lias tonbury, and afterwards abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, who is said to have advised King Ethel- red to buy off the Danes with a large sum of money, 58 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. and so to have laid the foundation of Dane-gelt. It was he that ordered the homilies of^Elfric, his suc- cessor both here and at Canterbury, to be read in all the churches, and so provided for the spiritual instruction of the people. And then there was /Elfric, perhaps the greatest of the three, the writer of those homilies, to which allusion has just been made, which became to the early church in England much what the Homilies, published at the time of the Reformation, were to the church of the sixteenth century. He was, first of all, a monk at Abingdon, and afterwards became Abbot of Cerne in Dorset, whither he was sent to instruct the society founded by Ethelmar, earl of Devon and Cornwall, in 987, in Benedictine rule. After holding the see of Ramsbury for a short time, he was chosen at Ambresbury by King Ethelred and all his "witan" as Archbishop of Canterbury. He is described as "a very wise man, so that there was none wiser in all England."' His homilies, which are still extant, are full of clear statements of doctrine, and were a precious legacy, not only to those who may especially be described as " his own people," in the diocese in which they were first composed, but to the whole English Church . To the last his affections seem to have been with his " former flock in Wilt- shire," for he remembers them in his will, and be- queaths a ship to them ; and, by his own desire, he was buried at Abingdon, in the monastery of which many of his early days had been passed. It was under Herman, the last of the bishops of Ramsbury, that the two sees of Sherborne and Rams- SECOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 59 bury were united under one bishop, whose see was settled at Old Sarum. Herman was by birth a Fleming. He was one of those foreign ecclesiastics brought into England by Edward the Confessor, who made him " his priest " or chaplain. His attempts to annex the Abbey of Malmesbury to his bishopric, which was itself but slenderly endowed, have been already noticed. Bit- terly resenting his failure, he retired for a while from his see, committing its administration to Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, who was assisted by a suffragan whose name was Rodulf (or Ralph), a Norwegian bishop, said to have been a kinsman of the Con- fessor. He was abbot of the large monastery of Abingdon, in Berks, which was in the diocese of Ramsbury. He was not the only abbot of Abingdon advanced to the episcopate, for his immediate prede- cessor, Siward by name, had been consecrated, in 1044, as coadjutor to Eadsige, archbishop of Can- terbury, with the title of Bishop of Upsal. Three years after Herman's retirement from Rams- bury, the see of Sherborne became vacant through the decease of Bishop ^Elfwold, and he had interest enough at court to secure that appointment in addition to his own bishopric. This was in the year 1058. After so holding the two sees for seventeen years, durins: which time he would seem to have resided chiefly at Sherborne, he removed, as has been stated, to Old Sarum, in consequence chiefly of a decree of the Council of London in 1075, which directed the removal of bishoprics from small towns or villages to larger towns and cities. 6o ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Old Sarum was indeed a strange place to choose for a bishop's see, and a still more unpromising site on which to build a cathedral. The chroniclers speak of it as " a fortress rather than a city, placed on a high hill, surrounded by a massive wall." The settle- ment, so to speak, comprised not only the king's castle, with all its officers and retainers, but the quarters of the bishop and his clergy. The relations of Church and State are at all times matters ot delicate adjustment ; hence it is not surprising to find that, when the authorities of each were brought into close and necessary proximity, not a few conflicts took place. Peter of Blois speaks of the church at Old Sarum as " the ark of God shut up in the temple of Baal." Nevertheless on that unpromising site, Herman, old as he was — he had been a bishop for more than thirty years — began vigorously to build a cathedral. But he lived only to lay its foundations, or little more, for he died within two years of the removal of his see to Old Sarum, leaving his work to be carried on by his successor, the famous Osmund. Herman was one of the nine consecrators of Lan- franc in 1070 to the metropolitical see of Canterbury, and he then appears as Bishop of Sherborne. He was a true member of the old English hierarchy, and the only one of those nine prelates who, as it would appear, had received consecration from a primate of English birth and undoubted canonical position. Twice at least he was sent to Rome " on the king's errand." This notice, slight as it may seem, is another indication of the growing custom of referring matters to the Papal see, which ultimately led to some SKCOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 6 I important results in England. As the historian of the Norman Conquest has said, — "In making England part of the great western commonwealth of which Rome was still the head, William bent our necks beneath the yoke of Rome, the yoke, however, no longer of her Caesar, but of her Pontiff." It has been customary to speak of a plain coffin- shaped tomb of Purbeck marble, now lying on the south side of the western entrance to the cathedral, as that which once covered the remains of Herman, and as having been brought with them from Old Sarum. There is no record, as far as is known, of Herman's burial-place ; and that would seem far more likely to have been at Sherborne, where, as we know, he lived for many years. And William de Wenda, afterwards dean, in his account of the translation of the bodies of former bishops to the new cathedral in 1225, contained in what is commonly termed the Osmund Register, certainly makes no mention what- ever of that of Bishop Herman. This review brings us to a period when the Norman dynasty was firmly and finally established in England. It carries us through the reigns of Ethelred, of Canute and his two Danish successors, to Edward the Confessor. The Domesday Record, which chronicles the state of things in the days of the last- named king, as well as in those of his successor William of Normandy, gives us some little clue, though by no means a complete one, to the number of the churches that at that time were built. The precept that directed the formation of the survey required no return to be made of churches. A few cases are 62 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURV. named, but they are invariably those in which some lands belonged to them as an endowment, which lands were subject to geld. When such glebe lands did not exist, the mention of churches in Domesday is to be regarded only as accidental, as the main purpose of the record was a fiscal one. Proofs might be multiplied to show that many churches did undoubtedly exist of which no mention is made in the record. Thus, strangely enough, there is no mention made of a church at Dorchester, the cradle of the Christianity of Wessex. Again, we are quite sure that at Sarum there was one, if not more churches, and yet even under " Sarisberie " in the Wilts Domesday we have no notice whatever taken of them. Moreover, the dedication of Eadgyth's church at Wilton, by Bishop Herman, in 1065, some twenty years before the conclusion of the survey, is matter of history, and yet there is no entry in Domesday concerning it. There are only some thirty churches distinctly accounted for in the Wilts Domesday, and the number is small also in Berks and Dorset. As regards the first-named county, a few others, such as that of Alwarberie (Alderbury), Duntone (Downton), Deverel, and Wilcote, in which last place it is stated that there was a new church, are mentioned incidentally. In a few places we have presbyteri mentioned where there is no church named, but we may fairly con- sider the entry of the one as implying the ex- istence of the other. Examples may be seen under Ramesberie, — Enedford (Enford), Rode (Rowde), and Bromham. And similar inferences can be drawn SECOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 63 from the entries in the Domesday for Dorset and Berks. 1 The usual title given in Domesday Book to ministers is presbyter. We also meet with capellanus and dia- conus. In one parish in 'Wilts we met with one who is termed " clericolusf which it is conjectured may mean a sub-deacon. Churches were too often entrusted, for some succeeding centuries, to persons in one or other of the minor orders. We learn something also from Domesday, incident- ally, concerning the revenue of the Church. A small portion only was allotted to the vicar. In some cases a third of the tithe was given to him, in others his portion was fixed by a special episcopal ordinance. Even at this early period, the tithes were alienated from the Church, and held by some ecclesiastic or layman at a distance. Thus — again to borrow an illustration from the Wilts Domesday — Girald, a priest of Wilton, held the tithes of Collingbourn, and Nigel, a physician, those of Nigravre (Netheravon). It is 1 Kemble's opinion was clearly that the number of churches in the tenth and eleventh century was large. Indeed, the four- fold distinction of churches specified in the laws of Canute into (1) the heafod mynster ( — the chief or head minster) ; (2) the " medemra mynster/' translated ecclesia mediocris ; '(3) the " la-ssa mynster," translated ecclesia minor; (4) the " feld- cirice," literally field church, where there was no burial-place, implies a considerable number of such sacred edifices in his reign. And then there is a statement in one of the laws of the Confessor respecting the due payment of tithe, to the effect that in many places there were three or even four churches where no long time previously there had been but one — " in multis locis sunt modo iv., vel iii. Ecclcsirc, ubi tunc temporis non erat nisi una." Thorpe's "Ancient Laws," I., 361, 445. 64 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. instructive to note the remarks in the Wilts Domes- day on the state of the fabrics of the churches in their parishes when the tithes had been thus alienated, — that of Collingborn is described as ruinous and decayed {vasta est et dissipate!) ; that of Netheravon was so ruinous, and the roof so out of repair as to be almost tumbling down {vasta est et ita discoopcrta ut pene corruat). Much as we may lament the evil of alienating tithes from the purposes for which they were originally bestowed, thus much must be acknowledged, that it is not one of modern date. The vicious custom antedates the Conquest ; many laymen and churchmen, enriched with such spoils, existed in the days of the Confessor. Without doubt much of the spiritual care of the people and their moral training was in those early days undertaken by the members of the various religious houses that had been founded for the most part during this period. Each such monastery became the centre of moral and religious life, not only to its immediate neighbourhood, but to all the estates with which it was endowed. In the diocese of Old Sarum they were not only numerous, but rich. In Wiltshire alone some two-fifths of the whole county belonged to one or other of the religious houses, or to persons holding high office in the Church. In the north was Malmesbury Abbey— the home once of Aldhelm — with its thirteen manors, assessed at well- nigh 300 hides, and so implying the possession of some 50,000 acres ; in the south were the abbeys of Ambresbury and Wilton, each with a number of estates, those of the latter monastery being nearly as extensive SECOND SUBDIVISION OF THE SEE OF WESSEX. 65 as those of Malmesbury. Then in Dorset there was the Benedictine Abbey of Shaftesbury founded, as is said, by the great Alfred, with ample possessions in Dorset and also in Wilts ; for in one of the latter, Bradford-on-Avon, their nuns found a safe refuge against the attacks of the Danes, and no doubt often sung their offices in the " Ecclesiola " of Aldhelm which is so marvellously preserved to us. In the same county also were Cerne, over which yElfric once presided, and Sherborne, the seat of the bishopric for so many years, and Middleton (Milton Abbey) founded by King Athelstan, about the year 937, to expiate the murder of his brother Edwin. And then in Berks there was the large and important Abbey of Abingdon, destroyed indeed by the Danes in the reign of Alfred, but restored at the instance of Edred, Alfred's grandson, about the middle of the tenth century, by ^Ethelwold, bishop of Winchester, and the chosen resting-place of more than one of the ancient bishops of Ramsbury. There can be no doubt but that in very early days these monastic houses were a great blessing in many ways to the people in the midst of whom they were placed, and to the estates which the liberality of successive benefactors bestowed on them. The re- cords of Domesday show plainly enough that such estates were always amongst the best cultivated, so that in considering their use we must not leave out the help they rendered in promoting the material progress of the people. The inmates of such monas- teries were by no means exclusively clerical ; many of their dependents were tillers of the ground in the F 66 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. first instance, and so they taught men to work as well as to pray. As they increased in wealth, so too they increased in worldliness. Moreover, their claim for exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, and their immediate subjection to the pope, introduced the elements of discord into the dioceses in which they were placed. The tenth century has been called emphatically the sceculiim obscurum ; notwithstanding all the efforts of the great Alfred, the clergy, suffering still more or less from the disastrous work of the Danes, became then out of heart, — in fact, they were demoralized and so "settled on their lees." But notwithstanding all this, it is questionable whether much lost ground had not been recovered by the time of the Conquest under the beneficent rule of Ethelred and Canute, assisted as they were by bishops, as we have seen in the case of our own dioceses, of holy and earnest life and conversation. And so, after all, it may be, that at the beginning of the eleventh, there was, comparatively speaking, quite as good a provision for the spiritual wants of the people, as some of us remember at the commencement of the nineteenth century. ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. 67 CHAPTER IV. 1075-1194. THE SEES OF SHERBORNE AND RAMSBURY UNITED, AND THE " BISHOP-STOOL " REMOVED TO OLD SARUM. Though Bishop Herman removed the see to Old Sarum, and, at all events, commenced the work of a cathedral there, yet we have all been wont to speak of Osmund as our first founder. Malmesbury rightly calls Osmund " vir probatissimus." It was he, at all events, that fully carried out the work begun by his predecessor. Moreover he formed a cathedral body, which should not only be a band of trusted councillors for the bishop, but should carry out the work of the church in various portions of the diocese, and so be a connecting link between the various parishes and the cathedral, their mother church. Osmund is said to have been connected with the Conqueror by ties of affinity. He is thought by some to have been Earl (or Count) of Seez, in Normandy. This is a far more probable supposition than that he was either Earl of Wiltshire or of Dorset ; and there is no necessity for supposing that the assumption of the mitre in England terminated his connection with Normandy, his native country. F 2 68 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. He would seem to have been employed by the Conqueror in high and important offices, and, for a time at least, to have been Chancellor of England. He was one of the commissioners whose work it was to compile the wonderful record which we know as Domesday Book. And he was present in the memor- able year 1086, and on an occasion so full of interest to us in the diocese of Sarum, when on that old hill fortress, where side by side were the King's Castle and the Cathedral now gradually rising towards com- pletion, all the principal men of the kingdom came— some sixty thousand in number, — and not only fully accepted that record as a true " extent " of the whole kingdom, but acknowledged William as their lawful sovereign, and " swore to him oaths of fealty that they would be faithful to him against all other men." It was not till 1092, five years after the Con- queror's death, that the cathedral built by Herman and Osmund was completed. A few days only after its consecration a severe thunderstorm entirely destroyed the roof and did much damage to the walls. Robert of Gloucester tells us, when speaking of the fifth year of the Red King : — " So gret lytnynge was the vyfte yer, so that all to nogte The rof the Chyrch of Salesbury it broute Rygt even the vyfte day that he y halwed was." The cathedral chapter that Osmund formed was, in those early days, not only a necessity, but a reality. It was constituted on the usual Norman model, with the " Quatuor Personam " at its head — viz., the dean, precentor, chancellor, and treasurer, together with UNION OF SHERBORNE AND RAMSBURY. 69 a number of canons. Of this chapter the bishop himself was the undoubted and recognised head — the whole body of canons forming his " council," which he summoned on all emergencies. In accordance with ''English custom," his canons, who were what were usually termed " canons secular," lived each in his own house, and some of them were probably married men. But none of them, whether digni- taries or not, had any corporate existence in the cathedral church apart from the bishop, for all at the first lived on the common property of the church, and the canons were the bishop's immediate companions and assistants, as well in the services of the mother church as in the general management of the diocese. It is conceived that the estates with which the Church of Sarum was endowed by Osmund were at all events, to a great extent, the old endowments of the bishoprics of Sherborne and Ramsbury. They lay almost entirely in Dorset, Wilts, or Berks. The first body of canons chosen by Osmund are said to have been noted for their learning and skill in music. Malmesbury speaks of the " Canonicorum claritas cantibus et literatura juxta nobilium." Osmund did his best to attach such to himself by liberal pecu- niary help, and he furthered their taste for reading and music by purchasing or transcribing manuscripts, and himself willingly turning " bookbinder " for the better preservation of his literary treasures. A few words must be said as to what is usually termed the "Use of Sarum." The attention of Osmund was drawn to the varieties of ritual that pre- vailed in different parts of England. These differ- 70 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. ences of each diocese from one another increased much during the tenth and eleventh centuries ; though in the eucharistical offices they all preserved the essentials of the service, yet they differed from each other by very important variations. The subordina- tion of the whole land under one head gave greater facilities for intercourse, and so rendered desirable a greater sameness in ritual observances. Hence, about the year 1085, Osmund drew up a form which he promulgated for use in the diocese of Sarum. It was not an original work, but one compiled from ancient sources. He invented little himself, but chose out of the practices he saw in use around him, and so arranged the various offices that his clergy, com- posed both of Normans and English, might have one uniform rule to lead them whilst discharging their respective duties and functions. Whether from the known ability and earnestness of Osmund, or the admitted influence that he must have had from the high position which he held, or the college of learned men which he had gathered round him, or from what- ever cause, it is certain that the " Use of Sarum " was very generally adopted in the south of England, and in other parts of the kingdom. It was introduced into Ireland by authority, it is said, of a canon of the synod of Cashel in 1172, and into Scotland some seventy years later. And amongst the acts and statutes of Gervase, bishop of St. David's, and his Chapter in 1223, was one which established the Precentorship, and ordained that, at all events in the case of two important offices, they should be carried out according to the "Use of Sarum." UNION OF SHERBORNE AND RAMSBURV. 7 1 It is not meant to imply that this prevalence of the liturgy and ritual of the Church of Sarum was obtained at once, or to the exclusion of other " Uses ; " such as those of York, Bangor, Hereford, and Lincoln, which still prevailed in their respective districts. Still, the very general acceptance of it is unquestionable. Within 200 years of Osmund's death we have full testimony of the esteem in which it was held, in the words of one of his successors, Bishop Giles de Bridport, who says that " like the sun in the heavens, the church of Salisbury is conspicuous above all other churches of the world, diffusing its light everywhere and supplying their defects." OsmUnd died December 3, 1099, his last days having been attended with much suffering, endured with great patience. Three hundred years afterwards, he was admitted into the calendar of Saints, and in a convocation of prelates and clergy held in St. Paul's in 148 1, the festival of St. Osmund was directed to be kept. The documents relating to his canonisation are still preserved in the cathedral muniment room. The successor of Osmund was a man of very different type to himself. Henry I., who had now become king, had bestowed the bishopric on his chancellor, Roger, originally a poor priest at Caen, " of a contemptible and base beginning," who at first pleased him, it is said, by the speed with which he got through his mass, and who had followed him through his adverse fortunes. Never, in truth, could there have been a greater contrast than between these two bishops of Old Sarum. The one of noble birth and a descendant of kings, the other of humble unknown 72 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. parentage and a simple child of fortune. The one essentially a saintly man, giving himself wholly to the duties of his high calling, the other a worldly-minded man, of the secular and statesman school. But Bishop Roger was nevertheless a man of undoubted genius, "a fair type," as Mr. Freeman has said, "of those Norman bishops of the twelfth century, pro- moted from the temporal service of the king, able statesmen, and often magnificent builders, who left behind them, some on the whole a good, others on the whole a bad memory in their dioceses, but none of whom could lay claim to the character of saints. - ' The episcopate of Roger at Sarum was scarcely marked with beneficial results to the diocese. Some of his acts seem to have been high-handed, and carried out with hardly a due regard to the claims of others. Malmesbury tells us that " if there was anything contiguous to his property which might be advantageous to him, he would directly extort it, either by entreaty or purchase, or, if that failed, by force. He tried to turn abbeys into bishoprics, and bishoprics into abbeys. The ancient monasteries of Malmesbury in Wilts, and Abbotsbury in Dorset, he annexed, as far as he was able, to his see." The same writer adds, that he also obtained for himself the town of Malmesbury, and building a strong fortress there, directly encroached on the rights of the ancient monastery there. At his bidding also, arose the great castles of Sherborne and of Devizes, and so great were his power and influence, that he even got into his possession the castle of Old Sarum and surrounded it with a wall. UNION OF SHEREORNE AND RAMSBURY. 73 Though he seems to have either rebuilt or re- paired in a more costly manner the cathedral at Old Sarum, there are few entries in the Liber Evidenti- arum, belonging to the Dean and Chapter, recording his interest in its canons. One document is signifi- cant enough, for it is a deed of " restitution of pre- bends which he had held in his own hand." In truth, his episcopate marks a change in the ecclesiastical state of England, as regarded the increasing distance between the bishop as chief pastor and the flock over which he had been placed. The bishop had now become the feudal lord and the clergy his vassals. Various synods were held, at which Roger was present, at which decrees were passed for repressing the admitted irregularities prevailing among the clergy. But the " fatherly care " of the flock was now '•' stiffened into a formal jurisdiction exercised ac- cording to a rigid technical law." He left behind him no cherished memory of his work as a bishop of the church of Christ, but died a broken-hearted man, the residue of his money and treasure, which he had placed on the altar of his cathedral for the purpose of completing it, being carried off against his wish, as he was nearly breathing his last sigh at Old Sarum. The next forty years after Roger's death were indeed times of trouble and distress for our diocese, for five weeks only had elapsed before the Empress Matilda landed in England, and then began that civil war be- tween the partisans of Stephen and her own, the seat of which was, in part, fixed in Wiltshire, over which the empress for a time gained such an ascendancy. 74 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. It was during the temporary triumph of the empress, that Jocelin de Bohun, one of a family that throughout her conflicts had been true to her, became Bishop of Sarum. Humphrey de Bohun was her great champion who so gallantly defended the castle at Trowbridge against Stephen, and it was natural enough that his kinsman should be so advanced. Of course, at the death of Stephen and the accession of the son of Matilda as Henry II., there was none to challenge his rightful appointment, and no trial of his own loyalty. It was no doubt owing to his rightful influence with the empress during the time of her ascendancy in England that he obtained a restitution of possessions that had been wrested from the Church by Stephen, — notably the estates at Potterne and Cannings. There are few more interesting documents than those charters, still preserved, by which, first of all, the Empress Matilda, and in due course her son, Henry II., gave back to the bishop and his cathedral chapter the estates of which they had been unjustly deprived. 1 Indeed, his care for his cathedral church and chapter is everywhere evident. Among the charters preserved in the " Book of Evidences " are many re- specting estates or privileges granted by Bishop Jocelin, or by his friend and patron, King Henry II. Though it can hardly be said for certain that separate prebends were as yet assigned to the several canons, or annexed to the dignities of the Church, yet we have amongst his grants provision made for the Precentor in the Church of Westbury, and for the Treasurer in 1 See Hatcher and Benson's " Salisbury," pp. 724-726. UNION OF SHERBORNE AND RAMSRURV. 75 that of Ficheldean. There is, moreover, a grant of land for " the correction of the books " belonging to his church, a duty which appertained to the Chan- cellor. There are also many grants recorded as having been bestowed on the communa or common fund of his cathedral. Bishop Jocelin, who, from the few glimpses that we can glean of his character, would seem to have been a man who cared little for worldly pomp, and who sought the rather to give himself up to the sacred duties of his high office, was hardly fitted to grapple with the many and serious difficulties which en- cumbered him. He would appear also to have been of a weak constitution, which unfitted him for great activity. In some respects a man of stronger will might have been more suited for the important post to which he was called, for the clergy themselves had to look for protection to their bishops. Hoveden, writing of the year 1143, tells us that "no respect was paid by the plunderers either to the clergy or the church of God, and whether clerks or laymen they were equally taken prisoners and held to ransom.'' At a Council held in London at that time it was decreed — a step absolutely necessary for the safety of the clergy — that "no one who should violently lay hands upon a clerk could possibly receive absolution from anyone, not even from the pope himself, and appealing in his presence." After Jocelin had held the see of Sarum for twenty years new troubles arose, though from a different source. He was, of course, present in n 64 at Clarendon, near Salisbury, when were framed what 7 6 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. are commonly termed the " Constitutions of Claren- don," the object of which was to take away from the clergy the privilege they had hitherto enjoyed of being tried for offences, of whatever sort, by none save ecclesiastical judges. The resistance given to this proposed concession by Archbishop Thomas a Becket is matter of history. It was after one of these meet- ings at Clarendon that Bishop Jocelin, together with some trusty councillors, came to the archbishop, and sought to reconcile him with the king. But the primate was unbending, and went into voluntary exile rather than yield to the royal demands. And from that place of exile he published a sentence first of all of suspension, and then of excommunication, against not only Bishop Jocelin, but also John of Oxford, then Dean of the cathedral. In no measured terms did Becket denounce these two dignitaries of our church in a letter to his suffragans. The bishops themselves protested against the archbishop's course, and in an appeal to the Pope, Alexander III., com- plain that " their brother, the Bishop of Sarum, when absent and undefended, having neither confessed to or being convicted of any crime, had been suspended from his office before the grounds of his suspension had been submitted to the judgments of his brother bishops of the province, or indeed of anyone else." 1 A step taken by Bishop Jocelin, a few years after- wards, of assisting in the coronation at Westminster of Henry, the son of the reigning king, in plain contravention of the rights of the primate, brought 1 Hoveden, sub anno 1167. UNION OF SHERBORNE AXD RAMSBURY. "J J upon him excommunication from the Pope himself. Two years elapsed before he succeeded in obtaining a removal of the sentence. The letters of absolution were addressed to the Archbishop of Bourges and the Bishop of Nivernais. It is stated in them that Jocelin was " worn out with old age and infirmity, and labour- ing under the effects of disease," and the bishops were directed not to require his attendance, but to convey to him personally, or by approved messengers, the absolution of the Pope. A copy of this " abso- lution" is preserved in the "Book of Evidences" belonging to the Chapter of Sarum. 1 There is also to be seen in the Bishop's Registry an interesting document from the Pope, signed by a foreign cardinal, to the effect that Jocelin had purged himself from any participation in the death of Thomas a Becket. It was likely enough that, on account of the active part taken by him against the archbishop, suspicion should fall on him, but he was completely innocent of any such charge. Increasing age and infirmities compelled Jocelin at last to withdraw from active work, and we find associated with him as a suffragan, Geoffrey, bishop of St. Asaph, who had been compelled, through poverty and the hostile invasions of the Welsh, to quit his post. When he came to England he was appointed to the then vacant Abbey of Abingdon, in the diocese of Sarum. it was natural enough that to him Jocelin should look for help; and after 1175, when he resigned the see of St. Asaph, he would seem to have been a coadjutor to him in that of Sarum. 1 " Liber Evidentiarum," B. 155, C. 192. 78 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. The few days that were left to him he spent in a Cistercian monastery. He died there in the year 1 1 84, on the 1 8th of November, a day that for many centuries afterwards was observed in the cathedral in commemoration of him. For five years after the decease of Jocelin de Bohun there was no bishop appointed for the see of Sarum. And even when a successor was appointed, in the person of Hubert Walter, it is questionable whether matters were much mended. It is doubtful if, during the four years that he nominally held the see, he resided at all in the diocese, for immediately after his consecration he went to the Holy Land to join the king, Richard I., in his crusade to recover the " holy sepulchre " from the hands of the infidels, and on his return to England the monks of the metropolitical Church of Canterbury met together and elected him to the primacy, and he was duly enthroned at Can- terbury on the day after the feast of St. Leonard (Nov. 7, 1 193). Though we have no means of forming any accurate judgment as to the progress of the Church in the diocese of Sarum during the period embraced in this chapter, in all some 120 years, yet there are indica- tions that there was not a complete standing-still. Despite of all the troubles of the times, and of the admitted ignorance, and too-frequent immorality both on the part of clergy and laity, some advance was made. The influence of two such bishops as Osmund and Jocelin could not but be felt, and even Roger, with all his worldliness, helped by his admitted talent as an architect to improve the material fabrics UNION OF SHERBORNE AND RAMSBURV. 79 of the churches. He was a great builder. Malmes- bury, Devizes, Sherborne, — all bear witness to this. In truth, he was the great architectural genius of the twefth century. He brought to perfection that later form of Norman architecture, light and richer than the earlier type, which slowly died out before the introduction of the pointed arch and its accom- panying details. Malmesbury speaks of his edifices as having " surpassing beauty, the courses of stone being so correctly laid that the joints deceive the eye, and leading it to imagine that the whole wall is composed of a single block." And of his cathedral at Old Sarum, he says, — " He beautified his newly-built church in such a manner that it yields to none in England, but surpasses many, so that he had just cause to say, 'Lord, I have loved the glory of Thy house.'" It is interesting, at all events, to be able to trace in the churches of Lambourne in Berks, of St. John's, Devizes, in Wilts, and at Fordington in Dorset, — all of them connected directly with the bishop or the cathedral chapter, — evidences of the hand of the careful builder providing for the needs of the people in their various parishes. Other churches might be mentioned, such as Bradford-on-Avon, where Norman architecture may also be seen, a proof that despite all difficulties some progress was made in the way of church building. There are other localities in which there would seem to have been a stimulus given to church-build- ing in the twelfth century. The Norman doorway of Berwick St. James still remains. Besides this, the adjoining parishes of Winterbourn Stoke, Stapleford, 8o ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. South Newton, and Little Langford, all within a very short distance of each other and but a few miles from Salisbury, have fine though not extensive remains of Norman work. Mention has been made of the retirement of Bishop Jocelin to a Cistercian monastery in his declining years. It was, as the course of our narrative will show, to a small house belonging to the same order, of which he was himself the second founder and be- nefactor, that another bishop of Old Sarum asked to be taken when he felt the hand of death upon him, that there he might in patience wait for his Master's call. It is clear, therefore, that that great wave of religious revival which is associated with the first settlement of the Cistercians in England had reached the diocese of Sarum ; and as the virtual founder of the order sprang from our midst, it is right to dwell a little on their history and their work. The Cistercians were founded originally by Robert, abbot of Molesme, about the year 1098. Their place of settlement was at Citeaux (Cistercium), on the borders of Champagne and Burgundy. They received the approval of the Pope, Pascal II., in 1 100. They soon became the most important of the new orders founded about this time. Their fame increased when Bernard, with thirty companions, entered the walls at Citeaux. But the virtual founder of this order was Stephen Harding, an Englishman, who, having been bestowed by his parents on the monastery of Sherborne in Dorset, went in or about the year n 25 to Rome. Shortly after that time (c. 1130) we read of him as UNION OF SHERBORNE AND RAMSBURY. 8 1 the head of the monastery at Citeaux. He wrote for its monks the " Charta Caritatis," and, being a good Hebraist, he employed himself in revising the Latin text of the Bible by comparison with the Hebrew. The original purpose of the establishment of this order was to protest against the laxity of discipline and dissoluteness of life that had begun to prevail, not only among the clergy and people generally, but also among the inmates of monastic houses. Hence their rule was of the strictest character ; their food was of the simplest, their dress of the coarsest kind. Though they spent much time in devotional exercises, yet they worked diligently in tilling the ground or in other labour. Their whole life was one of stern self-denial, and so a standing protest against the prevailing laxity of the age. No wonder that this order, from the peculiar sanctity which was believed to prevail among them, attained an influence not only on the continent of Europe, but also in England. To use the words of Mr. J. R. Green, — " At the close of the reign of Henry I., and throughout that of Stephen, the people were stirred by the first of those great religious move- ments which England was to experience in the preaching of the friars, the Lollardism of Wycliffe, and the Reformation . . . Everywhere in town and country men banded themselves together for prayer ; hermits flocked to the woods, noble and churl welcomed the austere Cistercians. A new spirit of doctrine woke the slumber of the religious houses and penetrated alike to the home of the noble or the trader . . . We see the strength of the new movement in the new 82 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. class of ecclesiastics that it forces on the stage ; men like Anselm or John of Salisbury, or others, who derived what might they possessed from their holiness of life or unselfishness of aim. The revival left its stamp upon the fabric of the constitution itself ; the paralysis of the church ceased as the new impulse bound the bishops and the people together ; and its action, when at the end of Henry's reign it started into a power strong enough to save England from anarchy, has been felt in our history ever since." 1 Direct evidence of the effect of this religious movement in the diocese of Sarum we may have but little. Still, the fact of Bishop Jocelin retiring into a Cistercian monastery is a proof of the esteem in which the order was held. The monastery of Waverly in Surrey, the first of this order built in England (c. 1 129) was at no great distance from our borders ; and within no long time afterwards there were houses of Cistercians at Bindon and Tarrant Kaynes in Dorset,, at Stanley and Kingswood in Wilts, and at Farring- don in Berks. Moreover, the character of Bishop Jocelin de Bohun, and of the brothers Herbert and Richard Poore, are such as may well have reflected the influences of that revival of religion which showed itself first in the Cistercian movement. And so, notwithstanding all the difficulties which beset Bishop Jocelin, and which at last forced him, broken in health and spirits, to the retirement of a monastery, we may well hope and believe that there was in this revival, which was in full vigour during his 1 "History of the English People," p. 91. UNION OF SHERBORNE AND RAMSBURY. 83 episcopate, a counteracting influence for good. To the last he was attending councils or synods, either for appointing pastors to the various sees and abbeys which were left vacant through England, or for enacting decrees for the correction of the many scandals and abuses that had arisen among the clergy. But meanwhile the earnestness and self-denial of the Cistercians, in themselves the most striking reproof of them, were bearing fruit ; and it is hardly too much to believe, that the great advance made within the next quarter of a century, not only in the cathedral but in the diocese, which will be the subject of our next chapter, may be in part attributed to them. c, 2 84 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. CHAPTER V. THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. II94-I257. For some twelve years there had now been prac- tically no bishop at Sarum. Moreover, England and the Church were alike impoverished by the enormous sums exacted for the ransom of King Richard I. " All bishops, priests, earls, barons, abbots, and priors had to contribute," says Wendover, "one-fourth of their incomes for this purpose, and were forced, moreover, to give their gold and silver vessels, even the sacred chalices, for this work of piety." And when the king returned to his kingdom it was to find a rebellion headed by his brother, the Earl John. More exactions followed, — not only did the king require two shillings to be paid from every carucate of land, but every man was to render him the third part of a knight's service, according as each fee would bear. Even the monks of the Cistercian order, who by special privilege could claim exemption, were com- manded to give him, in aid of an expedition to Nor- mandy, all their wool for the current year. It was indeed a gloomy prospect that opened upon Herbert Poore, who, at this eventful crisis, succeeded to the episcopate at Sarum. And within a very few THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARL'M. 85 years of his accession to the see, for resisting, together with Bishop Hugh, of Lincoln — afterwards canonized as St. Hugh — what were felt to be unjust exactions on the part of the king, the command went forth that his possessions should be confiscated, and he had, after many vexatious oppressions, to buy them back with a large sum of money. The accession of John to the throne in 1199 gave at the first a faint hope of the cessation of some of the troubles which had oppressed the Bishop and Church of Sarum. But it was delusive, for, besides the well-known troubles between the barons and King John, there were grave disputes between England and the Holy See. These last reached their climax in 1208, and then the whole kingdom was laid under an interdict by Pope Innocent III., many of the bishops, especially those who were charged to proclaim it, fleeing from their flocks and seeking a place of safety abroad. The name of Herbert, bishop of Sarum, is not given among the fugitives. He and his brother Richard, the dean of his cathedral, we may fairly conclude remained bravely at their posts, and did what they could to mitigate the horrors of those sad times. For sad indeed they were : whilst the inter- dict remained in force — for two whole years — all church bells were silent, all church services ceased, and the whole nation seemed given over, body and soul, to the destroyer. The only exceptions per- mitted at all were in the case of the baptism of child- ren and the administration of the Eucharist to the dying. But in no case were funeral rites to be per- formed ; — the bodies of the dead were carried out of 86 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. cities and towns and buried in roads or ditches, without a priest's blessing, without a mourner's prayer. The chroniclers are painfully explicit respecting the cruel, nay, savage treatment of the clergy and all Christian people. The king's soldiers ransacked towns, houses, churches, and even cemeteries, rob- bing every one, and sparing neither women nor children. Even the priests, standing at the altars and clad in their sacred robes, were seized, ill- treated, robbed, and tortured. Markets and traffic ceased, goods were exposed for sale only in church- yards, agriculture was at a standstill — many feared to go beyond the limits of the churches or their pre- cincts, whither they fled for sanctuary. And yet, despite all their troubles, the Church of Sarum does not seem to have been quite at a stand- still. We find King John, at intervals, showing in- terest in it. As early as 1200 we have a charter, dated at Falaise, in which he secures the liberties of the church of Sarum, and augments its revenues by the bestowal of the Church of Melksham upon it. Two years afterwards, at Molineux, the same king grants protection to the members of the Church in Sarum ; and in 121 2, shortly before he was forced by terror into submission and resigned his crown into the hands of Pope Innocent III., we find him at Porchester, restoring the possessions which had been unjustly and tyrannically seized. Meanwhile, from other sources, benefactions had been bestowed on the church, and evident progress was made in the development of the cathedral THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. 87 chapter. In the " Book of Evidences " we have deeds of the time of Herbert Poore relating to Cannings and Britford, which were granted for the coin m una of the Church of Sarum; — to Ficheldean and Alwardbury (Alderbury), which are now spoken of as annexed to the dignity of treasurer, and over which he is to have prebendal jurisdiction ; — to Lyme and Halstock, which are also, as now, a recognised prebend in the cathedral, to be exempt from archidiaconal jurisdic- tion ; — to certain tithes of small amount to be paid to the " succentor," an office thus early recognised. The principle already affirmed in the case of the Abbot of Sherborne received a fuller development, the pre- bend of Okeburne being assigned to the Abbot of Bee, and that of Loders to the Abbot of St. Mary Monteberg, in return for estates made over to the cathedral body, and the privilege in each instance annexed to it of "a seat in choir and place in chapter." It was mainly owing to the efforts of Richard Poore, brother and successor of Bishop Herbert, who held the office of dean, that this cathedral organization was so carefully carried out. We are fortunate in possessing a valuable document which has been com- monly called the "Register of St. Osmund," but which may with far more propriety be called the Register of Richard Poore, in which we have in- formation given to us on these points. And from this we learn that, at all events in 1226, that organiza- tion was complete. In that year a subsidy of one- sixteenth was granted to the king, Henry III., and in the old register alluded to we have a complete list of 88 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. the canons, together with the prebends, held by each of them respectively. Reckoning the bishop, who held at that time the " prebend " of Horton, 1 they were fifty- three in number. The same number are reckoned at the election of Robert Bingham in 1229 to the see of Sarum, a full and interesting account of which is con- tained in the same register. It may be well to explain the objects contemplated by Osmund and his successors at Old Sarum by the building of the cathedral and the formation of the cathedral body. It may be said that the duties devolving on the canons were intended to be threefold, and had reference to their relations, (1) with the bishop, (2) with the cathedral, (3) with the diocese at large. First of all, the canons were the special companions and advisers of the bishop. There were many matters of importance in ancient days which a bishop would never undertake without their consent. Hence we read of the canons as the " precious circlet of the presbytery" and the "council-board of God." Then, secondly, a certain number were always ' The Bishop of Sarum at the first would seem to have held the prebend of "Major Pars Altaris," the income of which was derived from Pentecostal offerings, &c. As these were of un- certain amount, by a decree of the bishop and chapter in 12 17 the prebend of Horton was annexed to the bishopric. In the " Liber Evid.," B. 81, will be seen the deed which is entitled "Carta de prebenda Episcopi, cujus nomine, tanquam canonicus, ad secreta capituli admittitur." No rule was so clearly laid down as this, that the possession of a distinct " prebend " was necessary in order to being admitted as a " member of chapter.'' This was recognised both in the case of bishop and dean. THE -SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. . 8<> required to be at the cathedral church, together with their vicars, for the purpose of maintaining its per- petual round of services, as the model and example for the whole diocese. The worship of the diocese was centered here. As it has been strikingly ex- pressed, — " Here was the ceaseless supplication for grace, the perpetual intercession, the endless praise — unbroken yet ever new — like nature herself, with daily- varying, never-changing majesty." And then, thirdly, they had other, even more im- portant, duties than these, for they were to go forth as missionaries, to carry, as from the fountain source, the blessings of our common faith to all in the diocese, and especially to those living on their estates which the liberality of benefactors had annexed as prebends to the cathedral. In truth, a cathedral such as Sarum was in its original foundation especially of a missionary charac- ter. It was the centre at which the bishop took up his station or seat, and from which he sent forth his clergy to evangelize the country round, whilst at the same time he maintained a theological school on the spot. The cathedral was then truly the "mother church " of the diocese. It was as " a city set on a hill " which could not be hid, the spiritual home of all committed to the charge of the bishop, whilst his canons, as under-shepherds, sought to gather them within the church's fold — now interceding for them in prayers and praises that rose up as incense night and day, now teaching them, in their several parishes, the principles of the christian faith and the practice of a holy life. f)0 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. It was in the days of Richard Poore, who became Bishop of Sarum in 12 17. being translated hither after a very brief episcopate at Chichester, that the work of the cathedral was successfully carried out. As we have already said, he had been Dean of Sarum previously ; many of the years — in all seventeen — during which he held that dignity were those of trouble. Nevertheless, we find him, as soon as opportunity offered, carrying out measures for the well- being of the cathedral and for the advancement of the great object for which it had been established. In 1 2 13, several statutes were prepared; one concern- ing the visitation of the prebendal estates from time to time by the dean, another respecting the habit and good ordering of the various clergy, a third on the status and duties of the vicars, one of whom was appointed by each canon. In the Old Register, these statutes are recorded as part of a " new constitution" {nova constitntio) which he carried out. In the fol- lowing year other statutes followed, the most important of them respecting the "residence of the canons." His care for his cathedral also appears in an interest- ing and remarkable account of " ornaments " — including in this general name vestments and service books — rendered to the authorities by Abraham, the treasurer, in 12 14, and which is fully recorded in the old register to which we have so often alluded. There was, however, another great work on which Richard Poore had set his heart, and which, as soon as he became Bishop of Sarum, he prosecuted with fervour. For some years efforts had been made to remove the cathedral from Old Sarum to a more con- THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. 9 1 venient site. There were many reasons for such a change, and amongst them the conflicts that frequently took place between the authorities of the church and those of the state whilst the cathedral was within the precincts of the king's castle. Indeed, Honorius III., in his " bull " authorizing the removal of the cathe- dral, names as a distinct reason for the step, that free access to the church was not to be obtained without leave of the " castellan," or governor of the castle. As soon therefore as he returned to Sarum he summoned his chapter and took counsel with them. A site was obtained on land which would seem to have been his own private property ; the expression in the original document recording the fact — u in domviio suo proprio " — can mean no less than this. Special messengers were sent to the pope, asking the blessing and sanction of the Holy Father ; and, as their own offering, the canons determined to give o?ie-fourth of their revenues for the next seven years in_Jurtherance of the good work. In the following year (12 19) a real commencement was made. A portion of the site was set apart as a cemetery, and a temporary wooden chapel erected, in which, on the Trinity Sunday of that year, was celebrated divine service. Meanwhile other sacri- fices and efforts were made by the bishop and his canons ; resolutions were passed in chapter as to building houses of residence, and also as to sending sundry of their brethren as " preachers," or collec- tors of alms, to various dioceses in behalf of the new cath edral. On the Feast of St. Vitalis (28th April), in the year 92 ANNALS OK THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. 1220, the foundations of the new church were laid. It was a solemn function proposed by the good bishop, at which he had hoped for the presence of many of the chief people of the nation. But the king and his nobles were on the borders of Wales making a treaty with the Welsh, and so few earls or barons were present. The common people, however, nocked in from all parts. On the appointed day, after secret prayer and solemn invocation of the grace of the Holy Spirit, the bishop accompanied by the canons of his church walked slowly, singing the Litany, to the place of foundation. Then, after an address to the assembled multitudes, five stones were laid by the bishop : the first for the Pope, Honorius III. ; a second for Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury ; a third for himself; and two others, one for William Longespe'e, earl of Salisbury, and another for Ela, his wife, " a woman worthy of all honour, because full of the fear of God." After these, a few others, including the dignitaries, the archdeacons, and canons present, each laid a stone, "amid the acclamations of the people, many of them weeping for joy, and all contributing their alms with a ready mind, according to the ability which God had given them." Within five years of the laying the foundation- stones of his new cathedral Richard Poore saw it sufficiently advanced to admit of divine service being celebrated in it. All that was probably then completed was what we now call the Lady Chapel, with its two side aisles, and its ambulatory on the eastern side. He determined on the consecration, at all events, of this portion of the building, and so THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. 93 directed William de Wenda, the dean, to cite all the canons for the festival of St. Michael and all Angels then next ensuing. On the previous day, which, as it happened, fell on a Sunday, accompanied by Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry, archbishop of Dublin, he went at early morn and solemnly consecrated three altars ; one, the high altar at the eastern end, in honour of the Ever- Blessed Trinity and All Saints, — a second at the end of the north aisle, in honour of St. Peter and the rest of the Apostles, — a third in a like place in the south aisle in honour of St. Stephen and the noble army of Martyrs. This was the solemn inauguration of his great undertaking. Before returning again to the bishop's house they spent some hours in the new church, no doubt part of them in private prayer. On the following day, the grand public function of consecration of that portion of the cathedral which was built was carried out. We have no detailed account of the ceremony given in the Osmund Register • all that William de Wenda, to whom we are indebted for all the particulars above given, tells us is, that " the bishop entered the new cathedral, and in it solemnly celebrated the divine mysteries." A sermon was also preached to the people, who flocked in great numbers to listen, by Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury. A few months afterwards, on the feast of the Holy Trinity, 1226, Bishop Richard Poore removed the bodies of three of his predeces- sors — of Osmund, Roger, and Jocelin — from the precincts of the castle, in which they had been buried, to the new fabric ; and, as far as the public worship 94 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. of God was concerned, the removal from Old to New Sarum was complete. More than a quarter of a century passed away after this solemn dedication of the earlier portion of the cathedral before it was completed. Three bishops in succession ruled over the diocese after Richard Poore, and during each episcopate the work was diligently carried on. Under Bishop Bingham, the first of them, all the fines {amerciamenta) due to the dean and chapter were devoted to the new fabric. Under William of York the assessments on the various pre- bendal estates were continued for the same purpose. At last, shortly after the accession of Giles de Brid- port to the see, who "covered the roof throughout with lead," it was hallowed on September 20, 1258, by Boniface, archbishop of Canterbury, with great solemnity. It does not seem to have been quite complete, according to the original design, till some eight years afterwards ; for in a note found in the statute book, in the appendix to the statutes of Bishop Roger de Mortival (fol. xxxij b), there is this statement that " the Church of Sarum was commenced building in the time of King Richard, and continued through the reigns of three kings, and was completed on the 25th March (8 calend. Apr.) in the year 1266, the whole expense of the fabric up to that time having been forty-two thousand marks (=^28,000) " — a sum probably not far short of ^500,000 in our own day. A few words may be added as to the general de- sign of the cathedral. In the engraving on next page a ground-plan is given, showing its arrangement in the thirteenth century. The whole building is an example BTO "" PLAN OF SALISBURY CATHEDRAL A.D. I26o. Scale 100/i. to an inch. 96 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. of pure Early English, and it is valuable, not only for its chaste beauty, but because it is one in which the designer was completely untrammelled, so that we see in it all that in those early days was considered essen- tial to the completeness of a cathedral. The general plan is that of a double cross of har- monious proportions. Of the two transepts, the larger is of three projecting bays in each arm, the lesser of two ; and each of the transepts has an aisle to the east, in which, in course of time, were constituted chantries, or chapels, each with its altar. The original choir would seem to have been of three bays, the seat of the bishop being at the south-east end of it, at the spot marked o on the plan. The presbytery extended from this point for five bays to the eastern gable, which rests on three arches opening to the eastern aisles and the Lady Chapel. Immediately behind this is a trans- verse aisle forming the procession path, and beyond this we have three eastern chapels, the lateral ones being the continuation of the side aisles. The whole chapel was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, but its three altars were dedicated, the central one (at the point marked a) to the Holy Trinity and All Saints, that on the north side (marked b) to St. Peter and the rest of the Apostles, that on the south side (marked c) to St. Stephen and the noble army of martyrs. The nave is of ten bays ; its length is in admirable proportion with the other portions of the building, and, in the centre of the south side, has a lofty porch which not unhappily breaks the outline. Originally there were three other porches, one called St. Peters porch (marked g) leading from the bishop's palace to THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. 97 the cathedral, and one on each side of the great transepts. The last two are often alluded to in the Consuetudinary of St. Osmund, and served important ritual purposes, both as regards processions at stated times, and the ceremonies with regard to the expul- sion of penitents from the church on the first day of Lent and their subsequent re-admission just before Easter. There was also a vestry (marked v), the upper portion of which was the treasury, in which was an altar, and where were deposited the treasures and muniments of the church. It is believed that the principal or high altar stood originally at the spot marked d on the plan. 1 One reason for thinking so is derived from the roof-paint- ings, which are of the date of the thirteenth century, and extending from the western end of the nave, are all sacred subjects up to the point immediately above the place indicated. Not only so, but there is a marked gradation in them. First of all, there are a number of medallions, each with a patriarch or psalmist or prophet or saint of olden time painted within it, extending to the western arch of the lesser transept ; and then, in the square formed by the intersection of the choir and transept, which is in four divisions, we have first of all the apostles in three of them, whilst in the fourth and eastern one we have a majestic figure of our Blessed Lord enthroned in glory, surrounded by small medallions of the four evangelists. In looking at that portion of the vaulted 1 Sec an essay on "The original position of the High Altar at Salisbury Cathedral," in the Wilts Archaol. Mag., xvii. 136. H 93 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. roof, and observing how all these sacred subjects cul- minate in the figure of our Lord, it seems almost irresistibly to point out the spot below as that where the altar once stood, the centre round which the worshippers gathered. This conclusion is further strengthened by the fact, that the capitals of the Purbeck shafts surrounding the pillars supporting the arch above which the figure of our Blessed Lord is painted, are not simply moulded, like all the rest, but carved with foliage, and they are the only ones so decorated throughout the building. The subjects of the roof-paintings eastward of the figure of our Lord, which are twelve in number, are all secular in their character, and emblematic of the various months in the year. A conjecture has been hazarded that the space behind the high altar, together with the lesser transepts and their aisles, all of which would seem to have been at one time on the same level, were at the first thrown open to the laity, so that they not only worshipped around the altar, — '■'■in circuit u mensa Domini" — but were taught by the emblems above the great duty of serving God in every-day life, that "whether they ate or drank, or whatever they did, they should do all to the glory of God" The towers and spire were added some sixty or seventy years after the first building of the cathedral. There are clear indications that they were not con- templated by the original architect, who probably intended to introduce a lantern, as at Ely, where his more venturesome successor built that lofty and beau- tifully-proportioned spire, which for gracefulness is not exceeded in England. THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. 99 From the Old Register, to which allusion has so frequently been made, we learn much concerning the state of the clergy in these early days, both of those who were connected with the cathedral and of others who were working in various parishes in the diocese. Of the former, we may say of a truth, that it was a noble band that Richard Poore gathered round him. There was, first of all, William de Wenda, the dean, who threw his whole soul into the work of the new cathedral, going to the diocese of London to collect the alms of the faithful in its behalf, and to whom we are indebted for a full account of all the proceedings. As precentor, there was Roger of Sarum, soon afterwards advanced to the see of Bath and Wells. Then there was Henry de Bishopston, a man of real learning, who " governed the schools'' at New Sarum, by which, it is conceived, is meant that he was chancellor — ad cujus qfficium pertinet scholas regere — who. in truth was elected dean, but declined the offered dignity. As treasurer, there was Edmund Rich (or Edmund of Abingdon), so soon afterwards summoned from his prebend of Calne, where he was caring for the interests, spiritual and temporal, of his flock, to fill the chair of Canter- bury ; our second sainted Edmund, whose memory still seems fresh among us, from the chapel in the cathedral which can still be identified as his, and the church of S. Edmund, and its once noble founda- ' tion, dedicated to him at Sarum. As his archdeacon of Wilts, who was also a canon of his cathedral, he had Robert Grosseteste, soon called to be Bishop of Lin- h 2 IOO ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. coin, and whilst there the rebuker of popes, allowing neither favours nor threats to cause him to swerve one hair's-breadth from what he felt to be the path of duty. Besides these there were Robert Bingham, " a man of great learning and a long time master in theology," his successor in the see ; and Luke, called the "king's treasurer" and dean of S. Martin's, London ; and Martin de Pattishull, afterwards dean of S. Paul's ; and Elias de Derham, who, as Leland says, was " director " of the new church (qui rexit ecdesiam) for twenty-five years from the foundation, by a sort of dim tradition believed by some to have been its first designer ; l and Henry de Teissun, who had been the delegate from the chapter to the Pope, and brought back from Rome the " bull " authorizing the removal of the church. There were others, a goodly array of great and worthy men, amongst those who in these early days were members of the chapter at Sarum. But as though in contrast with this band of worthies connected with the cathedral, the clergy generally were in a deplorable state of ignorance. Of course, the difficult times through which they had passed rendered such a state of things to a certain ex- tent unavoidable. Nevertheless, we have incontestable 1 Elias de Derham was certainly the builder of the original house called " Ledenhall." He also accompanied Bishop Richard Poore to Durham, and any one familiar with the cathe- dral must be at once impressed with the striking similarity of the chapel of the "Nine Altars " at the east end of Durham to many portions of Salisbury. That addition was certainly in progress, if not quite completed, during the time that Richard Poore held the see of Durham. THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. IOI proof of its existence in the Old Register. Among the statutes passed in 12 13, when Richard Poore was dean, was one requiring him and his successors re- gularly to visit the prebendal estates. As soon as William de Wenda succeeded to that dignity he pro- ceeded on such a visitation. He commenced his inquiry at Sunning, on the vigil of S. Michael, 1220. He sought information, not only respecting the state and efficiency of the clergy, but also concerning the ' ; ornaments," including under this head the various vestments and service-books of the churches. An extract or two, as showing the exact state of things in what ought to have been regarded as favoured parishes, will be of some interest. 1 At Sunning there was one Vitalis, a perpetual vicar. He presented to the dean one of his " capellani," by name Simon, who, asked concerning his orders, stated that he was ordained as a subdeacon at Oxford by a certain Irish bishop named Albinus, then acting as a suffragan to the Bishop of Lincoln, that he was ordained deacon by the same, and priest by Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, some four years previously. Examined in the gospel for the first Sunday in Advent, he was found utterly wanting, not in the least understanding what he read. Tested concerning the canon of the Mass, which commences, " Te igitur demcntissime Pater rogcuiuis" &c, he had no idea in what case " Te" was, or by 1 These accounts will be found in the " Osmund Register," fol. xliii. They are printed, together with others to the same effect, in Maskell's "Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England," p. 181. In the "Osmund Register" they are written in a contemporary hand, and were, no doubt, the authentic record of the time. 102 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. what word in the sentence it was governed. Re- quested by the dean to look once more at the words, the chaplain, after a little thought, gravely suggested that " Te " was governed by " Pater" because the " Father governs all things " ! He was then asked the case of " dementissime" and how to decline the word — in truth, its simple meaning — but he professed his utter ignorance. He further knew nothing about the antiphons, nor of the singing of hymns ; nothing of the " Divine office f nothing whatever of the Psalter by heart, though the ability to repeat the Psalter was then required of every deacon before his admission to the order of the priesthood. Asked by whom, and in what he was examined before his ordi- nation as a priest, he could not remember ; and in the end contented himself by protesting against the unbecoming course adopted by the dean of examin- ing one already ordained at all. In like manner the " chaplains," of Hurst, Sand- hurst, Roscomb, and Erburg — all of them depen- dencies of Sunning — were examined. Several of them at the first entered into a private agreement among themselves not to reply to the questions of the dean, and only did so on his sternly insisting on it, and threatening them with penalties in the event of their persisting in their refusal. They were all found sadly incompetent : one could neither read nor sing ; another, after floundering about a little while, would attempt no further answer, and was at once suspended from his functions ; a third, old and blind withal, could neither see, nor repeat by heart, the words of the canon or of the Gospel, and he was for- bidden to officiate any more. Vitalis, the perpetual THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. 1 03 vicar of Sunning, was moreover admonished, that, unless he obtained the services of more efficient chaplains, the dean would take the matter into his own hands. Of course there were examinations in which the clergy so tested were declared to be "sufficiently learned," but they were the exception rather than the rule, and the dean was compelled in many instances to accept a very low standard of efficiency. And this, it is to be feared, represented the normal condition of parish priests in those days. The building of the new cathedral had, naturally enough, its influence more or less throughout the diocese. It is interesting to observe that amongst churches built, or added to, about this time, are several closely connected with the cathedral. The church at Bishops Cannings still preserves its distinctively Early English character, and the same architecture may be seen also at Heytesbury, so long the peculiar of the dean. Other churches with similar character- istics, though some perhaps a little later in date, are at Uffmgton in Berks, and at Amesbury and Boyton in Wilts. Nor must we overlook Pottern, near Devizes, which furnished the " prebend " so long, and indeed to this day, held by the bishop, in virtue of which he had a " voice in chapter." There are, of course, others which might be named, and their existence in our own days, whilst it shows that in part of our diocese there was an immunity from those destructive ravages which removed so many early churches, seems also to show indirectly that the erection of the present beautiful cathedral was 104 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. the means of stimulating other benefactors to build churches in their own parishes or manors. As yet we read only of one church in New Sarum. The present city, of course, was gradually built up round the cathedral. But before the removal of the see from Old Sarum we read of a church dedicated to St. Martin, and in the " Osmund Register," under the year 1228, we have the record of a certain priest having been appointed to minister in it. During this period now under review, we see clearly enough the commencement of the struggle between the heads of the various monasteries and the bishop, as to their exemption from episcopal supervision. By paying a sum — it is said, commonly an ounce of gold — into the papal exchequer, they could easily obtain such a privilege. This led to many conflicts respecting jurisdiction, and to some scandals. In one point the bishops always stoutly insisted on their rights : — they demanded that abbots should be enthroned only by themselves, and that the " munus benediction is" or benediction which con- firmed their appointment, should be bestowed only by the diocesan, or by some one specially commissioned by him for the purpose. Indeed Nicholas, bishop of Llandaff, was suspended in 1 1 7 7 by Richard, arch- bishop of Canterbury, for interfering with the diocese of Sarum, his offence being that he gave the solemn "benediction" to an abbot-elect of Malmesbury with- out due permission. About this time, also, we have religious zeal mani- festing itself in the foundation of sundry religious houses. Notably amongst them were the abbey at THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. 105 Lacock by the Countess Ela, whose husband, William Longespee, was the first to find a resting-place within the new cathedral ; and the hospital of St. Nicholas at Sarum, by Bishop Robert Bingham. To those we may add the priory of Easton, near Marlborough, the foundation it is said, in 1226, of Stephen, archdeacon of Sarum and a canon of the cathedral. Still, not- withstanding these evidences of religious zeal in some quarters, there was no doubt much ignorance, and it is to be feared much irregularity, among the clergy generally, during the first half of this thirteenth cen- tury. In truth, the council held at S. Paul's under Cardinal Ottoboni, in 1237, passed decrees against the concubinage and extravagance of the clergy, as well as against what would appear to have been a not uncommon claim, that of hereditary succession to benefices. Harpsfield, moreover, tells us, that in the time of Bishop Bingham many of the more important churches were still unconsecrated ; and that attention having been called to the circumstance at a council held at London, the church of Abingdon was dedi- cated immediately afterwards. All those matters point to a lax state of discipline and of morals. It was of this age generally that St. Bernard said, "It is no longer true that the priests are as bad as the people, for the priests are worse than the people," and his words were probably true more or less as regards this diocese. And those evils, great as they were in themselves, were doubtless aggravated by the claims for increasing power and influence put forth boldly by the Papacy, which had the result at last of forcing so many who were strangers alike in 106 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. blood and tongue on the English Church. It was in the year 1240, that the Pope, Gregory IX., promised the Roman nobles the rich benefices in England, for themselves or their relations, if they would help him against the Emperor Frederick. It would seem providential, that, during this state of increasing weakness in the English Church, a new influence was brought to bear upon it. This was through the work of the Friar Preachers {fratres pre- dicatores), who, however much their zeal became after- wards alloyed with superstition and error, certainly were at the first a means of much good, and who ac- quired in the course of years a great power and influ- ence in this diocese. Founded by St. Dominic, they landed in England about the year 1221. Their prior, by name Gilbert, preached before Archbishop Stephen Langton, and so won his confidence that he gave him his "God-speed," and his permission to preach through- out the province of Canterbury. Hugh Grosseteste, the bishop of Lincoln, once a canon of Sarum and archdeacon of Wilts, was also in favour of them, and expressed a high opinion of their work to Pope Gregory IX. They entered the diocese of Sarum, more- over, under the direct sanction of Bishop Bingham and settled first of all at Wilton, about the year 1245, a little more than twenty years after their arrival in England. It is no part of our plan to explain the principles of the friar preachers, save so far as they affected the well-being of the church, and its progress, in our own diocese. Thus much may be said, that their rule of poverty and habitual self-denial, which stood out in THE SEE REMOVED TO NEW SARUM. 107 such contrast to the self-seeking and laxity of the clergy generally, added to their bold denunciation of the sins of the times, made them a real power in the country. And, what is more, they were a need of those times : for, just as the Cistercians a century before, so now the friars awoke men's consciences as with a trumpet-call. The monasteries had practically ceased to be the efficient instructors of the people. The powerful abbot as he became rich became also worldly, and isolated himself alike from his bishop and his dependents. Each great religious house became a great religious aristocracy, which at last had little or nothing in common with the masses. And, no doubt influenced by such examples, the clergy generally had. in like manner, become separated from their flocks. There was no preaching, properly so called, for the only general teaching was by the outward ritual. And this, even though administered not without apparent devotion, became almost mechanical. At best it seemed only to awaken a desire for knowledge which in itself it could never satisfy. Hence the friar preacher met the wants of the people. His life of stern poverty and his garb of simplest character convinced them of his sincerity ; his direct and practical teaching went home to their hearts and gained him a ready hearing. He was, as has been well said, the " missionary to the towns," in which were then contained the dregs of the people, and which too often were but the nurseries of disease and wretchedness. Amongst the masses of the ignorant and the diseased he went bravely with his message of peace. It was his work to strip Chris- T08 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. tianity of that costly and luxurious robe in which a selfish age had now enwrapped it, and to present it as the Gospel of the poor and oppressed. The friar preachers divided England into districts ; and one, Stephen by name, presided over the " brethren," whose work it was to rouse the unthink- ing in the diocese of Sarum to serious thoughts about their souls. They secured a few acres of land in the first instance at Wilton, where they erected a church and convent. Many benefactors lent a helping hand to the new religious community, amongst whom were King Henry III., William Longespee, William Mauduit, and others. After some years they came into the immediate neighbourhood of New Sarum, and established themselves at what is now called Fisherton Anger. 1 Their house at Wilton stood in what is called West Street • that at Fisherton, near the present bridge, opposite the sites where the county gaol and infirmary stand. No traces of any of these buildings now remain. The work carried out by this body of earnest and self-denying men was one of which the outward results may not have been so visible. Still, it was at the first a real work which they undertook ; and, in any case, it was a protest against the worldliness of an age in which corruption abounded on every side. There are entries in the capitular registers which show clearly enough the influential position attained in our diocese by some of the friar preachers of Sarum. 1 See, on the "Black Friars of Wiltshire," Wilts Archceolog. Mag., xviii. 162. ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. 1 09 CHAPTER VI. 1250-1380. COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION, AND THE DEMANDS AND EXACTIONS OF ROME. We now come to a period in the history of our diocese where we tread on firmer ground. Though we have had the Register of St. Osmund to guide us hitherto, yet the entries in that record, invaluable as they are, refer for the most part to matters relating either to the bishop or the chapter, or to estates in which they had an interest. For the present period, which embraces some 130 years, and extends through no less than ten episcopates, we have as guides, not only the episcopal registers, which commence in the year 1297, but also that of the Chapter, which begin in the year 1329. We have spoken in the previous chapter of the completion of the new cathedral. A few years only before that time the cathedral body had been gratified by the canonization of St. Edmund of Canterbury, formerly their treasurer, within but four years of his decease, by Pope Innocent IV. A chantry chapel, still to be identified as that of St. Edmund — it is the central one of the three in the north-east aisle of the great transept — was dedicated to his memory, the IIO ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. first, as it would seem, of such foundations in the cathedral. It was shortly followed by a similar foun- dation at the altar of St. Andrew, in memory of Robert Hertford, who had held the dignity of dean from about 1 238-1 258. It would have seemed natural that the right of the bishop to "visit" his cathedral should have been unquestioned. When, however, Bishop Giles de Bridport, who had consecrated it, issued in 1262 his mandate to the dean — then Robert Wickhampton — to summon the various members of the cathedral body to appear before him, it was resisted on the ground, that by the constitutions of St. Osmund their founder the visitation of the canons belonged exclu- sively to the dean. On full consideration of the whole matter the bishop revoked his mandate, and yielded to the claims of the dean and chapter for exemption from episcopal visitation. This document was ordered to be duly registered in the chapter records ; and among the canons present when such directions were given was Nicholas Longespee, who, some thirty years afterwards himself became Bishop of Sarum. So early in the history of our cathedral was the power of the bishop over its members cur- tailed and limited, the dean being declared to be the " immediate ordinary," and the cathedral itself free from episcopal jurisdiction. Nor was it till the days of Bishop Waltham, some 130 years afterwards, that the claim on the part of the bishop was again made, and on that occasion successfully, a " compo- sition" between himself and the chapter being entered into, carefully defining the purposes and limits for COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. Ill and within which sucli visitation should be carried out. Amongst the foundations at Sarum of this period must be mentioned one of some interest — the college of " Vaux/' or " de Valle Scholarum,"' the chief bene- factor of which is said to have been Bishop Giles de Bridport. It appears that in 123S, in consequence of an interdict pronounced by Otho, the papal legate, on the University of Oxford, some of the scholars withdrew and settled at Sarum. In 1260, Bishop Giles established a perpetual foundation, consisting of a warden and two chaplains, and made provision for twenty poor scholars, some of whom continued to have pensions as late as the year 1555. The college was just outside the close, on the Harnham side. There is a view of the building, which is now entirely destroyed, in Hall's " Picturesque Memorials of .Salisbury." Following shortly after the foundation of the chantry in memory of St. Edmund of Canterbury, of which we have spoken, was the establishment of the College of St. Edmund in New Sarum. Its munificent founder, who made provision for a provost and twelve secular canons, was Walter de la Wyle, bishop of Sarum. He had long been connected as a canon with the cathedral, and had held the office of Succentor. He must, of course, have known Edmund Rich whilst he held the dignity of treasurer, and would seem to have had a reverential esteem for him. By his own desire he was buried in the chapel of St. Edmund, and his monumental effigy is represented 112 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. as lying thus in plans of the cathedral of the dates- of 1733 and 1780. l An " ordinance " was passed about this time by Boniface, archbishop of Canterbury, respecting the rights of the dean and chapter during the vacancy of the see. It was the natural result of the successful stand which the cathedral authorities had made for immunity from episcopal jurisdiction. This was an age when, on every side, there seem to have been struggles for independence. More than once indeed the royal and papal prerogatives were in conflict : the pope claimed the bestowal of a prebend which the king had already given away, and Archbishop Boniface, when appealed to, decided in favour of the Pope. So, as we have seen, abbots claimed exemption from episcopal control, and cathedral bodies followed suit in demanding like independence. And this was now conceded to them, at all events during the vacancy of the see ; for the jurisdiction in such a case did not, for the time being, vest either in the metropolitan or the Crown, but it was provided that three or four of the canons should be nominated by the chapter, and that the Archbishop of Canterbury should choose one of them to act as "official," and to exercise episcopal jurisdiction. He instituted persons pre- sented to various benefices, and had many of the powers that, when the see was full (sede plena), belonged to the bishop. The rights of the chapter itself were saved as far as the prebendal estates, and 1 The effigy was removed from its proper place in 1789, and then placed between the second and third pier in the south- eastern portion of the nave. COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. II3 those belonging to the " communa," or common fund of the cathedral, were concerned. And as regards various churches in the patronage of the bishop, such as Poulshot, Preshute, Bremhill, St. Thomas the Martyr in Sarum, as well as the monasteries of Sher- borne, Milton Abbas, Cerne, Lacock, and Abingdon, the jurisdiction, such as it might be, was also vested in the chapter. One remarkable privilege was claimed and allowed at this same time. The chapter were permitted to call in any bishop they might think fit for the pur- pose of dedicating churches, or ordaining any of their canons or others connected with the cathedral, whom they might, after due examination by themselves, present as candidates for holy orders. It may not generally be known that, even to a very recent period, the Dean of Sarum was wont to examine such can- didates as were about to take charge of any of the parishes under his jurisdiction, and give his certificate of their competency to the bishop, in order to their ordination by him, they afterwards holding their appointments with the formal licence of the dean. 1 The custom did not, however, fall into desuetude 1 This "ordinance" of Archbishop Boniface is dated at Reading, January, 1262-3. After giving the chapter permis- sion, in the event of the archbishop not being in the city, or being unable or unwilling to confer orders, or to dedicate churches in the diocese, to call in some other bishop, it goes on to say. . . . " Canonicos et clericos ad presentationem Decani et Capituli libere ordinabit, salvis in omnibus et per omnia liber- tatibus et consuctudinibus quas habent Canonici Sarum, plena sede, circa clericos sttos cxaminandos ct ad ordines prcsentandos ." Statute Book, 49 b. I 114 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. until the time of Bishop Burgess, hardly more than fifty years ago. It will have been noticed that there is an allusion in this deed to the Church of St. Thomas the Martyr in the city of New Sarum. There was by this time also the Church of St. Edmund, as well as the more ancient Church of St. Martin. There were, therefore, towards the middle of the thirteenth century, three churches besides the cathedral. Whilst the Church was thus extending itself in the city of New Sarum and elsewhere, we find that the cathedral was also benefiting by the donations of sundry of the members of its body who had houses of residence there. At the first a heavy burden was placed on the canons who fulfilled their duty of residence, as it involved the necessity and great ex- pense of building houses. To encourage canons so to build, special privileges were promised to those who were the first to carry out this good work. As early as 12 19 there was a decree made in chapter that the heirs of the first builders of houses of resi- dence should receive two parts of the value of the building, the third part being yielded for the land. The collation and appointment to the houses, after the first sale of those which might become vacant, was to be left to the bishop ; but the representatives of the canons who first built, or the persons to whom the said two parts might be assigned, were to remain in possession of the said houses till satisfaction were made of the value according to the last will of the deceased canon. Amongst those who now freely gave their houses of COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. 115 residence to the cathedral body were Robert Wyke- hampton and Walter Scammell, who became in suc- cession bishops of Sarum. The former, by a deed dated at Ramsbury in 1277, gave the house which he had himself occupied as dean, probably on the site of the present deanery, to those who might ever afterwards hold that dignity ; the latter, in the same year, when advanced from the treasurership to the deanery, gave his house in like manner to be assigned by the bishop to any canon he might choose. Another house of some interest was also at this same time made over to the bishop and the cathedral body. This was the house then, as now, called " Ledenhall," or, as it is termed in the old docu- ments, "Aula Plumbea." It had been built by Elias de Derham at considerable expense ; it is styled " domus sttmptuose constructa." The name of its builder, who was a great friend of Bishop Richard Poore and accompanied him to Durham, has already been mentioned in connection with the new cathedral, of which, according to one tradition, he was the architect. In the " Liber Evidentiarum " (B), (Nos. 452-455,) there are several deeds respecting the transfer ; the last of them, which is on the "manner of paying" (de modo solutione) for the said house, and on a provision for feeding one hundred poor persons on the day of the obit of Elias de Derham, would seem to imply that it was not wholly a free gift. It is interesting to observe that this " residence house," which is still called " Ledenhall," remained for some six centuries afterwards in the gift of the Bishop of Sarum. Il6 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. No less than three deans of Sarum became in succession bishops of the see, but their united epi- scopates amounted only to some fifteen years. At last, in 1289, William de la Corner, one of the chap- lains of the Pope, was nominated by him to the see. The chapter had elected Laurence de Hawkeburne, but he died before consecration ; and then the Pope, who, two years previously, had set aside an election made by them, at once "provided" his chaplain to the bishopric. In the " Book of Evidences " we have detailed accounts of the election and confirm- ation of the three previous bishops, and also of the election of Laurence de Hawkeburne, but there is no record concerning William de la Corner. It is a significant proof of the increasing demands urged by the Church of Rome. A few years only before this time, Clement IV. had claimed the reservation of benefices belonging to incumbents dying at Rome ; whilst John XXII. , a few years afterwards, claimed in addition all that were vacated by promotions made through the favour of the Holy See. In a short time, as we shall see, the exactions of Rome increased so rapidly, that in Sarum, as elsewhere, open protests were made against them. By the time that William de la Corner, the pope's nominee, became Bishop of Sarum, the ecclesiastical organisation of the diocese was complete. It was divided not only into Archdeaconries, but into Rural Deaneries, and these remained the same up to a very recent period. The record, which is commonly termed the " Taxation of Pope Nicholas," was com- piled about the year 1292, and this document is of COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. 1 1 7 much interest as showing us the number of churches that then existed in the diocese. Thus, in Dorset there were 164 churches, in Wilts 105, in Berks 109, giving a total of 378. This reckoning does not include the chapels, of which there were a considerable number, many important parishes, such as Gilling- ham, in Dorset, and Bradford-on-Avon, in Wilts, having several dependent chapelries included in them which are not specially enumerated. The whole number of churches and chapels in our diocese at the close of the thirteenth century was probably not less than 450. Reference has been just made to the increasing claims of Rome. The accession of Simon of Ghent, in 1297 to the see of Sarum is marked by the protest of the bishop against them. We find him addressing a remonstrance to Pope Boniface VIII. on the scandals which had arisen in his Church from so many of the stalls having been given to foreigners, and at the first refusing to admit Reymund, a cardi- nal, whom the pope had " provided " to the dignity of dean, on the ground that the election to that office was in the hands of the chapter alone. Then we have episcopal monitions addressed to the chancellor and the treasurer for non-residence, — the one being openly rebuked for not providing a doctor in theo- logy for the lectures which he was bound to deliver either in person or by proxy ; the other for not repair- ing certain manifest defects in the cathedral. Again, we read of him removing Thomas of Savoy from the Archdeaconry of Wilts, and ordering the citation of clerks not resident on their benefices. Then we meet Il8 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. with mandates for inquiry concerning churches not as yet consecrated, or respecting pluralists, or those who, though holding benefices, were not in holy orders at all. We read also of prebendaries suspended for neglect of duty ; and in particular of a mandate addressed to the dean respecting "prebendal churches interdicted, and prebendaries suspended in Dorset," in places under his especial jurisdiction. It may be observed that such monitions were by no means unnecessary. A state of things had arisen which it needed a strong arm to put down. It was no unusual thing, as is proved by entries in the registers, for men in the lower orders of the ministry — " acolytes," in fact — to be placed in livings. In one case an appointment was made to the rectory of Fifield, in Berks, of a person who was not in holy orders at all (iion infra sacras ordines). 1 Then, again, many were appointed so young that a licence of non- residence for five years was at once granted to them for the purpose of their studying at Oxford, their churches meanwhile being entrusted {commcndatcc) to the care of some neighbouring vicar. Others were permitted to avail themselves of the plenary indul- gence promised to those who, at the jubilee pro- claimed in the year 1350 by Pope Boniface, visited Rome, — or, as it was expressed, fulfilled the duty, "visitandi limina beati Petri." In this episcopate we also trace the custom of calling in suffragans to assist the diocesan bishops. 1 This may possibly mean only in minor orders, such as that of an " acolyte"; still a rectory was, at this time, coming to be regarded as a "lay-fee." COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. I IQ In the case of Simon of Ghent, who really seems, from all that we can learn of him, to have given him- self heartily to his important duties, such help was probably necessary, from his inability to cope with the increasing work devolving upon him. In after- times, as we shall see, such help was the rather needed in order to supply the lack of personal service on the part of bishops who were occupied in high offices of State, and so very frequently absent from their dioceses, the suffragan who acted for Simon ot Ghent was a bishop of St. David's, who, judging from his commission, which empowered him to ordain in any parish church in Reading, would seem to have had a delegated jurisdiction over Berkshire. 1 It is in the next episcopate, that of Roger de Mortival, that the claims of Rome make sure and rapid advance. There is an entry in that bishop's register, under the year 1326, which, after stating that a chapter was held on the " 12th of the Calends of April (March 18), at which the bishop, the dean, and others were present, goes on to say : — " Then the bishop wrote an humble letter to the pope (John XXII.) signifying that, though there were in all in the Church of Sarum 41 prebends, 4 dignities, 4 arch- deaconries, and the sub-deanery to which he had the original right of collation, there were nevertheless at that time a dean, an archdeacon, and six preben- daries who had been appointed by the late Pope ; and further, that the precentor, treasurer, one arch- 1 Among the statutes issued in 13 19 was one entitled, " De provenientibus ad tumbam Simonis [de Ghent]." 120 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. deacon, and seventeen prebendaries held their offices by " provision " of the present Pope ; that hardly more than three out of that whole number ever resided in Sarum ; and finally, that there were no less than eight who were waiting for vacancies, having been appointed as canons, with the right of succeed- ing to prebends as they became void." Indeed, the bishop, though forced at length to give way, at the first had refused installation to the dean, Reymund de Fargis, nominated by the Pope, on the ground that the chapter had the undoubted right of electing their own dean. A few words must be said concerning the Cathedral Statutes, the first formal code of which was issued in the days of Roger de Mortival, for these statutes, save so far as they may have been abrogated or modified by subsequent legislation, are in force to the present day. Hitherto a number of Acts of Chapter and Ordinances had been passed, by which, in addi- tion to the original constitution of St. Osmund, the cathedral was governed. In the time of Bishop Herbert Poore, when his brother and successor, Richard Poore, was dean, there was drawn up what in the Osmund Register is called the New Constitution {Nova Constitutia), and a number of statutes were passed relating to the residences of the canons, the condition of the vicars, their conduct and " habit " in choir, the visitation of the prebendal estates by the dean from time to time, and on similar matters. Then, in the time of Bishop Bingham and his imme- diate successors, there were other statutes and ordi- nances passed respecting the goods of deceased COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. 121 prebendaries, the jurisdiction of the chancellor and sub-dean respectively, and other like things. But these had never been up to this time reduced into a code of statutes. Simon of Ghent had called together his canons for the purpose, but died before the work was accomplished. Hence, in the year 13 1 9, the task was again taken up by the chapter, at the instance of Roger de Mortival ; and some five years afterwards, in 1324, the new code was pro- mulgated. It contains some forty-six distinct statutes, and at the same time in its preamble recognises fully the force of ancient ordinances and customs. In fact, its purpose is defined to be the declaration of such ancient customs, the interpretation of doubtful ordinances, and the enactment of such new statutes as the lapse of time and the change of circumstances may have rendered necessary. Of course, not a few of these statutes — such, for example, as relate to the ancient ritual, the chantries, the processions, the veneration of relics, and the like — are now abrogated by the statutes of the realm. Others, moreover, which have reference to the daily life and certain duties of canons and vicars, the management of the prebendal estates and the control exercised over them by the dean, are now obsolete. Still, there are not a few of the statutes left which, in spirit, if not always in the exact letter, are binding upon all who, when duly installed as canons of the cathedral, promise to "observe its statutes and laudable customs." Mention has been already made of the struggle on the part of monastic bodies for entire freedom from episcopal jurisdiction. The question would seem to 122 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. have been mooted again in the appointment of Adam de la Hok, as abbot of Malmesbury. Documents were produced from which it was sought to be proved that their abbey was immediately subject to the Holy See, and that when they deferred in any matter to the Bishop of Sarum it was only as to a friend {tanquam ad amicuni). It was, however, decided that such exemption only obtained in certain cases, and that the " munus batedidiotiis'' must always be received from the hands of the Bishop of Sarum, or some bishop commissioned specially by him for the purpose. This was embodied in a separate statute, which further bound any abbot or abbess so receiving the episcopal benediction, in token of their subjection, to give a cope to the cathedral. On their doing so, they were enrolled in the list of benefactors of the Church. Reference has been made to an abuse which had now been introduced by the Pope of "providing" a person to a prebend before it was actually vacant. Those who were so appointed were termed "expect- ant canons." x This practice was speedily carried to a shameless extent, and extracts from registers might be multiplied in illustration of it. Thus, we find that about the year 1340 "letters apostolic" were laid 1 Entries of this character are very frequent. Thus, in the " Hemingsby Register" (1343) we read " Litene apostolicse Jacobi de Creyk qui admissus fuitcum expectatione prjebendae." Again, "Admissio Hugonis de Veyraco ad canonicatum cum expectatione prcebendcE , necnon dignitatis vel personatus." Once more (1333), "WHIielmus Coleby admissus in fratrem et canonicum sub expectatione prabcniiic." COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. 1 23 before the chapter of Sarum directed to Reymund de Fargis, then dean, naming his successor. In like manner there were similar " letters apostolic " naming a treasurer " after the decease " of Arnald, then holding that dignity. The bishops would seem to have had terrible evils to cope with. This is painfully evident from such entries in the registers as the following : — " Monition to the prebendaries that they demand no extortionate fines; " — " citation of pluralists and of non-ordained incum- bents 1 of livings ; " — "mandate for inquiry concerning unconsecrated churches; " — "denunciation of a patron for not presenting a fit person for a benefice ; " — " citation of the Archdeacon of Berks for non- residence and perjury ; " — " mandate to the dean to appear before the bishop in the chapter house die juridico ; " — " names of suspended and excom- municated prebendaries." Such entries speak for themselves ; as we read them we can in some little degree realize the difficult task undertaken by those who had the charge of the various dioceses in those early days. And yet from these same registers we gather evidence that the number of churches was increasing. Thus we learn that in 1326 and subsequent years no less than fifty-three churches were dedicated by Robert, bishop of Enaghdunc, acting under the authority of Roger de Mortival. A few years pre- viously similar licence had been given to David Martin, bishop of St. David's, to act as a suffragan 1 See note on p. 11S. 124 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. in the diocese of Sarum for "dedicating altars and celebrating orders." One religious body that now acquired a footing, and in the event considerable influence, in our diocese, must have a passing notice. These were the Knights Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who, established originally in 1 1 13 by a " bull" of Pope Pascal II., and succeeding at the beginning of the fourteenth century to much of the property of the Knights Templars (who had been suppressed for imputed crimes) became considerable landowners in this diocese. Half-clerical, half-military order as they were, their principle was to have a concentration of government of their own, an asserted and maintained independence, and so an imperium in imperio every- where. Neither pope nor bishop really liked the Hospitallers, for though they began with asceticism, yet, as they acquired wealth they, like others, became worldly, and humility was at last exchanged for arrogance. Notwithstanding all this, certain privileges and immunities were conferred on them by papal " bulls," until at last they were able to defy the rights alike of king and bishop. Their estates in the diocese of Sarum, were, in Wilts — at Anstey, Lockeridge, Swallowcliffe, and Temple Rockley ; in Berks — at Blewbery, Bisham, Brompton, Catmere, Greenham, Ilsley, Spene, Ufton, and Woolhampton ; in Dorset — at Chilcomb, Friar Moyne, Holme Priory, Kingston, Stintesford, Toller Fratrum, Warmwell, and Waye. Harpsfield, under the years 1325-29, speaks of Bishop Roger de Mortival having been an " impedi- COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. T25 ment " to the Hospitallers, in preventing their enjoy- ment of rights duly conveyed to them, concerning which, he adds, he was reproved by Walter, arch- bishop of Canterbury. The reference is possibly to the patronage of the prebend of Blewbery, which the Hospitallers claimed, but concerning which there would seem to have been frequent disputes ; some- times the king, and at other times the bishops, laying claim to it. In the year 1330 Robert Wyville became Bishop of Sarum, and the forty-five years during which he held the see were in many respects eventful ones. He was appointed to the see by papal provision, at the instance, it is alleged, of Philippa, queen of Edward III. That king had previously, in 1329, recommended him to the pope for the see of Bath and Wells. His earliest work would seem to have been the completion of the wall of the Close and the enlarge- ment of the Cloisters. 1 The king granted a charter, empowering him to carry out this work, and appa- rently in furtherance of the same gave him all the stones in the cathedral at Old Sarum for the purpose. Many of them, with all the characteristics of Norman work upon them, may be seen in the wall of the cathedral close and in some of its entrance gate- ways to the present day. The next incident in the episcopate of Robert Wyville is of somewhat a romantic character. For 1 In the "Liber Evidentiarum, B." we have a charter (No. 449), " pro complendo murum clausi ; " and another (No. 450), " de ampliando claustro." 126 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. some two centuries Sherborne Castle had been alienated from the see of Sarum. Since the days, in fact, of King Stephen, who seized it on the fall of Roger, bishop of Old Sarum, in 1142, it had been in the hands of the Crown. In the year 1337 Edward III. made a grant of it to William de Monta- cute, earl of Salisbury, but as the claims of the see to the castle had never been renounced, Bishop Wyville availed himself of the occasion of its transfer into private hands to bring a writ of right for its recovery. The case was accordingly brought forward in the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster, The Earl of Salisbury answered that he would defend his right to the castle by single combat, and the question was referred to a trial by battle. The register of Bishop Wyville (a.d. 1355) con- tains a letter from the bishop addressed to the arch- deacon of Berks, desiring that the prayers of the faithful might be offered up, and masses celebrated by the clergy throughout the archdeaconry for the success of the bishop's champion ; more particularly on the morrow of the Purification, and eight days following, the time when the combat was expected to take place. The whole proceedings, as detailed by an eye- witness in the Court of Common Pleas, are given from the Year-Book of Hilary Term, 29 Edward III. (1355), in Kite's "Wiltshire Brasses," pp. 15-18. On previous examination by the appointed judges, the bishop's champion was discovered to be wearing several " rolls of prayers and charms," and this caused the fight to be deferred ; at the same time it gave the COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. 1 27 disputants time for compromise. The bishop in the event paid 2,500 marks to the earl, who let judg- ment go by default. The " final concord " be- tween the combatants is still extant among the records in the custody of the Dean and Chapter of Sarum. 1 During the episcopate were compiled what are commonly termed the " Nonal Inquisitions," or the returns of the value of the possessions of the Church, for the purpose of levying the ninth of corn, wool, and lambs, in every parish for the purposes of the king. The time at which these returns was com- piled was in the 15 Edward III. (1341), just fifty years after the taxation of Pope Nicholas, to which previous reference has been made. ^\"L• are thus enabled to trace the progress of the Church in the diocese during the half century. There are named in Wilts some 234 churches; in Dorset, 223; in Berks, 119 — giving a total of 576 churches, as against 378 enumerated in the former record. This is of course, as in the previous case, irrespective of dependent chapels that were annexed to some of the more important parishes. The total number of churches and chapels was now hardly less than 650, an important advance during a period of fifty years. Of one great work accomplished at this time we must speak a little more in detail. Among the 1 There is a "brass" on the large slab which once covered Bishop Wyville's remains, and which was removed from the middle of the choir to the north end of the eastern transept, in which we have a representation of the contest for the recovery of Sherborne Castle. 128 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. canons of Sarum appointed by Bishop Wyville was William of Eciington. In due time he rose to be Bishop of Winchester, having been consecrated to that see, in 1346, by two former canons of Sarum, John Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury, and Ralph Stratford, bishop of London, assisted by his old friend and patron, Bishop Wyville. He determined to ac- knowledge God's goodness in raising him to so high a post in the church, by building at Edington, in Wilts, a magnificent church ; and furthermore, moved by the same pious zeal and gratitude, founded a college for a dean and twelve ministers, to the honour of the Blessed Virgin, St. Catharine, and All Saints. Subsequently, at the request, it is said, of the Black Prince, the government of the new monastery was altered, and a body of monks, of the order of Bonhommes, a ramification from the Augustinian root, became the proprietors of the church ; Edington, and Ashridge in Bucks, being the only two places in England where their order existed. The church, which still remains, rivals almost any sacred edifice in the diocese, both in size and beauty of detail. At the Reformation, the whole monastery, building, lands, and tenements, were granted to Seymour of Sudeley, the Protector's brother. On his fall, the site was granted to William Powlett Lord St. John ; from whom it passed to the Duke of Bolton, and finally became the property of the Taylor family, the present owner being Mr. Simon Watson Taylor. The successor of Robert Wyville in the see of Sarum was Ralph Erghum. The chapter, indeed, COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. 12Q elected one of their own canons, John Wormenhall, who had been ordained an "acolyte" in 1361 by William of Edingden, and who was chancellor of the diocese of Winchester in 1364, and a few years after- wards, in 1367, the administrator of that diocese under William of Wykeham. But the Pope peremp- torily set the election aside, and his own nominee was consecrated at Bruges by Simon Sudbury arch- bishop of Canterbury, assisted by the Bishops of Amiens and Carpentras. He was one of the bishops who joined in condemning Wyclifife as heretical when he was summoned before Archbishop Courtenay. He would seem to have been anxious to rule his diocese well and firmly, and in so doing to have roused in one quarter a strong opposition. He claimed the right of visiting the prebendal estates and churches during a vacancy in the deanery, and a complaint {querela) against him was referred, in the first in- stance, to the metropolitan, and afterwards to the pope, and decided ultimately adversely to him. He is said to have been the founder of a hospital of St. Michael, near Sarum. He also compelled the Earl of Salisbury, as a penance for some act of irreverence towards the Holy Sacrament, to erect a stone cross in the city, on which was inscribed his offence, and made him visit it from time to time with " bared head and naked feet." He would seem to have revived the custom, which, at all events, during the episcopate of Robert Wyville, as far as we know, had fallen into abeyance, of employing a suffragan to help him in his duties. Among the corporation deeds of Bridport is a small parchment, with a large frag- K 130 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. ment of the seal of Nicholas bishop of Christopolis,. which records that, on November 14, 1387, as suf- fragan to Bishop Erghum, he consecrated two altars in the parish church of St. Mary, Bridport, one in honour of St. Catharine and the other of St. Mary. Towards the close of the reign of Edward III. the exactions of Rome had become so great and so into- lerable, that the spirit of the English clergy was fairly roused, and they addressed to Parliament a remon- strance on the subject, and also petitioned that church- men might not be allowed to hold secular offices. An inquiry was made in 1374, and also in 1378, as to the number of foreigners holding benefices and dig- nities. At Salisbury, in the former year, there were the dean, the treasurer, the archdeacons of Berks and Dorset, the prebendaries of Highworth and Gilling- ham, all cardinals of the Roman Church, and habi- tually absent. In the latter year, the dignity of treasurer as well as the archdeaconry of Sarum were held by one and the same person, who was also a cardinal ; the prebend of Woodford, and the archdea- conry of Berks were also in the hands of these princes of the Roman Church. Besides these, there were of course numberless others who were foreigners, and for the most part non-resident, who were forced into dignities and benefices. We are not surprised at finding that an Act was at last passed, in 1379, dis- tinctly forbidding aliens thereafter from holding benefices. In truth, ecclesiastical abuses were now manifold. The jurisdiction claimed by the pope over the clergy had reached its height, whether in granting "provisions" to vacant benefices, or "ex- COMPLETION OF DIOCESAN ORGANIZATION. 131 pective graces," which nominated to them before a vacancy, or in demanding the taxation of them to supply " Peter's pence" to the treasury at Rome. And side by side were to be seen also glaring ex- amples of the luxury and vices of the clergy. The older religious orders had sunk into mere landowners, and even the enthusiasm of the friars had died away, leaving behind it only a crowd of encroaching men- dicants. It is no wonder that we find William Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, alleging the general degeneracy of the monks as a motive for bestowing his wealth on the foundation of colleges rather than of convents or monasteries. k 2 1^2 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. CHAPTER VII. 1380-1500. THE " STATESMAN " CLASS OF BISHOPS, AND GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. We enter now upon a period when the bishops of Sarum were for the most part of the " statesman " class, and some of them nearly related to royalty. It embraces no less than twelve episcopates, some spent in times of strife and confusion, and but of short duration. Few indeed of these bishops could have given much personal attention to their diocese, the episcopal duties having been performed chiefly by suffragans, who were either Welsh, Scotch, or Irish bishops forced often by troubles or poverty to leave their own dioceses ; or bishops in partibus, consecrated that is with titles borrowed from an old see, and provided with a prebend in the cathedral, or a benefice in the diocese, with which to secure them a main- tenance. Of the low condition of the Church and its manifold abuses at the close of the fourteenth century mention has been already made. Even old spiritual agencies, such as the work of the Cistercians, or the Preaching Friars, had lost their power ; the " salt had lost its salti- ness." The religion which the latter now preached, GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. 1 33 based as it was on indulgences, and dispensations, and penances, taught the people not so much how to be God-fearing, as the best way to compound for being ungodly. It almost seemed as though, for a layman, religion was impossible, and that it was really an impertinence to affect it. And yet, just as at previous periods we have noticed how, amid the degeneracy to which all things human are subject, there were in the providence of God, raised up agencies to counteract prevailing sins and errors, so at this time also, not only was there a remarkable religious revival in the country, but also a great social improvement among the people generally. The voice of Wycliffe had been heard, as that of a prophet, denouncing the sins of the day. Among those who were his judges and condemned him, when summoned before Archbishop Courtenay on a charge of heresy, was Ralph Erghum, bishop of Sarum. His itinerant preachers, or Lollards, as they were termed, were sup- pressed as far as king or parliament could compass it. No long time afterwards, the statute of heretics, the first legal enactment of religious bloodshed which defiled our statute-book, was passed, by which per- sistent heretics might be handed over to the civil officers to be burnt on a high place before the people. A Norfolk rector, William Sawtre, was the first victim committed to the flames for openly professing himself a follower of Wycliffe, and using his endeavours to spread Lollardism. But this persecution could not stop the progress of the new doctrines ; a wave of religious feeling was passing over the country, and no effort of bishop or king could check its advance. 134 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. In the same year in which William Sawtre suffered, a bold denunciation of transubstantiation and pilgri- mages was heard in Dorset from the lips of the parish priest of Lyme. Purvey, 1 wavering as his stead- fastness seems to have been, declared at the first fearlessly before his judges that if the Pope were to lay the kingdom under an interdict, so far from harming it would the rather benefit the people, inasmuch as it would, amongst other things, relieve them from the burden of maintaining some thousands of priests, to " prattle " the " Use of Sarum " without any devotion. The results of this movement, though perhaps difficult from want of contemporary records to be traced in detail in our diocese, were never- theless felt here, and some of them may possibly be seen in events that will hereafter be narrated. The first of the bishops of this period under review was John Waltham, the cherished friend of King Richard II., who had held high offices of state before he became Bishop of Sarum, and who, during the time of his episcopate here, was Lord Treasurer, and also Lord Chancellor. Immediately after his conse- cration we read of a commission issued to John Maydenhith, who held the prebend of South Alton and was also Dean of Chichester, to act as his vicar- 1 Among Purvey's heresies and errors was the following : — ' ' Item quod si Papa poneret interdictum in regno nostro non possit nobis nocere, sed multum prodesse ; quia per hoc nos alleviant a maledictis legibus suis, et a sumptibus sustentandi tot millia mundialium sacerdotum ad garrulandum usum Sarum et novum cantum sine devotione." " Fasciculi Zizaniorum " (Rolls Series), p. 390. GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. 1 35 general ; and of two suffragans commissioned to per- form episcopal functions. He himself would seem to have been much in London, and to have been en- gaged in public matters which occasionally brought him into conflict with the people. Thus we read of a riot in the house of the Bishop of Salisbury in London, on an occasion of disturbance caused by the city refusing, in 1391, to lend the king money. 1 His accession to the see would seem to have been sig- nalised by the institution of the festival of the visita- tion of the Virgin Mary, one instance out of many that may be named of the tendency to compensate by an excess of outward observances for the lack of that spiritual religion which the worldliness of the age was so completely forgetting, at all events in high places. Mention has been made in a previous page of the attempts on the part of an early bishop, to claim the Tight of "visiting" the cathedral, and his subsequent formal renunciation of his claim. The matter would seem to have been in abeyance for 130 years, the right not having been demanded by Roger de Mortival, nor included, as one belonging to the bishop, in the code of statutes which he issued. In the time of Bishop Waltham, whose high position in the State was no little help to him in enforcing it, the claim was renewed. He himself in 1390 resisted the metro- political visitation of Archbishop Courtenay, and only yielded on a sentence of excommunication being threatened, if not actually issued, against him. Two • See Milman's "Annals of St. Paul's," p. 80. 136 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. years afterwards, through the intervention of the king, an agreement was drawn up between Bishop Waltham and the chapter of Sarum, as to the mode and duration of his visitation, and the precise limits of the episcopal jurisdiction. This " concordat " was confirmed by Pope Boniface IX., and episcopal visitations of the cathedral, which could only be held septennially, were ever after regulated by it. The successor of Bishop Waltham was, like him- self, a favourite " in high places." At the enthroni- sation of Bishop Richard Mitford, who was translated to Sarum from Chichester, there were present "the King (Richard II.), the Duke of Glou- cester, and the Earl of Derby." It was in Richard Mitford's time that the church of St. Thomas, Sarum, was annexed to the dean and chapter by a bull of Pope Boniface IX., in 1402. This prelate was the friend and first patron of Henry Chicheley, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, he having appointed him to a prebend in the cathedral, in which he ultimately held the dignity of chancellor, and having made him also archdeacon of Berks. The eleven years of his episcopate were at best but stormy ones. He is said, indeed, to have been imprisoned at Bristol for a time as apartizan of Richard II. There is a very beautiful monument to his memory in the cathedral, " in the chapel of St. Margaret " ; it is placed in the opening, behind the great pillar, into the aisle of the south-western transept. In the list of bishops the obscure name of Nicholas Bubwith follows that of Richard Mitford. He too had filled high civil offices, — he had been Master of the GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. 137 Rolls, Privy Seal, and Lord High Treasurer. After holding the archdeaconry of Dorset, with the prebend of Cherminster, he became Bishop of London, and then, an unusual thing, exchanged London for Sarum. In a few months he was advanced by papal bull to the see of Bath and Wells. Possibly he never resided as bishop in our diocese at all. There is an entry in the diocesan register which records that, on March 17th, 1407, John, bishop of Callipolis "celebrated orders " by authority of Nicholas, bishop of Sarum. To the obscure name of Nicholas Bubwith succeeds the famous one of Robert Hallam. He also com- missioned from time to time no less than/twr suffra- cans to act for him in the administration of his diocese, and was for the most part engaged in efforts abroad for remedying the manifold abuses in the church. He was a gifted and learned man, and studied at Oxford during a period of great controversial excite- ment, when the new opinions promulgated by Wycliffe and his followers were daily gaining ground. In 1403 he was elected chancellor of Oxford, having a short time before been collated to the archdeaconry of Canterbury. Ten years after his consecration as Bishop of Sarum, together with Chicheley, bishop of St. Davids, and Chillingdon, prior of Christ Church, he went to the council held at Pisa, where he was re- garded as the head of the English members. He pre- sented a memorial complaining of the number of for- eigners forced upon a people' whose tongue they did not understand ; and found especial fault with the bad state of discipline into which the Cistercians in this country had fallen, an accusation which the abbot of 138 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Citeaux could not deny, though lie alleged the schism in the papacy then prevailing as in part the cause of it. In 1 41 4, we find Bishop Hallam, now raised, it is said, to the rank of cardinal, attending the coun- cil of Constance, at the head of eight prelates, amongst whom were Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, Richard Clifford, bishop of London, and Nicholas Bubwith, his own immediate predecessor at Sarum, all of them having been connected with our cathedral. There he boldly opposed the pope, John XXIII., and denounced him for his immoral life. There too, though he was not a promoter of the reformation desired by Wycliffe, he would not sanction the perse- cution of his Bohemian sympathisers. In truth he openly opposed the persecution unto death of John Huss, on the ground that " God willeth not the death of a sinner." Bishop Hallam died at Constance before the coun- cil was terminated, and was buried in the cathedral of that city. His decease at that critical time has been regarded by historians as fatal to the cause of many really effective reforms in the Church. Two facts relating to the influence of the church of Sarum at this time may be here fittingly mentioned. We have alluded to Bishop Clifford as one of the pre- lates present at the council of Constance. He held a stall at Sarum before his elevation to the episcopate. He is said to have been the first to render homage to Pope Martin V., who succeeded on the deposition of his abandoned predecessor, John XXIII., and so may be supposed to have had some share in the election of that determined and sagacious pope who GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. 1 39 brought Western Christendom again to the feet of the Roman pontiff. It was this same Bishop Clifford who succeeded in introducing, though not without some resistance on the part of his chapter, the Use of Sarttm into the cathedral of St. Paul, at London. 1 The other fact relates also to St. Paul's a few years earlier than that of which we have been writing. At that time Robert Braybrook was bishop of London. He had previously been dean of Sarum. He found grievous abuses in his church, which sometime before had been condemned in what is called a " tremendous increpa- tion "' by the king, Edward III. The abuse which he especially set himself to correct was connected with the residence of the canons. To use Dean Milman's words " The residentiaryship at St. Paul's had for- merly been held to be a burden, — the canons thought it more pleasant to reside each on his separate estate, leaving to others the irksome duty of attending the long and wearisome services of the church, for each of which he had his ill paid deputy. Gradually, how- ever, from the great increase of the common fund by oblations, obits, and other sources shared out to the residentiaries, this burden became an enviable privi- lege. There was a rush to become residentiaries. At this time, too, the residentiaries had an ingenious de- vice to exclude their eager brethren. The canon who 1 Henry Wharton (" Ilistor. de Episcopis de Decanis," Lond., p. 155) says that Bishop Clifford so decreed, with the consent of the chapter, on October 15, 1414, and that after the 1st day of December next ensuing the "Use of Sarum" was followed instead of the " Use of St. Paul's." See Simpson's "Statutes, &c, of St. Paul's," Introd., p. lix. I40 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. wished to become a residentiary was obliged to pay six or seven hundred marks to be spent in feastings. So the residentiary chapter had sunk down to only two. The affair was brought before the king for his arbitra- tion, and he ordered that residence should be deter- mined according to the usage of the church of Salisbury." 1 We pass over in a few words the brief and, as far as the church was concerned, uneventful episcopates of John Chandler (1417-27) and Robert Neville (1427-38), simply remarking that the appointment of the latter was an illustration of the power that to the last was wielded by Rome. A nephew of Henry IV., Robert Neville was, when he was but seventeen years of age, a canon of York, and provost of Beverley. On the vacancy in the see of Sarum, the chapter had elected their dean, Simon Sydenham, as bishop ; but the pope, Martin V., set that election aside in favour of Robert Neville, granting him a special dispensation, inasmuch as he was not of the canonical age for con- secration. We find suffragans still employed to assist in the work of the diocese during both these episco- pates. Robert Neville, after holding the see of Sarum for ten years, was advanced to the richer bishopric of Durham. One custom of much interest we meet with about this time, though it is not easy to say at what precise period it originated. It was that of co-opting lay benefactors of the church and others, into "brother- hood " in the cathedral church of Sarum. Among 1 Milman's "Annals of St. Paul's," p. 83. GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. 141 documents belonging to the cathedral is one entitled "Modus recipiendi aliquam honestam vel nobilem per- sonam in fratrem sen sorore>/i"—so that the practice was a recognized one, with its settled mode of inau- guration. The chapter registers have many entries on this subject. Thus in 1388, the Duke of Lancaster and his wife were admitted as " a brother and sister."' In 1400, the Earl of Rutland, — and in 1409, the Prince of Wales, and the Queen, together with her attendants, were admitted in like manner. In 1420, we have this record, — " Henry, bishop of Winchester " — no less a person than the Cardinal Beaufort of after days, who had formerly been a canon of the cathedral — asking to be received back as "a brother." And in 1473, King Edward IV., together with the bishops of Dur- ham and Carlisle, were so admitted into brotherhood. Whether these " brothers of the chapter " undertook any specific work on behalf of the cathedral is hardly known : — anyhow, the idea of thus forming a bond between the mother-church of a diocese and the faith- ful laity or clerics who were not part of the cathedral body, is an interesting one, and capable possibly with modern adjustments of useful revival even in our own day. When we reach the episcopate of William Aiscough, we come to anxious and also stirring times. He was secretary to Henry VI., and the King's confessor. He obtained the see by the "bull" of Pope Eugenius IV., dated Feb. n, 1438, and was consecrated on the following July 20, in the presence of the king, Henry VI., by Henry Beaufort, cardinal bishop of Winchester, in the royal chapel 142 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. of Windsor. He also performed the duties of his diocese by means of suffragans, and at last paid a terrible penalty for non-residence here, in what is commonly termed Jack Cade's rebellion. Already Adam Moleyns, bishop of Chichester, had been mur- dered by the mob at Portsmouth. And now they pursued William Aiscough with the same cruel pur- pose. They met with him at Edington, where he was actually engaged in celebrating the Holy Myste- ries. The church was entered by the lawless multi- tude, raising the cry, " Death to the King's Confessor, — the fellow always lived with the king, and did not reside in his diocese with us, nor keep hospitality, therefore he shall die." His holy office, the sacred- ness of the place, the holy work in which he was engaged, availed nothing. Clad in his sacred vest- ments the bishop was siezed and dragged with rude violence through chancel and nave, and the cry was raised, "To the hill-top with the traitor." The crowd gathered round, — the heaped-up flints that chanced to be nigh gave ready means for carrying their cruel purpose into execution, and in no long time the dead body of the bishop lay naked and gory on the down above. 1 The state of the church generally at this time in England has been graphically sketched by Mr. Green, in his " History of the English People," p. 267. He says, " In the presence of Lollardism the church had ceased to be a great political power, and sunk into a mere section of the landed aristocracy. Its one aim 1 Wilts Arch. Mag., iii. 56. GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. 1 43 was to preserve its enormous wealth, which was threatened at once by the hatred of the heretics and by the greed of the nobles. Lollardism still lived, in spite of the steady persecution, as a spirit of revolt ; and we find the Duke of Gloucester traversing England with men-at-arms for the purpose of repress- ing its risings, and hindering the circulation of its invectives against the clergy. . . . The dissoluteness against which Lollardism had raised its great moral protest reigned now without a check. A gleam of intellectual light was breaking on the darkness of the time, but only to reveal its hideous combination of mental energy with moral worthlessness All spiritual life seemed to have been trodden out in the ruin of the Lollards. . . . Even the religious enthu- siasm of the people seemed to have spent itself, or to have been crushed out by the bishops' courts." It was at this sad time for the church, that Richard Beauchamp, a native of Wilts, and a brother of Lord St. Amand, became bishop of Sarum. He held with his bishopric a prebendal stall at Westminster, and for a portion of his time also the deanery of St. George's, Windsor. Though he had, as the registers show, the assist- ance of some five suffragans at different times, he would seem, in one respect at all events, to have been a contrast to his predecessor, in that he was not only a resident, but we may say also, an active bishop. There is in what is called the " Burgh Register," a lorn: and detailed account of his visitation of his cathedral in 1454, within four years of his accession to the see, and also a list of things " ordered to be 144 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. amended ;" and he seems to have repeated his formal visitation at intervals of seven years, — certainly in 1468 and in 1475. One work, characteristic enough of the times, which he undertook, was the promotion of the canonization of Osmund, the founder of the cathedral at Old Sarum. Previous efforts had been made to obtain from Rome, now claiming to be the sole judge in such a matter, a formal recognition of the merits of Osmund, in order to his being included in the calen- dar of saints. This was, after due inquiry made, and the pleading of the case by special emissaries from England, granted by Pope Calixtus in the year 1456. All the documents relating to the canonization of Osmund are to be found among the muniments at Sarum. In 1472 a special indulgence was granted by Pope Sixtus IV. to all who visited the shrine of the saint on the day of his festival (July 17) ; and in the convocation of prelates and clergy in St. Paul's, in 1 48 1, that day was directed to be observed in his memory by the English Church. Another work which Bishop Beauchamp carried out in his diocese was the building of the present church of St. George's, Windsor. Edward IV., who was his friend and patron, appointed him dean of Windsor in 1477, and it was under the bishop's supervision that the present cruciform chapel of St. George was built. The king, out of regard to Bishop Beauchamp and his assistance in that work, conferred on him " and his successors the bishops of Sarum for ever," the office of Chancellor of the Order of the Garter. The king had previously shown his interest in Sarum ; at GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION". 145 least, that much we may infer from an entry in the Newton Register (p. 86), to the effect that on • ; August 23, 1466, the king entered the close at the south gate, and the queen at the north gate." A few years afterwards, in 1473, we nave tne same king again at Sarum, asking to be received as a " brother " of the church. Without doubt, during the thirty-two years of Richard Beauchamp's episcopate, there was progress in the church as regards its material structures, and probably also its outward services, for he and his family were not only wealth) - , but great promoters of church building. Large and handsome chantry chapels, built by them at Bromham,and also, judging from the badge of the " shackle- bolt ; ' that is to be seen there, at Devizes, are still remaining. The bishop himself, moreover, erected a large chantry chapel on the south side of the lady chapel in the cathedral, which was not removed till the end of the last century, in which he was buried. During his time, also, the Hungerford Chantry, which was a similar erection on the north side of the lady chapel, was built. And not a few churches in the diocese were either rebuilt, or to a great extent restored, at this time. At St. Mary's, Devizes, at Eton, at Wanborough in Wilts, at Sherborne in Dorset, at Fifield in Berks, and in other places, there is work to be seen which must be of the time of Bishop Beauchamp, and to carry out which the promoters were probably stimulated by the example of their diocesan. And as regards the increase of outward ceremonies there seems to be evidence in the entries in various L 146 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. chapter registers. Thus in the " Burgh Register " (p. 85) we have a complaint from the treasurer on account of the additional burdens cast on him by the introduction of sundry new feasts, such as that of St Cedde, St. David, &c. In the " Machon Register " we have the names of the various altars in the cathe- dral, which now beca*me numerous. In the same register also we read of the sum of ^40 having been bestowed on the church of Sarum by Edmund Lacy, bishop of Exeter, on condition of their using in the diocese an office compiled by himself in honour of Raphael the archangel. Nevertheless, with all this outward show, if indeed the opinions of people in general were to be trusted, there would seem to have been little spiritual progress, for they were loud in their denunciation of bishops for their pride and avarice, and the haughty isolation in which they lived apart from the members of their flock. Indeed, the bold way in which Reginald Pecock, bishop of Chichester, answered their complaints shows clearly enough the force of their conviction. He defended the bishops, then, as in later days, taunted as "dumb dogs " for their neglect of preaching, and contended that they might fulfil their mission in far more effectual ways ; and that their place was just as rightly in king's councils as in the pulpit. He boldly vin- dicated the payment of " annates " and first-fruits. With the general history of Pecock, his assumed heresies and subsequent deprivation, we have nothing to do ; we allude to the circumstance as occurring during this episcopate by way of illustrating the real state of things. Observers were not slow at GRADUAL APPROACH OK THE REFORMATION". 1 47 drawing their inferences ; it was said by some that " since Pecock and other prelates of his day had maintained that bishops were not obliged to preach, Almighty God himself had preached in England by the punishments which had fallen on them." As regards the church it has been said : "Imposing as the great ecclesiastical body still seemed from the memories of its past, its immense wealth, its tradition of statesmanship, it was rendered powerless by a want of spiritual life, by a moral inertness, by its anta- gonism to the deeper religious convictions of the people, and its blind hostility to the intellectual movement which was beginning to stir the world. Conscious of the want of popular favour, and jealous only for the preservation of their vast estates, the churchmen clung for protection to the crown. Pre- lates devoted themselves to the royal council-board, with the simple view of averting, by means of the monarchy, the pillage of the church. In any wider political sense the influence of the body to which they belonged was insignificant. From the time of the Lollard outbreak the attitude of the church is timid as that of a hunted thing. The church still trembled at the progress of heresy." 1 Still there were not wanting, in this diocese at least, counterbalancing influences for good. By this time there had sprung up in our towns a class of burgesses who were now acquiring not only wealth by trade but considerable political power. The disasters of the 1 Green's " History of the English People," p. 284. L 2 148 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Wars of the Roses fell principally on the nobility, — the ruin and bloodshed were limited for the most part to the great lords and their feudal retainers. The trading and industrial classes stood aloof from the struggle, and were not seriously affected by it. Com- merce went on unchecked, and developed itself more rapidly than at any other period. And in this diocese in particular we see the result in the improvement and restoration of churches, as well as in the institution of those trade guilds which, whatever their objects may have been, certainly were an acknowledgment, in the religious associations with which they were blended, of Him who is the giver of all good. The merchants' marks — the badges, that is, adopted by the merchants of the Staple, as they were termed, which are seen in so many churches — as in St. Thomas, Salisbury, in Tisbury, in Bradford-on-Avon, in Trowbridge, in Steeple Ashton, — all tell of good works done by this new and flourishing class of men engaged in the wool trade — the " staple " article in which they dealt, and from which many of them amassed considerable wealth. The memory of Bishop Beauchamp would seem to have been held in grateful remembrance in Sarum. There is a monument to him at Windsor, the deanery of which he held till his death; and his beautiful chantry chapel at Sarum was standing till 1784, when it was removed by Wyatt. As regards this chapel we are told,—" There was a custom that on Christmas day, and all the holy days, the wives of the mayor and aldermen and gentry of the city came to prayers in Beauchamp's chapel in the evening with flambeaux GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. I 49 and torches, except on Innocents' day, when they went to their own parish churches." 1 They were indeed troublous times, alike for the church and nation, in which was cast the lot of the two immediate successors of Bishop Beauchamp. The first of them, Lionel Woodville, had held the prebend of Cherminster in the cathedral, and became bishop of Sarum in 14S2. He was brother-in-law of Edward IV., and his episcopate was but a brief one, for his death was hastened by grief at the downfall of his family on the accession of Richard III., and the execution at Salisbury of his brother-in-law, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. The second of them, Thomas Langton, was advanced to Sarum from the see of St. David's, and in a few years was translated to Winchester. He would seem to have been a friend to literature, and to have encouraged learned men. Among those with whom he surrounded him- self, by giving them prebends in his cathedral, were Richard Fox, ultimately bishop of Winchester, the munificent founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and of the grammar school at Grantham, of which he was prebendary ; and Christopher Bainbridge, the executor to his will, who became at last archbishop of York and a cardinal of the Roman Church ; and James Stanley, who held the precentorship at Sarum, and who became warden of the collegiate church of Manchester and bishop of Ely. The state of the clergy generally, and more espe- 1 See Baker's " Collection of Epitaphs, &c, from Sarum Cathedral,"' in Harl. MS. 7048, p. 320. 150 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. cially of the inmates of the religious houses, seems however at this time to have been deplorable ; for, in 1489, a "bull" was issued by Pope Innocent VIII., censuring in strong terms their dissolute lives, and giving authority to Archbishop Morton for their cor- rection. And not only so, but the papal "bull" was backed by Act of Parliament. Twice, we are told, there was a metropolitical visitation of the cathedral of Sarum. Unhappily the episcopal and capitular registers are very imperfect about this period ; there are none of the former between 1481 and 1485, or of the latter between 1475 an d x 497- Froude, in his History of England, 1 has told us some of the results, more especially in the case of the Abbey of St. Alban's. It is to be feared that what he there details is too true a picture of other parts of England as regards the character of the clergy generally at this time. It is always darkest just before dawn of day. In our next chapter we shall be treating of the church of Sarum at the approach of the Reformation, when the evils of which Ave have been compelled so frequently to speak reached their climax, and provoked the severe, though not altogether uncalled-for, interference of the Crown and Parliament of England. As in all great changes, some things were swept away ruth- lessly which we would fain perhaps have retained ; and similar evils, though in a modified form, re- 1 See Froude, i. 97, and also Frascrs Magazine, Feb. 1857. See also Folkestone Williams' "Lives of English Cardinals," ii. 175. There would no doubt be found an account of these visitations in the register of Archbishop Morton at Lambeth. GRADUAL APPROACH OF THE REFORMATION. 151 appeared in the course of no great number of years. Still there is no doubt that the Reformation, however much we may regret some of its accompaniments, or the means by which it was effected, was a real blessing alike to church and nation, and brought light where before the darkness was "such as might be felt." It is worth a passing mention before closing this chapter that for a brief period — from 1496 to 1499, during the short and uneventful episcopate of John Blythe — the islands of Jersey and Guernsey were se- parated by Pope Alexander VI. from the diocese of Coutances and included in that of Sarum. The same pope, within three years of that time, removed them to the diocese of Winchester, in which the) have ever since been included. 152 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. CHAPTER VIII. i5°°- r 57i- THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. At the commencement of the sixteenth century the diocese of Sarum must have been of an extent such as it was quite beyond the power of any one bishop to administer. It has been indeed said that there were in England some 45,000 parish churches upon the Reformation. 1 Even reckoning up those recorded in the " Valor Ecclesiasticus " as in Wilts, Berks, and Dorset, in 1535, we find as many as between eight and nine hundred, and many of the dependent churches are not named. Almost a cursory glance at the details given in the " Valor " of churches in such places as Wilton, Shaftesbury, and Reading, will go far to prove that the statement, exaggerated as it may seem at the first, is hardly to be discredited. In the Wiltshire Institutions, moreover, we meet with the names of sundry churches which have since 1 According to some authorities, the number was much greater. See Maskell's "Monum. Rit. " 1. clxix. note. He quotes a fifteenth-century manuscript in the British Museum ("Bibl. Reg.," MS. 8, D. iv.) in which it is said, " Sunt in Anglia ecclesice parochiales, 45,011." THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. 1 53 passed utterly out of mind : not only their site, but also their very names, having been lost. To give an instance or two out of many others that might easily be produced ; — in the Hundred of 15radford-on-Avon, there are, in the episcopal registers, the names of Berrelegh, Wittenham, and Atworth Parva. Of the first we cannot with certainty trace the name or the site of the village ; of the two latter we can only by tradition assign the site of the churches. Then there are also others, such as Chaldfield Parva and Cumber- well, where all traces of a church or chapel have dis- appeared. And yet we have in the registers the names of successive incumbents from the fourteenth till the sixteenth century. As soon as Edmund Audlev, in 1502, entered on this episcopate, a commission was given by him to Richard Newport, one of the canons of Sarum, to act as vicar-general of the diocese. He also, and consider- ing the extent of his diocese we can hardly feel sur- prised, during the twenty-three years that he held the see of Sarum, called to his assistance no less than four suffragan bishops, each with a foreign title. Of these, three were beneficed in the diocese, and the fourth was abbot of Dorchester, in Oxford- shire, with which place, as the cradle of Christianity in Wessex, Sarum would always have a very intimate connection, though perhaps for some cen- turies before this time it had been in the diocese of Lincoln. Beyond the ordinary entries in the episcopal and capitular registers we have little record of Bishop Audley's episcopate. His lot was cast in a time 154 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH AT SALISBURY. when the church in England was gradually assuming an independent position as' regards doctrine ; when vernacular teaching was beginning to be extended ; and when the translation of Holy Scripture, which could be seen in the churches, and occasionally in the hands of the people, prepared the way for that final breaking-away from Rome which was at hand. There is still to be seen on a spare leaf of a Sarum breviary, which is in the cathedral library, a service, which so much resembles an antiphon given by Bishop Latimer for use in the diocese of Worcester at the sprinkling of holy water, which ran on this wise according to Foxe : — " Remember your promise in Baptism, Christ, His mercy and blood-shedding, By whose most holy sprinkling Of all your sins you have free pardoning, 1 " — that it has been conjectured with every probability to have been known to Latimer, inasmuch as the manuscript at one time belonged to the church of Arlingham, a place at no great distance from West Kington, then in the diocese of Sarum, of which Latimer in 1529 became rector. If so, inasmuch as the date of the manuscript is of the end of the fifteenth century, we have in this document, now pre- served in the cathedral library, a very early specimen of a vernacular service. 1 See Wiltshire Arch. Mag., xviii. 66, in a paper by the Rev. H. T. Kingdon on "An Early Vernacular Service." The ser- vice is an Aspcrsio, or sprinkling of holy water, a service said in procession in the nave. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. I 55 Anyhow, among the first who was promoted to a stall in Sarum cathedral during the time of Bishop Audley, was John Colet. afterwards dean of St. Paul"s, who, as Dean Milman says, "stood forth among the churchmen of his day with almost all the virtues, and few if any of the infirmities, of his order." He would seem to have been raised up in God's Providence as one specially fitted at once to guide and quicken the movement that was now every day more apparent of the desire to know and read in their own tongue the truths of God's revealed Word. He devoted himself to the study of the sacred writings and their practical application. Dean Milman says that, in his own preaching, he adhered to his famous axiom, " Keep to the Bible and the Apostles' Creed, and let divines, if they will, dispute about the rest." 1 Bishop Audley would seem, in 15 19, to have main- tained his right of visiting his cathedral ; and we have a record under the date of 1520 of certain statutes promulgated by Cardinal Wolsey having been read to the assembled canons. 2 He lived long enough to see his sovereign enter the lists against Luther, and, by a defence of the seven sacraments, earn from Pope Leo X. the title of " Defender of the Faith." He died in 1524, and was buried in a beautiful chantry chapel, the last of its kind erected within those walls, which is still standing on the north side of the presbytery. 1 Milman's "Annals of St. Paul's, p. 11S. 2 Hansard's " Memorials," p. 127. 156 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH AT SALISBURY. He was succeeded by the last foreigner that was forced on the see of Sarum, Lorenzo Campegio, a Roman cardinal. We meet with him some years previously, acting (in 15 17) as coadjutor to Wolsey, when he held the office of papal legate. A few years afterwards we find him active in forming a confederacy of German princes in favour of the Pope and Church of Rome, bringing together at Ratisbon several princes and bishops who bound themselves to support one another in resisting Luther. He was appointed, it is said, at the request of the king, by papal bull to the see of Sarum, and, when the question of the divorce of Henry from Catharine of Arragon was raised, he was appointed, together with another cardinal, to try it. It is said, indeed, that Campegio was actually furnished with a " bull " from the Pope dissolving the marriage, but refused to publish it ; and that after a time, in consequence of secret instructions from Rome, he destroyed it. On the fall of Wolsey he became himself the papal legate. As regards the diocese of Sarum, which, by the way, he was allowed to hold together with one in Italy, 1 he could have given very little, if any, personal attention to it. On Jan. 10, 1524-5, just one month after his appointment, he being himself abroad, a commission was given through Cardinal Wolsey, then Archbishop of York, to Thomas Bennet, treasurer of the cathedral and a canon residentiary, to act as 1 He was appointed by papal Bull dated Dec. 2, 1524, to the see of Sarum, " ita quod non desinat esse episcopus Bono- niensis." Brady's " Episcop. Succ." I. 32. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. I 57 vicar-general of the diocese, whilst his episcopal duties would seem for the most part to have been performed by a suffragan, John Pynnock, titular bishop of Syene, who was vicar of Inglesham, and held successively the prebends of Durnford and Chardstock, in the cathedral. 1 Among the documents in the chapter records is an order of Bishop Campegio for the weal of the inhabit- ants of Sherborne in the time of dearth. In the Mantuan archives, moreover, there is contained in a letter, written in August, 15 18, to the Bishop of Wor- cester, Cardinal Ghinucci, an account of the reception given by the court and city of London to Campegio. After holding our see for ten years he was deprived by Act of Parliament (25 Henry VIII.) on the ground, as therein stated, that " for the more part of his promotion he had been and yet continued to be resident at the see of Rome and elsewhere ... far out and from any part of the king's domi- nions." At the same time we must not forget that one motive for the king's animosity to Cardinal Cam- pegio was his difficulty in obtaining from him as papal legate, or through him from the court of Rome, a sentence of divorce from Queen Catharine. 2 The few years during which Nicholas Shaxton — 1 Harward's "Memorials," p. 13. - Cardinal Campegio was still regarded at Rome as Bishop of Sarum until his death in 1558. Moreover, as a protest against his deprivation, an independent succession was maintained by the Pope in our see. A detailed account of those who were so "provided" to Sarum will be found in "Fasti Ecclesise Sarisbericnsis," Introduction, p. 53. 158 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. they were barely four — held this see, were indeed times of excitement and anxiety. He was not unknown to the diocese, for he had held the living of Fuggle- ston with Bemerton, and the dignity of treasurer of the cathedral. He succeeded at the very moment when papal supremacy received its death-blow, and when More, and Fisher, bishop of Rochester, were first of all committed to the tower, and afterwards put to death, for refusing the oath of supremacy to the king. In the very year of his consecration the visitation of the monasteries took place, which soon ended in their suppression. There was also held about the same time the visitation of the cathedral by Sir John Tregonwell, as the king's commissioner, the result of which was the enactment of some im- portant ordinances respecting the residence of the canons, and the exercise of the right of patronage on the part of the dean and chapter. In his episco- pate the claims of the diocesan to recognised'assist- ance seem to have been admitted, and an Act was passed (26 Henry VIII. cap. 14) for the consecration of suffragan bishops with titles derived from English towns. In pursuance of this Act two suffragans were consecrated — Thomas Morley (in 1537) as bishop of Marlborough, and John Bradley (in 1539) as bishop of Shaftesbury. Burnet, in his " History of the Reformation," prints the injunctions given in 1538 by Bishop Shaxton throughout his diocese, and these certainly, whilst they show painfully enough the evils which prevailed in the church, prove unmistakably his earnest desire to remedy them. He begins with provision about THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. I 59 non-residents, and their curates in particular, that no French or Irish priests that could not perfectly speak the English tongue should serve as curates. They were at high mass to read the Gospel and Epistle in the English tongue, and to set forth the king's supremacy and the usurpations of the bishop of Rome. As regards sermons, he charges that they be preached purely, sincerely, and according to the true Scriptures of God ; and distinctly forbids any friar or person in a religious habit from performing any service in the church. He especially directs the clergy to commit to memory the gospels of S. Matthew and S. John, together with many other portions of the New Testament, in English. He requires the people to be taught the Lord's Prayer and the Creed in their own tongue ; and, dispensing with all lights before images, directs that every church should be furnished with a Bible. He complains of the prac- tice of putting false relics upon the people, besides the shameful abuse of such as were perhaps true relics. He prays and commands them, by the autho- rity he had under God and the king, to bring all such things to him, with the writings relating to them, that he might examine them, promising to restore such as were found to be true relics, with an instruction how they ought to be used. He also orders that the Ave and pardon bell, that was wont to be tolled three times a day, should be no more tolled. 1 Bishop Shaxton was silenced and condemned at 1 Burnet's " History of the Reformation," Book 111., part iv. (a.d. 1537). 160 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. the same time as Latimer, under the act commonly- called that of the " Six Articles." His courage after- wards failed him, and he recanted. At the burning of Ann Askew and others for "grave heresy." Nicholas Shaxton preached, though he had himself been branded as a " sacramentarian heretic." And within three weeks of that " frightful holocaust " he "preached at Paul's Cross and there recanted, and wept sore, and made great lamentation for the offence, and prayed the people also to forgive him his ' mysse ' example that he had given unto the people." 1 Nicholas Shaxton resigned his see in 1539, and afterwards acted as a suffragan in the diocese of Ely. He held his bishopric long enough to see the final suppression of the friar preachers of Sarum, and of the chief religious houses, — notably of Malmesbury and Ambresbury — in his diocese, and the rifling of his cathedral of many of its jewels and ornaments. In the same year in which he retired from Sarum the abbot of Reading was executed as a traitor. He himself narrowly escaped a like punishment. He died in the year 1556, and found his last resting-place in the chapel of Gonville Hall, Cambridge, of which he had been the president. His successor at Sarum was the versatile, and, it is to be feared, unscrupulous Salcot (or Capon). None but such as he could have heM the see through so many phases of opinion. Succeeding to it at the 1 "Grey Friars' Chronicle," p. 50. Quoted in Milman's. "Annals of St. Paul's," p. 210. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. l6l close of the reign of Henry VIII., he held it alike during the iconoclastic period of the protectorate, the reign of Edward VI., the terrible days of Mary, even till the reorganization and final establish- ment of the Anglican doctrine under Elizabeth. As king's commissioner he sent several to the stake in the days of Henry VIII. Under Edward VI. he became a Protestant ; and, changing once more under Mary, sat as a judge at the trial of Bishop Hooper and John Rogers. He saw the fall of Cromwell, the final suppression of the Jesuits, the confiscation of chantries and colleges. During his episcopate of hardly more than twenty years he saw many a one put to death for heresy, or denying the king's supre- macy, or on other pretences ; among the more notable sufferers were Archbishop Cranmer, and Bishops Ridley and Latimer. Soon after his accession to this see a very important change was effected as regarded the extent of the diocese. This was in the year 1542, when a new diocese was formed with its see at Bristol ; one of the canons of Sarum, Paul Bush, who had been previously prior of Edington, being consecrated as its first bishop. In this new diocese was placed the county of Dorset with its churches and chapels, probably numbering some four hundred. The peculiar juris- diction, however, of the dean and of the canons whose " prebends " lay in the county of Dorset would seem still to have been preserved. There are among the State Papers many notices which throw light on the anxious character of these times. Thus it was deemed expedient to license M l62 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. certain persons to preach, 1 and in one document we have the names of those so licensed under the eccle- siastical seal since July, 1547, and amongst them we find one well known in England, and, as we have already seen at one time, beneficed in the diocese of Sarum — Hugh Latimer. This must have been after his release from imprisonment, in consequence of refusing as Bishop of Worcester to accept the Act of ■" Six Articles " on the accession of Edward VI., when he declined again to undertake an episcopal charge, preferring instead to act as an itinerant preacher, as the more sure means of fixing the doctrines of the Reformation in the minds of the people. In 1548, strict orders were issued to the several bishops to direct the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper to be administered in both kinds, all old service books to be brought in, and all images to be removed from the churches. At the same time the office for Holy Communion was published in English. Such orders, naturally enough, led to opposition. On this and other accounts there would seem to have been tumults and risings in various parts of the country, amongst other places in Berks. A procla- mation was speedily issued against all idle vaga- bonds and stirrers of tumult, and the summary punishment of " being hanged without delay " dealt out to them. About the same time there would appear to have been a general visitation of England for the suppres- sion of superstitious practices ; and commissioners 1 "Calendar of State Papers" (Edw. VI.), P- 5- THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. 1 63 were also appointed to make inventories of church ornaments, jewels, bells, vestments, and other property belonging to the churches. It is to be feared that much wanton mischief was done by those who acted under the powers of one of these commissions. Thus, though images and pictures of saints were ordered to be destroyed, a special exception was made in cases of images on tombs. Nevertheless, many of them were sacrificed at this time to a barbarous zeal, stimulated, it may be in some instances by covetous- ness, inasmuch as many of them were formed of copper or even of the more precious metals. Without all doubt not a few monumental brasses were de- stroyed from a similar cause. The returns for the chantries, as well as the inven- tories of church goods and ornaments, give us many interesting particulars. 1 We have, in the case of the larger towns or parishes, given to us the number of communicants, which, as they presumably included all who were above the age of confirmation and had come to years of discretion, will enable us to give a fair estimate of the population of the towns them- selves. A few examples will suffice. Thus in Marl- borough there were, in the year 1548, three parish churches and 1061 communicants ; in St. Edmund's, Sarum, they numbered 1700 ; in Mere, 800 ; in Chip- penham, 667 ; in Calne, 860; in Malmesbury, where there were two parish churches, 860 ; in Devizes, where there were two churches and but one " persone" 1 See Wilts Arckaol. Mag., xii. 354, in a paper by Mr. Mackenzie Walcot on "Inventories of Church Goods and Chantries of Wilts." M 2 164 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. (parson), 900 ; in Bradford, 576 ; in Trowbridge, 500 ; in Aldbourne, 400 ; in Coseham (Corsham) described as "a greate parisshe," 576; in Warminster, 800. Such returns not only give us information as to the relative size, but as to the actual population of the several parishes themselves, as probably those above the age for confirmation, which was then undoubtedly younger than it is commonly supposed to be now, would represent some two thirds of the whole number. Fuller speaks of Bishop Capon as an "impairer of his church." No doubt there was truth in this ; in the administration of the estates of his see he sadly im- poverished the bishopric though he enriched himself. There are many transactions recorded in the episco- pal register which can only bear this interpretation. Some of the estates in Dorset, which still belonged to the see, were leased out for no less than 99 years, without any reservation of rent to the see, and con- sequently, we may presume, at an increased fine. It is true that at the accession of Queen Mary he filed a bill against the lessee of these estates, on the ground that the lease had been extorted from him by undue pressure from the Crown, and from others. It is just possible that he may have deemed it the wiser course for preventing the alienation of those estates to the see of Bristol, in which diocese Dorset was now in- cluded ; and in any case we are sure that bishops at this time were forced to submit to the rapacity of the court and its favourites. 1 Still as much the same 1 Thus Cranmer was compelled to surrender many of his possessions, and Ridley to sacrifice four of h is principal manors THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. 1 65 testimony is borne concerning him when as abbot he administered the affairs of his religious house at Hyde, we fear that we can hardly judge the accusation to be quite groundless. 1 One illustration, in passing, may however be given of the exertion of undue influence upon bishops by those in authority. In the calendar of State Papers for the year 1550 (p. 27), there is the account of a correspondence between Bishop Salcot and Cecil, then a secretary' of state, relating to a request made by the latter for the next vacant prebend at Salisbury in favour of a Mr. Brown. The bishop replied that he had already granted two " advocations," one to Sir William Herbert, and the other to Dr. Oking, chan- cellor of Sarum. Bishop Capon died in 1557, and was buried just behind the bishops' throne, on the south side of the choir. The tomb still remains, and marks out the spot where, in the sixteenth century, the bishops' throne stood — namely, some twenty feet further west- ward than at the present time. Well nigh three years passed before a successor was appointed to the see of Sarum. At Rome, indeed, an independent succession for a time was kept up, the Pope on the death of Lorenzo Campegio, in 1539, nominating Cardinal Caspar Contarini ; and after his decease, in 1543, William Peto. Their titles in a single day. See Lyson's "Environs of London," under " Stamvell Manor" (v. 251), and Oliver's " Bishops of Exeter, " p. 123. ■ Much concerning Bishop Capon may be seen in the Intro- duction to the " Liber de Hyda" (Rolls Series). 1 66 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. to the see were denied both by Henry VIII. and also by Queen Mary, though Peto had been her confessor, and they were never recognised as bishops in England. During this interval Queen Mary died, and Elizabeth succeeded to the throne. Among the first acts of her reign was the authorising certain approved persons to> preach in the diocese of Sarum. Thus, among the State Papers, there is a royal message to the dean and chapter of Winchester directing them to pay the revenue of a prebend, which he held in their church, to Dr. Harding, whilst he was engaged in the duty to which she called him of preaching in the diocese of Sarum during the vacancy in the see. There is also another mandate from the queen to the same effect addressed to one Dr. Hoskins,and also to John Fezard r described as " Parson of Donhead, St. Mary." In the August of this same year (1558) some royal commissioners, among whom was John Jewel, visited the cathedral of Sarum, and issued certain injunctions to the members of the cathedral body. A copy of their injunctions is contained in the statute book. They relate to the various duties of the " dignitaries, canons-residentiaries, and other canons, the vicars, and all other mynisters of the cathedral church of Sarum." They direct the authorities, amongst other things, " to lay in quier two bibles in Englishe of the largest sorte and volume for the ministers to use ; and two other of the like sorte in the bodye of the churche in such meete and convenient place as every other person coming thither may have recourse to the same ; and one booke of paraphrases in Englishe in the bodye of the churche and the other in the quier." They THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. 167 order all the canons to " be present together at the feast of Whitsuntide and soe continue eight dayes, in the which tyme the statutes and ordinances of the churche and all other the queen's majesties injunctions were to be solemnly read in the chapter house where they were to consulte for the execution of the same ; " and those absent without due cause were to be "denounced excommunicate, and soe remaine until they made their personal answer and declared a just cause of their absence." And they authorise for the early morning service a shortened form of prayer, which continued so to be used till a comparatively for recent period, and which may well serve as a model our own days, now that we are permitted, for additional services, to exercise a considerable amount of liberty. The special ordinance alluded to runs thus : — " Alsoe for the due exercisinge of common prayer, be it ordered, that the minister which is tabled for the weeke to begin the common prayer in the quire shall the next weeke following, every morninge from the first daye of Aprill untill the last daye of September at five of the docke after the bell is runge, and from the last daye of September until the first daye of Aprill at six of the docke, use common prayer in this forme followinge : — First, the general confession with the absolution, then the letanie untill this verse ' O Lord arise,' &c, before the which shall be read one chapter of the Newe Testament in order, and then the rest of the letanie with all the suffrages follow- ing." But this visitation of the royal commissioners extended not only to the cathedrals but also to all 1 68 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. the churches in the kingdom ; and we have a report from Jewel himself of the state in which he found religious matters in the very diocese over which he was so soon afterwards called to preside as bishop. The commissioners were armed with authority to correct such abuses as could not be corrected by the ordinary jurisdiction of the bishops, except at a greater loss of time than the exigencies would allow. Jewel was amongst those appointed for the western division of England, and immediately before the commence- ment of his labours he wrote a letter to Peter Martyr to this effect : — " I have now one foot on the ground, and the other nearly on my horse's back. For I am speedily to enter on a long and arduous legation, for the settlement of religion, through Reading, Abingdon, Gloucester, Bristol, Bath, Wells, Exeter, Cornwall, Dorset, Salisbury. The compass of my journey will be about seven hundred miles, so that I apprehend it must be full four months before we can return." And the result of this official journey which, as far as Jewel himself was concerned, was a "continued progress of kindness, of patience, and of laborious ministrations," is thus summed up in another letter dated November 2, 1559, to the same faithful friend : — "At last I have returned to London, worn and harassed by painful journeying. I have been kept away for three whole months by the duties of this arduous commission. And what, you will ask, has been done after all ? Receive then, in a single word, the result of much laborious enquiry. We found everywhere the minds of the multitude sufficiently well disposed to the true religion, and this too where the greatest difficulty was THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. I 69 expected. Nevertheless it is scarcely to be believed what a harvest or rather what a wilderness of super- stition had sprung up in the time of the Marian darkness. We found everywhere votive reliques of saints : nails with which the infatuated people dreamed that Christ had been pierced, and certain minute fragments of the sacred cup. The number of sor- ceresses and witches, in all quarters, was enormous. The cathedral churches had become dens of robbers, or worse, if anything more foul and iniquitous could be named. If there was any instance of inveterate obstinacy it was found among the priests ; those more especially, who, for a time, had stood forward on our side. They, as I suppose, in order that they may not be thought to have changed their opinions incon- siderately, are now confounding everything. But let them make what disturbance they may, we, in the meantime, have thrust them out from their degree and ministry. The ranks of the papists have fallen almost without a blow. Oh ! if we had but sufficient help, there might yet be good hopes of religion. But it is weary work to drag the chariot without horses — especially up hill." 1 Without doubt this visitation did something towards the recovery of the realm from the state of ignorance and confusion in which it was plunged. But the task with which not only these commissioners, but also the bishops, everywhere had to deal was a most difficult one. It was their aim to establish a preach- ing clergyman in every parish in the kingdom to 1 See " Life of Jewel," by Le'Bas, p. 71. 170 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. instruct the masses, whom the clergy under the old system left to a great extent untaught. Almost all the whole teaching of the clergy hitherto had been in their ceremonial, and the preachers had been for the most part monks and friars. But these, as well as the foundations by which they bad been maintained were gone, their revenues having been confiscated to- the crown or bestowed on some courtier. Moreover, much of the wealth of the clergy in general, from which might have been educated and maintained a succession of effective preachers, had been taken away, and the tithes especially alienated to the crown, or to the bishops, or cathedral chapters, or to lay impropriators. And, as Dean Milman has said, " the inevitable consequence of all this was, that the Eliza- bethan clergy could show few at their head of very great erudition and exemplary piety, and those chiefly in the highest functions. In the country parishes there might be here and there men of most saintly lives, and if of limited yet of the holiest influence. But beneath was a mass of men of low origin, who retained the coarse manners and habits, it is to be feared, and too often the vices of those who took to the profession because they were fit for no other; men who, while they assumed a superiority as instructors, were hardly better than the mass -priests or mendi- cants of old. There can be no doubt that for some period the town Anglican clergy were, as examples, little edifying in their lives, and, as teachers of the people, lamentably deficient. They were not the men to supplant in the affections of the people the more faithful Romanists, who, more ignorant perhaps,. THE CHURCH OF SARl'M AT THE REFORMATION. 171 had nevertheless administered all they knew, or cared to know, of Christianity." 1 Still, despite of all difficulties and drawbacks, the labours of Jewel and his colleagues, in the commis- sion of which we are speaking, were most service- able in the establishment of sound religious practices and opinions. Of the whole body of the clergy — there were now 9,400 beneficed men in England — only 189- refused the oath of supremacy. All the rest, by their subscription to the declaration offered for their acceptance, consented to a total abolition of foreign jurisdiction, whether in matters temporal or spiritual, and to the administration of the sacra- ments and the order of divine service, as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. It is hardly surprising that Jewel, who had been able to gain so clear an insight into the difficulties which would certainly surround any bishop, should have hesitated at first in accepting the see of Sarum. Moreover, the scruples which not a few of the leading reformers, and amongst them Jewel himself, brought with them from the continent, whither they had fled as exiles during the Marian persecution, respecting the lawfulness of certain outward symbols and reli- gious ceremonies as well as of certain clerical habits, — scruples which it was well known that the queen herself did not share, — added not a little to the diffi- 1 "Annals of St. Paul's," p. 273. 2 These 189 comprised 14 bishops, 6 abbots, 12 deans, 12 archdeacons, 15 heads of colleges, 50 prebendaries, and So rectors. See Strypc, "Ann." vol. I. part i. p. 255, quoted in Le Bas, "Life of Bishop Jewel," p. 74. 172 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. culties of the position. He was, however, unwilling to resist the queen's own urgent wishes and express command, and was accordingly consecrated by Arch- bishop Parker, on 21 January, 1560, together with three others, one of whom, Edmund Gheast, then pro- moted to the see of Rochester, became in a few years his own successor at Sarum. But, as the last biographer of Bishop Jewel has said, " The sight of the crucifix in the queen's chapel, — the apprehension that this remnant of superstition would be perma- nently fixed upon the church of England, — the still doubtful stability of the Reformation in some other respects, — all these things were against him. The crosier was very uneasy in his grasp : and he was evidently prepared to cast it away, if it could not be retained without a sacrifice of his honest con- victions." l It was but little more than three months before his consecration, that, preaching at St. Paul's Cross, he uttered his memorable challenge, in which he defied his adversaries of the old religion to produce one sufficient sentence out of any old catholic Doctor or Father,— or out of the Holy Scriptures of God, — or any one example of the primitive church, — in favour of the peculiar doctrines of Rome, more especially respecting the dogma of transubstantiation, or the practice of private masses. The sermon was preached a second time, but in an extended form, before Queen Elizabeth, on the second Sunday after Easter, which in that year fell on March 17, immediately succeeding his consecration as bishop of Sarum. 1 Le Bas, " Life of Jewel," p. 84. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION-. I 73 The revenues of his see were, on his accession to it, in a very impoverished condition. There can be little doubt but that some of the bishops in Henry's reign, as they saw the end of their own power ap- proaching, turned to profitable account the remaining period of their precarious tenure by every possible artifice. The result was, that their immediate succes- sors found the property and estates belonging to their sees so miserably dilapidated, or unfairly alienated by the grants of long beneficial leases, that they were reduced to great difficulty in meeting the expenses incident to their station. Nor were they the only sufferers from such a state of things ; this is proved by the draft of a bill still preserved in the State Paper Office, dated a few years subsequently, for " the relief of vicars and curates lacking needful sustentation in their cures, whereof the rectories are impropriate." 1 Bishop Jewel would often playfully allude to his diminished revenue, and to the wasteful but selfish management of his immediate predecessor as the cause of it, saying, — " A capon has devoured all." And it was true ; for not only had the episcopal income suffered from his rapacity, but many livings in the diocese had their revenues mortgaged for a long period of years, for his own benefit but their injury. The effect of this was, that not a few parishes were left either without teachers, or committed to unworthy or ignorant men. Hence Bishop Jewel was himself constrained to become almost " an itinerant preacher of the Gospel." The labour thus 1 See "Calendar of State Papers" (Elizabeth), p. 411. 174 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. necessarily imposed upon one of his feeble frame, added to the ordinary anxieties of his see, tended, it is to be feared, materially to shorten his life. Though the testimonies borne to his diligence in the work of his diocese are abundant, yet, within a short time of his consecration, Bishop Jewel put forth the great work by which he will ever be remembered, namely, his " Apology for the Church of England." Composed originally in Latin, it was soon circulated among the learned, not only in England, but on the continent. It was read even at Rome itself; and such was felt to be its power, that two divines, the one a Spaniard and the other an Italian, were appointed by the Council of Trent to prepare a reply to it. Jewel himself, alluding to this circumstance, says : " Yea, it was read and sharply considered in your late council at Trident (Trent); and great threats made there that it should be answered, and the matter by two notable learned bishops taken in hand ; the one a Spaniard, the other an Italian. Which two, notwith- standing these five whole years, have yet done nothing, nor (I believe) intend anything to do. Indeed, cer- tain of your brethren have often been gnawing at it ; but such as care nothing — nor is cared —what they write." 1 It is something 'to feel that the "Apology," — the complete vindication of the catholicity of the Church of England, and its justification in separating itself from Rome, — was written by a bishop of Sarum, than whom none was more painfully earnest and diligent " Defence of the Apology," part i. cap, iv. sec. 2. THE CHURCH OF SARU.M AT THE REFORMATION. I 75 in the care of his diocese. The work was translated into English in the year 1564, and by no less a person than Lady Anne Bacon, wife of Sir Nicholas Bacon, keeper of the great seal, and the mother of the great Lord Bacon. It was immediately afterwards printed and sent forth with a short treatise supposed to have been drawn up by Archbishop Parker subjoined to it, exhibiting the scheme of government by which the church of England was administered, and the earnest desire of the rulers of that church that true religion might flourish and abound within its borders; amongst other things hoping that all abuses might be rectified, and " that God might have His honour truly and purely reserved unto Him, and that the rule and way of everlasting salvation might be taken from out of His very Word, and not from other men's fantasies ; that the sacraments might be ministered, not like to a maskery or stage-play, but religiously and reverently, according to the rule prescribed by Christ, and after the examples of the holy fathers which flourished in the primitive Church." The bold challenge uttered at St. Paul's Cross, followed so soon afterwards by the " Apology for the Church of England," naturally enough raised up against our bishop a very host of adversaries. The most determined and formidable of these was found in Thomas Harding, a dignitary of his own cathedral. We have already met with him as a licensed preacher in the year 1558, in this diocese, during a vacancy in the see. He had been appointed by Henry VIII., in 1542, to the Hebrew professorship at Oxford, and subsequently obtained a prebendal stall at Winchester. 176 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. In 1555 he was collated to the dignity of treasurer of Sarum, and was amongst the canons present when Jewel was elected to the bishopric. He speedily came into collision with Bishop Jewel, on the occa- sion when the first visitation of the cathedral during his episcopate took place ; in which, as a biographer of Jewel says, " as Harding had the worst, so it was a presage of a second foil he was to have in the encounter." It maybe stated in passing, that Thomas Harding, who was really a learned man and a stout Romanist at last (though in the time of Edward VI. he professed himself a Protestant, and was actually as chaplain of the Duke of Suffolk the instructor of the Lady Jane Grey in the doctrines of the Reform- ation), was ultimately deprived of his preferments, and, retiring to Louvain, in Flanders, employed him- self chiefly in his controversy with Bishop Jewel until his death at that place in 1572. It is not within the scope of this work to enter into the merits of a controversy which embraced every important point in debate between the Church of Rome and the Church of England. But, as the Bishop of Sarum was the foremost champion of the Reformed Church, and his most formidable opponent the treasurer of his cathedral, it could not be passed over without remark. Le Bas, in his life of Jewel, well describes the character of the Apology and the candid spirit in which it was written : — " The dispute was conducted by Jewel in a spirit of perfect fairness and integrity. The method observed by him is pre- cisely similar to that which was followed by Cranmer in his controversy with Gardiner relative to the sacra- THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION'. I 77 mental doctrine. The paragraphs or passages from Harding's books are always printed immediately be- fore the answers to them. The performance of his adversary is thus incorporated with his own, and the reader is enabled with entire convenience to compare the disputants with each other. Jewel maintains throughout the serenity and self-possession which indicate a perfect mastery over his subject. There is no exhibition of petulance or irritation ; no symptom of conscious weakness ; nothing of the agitation by which men sometimes betray a want of confidence either in the goodness of their cause or in their own capacity to do it justice. Every one who studies the controversy must arise from it with a persuasion that the learned Bishop Reynolds said no more than the truth when he affirmed that Harding was " no more able to subsist under the hand of his renowned and incomparable antagonist than a whelp under the paw of a lion." We find Bishop Jewel, no long time after his en- trance on his episcopal charge, claiming and exercising the right of " visiting " his cathedral. He did so in 1562, and there is a long account of the proceedings in the Holt Register (fol. 1 76) ; and also in 1568, a record of which is found in the Blacker Register {foL 38). In the former visitation he made a statute respecting the residence of the four principal dignitaries (qnaiuor personce), namely the dean, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, which he directed to be observed in strict accordance thereafter with the statutes of St. Osmund and Roger de Mortival, bishops of Sarum. It is in the preamble to that ordinance that he speaks of the N 178 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. dignity of his church, and says concerning it : — " It well behoves our cathedral church, as a city set on a hill, to shine forth among other churches, and to be to all others a worthy example." 1 Whilst writing concerning Bishop Jewel's care for his cathedral, the following anecdote may be men- tioned as to his anxiety in all things to watch over its interests. It may also remind us of the like deter- mined spirit of resisting abuses that was manifested by Robert Grosseteste, himself once a canon of Sarum,. when, three hundred years previously, he ruled over the diocese of Lincoln. A certain layman of rank having by some means obtained a prebend in his cathedral, and intending to let it to another lay- person for his own advantage, acquainted Bishop Jewel with the conditions between them, and the opinions of the lawyers with regard to the validity of the transaction. " What your lawyers may answer," was the bishop's reply, " I know not ; but for my part, and to my power, I will take care that my church shall sustain no loss while I live." We are not told what was the precise nature of the case, nor whether the bishop effectually opposed the intended transaction ; but, at all events, it was an honest endeavour to save the patrimony of his church from the ruin which her own professed friends were bringing upon her. Our bishop also boldly protested, in a sermon preached before the queen from the text, " The zeal 1 "Maxime ecclesiam nostram cathedralem, quam seu civi- tatem in monte positam, inter alias ecclesias lucere, et cceteris omnibus exemplo esse, convenit." THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. I 79 of thine house hath eaten me " (Psalm lxix. 9), against the ruinous impropriations and other abuses of church property, whereby the vicars and curates were deprived of even a provision necessary for ordinary wants. His words vividly describe the state of things over which he mourned, and from which he discerned the weak- ness of the church itself: — "They that should be careful for God's church, that should be patrons to provide for the consciences of the people, and to place among them a learned minister who might be able to preach the Word unto them, out of season and in season, and to fulfil his ministry, seek their own and not that which is Jesus Christ's. And this is done not in one place, or in one country, but throughout England. A gentleman cannot keep his house unless he have a parsonage or two in farm in his possession. If the misery which this plague worketh would reach to but one age it were tolerable ; but it will be a plague to the posterity. It will be the decay and desolation of God's church. Young men which are toward and learned see this. They see that he which feedeth the flock hath least part of the milk. He which goeth a warfare hath not half his wages ; therefore they are weary and discouraged. They change their studies. Some become 'prentices ; some turn to physic ; some to law : all shun and flee the ministry. And besides the hindrance that thus groweth by wicked dealing of patrons by reason of the impropriations, the vicarages in many places, and in the properest market-towns, are so simple that no man can live upon them, and therefore no man will take them. They were wont to say, Beneficia sine N 2 180 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. cura — benefices without charge ; but now it may be said, Cura sine beneficio — charge or cure without benefice." We have quoted these words of bishop Jewel in order to show the difficulties which beset him on every side in seeking to promote the spiritual welfare of his diocese. Nor was this all ; for even in the remedy devised to meet this lamentable state of things, the deplorable want of men fitted by education and intel- ligence to instruct the people, there lurked an evil which was not anticipated. Archbishop Grindal granted licences to certain individuals to preach throughout the kingdom. But this kind of roving commission granted to these licensed preachers was soon abused. They began to exhibit not a little of the intrusive temper which the mendicant orders displayed before them, ranging at will from parish to parish, and not scrupling even to supersede the ministrations of the regular clergy on the strength of the licences with which they were furnished by the archbishop. Moreover, they usually demanded pay- ment for their sermons, and so were an additional burden to the people already sufficiently charged with the support of their own ministers. The diocese of Sarum was by no means free from this abuse, for we have our bishop thus writing under date of December 22, 1565, to the archbishop of Canterbury : — " There are certain that have received your Grace's licences ; and these men pass up and down, from church to church, preaching everywhere as if they were apostles. And by virtue of your Grace's seal, they require money for their labours. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. l8l I will stay one or other of them, if I can, that your Grace may know them better." One fact in connection with the episcopate of Bishop Jewel must not be quite passed over, well-known though it may be, from its bearing not only on the interests of the church at large, but on the honour of our own diocese in particular. ' It will be remembered that Jewel visited the western parts of England as one of the Royal Commissioners. In the course of their inquiries they went to Exeter, where at that time lived the family of Hooker. It soon became known that Jewel took a kindly interest in promoting the advancement of poor yet worthy scholars. After he became bishop he generally had with him some half-dozen such lads, often of humble parentage, whom at his own cost he trained up in the pursuits of learning, and hence an applica- tion was made to him, soon after his promotion, in behalf of Richard Hooker, a lad who had already given promise of more than ordinary talent. The bishop, after having duly inquired into his case and examined the boy personally, helped him materially in his education, and had him removed in the year 1567, when he was about fourteen years of age, to Corpus Christi college, Oxford. He supplied him also with a pension, which, added to the small means furnished by his family, enabled him to prosecute his studies and to lay the foundation of his renown. The simple and touching account of Richard Hooker's visit to the bishop when on his way to visit his mother at Exeter, as related by Isaac Walton in his " Life of Hooker," has been told so often, and 1 82 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. withal is so well known, that we will not repeat it. Suffice it to say that by his seasonable kindness he was the means of fostering and preparing a renowned defender of that church, of which he was himself so bold a champion, who, equally with himself, could vindicate her position. It was not given to Jewel to see Richard Hooker beneficed in his diocese, or hold- ing the subdeanery and a prebend in his cathedral. Still it was at the living of Boscombe, in South Wilts, that the first four books of his " Ecclesiastical Polity" were written, and that the church saw the first-fruits of the kindly thought of Bishop Jewel. We do not wonder at the reverence in which Hooker himself held the memory of his early friend and benefactor. It is candidly expressed by him in those words in which he speaks of " the controversy handled between Mr. Harding and the worthiest divine that Christ- endom hath bred for some hundreds of years." 1 Amongst other diocesan benefactions, Bishop Jewel is said to have built, at his own expense, a library for his cathedral church. His immediate successor, Edmund Gheast, added a large number of books. The name of each of these benefactors was subse- quently recorded in an inscription, in which their bounty is especially named. The state of his diocese threw upon Bishop Jewel, not only the labour of pastoral superintendence, but that also of pastoral instruction. It has been said that the "pulpit won the Reformation," and Jewel was an especial instance of a man who was 1 " Eccl. Pol.," b. ii. sec. 6. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. I S3 - instant in season and out of season " in " preaching the Word among the people." But this was by no means his only anxiety: it was natural that one of his character and attainments should be constantly referred to in many matters which were in controversy in his time. It is matter of history that, in the draw- ing up of the " Articles of Religion," he was especially consulted ; it being unanimously resolved by the Upper House of Convocation that the Articles of 1562 should be printed under the supervision of the Bishop of Sarum. For a portion of his really short episcopate he was burdened with the care of the diocese of Bristol, which was vacant for some four years after the decease of Bishop Holyman in 1554- A few words on the close of the life and labours of Bishop Jewel in this diocese will not unfitly conclude this chapter. Always of a feeble constitution, with a bodily frame both spare and thin, his life was nevertheless to its very close one of constant exertion. In the autumn of 157 1, his weakness so increased upon him that warnings were plentiful enough that the end could not be far off. Still, though he could not be uncon- scious of them, he would allow himself no thought of ease, or of cessation from work. And so within but a very few weeks of his decease he set forth on a more searching visitation of his diocese. With more than usual severity of rebuke he warned clergy and laity alike of their negligence and their vices. He preached everywhere, omitting no opportunity of setting forth the truth ; and " in order to give full and permanent •effect to his oral instructions, he furnished his clergy 184 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. with tracts, which he enjoined them to learn by heart, and thus to qualify themselves more effectually for the edification of their flocks." His bold denunciations of the corruptions of Rome naturally enough excited much opposition. We are told that when on his visitation he reached Abingdon, whither multitudes flocked to hear him, his outspoken earnestness excited the anger of certain scholars from Oxford, who were anything but cordially affected towards the reformed faith. They would fain have charged him with a misquotation from St Gregory. But this triumph was but of short duration, a reference to an ancient manuscript proving that, with his usual accuracy, his citation was perfectly correct. We next hear of Bishop Jewel at Lacock. When on his way to preach there he was met by a friend, who, seeing his great weakness of body, tried to dis- suade him from his purpose. But it was in vain ; the bishop simply replied, Oportet episcopum pmdicantem mori — (It well becomes a bishop to die preaching). And preach he did, — what was indeed his last ser- mon — from the words of St. Paul : " Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh." He then toiled on wearily and painfully to Monkton Farleigh, a manor that by exchange had recently be- come one of the possessions of the see, where his sick- ness so increased upon him that he never rose again from the bed on which he then lay down, suffering extreme pain endured with submissive patience. The good bishop entered into his rest on September 23, 157 1, before he had completed the fiftieth year of his age. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REFORMATION. 1 85 It was a brief episcopate — only eleven years — after all ; and they were indeed stormy and anxious times in which it was passed. But it would be difficult to overrate the influence for good which that episcopate had, not only in the diocese of Sarum, over which Jewel ruled, but in the general wellbeing and per- manent establishment of the Reformed Church in England. 1 86 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. CHAPTER IX. 1570-1640. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION ON THE CHURCH OF SARUM. It has been remarked that there is in the English mind a certain heaviness that is ever requiring some outward stimulus to keep alive its zeal; and that no sooner is this exciting cause withdrawn than it relapses again into its former state of apathy. The course of our narrative will have given evidences of the truth of this remark; what will follow will abundantly confirm it. For some time after the Reformation was an accom- plished fact, the efforts of the bishops and of others in authority to cherish the spirit of earnestness which had been roused were more or less successful. But there were, only too soon, many influences at work, either to counteract such endeavours, or to divert zeal into channels alien to the interests of the church. There was, on the one hand, in not a few instances, a strong clinging to the older forms of religion ; whilst, on the other, the Puritan element, which would fain have rejected much of what was still preserved of a catholic character, was an increasing source of difficulty. There were also many angry disputes about vest- ments, simple as were those few which were retained. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 1 87 To draw a hard and fast line, in what was still a transi- tion period in our church's history, was impossible. An illustration of what is implied is ready to hand in the fact that a funeral sermon after the decease of Bishop Jewel was preached at the cathedral in the morning by Giles Laurence, archdeacon of Wilts, and in the afternoon by one William Holcot, a gentle- man of good family and estate, of Buckland, Berks, described as " formerly a lay-preacher." 1 It must, in order fully to appreciate the difficulties of these days, be borne in mind, that, for a long time after the Reformation, many had been admitted to the ministry of the church in England with no better than Presbyterian ordination. In Travers's supplication to the Council, which Richard Hooker answered, 2 it would seem to be implied that the intention of a statute of the 13th of Elizabeth was in effect to authorize other than episcopal ordination, inasmuch as it permitted those who had received orders in other ways than that prescribed in the English service book, on giving certain securities, to exercise their calling in England. There can be no doubt, that not only in the parliament of Elizabeth, but also among her chief advisers, there existed a very strong bias in behalf of the Puritan party ; and there were evident reasons for 1 See Wood's " Athen. Oxon.," I. 395. LeBas, in his "Life of Jewel " (p. 233), speaks of John Holcot as " a gentleman of good family and estate, who, though most probably in orders, was without a cure, and laboured as a gratuitous preacher of the Gospel." The words in italics represent, however, simply the conjecture of the writer. See Strype's " Parker," b. iv., cap. 5. 2 See Keble's " Hooker,"' in. 548. 1 88 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. such a feeling. There was, first of all, the remem- brance of the cruelty of Queen Mary and her advisers, which caused a strong reaction in the minds of very many against all that favoured Romanism, with which such severities were identified. Then there was much to cause sympathy with foreign Protestants ; this was especially kindled in Elizabeth's Court by the first news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572, the very year, as Keble remarks, 1 "when the English Puri- tans began to be more open and combined in their efforts, first in Parliament for legalizing the discipline, and afterwards, in their several districts, for establish- ing it without law." Moreover, after the "bull" of deposition was issued against Queen Elizabeth by Pope Pius V., it became a matter of plain loyalty and patriotism to abjure Rome in everything. Hence a strong wave of Puritanism swept over the whole country. In appointments to high offices there was an evident leaning to the Puritan side. The results were not surprising. The great dislike of the Puritan party to anything that seemed in the least to savour of superstition led to the neglect even of seemly cere- monies, and so to slovenliness in carrying out the ordinary services of the church. The chapter regis- ters are full of indications of the growth of this feel- ing, as will be presently shown, which increased year by year until it culminated in the temporary overthrow of the church, as much from the apathy of her nominal friends as from the activity of her avowed enemies. 1 Keble's " Hooker/' Preface, p. Ivi. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. l8g How far the bishops 1 that ruled the Church of Sarum, during the seventy years that followed the episcopate of Jewel, were equal to coping with these difficulties is a matter of question. Several of them, — there were seven in all, — had but a very short tenure of the see, to say nothing of its having been actually vacant for some five years during this period. One alone of the number had anything like a lengthened episcopate, John Davenant ; and, able and devout man as he undoubtedly was, his almost avowed sym- pathy with the Puritan party hardly fitted him to con- tend earnestly for those catholic truths and usages which the impulsive zeal against Rome placed espe- cially in jeopardy. In rejecting truths and cere- monies which Rome had abused, men were at this time in danger of casting overboard also many which, as a branch of the Catholic church, we had ourselves retained as part of our common heritage. But there were even yet other matters than those which have been named which may well have caused anxiety to the immediate successor of Jewel, Edmund Gheast, who was translated to Sarum after a compara- tively brief tenure of the see of Rochester. The tales of the distressed poor, wandering about in every part of the country, deprived as they had been of many of the old sources of relief, by the alienation of the property of the religious houses, are well known ; in fact, so general was the distress, as to render necessary the passing 1 The bishops were Edmund Gheast, 1571 ; John Tiers, 1577-89 ; John Coldwell, 1591-96; Henry Cotton, 1598; Robert Abbot, 1615 ; Martin Fotherby, 1618 : Robert Town- son, 1620 ; John Davenant, 1621. I90 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. of the first Poor Law. Then, again, in the calendar of State papers we have the record of a document, to which reference has been made, which tells only too plainly of the impoverished condition of many of the clergy, namely, the draft of a bill " for the relief of vicars and curates lacking needful sustentation in their cures." Soon after this, in 15 73, followed a proclamation against Nonconformists; and, in 1577, the suppression of " prophecy ings," together with the sequestration of Archbishop Grindal for presumed sympathy with the Puritan party. Nor was the security of the law in- voked at this time only against the Puritans, for we also hear of one Cuthbert Main, a priest of the Church of Rome, being put to death for denying the supremacy, and maintaining the authority of the pope against that of Queen Elizabeth. Against such elements of disquiet the short rule of Bishop Gheast at Sarum could have sufficed for little real progress. Though undoubtedly a learned divine, — he was one of the Protestant disputants with Jewel in 1559, — he certainly lacked the activity and earnestness in preaching which characterized his pre- decessor. His name will be remembered in connection with the Eucharistic controversy, the 28th article, "of the Lord's Supper," having been drawn up by him. 1 Bishop Gheast would seem to have held a visita- 1 In the " Calendar of State Papers " (Domestic Series), A.D. 1566, there is mention of a letter from him when Bishop of Rochester to Cecil, in which he says that he " supposed tidings had reached him of the Bishop of Gloucester's objection to the adverb ' only ' being placed in the article respecting the Holy Sacrament." RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 191 tion of his cathedral in 1571, 1 and to have super- added his authority to that of the chapter respecting the sermons to be preached by the various canons, each on those occasions appropriated to the " pre- bend" which they held. At this time the number of canons was forty-seven. The earliest decree, as far as is known, respecting these " preaching turns," which are still continued to this day, was, it is be- lieved, in the time of Bishop Jewel. 2 It would almost seem as if the old duty of being the " hebdomadary," or canon specially charged with the ministrations for the week in pre-Reformation times, had afterwards been commuted for a preaching turn. In this episcopate, also, an Act of Chapter was passed by the residentiaries, who now seem to have claimed to act for the whole body, respecting certain statutes, which, in the course of the changes which had passed over the nation, had become either prac- tically abrogated, or which, at all events, had fallen into desuetude. They did not formally repeal or amend such statutes, but contented themselves with the general declaration that, " whereas, in the Book of Statutes then before them, there were many super- stitious enactments, not only contrary to the law of God, but also opposed to the laws of this realm of England, alike from piety towards God and obedi- ence to their sovereign, they by their unanimous assent and consent, pronounce all such contents of the said book as be thus contrary to God's law or the statutes 1 Blacker Reg., p. 69. 2 Holt Reg., p. 62. 192 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. of the realm, to be at once and for ever abrogated." The canons residentiary who sign this declaration with John Piers, then dean, were T. Lancaster (arch- bishop of Armagh), R. Chandler, J. Procter, J. Col- sell, and J. Bold. There are, it may be remarked in passing, indica- tions of the mischief which had been done to the cathedral during the excitement of these times, in not a few notices in the Chapter Registers. Some, at all events, of the mischief which is commonly attributed to the ill-directed zeal of men of the seventeenth, is without doubt to be attributed to their predecessors of the sixteenth century. That this was the case, at all events with regard to our cathedral, we shall show in the course of our narrative. Meanwhile, it may be mentioned that in the second year of the episcopate of John Piers, who previously as dean signed the document just referred to, we have a decree of chap- ter, by which every canon is required to pay one- tenth part of his " prebend" for the reparation of the cathedral. 1 Very shortly afterwards, we have a de- cree that the old "ornaments" of the church should be sold for certain purposes, and amongst these for the providing new " ornaments," such as were then required. Other entries are met with, which imply that the cathedral had fallen into a state of neglect and want of repair. There can be little doubt that the same thing was true of many other churches in the diocese. Indeed, many of the smaller churches were wholly removed, whilst a large number of 1 Blacker Reg., p. 91. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 193 chapels, formerly attached to religious houses, had been secularized. It has been previously mentioned that we have the names still preserved to us of in- cumbents of parishes up to the Reformation, but we then lose sight of the parishes. In some cases, they were no doubt incorporated into neighbouring parishes, in others we have lost even the names of them, and cannot with accuracy identify the site on which their churches stood. By way of illustrating some of our previous remarks, we may give a few extracts from a court book of the Archdeacon of Berks, in the year 1583, the manuscript of which is preserved in the Bodleian Library. They refer to a presentment made respecting the state of things in Binfield, Berks, hard indeed to deal with, but which, from similar records relating to other parishes, it is to be feared, were by no means excep- tional. "Certayne articles concernynge the abuse of the Persone of Bynfylde in the Countie of Barkes. "Our Persone, being utterlie unlerned, sometymes taketh upon him to expounde whenne he rather perswadeth the people to sedition than otherwise, as of late in his ex- position he shewed the people that no man shoulde honor or reverence any ryche man or gentelman, except he was a magestrate. Our Persone doth not, neither ever hath, called the youthe of the parishe to examine them of their faith, neither hath catechysed to anye of the youthe in the parish, which ought to be looked on, for we have muchc youthe and rudely brought upp and not in the knowledge of their duties towarde God. " Our Persone and his wyffe be people of evill disposi- tions, seditious and full of brawles, and unquiet with their neighbours, slanderers and evil speakers, both openlie and O 194 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. publicklie, a matter to be carefully looked to, and himselfe doth minister the Communion when he hath given occasion of greate offence to his neighbours, and doth not seeke before he goeth to the administration of the Sacrament to be in love and charitie, but dothe persist in his lewde pro- ceeding. " Our Persone neither hath studied the Holye Scripture neyther yt doth, butt will rather leade an evyle lyfe than take any paynes that way. ' ' Our Persone hath been a Fryar in his younge tyme, and so in parte continueth still in that profession, for we have heard him saye yf ever we had masse agayne he would say it, for he must lyve. "Our Persone is a common hunter of ale-houses, a greate swearer, a carder, a table-player, and a brawler." The index to the "Wiltshire Institutions," as printed by Sir T. Phillips, shows a number of deprivations during the episcopates, both of Jewel and Gheast, — no doubt principally on the ground of disaffection or disloyalty to the reformed faith. There were of course many at the commencement of this period of seventy years, like the "Persone of Binfield,'"' at heart Roman- ists, though not, it is hoped, as he was, in so many other respects unfaithful to his calling. Within some thirty or forty years a change had taken place both in clergy and people. What were deemed superstitious observances had ceased, but in their place we find either cold indifference, or un- seemly disorders and strife. Thus, in an account of Archbishop Laud's visitation of the cathedral, in 1634, we have, under the head " A remembrance for the Church of Sarum, in very many necessary particulars," the following noteworthy statement, — "You may please to take notice that in most parishes in Wiltshyre, RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 1 95 Dorsetshire, and the westerne partes, there is still a Puritane and an honest man chosen churchwardens together. The Puritane always crosses the other in repayres and adorning the church, as also in the pre- sentments of unconformityes, and in the issue puts some trick or other upon the honest man, to put him to sue for his charges hee hath been at for the church. You shall find it at this instant in the parish of Bea- minster in Dorsettshyre, between Crabb and Ellery : the suit now depending." l And with regard to attend- ance at the cathedral by the civic authorities at Salisbury we are told, — " The seates in the nave of the church graunted not long since to the mayor and cor- poration for their convenience to hear sermons, are now lately forsaken by a greater parte of the company who are of the faction against the Church, and now the seates doe rather pester than adorne the assembly. Dr. Barnston can well enforme upon what conditions those seates were erected, and how they are broken and the church service abused by sufferance of lectures at unseasonable houres." A few more extracts may be added by way of show- ing the state of neglect and disorder in which the cathedral and its services were at this time. At a session held at the Guildhall, April 5th, a.d. 1630, at which Edmund Mason, the dean, was present, the following directions were given : — "Divers personswere ordered and enjoined to look to disorders in the church in the time of divine service, 1 See Report iv. of "Historical MSS. Commission," Append, p. 131. O 2 196 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. and to apprehend the offenders, or certify their names to one or more justices, on Sundays and Holydays." And in a similar session held on October 5th, in the same year, we have " sundry orders touching divers persons presented for disorders in the church." There was an order of chapter issued about the same time that the " Sacrists (or virgers) in their sur- plices walking up and down in the church in service time, according to their office by law and patents, should be in the quire at the beginning of service and so continue to the end, and in sermon time should see good order kept in the church." l The complaint of John Lee, then treasurer of the cathedral, in answer to the articles of inquiry, in 1634, is long, and though tinged evidently with an animus against some of his brother residentiaries, reveals nevertheless a state of things by no means creditable either to themselves or to the cathedral of which they were the appointed guardians. One extract, — the con- cluding sentences of his answers, — must suffice : — "Men both of the better and meaner sort, mechanicks, youths, and prentises, do ordinarily and most unreverently walk in our church in the tyme of devine service, and with- in hearinge of the same, with their hattes on their heads. I have seene them from my seate, and not seldome, so walkinge or standinge still, and lookinge in upon us when we have ben on our knees, at the letany and the command- ments. I earnestly and humbly desire some eftectuall course may be taken for redresse. And also for the ordinarie trudging up and downe of youths and clamours of children to the greate disturbance of the preachers in their sermons. The vergerers and other officers have had a charge to look 1 Shuter, Ree\ 26. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 1 97 to this, but to little or no purpose. Dr. Barnston, Dr. Henchman, and myself have ben fayne to ryse and goe out of our seates to see and stay the disorders. But I never, to my uttermost remembrance sawe Barfoot, the vergerer, who sits in my sight, to ryse at the greatest noyse." v But Puritan disorders manifested themselves during Davenant's episcopate elsewhere than in the cathedral. A well-known instance of the fanaticism of one of its professors who held an important office at Salisbury- must be referred to. Henry Sherfield, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and recorder of Salisbury, a rigid Puritan, took grave offence at the imagery of a painted window in the church of St. Edmund; and having previously obtained consent of the vestry of that parish to take down the said window, " inasmuch as God is painted in many places as if He were there creating the world," and, moreover, "it is very darksome, whereby such as sit near the same cannot read in their books," promptly commenced proceedings by "breaking the same with his staff." There is no doubt that the ob- ject was to show open contempt for ecclesiastical authority ; the more so, as when the bishop, having heard of his design, sent a message to Sherfield admon- ishing him to abstain, the expostulation was altogether unheeded, and only answered by a defiant threat that the act itself was but the precursor of other similar acts, and that in due course all the other stained glass windows in that church would be destroyed. An information was exhibited in the Star Chamber against Sherfield, in February, 1633. The trial ended in the conviction of the recorder, who was sentenced 1 "Hist. MSS. Com.," App. to Report iv., p. 138. 198 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. to be committed to the Fleet, to be fined ^500, and to make an acknowledgment of his offence to the Bishop of Salisbury before such persons as the bishop should choose to be present with him on the occa- sion. Archbishop Laud, in pronouncing his concur- rence in the judgment, for which he gave his reasons at some length, added, " There was a time when churchmen were as great in this kingdom as you are now. Let us be bold to prophesy that there will be a time also, when you will be as low as the church is at present, if you go on treating it with contempt." 1 And yet all through this seventy years of unrest and disquietude, when what zeal there was became a hindrance rather than a help to the real progress of the church, men, in the providence of God, were raised up in our diocese, who, alike by their writings and their example, left behind them an influence for good which must ever be had in thankful remem- brance. At its commencement we meet with John Foxe, the martyrologist, and William Camden, the historian, called the "lay prebendary" of Ilfracombe, and John Garbrand, the bosom friend of Bishop Jewel, to whom he left the principal part of his manuscripts, and who materially assisted Laurence Humphrey in his life of his friend and patron, and Tobias Matthews, one of the divines employed in the Hampton Court Conference, who ultimately became Archbishop of York. And then, after a short interval, followed Richard Hooker, who, as far as permanent influence on the future well-being of the church and 1 See Hatcher and Benson, p. 373. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 1 99 the vindication of her catholic character were con- cerned, was perhaps the greatest of all our worthies. When at the advancement, in 1589, of Bishop Piers to the metropolitical see of York that of Sarum was vacant — and it remained so vacant for well-nigh three years — the administration of the patronage would seem to have been in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury, at that time John Whitgift. It was by him that Richard Hooker was appointed to the vicar- age of Boscombe, and also to the prebend of Nether- avon, as well as the sub-deanry in the cathedral. As Jewel, it may be, was the ablest defender of the church against the Romanist, so Hooker was its chief vindicator against the Puritan. The first four books of the " Ecclesiastical Polity," if not wholly written at Boscombe, were at all events completed there. There are, as Keble well remarks in his introduction to his edition of that work, critical periods and turning- points in the history of our church, of which un- doubtedly the close of the sixteenth century was one. And it was so overruled that the insight of Arch- bishop Whitgift in selecting Richard Hooker for pro- motion was the means of raising up the most efficient instrument to contend against its special difficulties and dangers : — " The current was setting strongly in favour of the Puritan party, or innovators, up to the time when Whitgift became archbishop. Acute and indefatigable as he was in his efforts to produce a reac- tion, not only by his official edicts and remonstrances, but by his disposal of preferment also, and the literary labours which he encouraged, there was no one step of his to be compared in wisdom and effect with 200 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. his patronage of Hooker, and the help which he provided towards the completion of his under- taking." 1 But the name must be mentioned also of one, who, towards the close of this same period, was beneficed in Wiltshire, and that within a mile or two of the cathedral. This was George Herbert, who, in 1630, when only in deacon's orders, was presented to the living of Bemerton, a charge which he accepted " after much spiritual conflict and great apprehension lest he should prove unequal to the work." To dwell on the life of this poet-pastor would be superfluous, so well known to all is it from Isaac Walton's simple, but touching account. Suffice it to say, that, as in his whole daily life he was her faithful disciple, so in his verse was he especially the poet of the church. " He never wearies of pouring out his deep love and admiration for it. He reverences every emblem, every nook and corner of the sanctuary, every external grace, every rite, form, and observance connected with it or related to it. It is the loadstone of his thoughts, the well-spring of his imagination, the living fire that kindles his heart and mind. He loved it for what it was, and for what it symbolized; and upon its symbols he threw a new and wondrous light of poetry and devotion. He consecrated to it and its Founder all that he had and could ; his genius, and the ex- pression of it." ~ The influence of so faithful and consistent a wit- 1 Keble's " Hooker," Introduction, p. lxiv. 2 See Adams's "Lives of Great English Churchmen" (S.P.C.K.), p. 270. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 201 ness to the church, in days when men seemed to A be drifting away from its doctrine and discipline, must needs have been great. His verses in which he describes his love for the Church of England, as dis- tinguished on the one hand from Rome, and on the other from Puritanism, are worth quoting, as illus- trating the peculiar value of his life and teaching at this critical period of the church's history in this country : — " I joy, dear mother, when I view Thy perfect lineaments and true, Both sweet and bright. Beauty in thee takes up her place, And dates her letters from thy face, When she doth write. " She on the hills,'- which wantonly Allureth all in hope to be By her preferred, Hath kissed so long her painted shrines, That e'en her face by kissing shines, For her reward. " She in the valley 2 is so shy Of dressing, that her hair doth lie About her ears ; While she avoids her neighbour's pride She wholly goes on th'otherjside, And nothing wears. " But, dearest mother, what thou miss, The mean, thy praise and glory is, And long may be ; Blessed be God, whose love it was To double-moat thee with His grace, And name but thee." 1 The Church of Rome. 2 Puritanism. 202 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. It has been beautifully said of George Herbert that " his life was one continued Sunday." And Richard Baxter, nonconformist as he was, bears this striking witness to the calm and beautiful spirituality of his poems : " Next to the Scripture poems, there are none so savoury to me as Mr. George Herbert's. I know that Cowley and others far excel him in wit and accurate composure ; but as Seneca takes with me above all his cotemporaries, because he speaketh things by words feelingly and seriously like a man that is past jest, so Herbert speaks to God like a man that really believeth in God, and whose business in the world is most with God ; heart-work and heaven- work make up his book." At the very close of the period which we are reviewing there were others of note who held prefer- ment in the diocese. Amongst them may be men- tioned Edward Gough, the editor of Camden's " Britannia " ; William Chillingworth, author of the " Religion of Protestants ; " and John Pearson, afterwards Bishop of Chester, and author of the well-known work upon the Creed. Nor must we omit to mention Thomas Fuller, the church historian, a nephew of Bishop Davenant ; and another nephew of the same bishop, Edward Davenant, on whom was bestowed not only the treasurership of the cathedral — " the best dignity " — but the valuable living of Gil- lingham, besides other preferments. He is described by Aubrey as not only " a man of vast learning but of great goodness and charity." He was executor to Bishop Davenant's will and also the inheritor of most of his property, insomuch that it was said that RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 203 •'he gained more by the church of Sarum than ever any man did by the church since the Reformation." 1 But all these worthies belonged rather to that period of trouble and confusion to the church which was immediately at hand. They were all in'turn " seques- trated " from their benefices, whether in the diocese or the cathedral. We may add, fittingly enough, a few words respecting Bishop Davenant, to whom the difficult task was assigned of ruling and guiding the church of Sarum in those dangerous and anxious times. He succeeded Bishop Townson, his brother-in-law, who, after having held the bishopric for barely ten months, died, leaving behind him a widow and fifteen children by no means plentifully provided for. He accepted the see, it is said by Camden, with an implied pledge that he would remain unmarried, and so be able the better to provide for his nephews and nieces. He certainly redeemed the pledge fully, for, during the twenty years that he was Bishop of Sarum, he bestowed dignities, prebends, or livings on all who had any claims of kindred. Like many of the divines who received their advancement in the reign of James I., 2 he had a strong dislike to everything connected with Rome, and also strong Calvinistic 1 Quoted in Bailey's " Life of Thomas Fuller" (1874), from Aubrey's Letters, 11. 300. 2 Judging from frequent royal visits to Sarum, Bishop Daven- ant must have been highly esteemed by both James I. and Charles I. The former king was at the palace in 1623, the latter in 1625 and 1632. On the last occasion Charles I. was for some days at Salisbury and attended the daily service in the 204 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. sympathies. The Puritan party were treated by him with much kindliness and tolerance. " Fuller," says Bailey, in his life of that historian, " whose connection with his uncle throughout his boyhood and early man- hood was pretty close, held him in great respect, and to the bishop's school of churchmanship, he, together with the large circle of Davenant's connection, ever tenaciously clung, and did very much to perpetuate it. Fuller's biographer justly says of Davenant, that he was " a man in whom piety and sound learning were united to a degree perhaps rarely excelled." x Bishop Davenant did not live to see the troubles that were so soon to come upon the Church, though he must often have discerned the gathering clouds that foretold the approaching storm. Just as the Long Parliament met, and but a few months only before it began its work of destruction, by de- priving its bishops of their titles and offices and confiscating the revenues of the church, Bishop Davenant died. Fuller says of him, "he sweetly fell asleep in Christ, and so we softly draw the curtains about him." There is a document of Bishop Davenant's respect- ing the church and parish of Aldbourne in North Wilts, which is of so much interest as throwing light on what was deemed the proper position of the Holy Table, in 1637, that we venture to give a copy of it. cathedral. Fuller, at the time Prebendary of Netherbury, .speaks of having had the honour to see the king solemnly "heal" — i.e., "touching for the evil" — in the choir of Salis- bury. See Bailey's " Life of Fuller," p. 88. 1 "Life of Fuller," p. 77. RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. 205 The direction contained in it, to the effect that Holy Communion should be administered on four suc- ceeding Sundays, and that no more than two hundred persons should communicate at one time, is to say the least a remarkable one respecting a parish that we can hardly think was ever a very populous one. Bishop Davenant's order is as follows : — "John, by Divine providence Bishop of Sarum, "To the Curate and Churchwardens with the parishioners of Awborne in the county of Wilts and our diocese of Sarum, greeting : — '• Whereas his Majestie hath beene lately informed that some men factiously disposed have taken upon themselves to place and remove the Communion Table in the church at Awborne, and thereupon his highness hath required me to take present orders therein : — These are to let you know that both according to the Injunctions given out in the Kaigne of Queene Elizabeth for the placing of the Com- munion Tables in Churches, and by the 82 canon agreed upon in the first yeare of the Raigne of King James of blessed memory, it was intimated that these Tables should ordinarily be sett and stand with the side to the east wall of the chauncell, I therefore require you, the Church- wardens, and all other persons not to meddle with the bringing downe or transposing of the Communion Table, as you will answer it at your own perill. And because some doe ignorantly suppose that the standing of the Com- munion Table where altars stood in time of superstition hath some relish of Popery, and some perchance may as erroniously conceive that the placing thereof otherwise when the Holy Communion is administered savours of irreverence, I would have you take notice from the fore named Injunction and Canon, from the Rubricke prefixed before the administration of the Lord's Supper, and from the first article not long since inquired of in the Visitation of our most reverend Metropolitan, that the placing of it higher or 206 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. lower in the chauncell or in the church is by the judgment of the Church of England a thing indifferent, and to be ordered and guided by the only rule of convenientie. " Now, because in things of this nature to judge and determine what is most convenient belongs not to private persons, but to those that have ecclesiasticall authority, I inhibit you the Churchwardens and all other persons what- soever to meddle with the bringing downe of the Com- munion Table, or with altering the place thereof at such times as the Holy Supper is to be administered, and I require you herein to yeeld obedience unto what is already judged most convenient by my Chauncellor, unless, upon further consideration and viewe it shall be otherwise ordered. Now, to the end that the Minister may neither be overtoyled, nor the people indecently and inconveniently thronged together when they are to drawe neire and take the Holy Sacrament, and that the frequent celebration thereof may never the lesse be continued, I doe further appoint that thrice in the yeare at the least there be pub- lique notice given in the church, for fower communions, to be held upon fower Sundaies together, and that there come not to the communion in one day, above two hundred at the most. For the better observation whereof, and that every man may know his proper time, the curate shall divide the parishioners into fower parts, according to his discretion, and as shall most fittingly serve to this purpose. And if any turbulent spirits shall disobey this our Order, he shall be proceeded against according to the quality of his fault and misdemeanour. 1 " In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and Seale Episcopall, this seventeenth day of May, 1637, and in the yeare of our consecration the sixteenth." 1 This injunction is entered in the Aldbourne Parish Regis- ters and is printed in the Oxford edition of Laud's works by the Rev. J. Bliss (vol. vi. p. 60). It is referred to by the archbishop himself in Laud's "Speech at the Censure of Bas- terwick." Ibid., 11. p. 80. See also Wilts Arch. Mag. vii. '3. ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. 207 CHAPTER X. 1640-1660. THE CHURCH OF SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. The period embraced in this chapter is but one of twenty years ; short, indeed, and yet, as regards the church itself, most eventful. For it includes the time of its temporary overthrow, and its subjugation to those who denied the sacred commission given to its bishops. A very short time before its commencement arch- bishop Laud had held a metropolitical visitation, for the purpose of reforming abuses with respect to the fabrics and ornaments of churches and the habits of the clergy, many of whom had discarded the out- ward distinctions of their order. The report for our diocese was as follows : — " For Salisbury he found the bishop (Davenant) had taken a deal of care about his Majesty's instructions, and had caused copies of them to be sent to most of the ministers ;" but, he adds, " the greatest part of Wiltshire was overgrown with the humours of those men who do not conform." How strong the same feeling of opposition to the church was in the city of Salisbury itself, will pre- sently appear. It was indeed at a critical timewhen King Charles I., 208 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. despite of the remonstrances of the Commons' house of Parliament, filled up several vacant bishoprics, and amongst them Salisbury, by the translation of Bryan Duppa from Chichester. He had previously held the dignity of chancellor of our cathedral. He was the trusted friend of the king, and to him had been committed the education and guidance of his son, afterwards Charles II. But it was a poor heritage to which he now succeeded. For already the Par- liament had begun its work against the church. In this same year we have the Commons impeaching no less than thirteen bishops for their share in the canons of 1640, and passing votes against their sitting in Parliament at all ; ordering moreover that commissions be sent into all counties for the "de- facing, demolishing, and quite taking away of all images, altars, or tables turned altar-wise, crucifixes, superstitious pictures, monuments, and reliques of idolatry, out of all churches or chapels." In truth, scarce a speech was made in Parliament but the bishops and the church were the chief if not the only subjects of it ; nor was scarce any petition presented unless alleged superstition and Popery filled the greater part of it. Within but a few months indeed of Bishop Duppa's entry on the diocese of Sarum the Commons had deliberately resolved that " the government of the church by archbishops and bishops was a great impediment to reformation and preju- dicial to the stale, and that the same should be taken away." As far as any effective rule in his diocese was con- cerned, the episcopate of Bishop Duppa was neces- SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 209 sarily a blank. On the restoration he was at once advanced to Winchester. That he was not unmindful of the church over which he had nominal rule, when in its lowest estate, the course of our narrative will show. Isaac Walton said of him, that he was one of those in whom " there is such a commixture of general learning, of natural eloquence, and christian humility, that they deserve a commemoration by a pen equal to their own, which none have excelled." He was undoubtedly a holy man, a high churchman of the very best type, who, in days of trouble and difficulty did his best, at least by example, to main- tain the standard of church doctrine and discipline. His little treatise entitled " Holy Rules and Helps to Devotion " was much prized by the late Dean Hook, and shows clearly enough the devout heart of the compiler. 1 At the very commencement of his episcopate at Sarum an ordinance was passed by the Parliament, which, though apparently intended for good, yet really materially increased the elements of disorder in the several parishes. The authorities in cathedrals were required and enjoined " to suffer the inhabitants to have free liberty to have a sermon preached in their cathedrals every Sunday in the afternoon ;" and further, in all parish churches where there was no preaching in the afternoon, " if the parishioners will maintain a conformable lecturer at their own charge, the parson or vicar shall give way to it, unless he will preach ' A good sketch of the character of Bishop Dupp.x will he found ia Stephens' "Memorials of the Sec of Chichester," p. 278. P 2IO ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. himself." And a short time afterwards they ordered that it should be lawful " for the parishioners of any parish to set up a lecturer and to maintain an orthodox minister, at their own charge, to preach every Lord's- day where there is no preaching, and to preach one day in every week where there is no weekly lecturer." It is not difficult to see what confusion and disorder such enactments must have caused, the more so as the parish minister could not refuse to admit these lecturers into his church without incurring the penalty of imprisonment and possibly sequestration. In his cathedral city also bishop Duppa found a strong puritanical element. Two petitions from the mayor, aldermen, and inhabitants of New Sarum were presented to the Lords and Commons about this time against all Popish and Romish superstitions. In their address to the Commons they conclude by entreating them to proceed to the " perfecting of their noble resolutions, for the peace of the kingdom, the advancement of the Gospel of Christ, the reformation of the church, and the abolishing of all Popish and Romish superstitions ; and for the bringing to condign punishment such delinquents, of what kind soever, as they should see just cause to proceed against ac- cording to their merits and deserts." 1 Early in February, 1642, Salisbury itself had clear evidence enough of the actual commencement of the civil war. Sir Edward Hungerford, the Parliamentary general, entered the city, and, seizing such money, plate,_and arms as he could find, forced the inhabit- 1 Hatcher and Benson, p. 391. SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 211 ants to purchase an exemption from further plunder by a contribution of ,£1,500. Great alarm was in consequence excited amongst the members of the cathedral body and others of the clergy, who were anxious for the protection of a royalist force. It is said that the dean and chapter ventured to provide themselves secretly with arms for their dependents, in order to join the first friendly troop that should approach. Their intentions soon became known, and a design was formed to raise three troops of horse in the county, in order to levy the rents belonging to the see. But this only increased the general alarm, lest the lawless soldiery might extend their depre- dations to private property ; the more so, as many of the citizens were tenants of the bishop. And the conflicts of hostile bands which took place, not only in the neighbourhood, but sometimes in the very streets of the city, must have intensified the general anxiety. But it is no part of our work to give an account of the civil war, the scenes of which, on some very important occasions, were found in Berks, Wilts, or Dorset. This has been well told in the " History of Salisbury." Our task is simply to trace the history of the church in these times of difficulty, and what has been mentioned has so been named for the purpose of explaining the especial troubles with which it was now surrounded. The first blow fell naturally enough on the bishop himself. An order went forth for the seques- tration of the episcopal estates, and no long time elapsed before it was carried out. The palace is said p 2 212 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. to have been sold to one Van Ling, a Dutchman, a tailor by trade, who bought it of the Parliamentary Commissioners. It is said, moreover, that the hall was pulled down, and the house for the most part converted to an inn, having a passage opened through the wall of the close to give entrance for the market people and other travellers who came through Harn- ham from the western parts. Other portions were let out as small tenements to poor handicraftsmen. 1 The estates belonging to the see were sold, as favourable opportunities offered, between the years 1646 and 1650. The royalties in Sarum itself were purchased, together with certain lands in and adjoin- ing the city, by the mayor and corporation for ,-£3, 590. 7s. Sd. The total sum received for the estates was ,£38,383. 2s. 3d. Next, of course, the cathedral, and the members of the cathedral body, succumbed to the blow of the levellers. Some time before, the order had gone forth for the removal of images and all superstitious relics. Though many cathedrals, especially Canterbury and Norwich, were much injured by the iconoclastic crusade which follow this order, it is believed that Salisbury escaped for the most part, and was free from material profanation. It is a certain fact that it was 1 This statement is made on the authority of Dr. Pope in his "Life of Bishop Seth Ward." See Cassan's "Bishops of Sarum," in. 73. According to a document printed in Nicholl's "Collectanea Topographica," which gives an account of the sales of bishops' lands from a coeval manuscript (Add. MS., 9049), the palace was sold July 12, 1648, to William and Thomas Baxter, for /"88o 2s. SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 213 kept in repair during the Commonwealth, for, in Dr. Pope's " Life of Bishop Seth Ward," there is an anec- dote to the effect, that when workmen engaged from time to time on repairs were interrogated as to the authority by which they so worked, and as to the source whence they looked for remuneration, they were wont to reply, " They who employ us will pay us ; trouble not yourselves to inquire who they are ; whosoever they be, they desire not to have their names known." Moreover, we are told that when one ot Waller's officers sent up to the Parliament certain plate and a pulpit-cloth from Salisbury Cathedral, he was ordered to restore them, it being considered that he had overstepped his commission, all that was re- tained being certain copes, hangings, tippets, and a picture of the Blessed Virgin. Hatcher, indeed, con- siders that at this time the images in the west front were mutilated, and as far as possible destroyed. It is certainly true that in a sketch of the cathedral by Hollar, made a short time before, the statues are represented as though in his time entire. More- over, Edmund Ludlow garrisoned the adjoining belfry which was then standing, and his troopers may, of course, have been tempted to this work of devastation, which was no doubt mostly done in all cathedrals and churches by soldiers. Still the latter supposition is wholly conjectural, and as, at all events, some of the statues were complete in Hollar's time, it is quite possible that in any case he might have chosen to draw his sketch with the figures complete. It is just as likely that these figures were mutilated in the visitation of cathedrals and 214 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. churches in the time of Edward VI., one especial object of which was to see that all images were removed. 1 In one respect the cathedral was put to an unworthy use ; indeed, such appropriation of it would seem to have led to the damage and desecration of part of the building. For on October 10, 1653, a letter was written from the Council of State to the mayor of Salisbury to let him know " that the Dutch prisoners lately sent to the town to be kept there, have done much spoil upon the pillars of the cloisters and to the windows of the library there, being committed to custody in that place, and also that by reason that due care hath not been had over them, some of them have escaped." The mayor, one Thomas Raye, would gladly have been rid of his charge, for on April 2, 1653, we find him asking for the "acceptance of a bill for ^300 for the expenses touching the Dutch prisoners at Sarum;" and on the following December 9 he petitioned that " the prisoners complained of might be removed to another place." In many cathedrals at this time there was liberty granted both to the Presbyterians and Independents to use them for the purposes of their worship. Exeter Cathedral, for example, was divided into two parts by a brick wall — East Peter's and West Peter's — for the express purpose of being used by the two sects re- spectively. A similar arrangement was made with regard to Wells ; and, among documents mentioned 1 See a paper in the Wilts Magazine, III. 120, on the "Images destroyed in Salisbury Cathedral ; " and Hatcher and Benson, pp. 258, 405. SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 215 in the Calendar of State Papers (1653), is a " petition of sundry members of a congregated church in Wells to have the chapter-house to meet in for the exercise of their religion ;'' a request which was directed to be granted " unless the magistrates could show any just cause against it within fourteen days." In our own cathedral there seems only to have been one acknowledged minister — Dr. Faithful Tate — of whom in a register of Church Livings (1645-50) preserved among the Lansdowne MSS. (No. 459)> ^ is said, he " supplieth the ministerial office formerly supplied by the Deane and Prebendaries; he preach- eth twice every Lorde's Daye." An act was passed in April, 1649, abolishing the name and office of dean, archdeacon, precentor, chancellor, treasurer, canon, and all other offices be- longing to cathedrals ; and ordering many of them to be sold, and profits applied " in such a way as may best carry on the public safety and the service of Ireland." It would seem as if by June, 1651, a sum of nearly ^400,000 had been so raised, which was apportioned one-third to the navy, one-third to Ireland, and one-third for exigencies. Some, at all events, of the chapter lands and revenues, as will soon appear, were at the disposal of what was called the " Com- mittee for Plundered Ministers," and were applied to " augment from the revenues of rectories, tithes, &c, the income of neighbouring ministers, provided they promised fidelity to the Government." 1 1 That this pledge was required is evident from the following extract from the Minute Book of the " Committee for Plundered Ministers," preserved in Sion College Library. Thus (at fol. 2l6 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Among the purchasers of a portion of the chapter property were the Corporation of Salisbury, and they were actuated apparently with a worthy motive enough, considering that so many of them belonged to the Presbyterian sect. For among their records is one dated May 25, 1649, by which an order is made "for purchasing certain houses lately belonging to the dean and chapter in the Close, to make provision for houses for the ministers of the several parishes within the city, and for the minister of the Close, and also for the schoolmaster and school there." The pur- chase was completed in the following August, and for the consideration of ^880 the mayor and commonalty obtained four of the canonry houses which had been recently vacated by Dr. Mason, Dr. Thornborgh, Dr. Osborne, and Dr. Barnston for the purpose above stated. Whilst speaking on this point we may as well ex- plain by an extract or two from the Minute-Book of the " Commissioners for Plundered Ministers " re- lating to Salisbury, the way in which they re-distributed a portion of the revenues arising from the confiscated estates of the dean and chapter. On October 2, 1650, the said commissioners granted to the town of Sarum an augmentation for four minis- ters, to preach in four churches, of ^400 ; these four 712), under date of December 4, 1650, we read: "Ordered that the Trustees for Maintenance of Ministers do henceforth forbear to pay any augmentation till the respective ministers that are to receive any augmentation do make it appear to them that they have taken and subscribed the engagement as by Act of Parliament is directed." SARU.M UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 2l^ ministers were " Dr. Faithful Tate, minister of the cathedral church ; Mr. W. Eyre, of Martin's ; Mr. John Strickland, of Edmund's ; Mr. John Conant, of Thomas's Church." They further direct how this sum should be divided, viz., to Dr. Tate, ^125 ; to Mr. Eyre, ^128 ; and ^147 among the other two minis- ters. These grants, paid through the town authorities, would seem to have been supplemented by other spe- cific grants to the ministers themselves ; thus, Dr. Tate had ^23 out of the impropriate rectory of Figheldean, ;£i6 from the rectory of Wanborough, besides other revenue ; and Mr. Eyre ^40 from the rectory of Martin's, &c. ; and, in the following January, grants made to ministers of St. Edmund's and St. Thomas's would also appear to have been increased. Moreover we have this notice of Sarum school : " December 10, 1 65 1, endowed with ,£25, payable out of the late king's revenue ; Mr. John Hunt, the master, Mr. Edward Hillary, the usher, both painful, pious, and able men in their faculty, as hath appeared by their educating of divers eminent scholars that have proved profitable instruments in this nation, the sum of ^20 to be given to the master and £5 to the said usher for their encouragement." There were in all, including the six vicars choral, well-nigh sixty clergymen ejected from the cathedral. There was not even an inquiry into the circumstances of any of them, but they were simply ejected in pur- suance of the order of the Commons, which abolished their titles and offices and confiscated their revenues. Amongst them was Richard Bayly, the dean, who, as the near kinsman and executor of Archbishop 2l8 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Laud, could have looked for little consideration. Others were Humphrey Henchman, John Earles, and Alexander Hyde, who, on the Restoration, became in succession bishops of Sarum. Then there was Richard Stuart (or Steward), the friend both of Charles I. and of his son, Charles II., whom he fol- lowed into exile, and who died in France, in his last words praying for the peace of the church of England. Nor should we forget, too, other famous names, that of John Pearson, afterwards bishop of Chester, and Thomas Fuller, the church-historian. As part of our diocese at this time, a passing mention may be also made of those clergy who were ejected from the collegiate church of St. George's, Windsor. These, including some seven minor canons and a divinity lecturer, were more than twenty in number. Among the canons so deprived was John Hales, one of the most learned men of his time, who also was turned out of his fellowship at Eton, and who was, without all doubt, reduced to great need ; and Anthony Farringdon, the divinity lecturer who wa s also vicar of Bray, no mean divine or scholar, as is evidenced by his writings which still remain to us. Walker, in his " Sufferings of the Clergy," gives us a list of such of the parochial clergy as were at this time deprived of their livings on various grounds. In his list there are 17 in Berks, 27 in Dorset, and 56 in Wilts, — in all some 100 in the three counties. These numbers would be for the most part exclusive of those who held dignities in the cathedrals of Sarum and Bristol, or in the church of St. George's, Windsor, though in some cases, of course, the same names occur SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 2IQ more than once. Anyhow, there must have been at the least two hundred^ clergy ejected who were beneficed in one way or another in Wilts, Berks, and Dorset. In the removal of these ministers from various parishes, there was a kind of show of fair dealing as regards giving them an opportunity of defending themselves against the charges laid against them. Everything in the days of Puritan ascendancy was managed by committees, — indeed that one word "com- mittee," during the Commonwealth, represented the whole executive government. In 1643 there was appointed an assembly of divines, which was to meet at Westminster, and was really a committee to which were referred all matters relating to the doctrine and discipline of the church, out of which sprung a number of other committees, such as the " Committee of Tryers," with the power of approving all who should be admitted into church livings ; the " Com- mittee of Scandalous Ministers," for the expulsion of such as were judged to be unworthy ; and the " Com- mittee of Plundered Ministers," to which reference has been made, the real object of which was to pro- vide, in many instances, for such as had been put into the places of those who had been ejected. But the constitution of these "sub-committees," for such they were, in various parts of the country, was • Dr. Stoughton, in his " Church of the Commonwealth," ii. 529, computes the number of clergy in England at about 10,000, and thinks that, in all, about one-fifth may have been ejected— certainly not less than 2,000 or more than 2,500. The propor- tion in Wilts, Berks, and Dorset (the old diocese of Sarum) would seem certainly to have been somewhat greater. 2 20 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. one which meted out but scant justice. We have a free acknowledgment of this fact from a well-known member of the Puritan party, Dr. Owen, who says : " There are in Berkshire some few men of mean quality and condition, rash, heady, enemies of tythes, who are the committee for ejecting ministers." 1 And when it is borne in mind that the "committee" appointed for each district were to call to their assist- ance some "well-affected men" in each hundred, and inquire into the lives, doctrine and conversation of all ministers and schoolmasters ; and that among those who were to be proceeded against were all who were ill-affected to the Parliament; and, moreover, that accusers were to be encouraged to come forward, " the parishioners in general being not forward to complain of their ministers, though scandalous," we can easily understand, that, though possibly some unworthy men may have been removed, great and undeserved hardships were inflicted on by far the majority. There was, indeed, some tempering of mercy — one-fifth of the proceeds of the livings being reserved for the support of the wives and children of the ejected ministers — but complaints of non-pay- ment were too frequently made, and certainly in many cases on sufficient foundation. Moreover it was, indeed, a cruel decree which forbad ejected ministers becoming schoolmasters. Among the ministers in the diocese who were members of one or other of the committees, we find 1 Quoted by Stoughton in his "Church of the Common- wealth," ii. 109. SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 22 1 the name of Dr. W. Twiss, of Newbury (who was prolocutor of the Westminster assembly of divines in 1643); John White, of Dorchester; Nicholas Proffit, of Marlborough ; Dr. Thomas Bayley, of Manning- ford Bruce ; Henry Scudder, of Collingbourne-Ducis ; John Strickland, of New Sarum ; and Adoniram By field, of Collingbourne. The last-named person was scribe of the Westminster Assembly, 1 and, also, one of the "Committee of Tryers" for Wilts and the neighbouring counties. An instance or two taken from our own dio< :ese will be all that our space allows, in illustration of the results of the proceedings of one or other of the above-named committees : — The Rector of Childrey, in Berks, a parish some twelve miles from Oxford, was Dr. Edward Pocock. He was a really learned man, and professor of Arabic in the University of Oxford. He held a canonry at Christ Church, of which he was dispossessed in 165 1. He was summoned before the committee appointed for the purpose, on the complaint of sundry dis- affected parishioners, who charged him with using the Prayer Book and other matters. He was compelled to attend their meetings, now at Abingdon, now at Wantage, and for some months was abominably worried. At last they charged him with insufficiency ! Upon this Dr. Owen, who was one of the number, could not forbear to say that they took the ready way to 1 There are three volumes in Dr. Williams's libraryjwhich contain minutes of the proceedings of the Assembly taken, for the most part, by Adoniram Byfield. See Stoughton's " L Church of the Commonwealth," 11. 538. 2 22 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. make themselves infamous, the person whom they were now censuring in this manner, being of such extraordinary learning as was famous through the world." 1 Through this interference Dr. Pocock was delivered out of the clutches of the " ejectors." Owen himself protests against a man like Pocock being liable to be thus cast out of his benefice on such slight and frivolous pretences. 3 It is said to have been due to the same generous interference of Dr. Owen in his behalf, that Thomas Fuller, who once belonged to our diocese, and who states that for the sake of his lord and master, King Charles, he lost " none of the worst livings and one of the best prebends in England," was delivered from ejection from the benefice he held in Essex. Ready as he was in reply even to captious questions, Fuller nevertheless had misgivings as to whether he should be able to answer satisfactorily all the inquisitional inquiries of the strange court before which he was summoned. In this emergency he resorted to John Howe, whose position as the favourite chaplain of Cromwell was one of great influence, and who was never known to refuse applicants such aid if they were but persons of real merit. And when he ac- costed him he said, in his homely way, — •" Sir, you may observe that I am a pretty corpulent man, and I am to go through a passage that is very strait. I beg you will be so good as to give me a shove and help me through." The appeal does not 1 Walker, part II., p. 104. 2 See Stoughton, II. 109. SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 2 2 3 seem to have been in vain, and, fortified by his counsel, Fuller appeared before the " Triers." When asked in the usual way, " Whether he had ever had any experience of grace in his heart ?" he gave the memorable reply, " I can appeal to the Searcher of hearts that I have made conscience of my very thoughts." Calamy, in relating the circumstance, says that he "gave that in for answer, - ' almost im- plying that it was a studied reply, suggested, it may be, by Howe himself. The biographer of Howe re- marks that "whilst Fuller's reply was sufficient to answer the general purpose for which the question was put, it was not so particular as to involve any of those perplexing discussions which were the delight of the men and of the age. If honest Thomas Fuller had attempted a more specific answer, it is by no means improbable that, in spite of all his excellence, he would not have satisfied the subtle and " distin- guishing" spirit which animated many of his ex- aminers. He might, but for Howe's timely help have stuck in the dreaded passage after all. 1 As it was, he was allowed to remain undisturbed in the appointment which he then held. These two were instances in which, through the intervention of one of the Committee of Tryers, hard measure, which was about to be meted out against worthy men, was prevented. But in many, very many, cases, great hardships were endured by not a few of the ejected ministers. In some instances, as may be seen in Walker's account, they were almost penniless, 1 Bailey's " Life of Thomas Fuller," p. 603. 2 24 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. and dependent for the bare necessaries of life for themselves and their families on the charity of some of the neighbouring gentry. Thus, Thomas Ayles- bury, 1 ejected from Kingston Deverel after much worrying treatment, having been more than once sum- moned before committees and imprisoned for a time in London, was indebted to the charity of Sir George Horner. William Bartlett, 2 deprived of Yetminster, writes from his prison in London not only a complete vindication of himself from the malicious charges laid against him, but adds : " I have been Vicar of Yet- minster 39 years, time enough to know me inside and outside ; but notwithstanding that, all my possessions are taken from me which were my father's patrimony, whereunto God hath called me, and wherein I was settled by the laws of the kingdom. But, howsoever, I am an undone man, and how to recover myself I know not, for want of means." And then, in Berks, we meet with Guy Carleton, 3 turned out of Buckles- bury, imprisoned in Lambeth House, afterwards escaping beyond the seas, his wife and daughters meanwhile being maintained in London partly by their own labour and partly by charity, but happily surviving till the Restoration, when he became suc- cessively Dean of Durham, Bishop of Bristol, and was thence translated to Chichester. But the reader who would fain desire to know more of the sufferings of the clergy in these troubled times can find ample information in the pages of Walker. 1 Walker's "Sufferings of the Clergy," II. 1S8. 2 Ibid., II. 198. 3 Ibid., II. 215. SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 225 No doubt that book, which, as its author distinctly tells us in its opening sentence, was written as a counterpoise to the account given by Calamyof the sufferings of those ministers who a very few years afterwards were de- prived through the Act of Uniformity, is written ex- clusively from one point of view. Still, though per- haps in a few instances the committees in various parts of the country removed some unworthy persons and swept away abuses, there can be no doubt that a great amount of suffering was often unjustly inflicted in many other cases that must be heartily condemned, especially with regard to those who were its authors. There are two cases of ministers — the one in Dorset and the other in Wilts — that are related with much circumstantial detail, and carry home, on their perusal, the conviction of their truthfulness. 1 There was that of Anthony Sadler, who was presented to the living of Compton Hawey (Over-Compton), near Sherborne, but who, in offering himself to the Tryers for their approbation, was examined at great length as to the evidence of the work of grace in his heart and on divers other matters, and was ultimately rejected by them. There was also the case of Walter Bushnell,the vicar of Box, from whose own pen we have an account of the persecution he endured for a long time through various charges laid against him before the commissioners, and from his being summoned to attend them at different times at Marlborough, Market Lavington, Calne, and elsewhere. The whole account is printed in full by Walker, and certainly conveys the impres- 1 Walker's "Sufferings of the Clergy," 1. 175. Q 2 26 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. sion that in being ejected from his living he was treated with harshness. In truth, the charges which were brought against him of immorality and other irregularities would seem to have been acknowledged to be groundless, and he was dispossessed on the ground of insufficiency, though the trial of it was not allowed to be public. In reading the whole ac- count one can hardly fail to acknowledge that there is truth in the remarks of Walker, who says : " The outrages and oppressions acted upon Mr. Bushnell are so plain and so many that I shall not make any other observation upon them than this one, that it will be easily thought that Wilts was not the only county in which the clergy were treated after this manner by the commissioners of this ordinance." l It was stated by Morley, at the Savoy Conference, that some places had no ministers at all during the usurpation, and he instanced Aylesbury in proof of his assertion. Baxter contradicted him, though at the same time it would appear tolerably certain that one Barton, the minister there, was imprisoned in the gate-house for reading the king's declaration. It is frankly admitted by Stoughton, in his sketch of those times, that such may have been the case during a part of this period in some of the poorer parishes. In- deed, of this we have an independent testimony ; for Walton, in his life of Bishop Sanderson, tells us dis- tinctly that it was a source of much lamentation to him that " in many parishes, where the maintenance was not great, there was no minister to officiate ; and 1 Walker's " Sufferings," n. 413. SARUM UXDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 227 that many of the best sequestered livings were possessed with such rigid Covenanters as denied the sacrament to their parishioners unless upon such conditions and in such a manner as they could not take it. The want of this blessed benefit he lamented much, and pitied their condition that desired, but could not obtain it." 1 It is no part of our subject to treat of the sequestra- tion of estates that was carried out at the same time as this ejection, on non-approval of ministers by the various committees. A catalogue of such as, from sympathy with the king or opposition to the parlia- ment, were fined, is printed by Dring in his list of delinquents and their confiscations. Such measures, however, must have added materially to the difficul- ties of these days as regards the provision for the religious needs of the people. 2 We may mention in passing, that one great danger which, in 1653, threatened the Church, seems to have been providentially averted, though by what influence the Parliament was induced to delay the execution of their order we are not told. Nevertheless on February 18, 1652-3 it was ordered, "that all the 1 Walton's " Lives" (Bishop Sanderson), p. 345. 2 A " Register of Sequestrations for Wiltshire" (1645-49) is among the Add. MSS. (No. 22,084), a valuable document which was purchased by the authorities of the British Museum in 1857 from Messrs. Squarey and Whatman, of Salisbury. See, also, on " Delinquents and their Estates," Add. MSS. 5495 and 5,508. In an edition of Dring's "Catalogue" in the British Museum the whole amount of confiscations is said to have amounted to ^1,304, 95 7. 2s. id. O 2 2 28 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. cathedral churches in England, where there are other churches sufficient for the people to meet in for the worship of God, should be surveyed, pulled down, and the materials sold ; " and in the following July a committee was appointed to " consider what cathedrals should stand or what part thereof." An advertisement is quoted from a diary of those days about Lichfield, in which it is stated that " a great store of lead is to be sold by reason of taking down the cathedral church there, and also the bells of the said cathedral, all which will be sold worth the money." And this notice is further added : — " If any please to repair thither to buy them, they may be well used in the price of them." Meanwhile, during this time of trouble and humiliation for the Church, its bishop, Brian Duppa, though deprived of his office and his revenues, was not unmindful of his scattered flock in the diocese of Sarum. He at the first, after his deprivation, spent some time at Richmond in solitude and devotion, but was ever availing himself of opportunities to preserve and revive the church. From one of his letters preserved among the Tanner MSS. (vol. lii. p. 41) we learn that meetings were being constantly held to consult, "that the church as such should receive no harm" (lie ecdesia aliqtrid detrimenti caperet), " especially in such a sad juncture of time, when its well-being could hardly fall into consideration, and when the great care was that, though stripped of all her outward helps, yet there might be a being left in her." Indeed among the Clarendon Papers there are letters which show that Hyde himself was es- SARUM UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH. 229 pecially anxious that the succession of bishops should be kept up ; and preferred that a commission should be given by the king to the bishops of each province to elect and consecrate fit persons to vacant sees, and ratify and confirm the process afterwards. Consulta- tions would seem to have been held for the purpose with five bishops — those of Ely, Sarum, Rochester, Lichfield, and Chichester. Bishop Duppa, though he agreed with the Bishop of Ely (Wren) in thinking that in any case suffragans might be appointed, never- theless expressed himself quite ready to consecrate bishops to English sees, and named as two others who would join with him — though they could wish that a " collation " were made by the king — Usher, arch- bishop of Armagh, and Brownrigge, bishop of Exeter. Happily there was no need of any exceptional measures. The clouds were now clearing away. At the restoration, in 1660, there were still surviving nine bishops. The day of trial had been indeed severe and sad, but after all, as we now look back upon it, it was not of long continuance. And though possibly some two hundred of our clergy suffered more or less in the temporary, in some cases the permanent, loss of their means of subsistence, in other dioceses the proportion was undoubtedly greater. When we read rumours of the desecration of other cathedrals, and the wanton destruction of many portions of them — notably of those of St. Paul's, and of Exeter, we may well feel thankful that the hand of the spoiler in our case was withheld, and that no irremediable mischief would seem to have been done to our own beautiful cathedral at Sarum. 230 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY, CHAPTER XI. 1660-1688. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. At the restoration, in May 1660, Brian Duppa returned once more to Sarum as its bishop, but in a few months afterwards was translated to the see of Winchester. He found that his palace had been laid waste. As we have already intimated, his cathedral had fared better, some friendly hand during the days of trouble having supplied the means as far as possible of keeping the fabric in repair. The allusion, it has been said, is to certain members of the Hyde family, but one can hardly help believing also that the bishop himself was, as far as he was able, a willing aider in this good work. He preached at the re- opening of the cathedral to its old and accustomed form of worship, from the words, " Lord I have loved the habitation of thine house, and the place where thine honour dwelleth." He did not long survive in his new sphere of duty. He died March 25, 1663, leaving behind him a reputation for personal holiness, and munificent charity, bestowing with almost his last words his episcopal benediction on the king who had been his pupil, and who reverently knelt to receive it by the side of his dying bed. THE CHURCH O? SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 231 As regards the cathedral services, it would appear from sundry entries in the books of the clerk of the fabric, that many necessaries for their due solemniza- tion had at once to be procured. Of the chapter of residentiaries there were but three, out of the seven that had been deprived, who returned to what was now in many respects a desolate heritage. And they had at once to set to work to repair the breaches that had been made in it. Thus we have an account of ^73 laid out about the bells, sundry charges for unloading the organ and bringing it from Hampton (Southampton) — with a side note intimating that it had been given for the most part by Bishop Duppa — forms for the communion, brass candlesticks for the altar, silkman's bill for the bishop's throne, rails about the communion table, and the cost of carrying the font from London ; entries which show how, as regards the accessories of divine worship, the house of God had been laid bare during the days of Puritan ascendancy. Humphrey Henchman, precentor of Sarum, one of the three surviving members of the chapter of residentiaries, succeeded as bishop of Sarum on the advancement of Brian Duppa to Winchester. His episcopate here was but a brief one, as, in 1663, he was translated to the see of London. Nevertheless, great events happened in it, inasmuch as in 1662, the Act of Uniformity was passed, by the operation of which the church in the diocese of Sarum, as else- where, lost some of her best men. No doubt in many cases the Act in question was the means of getting rid of some ministers, often unworthy and 232 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. inefficient, and in all cases more or less disaffected towards the government. But there were others on whom it pressed hardly, especially in face of the declaration of indulgence set forth by the king, and the acknowledged fact that, without any let or hin- drance, in not a few churches, between the restoration and St. Bartholomew's day 1662, ministers continued to carry on worship as before, either following the directory or engaging in prayer as they pleased. And of this latter class, Philip Lamb, the minister of Bere Regis, who it is said was offered ^600 a year if he would conform, may be regarded as the example. " I must tell you," he said in his last discourse to his people, " that perhaps you may not see my face, or hear my voice any more in this place, but not out of any peevish humour or disaffection to the present authority of the kingdom — I call God and man to witness this day — it being my own practice and counsel to you all to fear God and honour the king, but rather a real dissatisfaction in some particulars imposed, to which notwithstanding all endeavours to that purpose my conscience cannot yet be espoused." 1 Indeed, we have the testimony of Bishop Burnet that in some cases ministers were ejected before they had ever had an opportunity of seeing the Act of Uniformity in the new prayer book. It is right, however, to remember that noncon- formity in Wilts is of earlier date than the days of the Commonwealth. The oldest dissenting chapel in England is in our county, at the village of 1 See Stoughton's " Church of the Restoration," 1. 275. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 233 Horningsham, and is said to have been erected by some workmen brought from Scotland by Sir John Thynne, the ancestor of the Marquis of Bath, for the purpose of building his mansion at Longleat. This still remains, and has the date of 1566 upon it. Moreover, many of the settlers who came to our Wiltshire towns from the low counties, brought, with their craft as cloth-workers, their dislike of episcopacy, as they found it here ; and possibly to those Flemings, and others from the Continent, we owe much of the nonconformity at one time so pre- valent in them. Still it must be confessed that in not a few cases dissent gained a more permanent footing from the work of those, who, when ejected from their benefices, settled in some of the neighbouring towns. As regards Wiltshire this was certainly the case at Devizes, Warminster, Bradford, Chippenham, Don- head, Marlborough, and Salisbury. The numbers of those who were ejected are given by Calamy as : in Berks, 29 ; in Dorset, 49 ; in Wilts, 61 — making a total in the three counties of 139. Without all doubt some of these endured great privations. There is an anecdote related of one of them that may be worth recording. Peter Ince, who was ejected from Donhead St. Mary, had been educated at Oxford, and was not only an excellent scholar, but otherwise gifted as a parish minister. Not long after 1662, Mr. Grove, a gentleman of position and wealth, whose seat was near Birdbush (Fern House), upon his wife's lying dangerously ill, sent to the parish minister that he might pray with her. But he was from home and his services could 234 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. not be obtained. One of the servants remarked,. " Our shepherd, sir, can pray well if you will send for him, for we have heard him in the field." Upon this he was sent for immediately, and on being asked whether he could pray, the shepherd replied, " God forbid, sir, that I should live a day without prayer." After ministering to his dying wife Mr. Grove learnt to his surprise that the shepherd was indeed one of the clergy lately ejected from the church, who having nothing of his own left, was content for a livelihood to undertake the lowly work of tending sheep. " Then," said Mr. Grove, " you shall be my shep- herd ; " and he at once received him into his house. 1 He showed like kindness to another ejected minister, Thomas Rosewell, who had been the rector of Sutton Mandeville on his leaving the family of Lady Hunger- ford, to whose son he for some years had been tutor. Another anecdote may also be narrated as showing incidentally the character of some of those who must be regarded as " intruding " ministers. Thomas Fuller had been deprived both of his prebend of Nether- bury in the cathedral, and of his living of Broad- windsor in Dorset. One John Pinney, who belonged to a local family, had taken his place in his Dorset- shire benefice. When on the restoration Fuller came to resume possession he heard Pinney preach, and was, it is said, so pleased with his ministrations and their acceptance by the parishioners that he was un- 1 See Palmer's edition of Calamy's " Nonconformists' Memorial" (1775), II. 503; and Stoughton's "Church of the Restoration," 11. 545. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 235 willing to deprive them of such a man, and withdrew his claims. It is not said whether Pinney received the entire income of the benefice, or was simply curate to Fuller. Before the passing of the Act of Uniformity, however, Pinney was dismissed, one Edmund Sly being appointed. The character of the man who won Fuller's regard is thus given by Calamy : " He was much of a gentleman, a con- siderable scholar, very facetious, yet grave and charming companion, and an eloquent, charming preacher." 1 Bishop Henchman was succeeded in our see by John Earles, who was chancellor of the cathedral, and held the living of Bishopston. It is of this bishop that Isaac Walton says that " since Hooker died none have lived whom God hath blessed with more innocent wisdom, more sanctified learning, or a more pious, peaceable, and primitive temper." Twice at least he had refused, or rather shrunk from, offered posts of trust and dignity. 2 He yielded at last as regards the see of Sarum to the persuasions of Arch- bishop Sheldon, though at the time of advanced age, and ruled the diocese gently for hardly two years, when he was called to his rest. His successor was Alexander Hyde, whose epis- copate was of yet shorter duration. The court had been at Sarum in 1665 in consequence of the plague 1 Bailey's "Life of Fuller," p. 680. 2 See a letter from him to Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of Lon- don, dated September 25, 1662, declining offered preferment, in Tanner MS. No. 48, fol. 46- 236 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. raging in London, and it is named, as a proof of the sad depreciation that had taken place in the character of the clergy, that so many of them left what, though a post of danger, was at the same time a post of duty. In the following year, a few months only after Bishop Hyde's consecration, the plague was devastating Salisbury, though the Close would seem providen- tially to have escaped. Under such circumstances little could be effected in the way of church progress or restoration. The cathedral accounts, however, show some sums expended on pointing the steeple, and paving the cloister and north aisle, besides painting the communion rails. Possibly similar works were carried out in various churches of the diocese. The widow of Bishop Earles gave the altar- cloth and the pulpit cloth, gifts which seem to imply the severe simplicity of the services during the Puritan ascendancy. There is also a charge for "altering the old communion-plate into a chalice like the former." l Towards the close of 1667, both the bishopric and the deanery were vacant by the decease of Alexander Hyde and Richard Bailey. To the former Seth Ward, the bishop of Exeter, was translated ; the latter dig- nity was obtained by Ralph Brideoak. Ralph Brideoak had been chaplain in the Earl of Derby's family, and witnessed the heroism of the countess during the siege of Latham House. He was one of those who found pliancy a necessity, and, 1 Accounts of the " Clerk of the Fabric,'' from Michaelmas, 1667, to Michaelmas, 1668. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 237 submitting to the times, held the valuable livings of "Witney, in Oxfordshire, and of St. Bartholomew-by- the-Exchange, in the time of the Commonwealth. He served afterwards as a commissioner for the trial and approbation of ministers. He would seem to have conformed readily enough at the Restoration, and to have become dean of Sarum, and canon of Windsor, and ultimately (in 1674) Bishop of Chi- chester, holding his canonry in commendam with the bishopric. In his epitaph in the chapel of St. George's, "Windsor, where he died and was buried, it is stated, that " on the exile of Charles II. he was deprived of all his preferments." But the account given above would seem to be the correct one. 1 In Rennet's history there is a curious account of Bride- oak's visit to Lenthall, the Speaker, when on his death-bed, and no doubt he owed much to Lenthall's influence during the Commonwealth. As regards Bishop Seth "Ward, we may freely allow that in many respects he was a remarkable man. As a mathematician and astronomer he had few equals among his contemporaries. He was one of the founders of the Royal Society. Originally educated at Cambridge, he afterwards migrated to Oxford, where he became the President of Trinity College, and Savilian Professor of Geometry. But with all his admitted talent and his undoubted generosity, he is hardly to be reckoned among our great or successful bishops. His episcopate was at best a stormy one. This was in part owing to cir- 1 Sec Stoughton's "Church of the Reformation," I. 502. 238 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. cumstances over which he had no control, but in part also to his personal character. He had a strong will, and was not easily to be diverted from a path which he thought the right one ; but whilst he strove to rule his diocese justly according to his own ideas, there was a lack of gentleness in his disposition which sadly interfered with his success. He left behind him a volume styled "Notitise Diceceseos Sarum," in which he made useful memoranda of all that concerned his diocese ; and, judging from these collections, he was not only diligent and methodical, but anxious to know its real condition. Indeed, his biographer, a Dr. Walter Pope, tells us, that he had " a large book in which he had a list of all the livings in his diocese, as also the names of all the incumbents, with their several qualifications as to conformity or non-con- formity, learning or ignorance, peaceable or conten- tious conversation, orthodox or heretical opinion, good or scandalous lives, for all of which he had framed peculiar marks. And so, when any clergyman of the diocese came to him, as soon as he heard his name he knew his character, and could give a shrewd guess as to his business, and so was out of danger of being surprised." 1 But there is after all in this, too much of the head rather than of the heart; his statistics, judging from the volume that still is pre- served in the diocesan registry, have a more genuine 1 This biography by Dr. Pope is printed by Cassan in his "History of the Bishops of Sarum," in. 3,1. A transcript of the " Notitire " was made for Bishop Burgess, and was presented in 1837 to the dean and chapter by that bishop's widow. It is still preserved in the muniment room of the cathedral. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 239 ring about them than his charity, and so he hardly- had that best of all qualifications, — a real sympathy with his clergy, — which is the only true secret of a bishop's success. No long time after Bishop Seth Ward's translation to Sarum, Archbishop Sheldon issued circular letters complaining of the slovenly performance of the duties at cathedrals by deans and canons, as though to say the various offices were beneath their dignity, and of their being left by them to be performed by vicars or petty canons. Other matters were spoken of in these letters, which are called Uteres, pice et salutares, and amongst them was the requirement of a statement as to what moneys had been received and spent by the dean and chapter since the Restoration. The return is a curious one, the original letter being still pre- served among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian at Oxford. This was accompanied with a private letter from the dean, Ralph Brideoak, to Archbishop Sheldon. The general purport of the return was as follows : that there were but three members of the lesser chapter remaining at the Restoration, namely, the dean (Richard Bailey), the precentor (Humphrey Henchman), bishop successively of Sarum and London, and Dr. Matthew Nicholas ; that these three claimed to have expended in all some ^11,825, of which ^£4,200 was in the fabric of the cathedral ; but, adds Dean Brideoak, " the sums they received were no less than ^24,000, and what they laid out as publique uses is not visible to us, and nothing appears in our bookes. There are some things not prudently ex- posed to view, which are locked up in this private 240 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. paper, for I may tell your Grace, that the ,£4,200 was raised on fabric lands let for three lives, and not one penny of it given by any of the three." 1 In this last sentence we have much revealed to us of the source of the weakness of the church in general. It was a golden opportunity given to all men, when, at the Restoration, the church recovered her privileges which for a time had been withheld. But as it was with the king, who seemed quite uninfluenced by the bitter lessons of adversity, and took his course in the same unthinking and godless way as ever, so, more or less, was it with the church ; abuses still were rife, and during the period of twenty-five years now under review it is to be feared that the church was slumbering, and, as far as any real, earnest work for the good of the diocese, well nigh powerless. In the " Notitise," to which allusion has been made, Bishop Seth Ward gives us a list of the churches and chapels in his diocese, which now included only Berks and Wilts. The numbers were as follows : — Churches. Chapels. Berks ... 128 ... 37 Wilts ... 255 ... 35 making a total of 455. The unfortunate destruction of the registers for Bristol diocese prevents our giving such exact numbers for the churches and chapels in Dorset. In one respect Bishop Seth Ward's mind was fully made up. He was determined to carry out, not only the provisions of the Act of Uniformity in all their 1 Tanner MS., No. l^Z,fol. 263. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 24 I rigour, but also the various penal acts, passed just before and during his episcopate, against various bodies of nonconformists. No colouring of the bishop's conduct can quite hide his intolerance ; indeed it is said that, by the course which he pursued at Salisbury, he drove many persons away to Holland, to the detri- ment of trade in that city. It is hard to say which he disliked most, the Quaker, the Protestant non- conformist, or the Popish recusant. His letters to the Archbishops Sheldon and Sancroft are full of allusions to this subject, and he is always spoken of by Calamy and other dissenting writers as having carried out with strictness and severity the various penal laws enacted against them. Thus, within a few weeks only of his translation from Exeter to Sarum we have the record of Thomas Taylor, an ejected minister from Burbage, who afterwards lived for some years at Salisbury, supporting himself there by teaching, being summoned before the spiritual court, and a decree of excommunication being issued against him, he escaping the consequence of the writ " de excommunicato capiendo " by being conveyed secretly and at night by friends to Stockbridge, where, being out of the diocese of Sarum, the writ could not reach him. And in the Lambeth library there is a manuscript entitled "An account of Popish recu- sants, and obstinate separatists and conformists in Wiltshire, in the time of Seth Ward, Bishop of Sarum." His opinions may be gathered from an extract from a letter addressed by him to Archbishop Sancroft in December, 1681 (Tanner MS. xxxvi. fol 196):— " I thanke God I live amongst a generally willing and R 242 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. conforming people, and I should some time ago have given an account of the execution of the law against dissenters had there not been a continual expectation of a prescribed method of proceeding against them. I must now humbly represent to your Grace that the conventicle which hath been too long and too often kept in this city (a Samaritan conventicle of persons pretending themselves friends of our Church, par- takers of the public services and sacraments, and afterwards resorting to the exercise of a presby- terian) is now dissolved, and I am confident that it will not be resumed." Attempts have been made to extenuate the bishop's severity, and to throw doubt on the statement of Neale, who says, in his " History of the Puritans," that, " in the diocese of Salisbury the persecution of nonconformists was hottest by the instigation of Bishop Ward, many hundreds being persecuted with industry and driven from their families and their trades." We are assured that neither in the episcopal documents, nor in those of the city, is there a syllable of evidence to support such a charge. This, how- ever, we know for a fact, that, when a bill was brought into the House of Lords for the relief of Protestant dissenters, it was strongly opposed by Archbishop Sheldon and Bishop Ward. It ended in what is commonly called the Test Act, by which any one who refused to take the oath of allegiance and supre- macy, and to receive Holy Communion according to the rites of the Church of England, was incapable of public employment, military or civil. Moreover, when this was followed by a proclamation requiring THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 243 the laws against nonconformists to be put in exe- cution, the Bishop of Sarum, notwithstanding the excitement that prevailed, thought it his duty to act in strict accordance with it. Thus we have these records, gathered from the Corporation books: 1 — "1674. James Bennet, merchant, mayor: in his time the nonconformists were disturbed in their private meetings ; and Mr. Swafheld, the minister, was put in Fisherton prison for twelve months." Again, — "1675. William Smith, mayor : ontheiSth of April he disturbed the meeting and put Mr. Francis Bampfield, a nonconformist minister, into the town prison till the 4th of August, and then released him for a fine of twenty shillings to the Bishop of Sarum." Once more, — " 16S1. Mr. Richard Minefye, laceman, mayor : in this city, the mayor being in London, on Sunday, the iSth of December, Lieutenant Turner and Mr. Joist, the organist, with the bishop's bailiffs and others, broke open the doors of a meeting-house in Castle-street, and pulled down the pulpit and seats, and broke the walls of the house, and threw them into the main stream, and took the names of the several persons to prosecute them." Moreover, there is, in the " Notitiae," a list of persons " signified " upon certificate from the archdeacon with the fol- lowing note by himself: — " Memorandum, Octob. 16, 1692. All persons imprisoned for things committed before July 31st last upon the writ ' De excom- municato capiendo' imprisoned at Sarum, being thirteen, were delivered by His Majesty's writ 'of 1 Hatcher and Benson, p. 463. R 2 244 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. pardon." Amongst those so " signified" was Thomas Grove, Esq., of Donhead St. Andrew. There can be no doubt as to there being some truth in Neale's statement, though it may be exagge- rated. Even the friendly though garrulous Dr. Pope, to whom we are indebted for a sketch of the bishop's life, whilst explaining the bishop's course as one dic- tated by motives of conscience, tacitly admits the fact, when he says, " 'Tis true he was for the Act against conventicles, and laboured hard to get it passed .... not out of enmity to the dissenters' persons .... but of love for the repose and wel- fare of the Government, for he believed that if the growth of them were not timely repressed, it would either cause a necessity of a standing army to pre- serve the peace, or a general toleration which would end in Popery, whither all things then had an appa- rent tendency." He adds that the Act, when put in force, put an end to all the meetings of dissenters in this diocese, " for in Sarum there was not one con- venticle left, and but few in the skirts of Wilts," and that at length a messenger was sent from the king, with a verbal command no longer to molest the dissenters. " Upon which," says Dr. Pope, " the bishop went to wait upon his majesty, and humbly represented to him that there were only two troublesome noncon- formists in his diocese, which, he doubted not, but he should bring to their duty, and then he named them. These are the very men, replied the king, you must not meddle with : to which he obeyed, letting the prosecution against them fall." 1 * Hatcher and Benson's "Salisbury," p. 465. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 245 We could need no stronger proof of there being some ground for the complaint against Bishop Seth Ward than this anecdote preserved by his apologist. No doubt he was conscientious in the course he pur- sued, nevertheless it was one of severity towards non- conformists. At one and the same time he was hold- ing a visitation at Newbury and exhorting men to brotherly love, and elsewhere " haling men and com- mitting them to prison." And so inconsistent to ordinary men did such conduct appear, that, at this time, several of the bishops, dining with Sir Natha- nael Horn, then sheriff of London, and discoursing with him about putting the laws against dissenters into execution, were told by him plainly enough that, " they could not trade with their neighbours one day and send them to gaol the next." But whilst we are forced to admit the bishop's iron rule as regarded a portion of what after all was his flock, we readily acknowledge the un- bounded generosity, we may say munificence, with which he helped in the rebuilding of his two palaces at Exeter and at Sarum, as well as in the restoration of either cathedral. His biographer tells us that he not only contributed liberally to the general fund for the latter purpose at Salisbury, but him- self paved a portion of the cloister, and that the nave and choir were also " at his exhortation and more than proportionable expense," thoroughly put in order, and in part paved with marble squares. At the same time the bishop's, dean's, and prebendaries' stalls were " made new and magnificent ;" a memorial alike of the royal oak and union, and a playful allusion 246 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. to the dean's name, Bride-oak {broad oak), being pre- served in the large finials which, till quite recently, adorned the dean's stall, and which it is to be re- gretted have been removed, inasmuch as they were, at all events, of some historical interest. The work of restoration would seem to have gone on gradually. The nave was fitted with seats in 1676, the sermon then being usually preached in the body of the church. There Avas also, it is believed, a movable wooden pulpit, which stood ordinarily by the first pillar on the south side, on which was to be seen till a short time ago, when it was needlessly and wantonly removed, the inscription, " What, not one Houre." In those days the preacher had the hour- glass beside him, and was thought indolent or care- less if he did not go on with his words of edifying until his sand ran out. And the inscription would seem to have been intended alike as a reproof to preacher or hearer, if the earnestness of the one or the attention of the other flagged before the end of the accustomed hour. But troubles came to Bishop Seth Ward from a quarter whence he little expected them. On the advancement of Ralph Brideoak to the see of Chichester, Thomas Pierce became Dean of Sarum. He was a Wiltshire man, the son of one John Pierce, of " The Devizes," from whom he would seem to have inherited a small landed estate near Tidworth. Educated at Oxford, he became Fellow of Magdalen College, a post from which he was ejected by the Par- liamentary visitors in 1648, on the suspicion of having been the author of a sharp satire upon them. At the THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION'. 247 Restoration he became canon of Canterbury, and for some fourteen years was president of his college, but the fellows not agreeing under his management he resigned in 1675, becoming in that same year Dean of Sarum. There is no doubt that Dean Pierce was an able and learned man and " no mean divine." Much concerning him will be found in Isaac Walton's life of Bishop Sanderson, with whom he would seem to have been on terms of intimacy. But the same over- bearing spirit which prevented the fellows of Magda- len being content under his rule introduced the ele- ments of discord at Sarum. He quarrelled with his chapter, " insomuch that they appealed to the arch- bishop respecting claims which he asserted in contra- vention of their own acknowledged privileges, and prayed for his grace's interference to preserve their ancient and undoubted rights from an impending ruin." He further quarrelled with the bishop, by openly ranging himself on the side of the choir again some episcopal monition. Thus Trelawny, bishop of Bristol, writes in 1686 to Archbishop San- croft : " I wish to tell your grace what I observed at Salisbury. By reason of the deane's supporting the choir against the bishop there is a scandalous neglect in the performance of the service. The day I rested in the town the singing men refused to sing an anthem which was then desired by the bishop's nephew and Canon Hill ; and in the afternoon the organist (which, they say, happens often) was absent, and the prayers performed without the organ. I cannot suppose this as done to me, being a stranger, but wholly intended to the bishop, to whom I made a visit, as being his friend." 248 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. Nor was this the dean's only quarrel with his dio- cesan. Disappointed, it is supposed not without reason, at failing to obtain a prebend for his son, and it may be, not unfairly vexed at the nepotism dis- played by Bishop Ward in advancing two relatives in very early life to posts of dignity and emolument, the dean openly denied the right of the bishop to give away the prebends at all, contending that such patronage was primarily in the Crown, and moreover challenged his right of visiting the cathedral, at all events in the way in which some few years previously he had done. 1 Though, on appeal to the Lord Keeper on all the matters in dispute, the dean was ultimately judged to be in the wrong, the dispute, which was long-continued, had a serious effect on the bishop, and led to a condition of much disorder. Writing a letter to the primate in 1684, the bishop says, mourn- fully : " Matters in this place seem to me, by the per- verseness of some persons whom I need not name, brought to such a crisis that it will be very hard for the number of very wise and good men that are here to withstand the inundation of atheism and all manner of profaneness and debauchery which, by the counte- nance of some of our grandees, are continually break- ing in upon the church." And yet another trouble, and this too from a still more unexpected quarter, befell our bishop. Remem- 1 This quarrel, and the dean's grounds of contention are all explained in a scarce volume entitled " The Vindication of the King's Sovereign Right, &c." The book was, it is believed, printed privately, or, at all events, if published, soon withdrawn from circulation. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 249 bering the strong opinions which he held concerning nonconformists it is not easy to describe his vexa- tion, when there appeared about the year 1683 an anonymous pamphlet in Salisbury, entitled "The Protestant Reconciler"; for it was in effect a plea, not simply for the toleration, but also for the compre- hension, of dissenters within the church. A more direct attack on those opinions, of which the bishop was the boldest exponent, could not be ima- gined. And his annoyance was increased tenfold when the authorship was traced to Dr. Whitby, the rector of St. Edmund's, who was one of the bishop's chaplains ! Straightway the soubriquet of Dr. Whig- by was applied to the writer, and every one began to talk of sedition, disloyalty, and even treason. It was answered promptly by several persons, and amongst them by Dr. Jennings, a prebendary of the cathedral, who had married a niece of Bishop Ward, in a pam- phlet entitled " Bifrons " or " A New Discovery of Treason under the Fair Form and Mask of Religion." But the bishop was compromised ; he had often been suspected of trimming, in fact it had been confidently stated that at one time he had been so zealous for the commonwealth as to take the engagement, and after- wards became equally zealous for conformity. On this occasion he bravely and generously stood by his chaplain, who, though he got no further promotion than the Rectory of St. Edmund's, held his precentor- ship with a prebend, which at all events found him enough to keep the wolf from the door, lint the excitement did not soon lull, for it came at last to this, that Chief Justice Jeffreys, when holding the 250 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. assize at Sarum, directed Dr. Whitby to be indicted, and declined to dine as usual with the bishop, — a course which Dr. Woodward, afterwards dean, and then one of the residentiaries, much regrets in a letter addressed by him to Archbishop Sancroft. All these troubles — and there were others which have not been told — caused much mischief, not only in the cathedral, but in the diocese. Despite of all the bishop's efforts to extirpate dissent, the church itself seemed to be slumbering, and as far as any real earnest work for the good of the diocese was well-nigh powerless. In truth, these twenty-five years seem to stand out in Sarum, as far as we are able to learn, no less than in other dioceses, as at the best days of lax indifference. And the bishop, now well-stricken in years and harassed with all the difficulties of his position and the attacks alike of seeming friends as well as of foes, began to betray symptoms of failing faculties. It was indeed sad and humilitating to see how the man, so gifted with intellectual power, became a very child in his weakness. Utterly unable to attend to his episcopal duties, all diocesan work was at a stand- still. Burnet tells us that the Court intended at one time to have named a coadjutor for him, but there being no precedent for that since the Reformation, they resolved to stay till he should die ; a miserable confession, to say the least, that what was not only possible but customary in olden times should then be deemed impracticable. The result is told in the following extracts from a letter contained among the Tanner MSS., and addressed to Archbishop THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE RESTORATION. 251 Sancroft by Baptist Levinze, bishop of Sodor and Man, ■who then held the living of Christian Malford : — "Being at my parsonage in Wiltshire, the sub-dean of Sarum, then in visitation for the dean, who has great numbers of parishes dispersed throughout the diocese, came to me with a considerable number of the clergy to desire me to confirm in the diocese, for (says Mr. Sub-dean) in respect of the whole diocese, and each minister for his particular parish wherever I come, the people cry out for confirmation, and desire that some other bishop be employed to do this good office for them during their own bishop's indisposition."' And he subse- quently says, — " North Wiltshire is very remote from Sarum, and there hath scarce been any confirmation in these parts within their memory.'' How strangely are we apt to miscalculate the pro- bable results of great occurrences in the history of the church. Never, as it would appear to us, could there have beena more golden opportunity for her, than when, at the Restoration, she regained her old ascendancy. But, in the event, we know how little, not only in Sarum, but in all other dioceses of England, she used the bright opportunity that was then given her. This lesson, at least, we may learn for our own comfort. It is not in days of seeming power and prosperity that the church is free from dangers. Its perils after all come more from within than from without. The very storms that beat upon her only bind together her loyal defenders in closer union ; and the energies, that in days of sunshine waste themselves too often in selfish ends, are then quickened to promote what is for her common good. 252 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. CHAPTER XII. 1688-1800. THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REVOLUTION AND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Great events were now impending over the church and nation, and Salisbury was to be the scene of some of the most important of them. The bishop was in a hopeless state of imbecility, lamentable indeed when contrasted with those great gifts with which he had been endowed, knowing nothing of what was going on within his own palace. Meanwhile important con- ferences were held there — now of the adherents of the king, James II., who, by his forsaking, as he had done, the church of the Reformation, alienated from himself the affections of his people ; — now of the supporters of the Prince of Orange, who, at the invitation of the chiefs of the party that still abjured Rome and clung tenaciously to the liberties which they had acquired, had come from Holland to be their leader, and, as the event proved, ultimately their king. When the news arrived that the Prince of Orange had landed at Torbay with an army of some fifteen thousand men, the king ordered his own forces to Salisbury, as the key of the west of England. He THE CHURCH OF SARU.M AT THE REVOLUTION. 253 followed them to the city, where he was received with much outward respect by the mayor and corporation, being met by them on horseback and escorted to the bishop's palace, which had been prepared for his reception. Thence he sent for his brother's trusted friend, the Bishop of Winchester, Bryan Duppa, who had presided once over the see of Sarum, and sought his counsel. The bishop advised his calling a Par- liament, but the advice came too late. Already the king's sincerity was doubted on every side, and there were not a few who assured him, that, though they would willingly shed their blood in the sen-ice of their sovereign, they yet hesitated to draw the sword against a prince who came, not uninvited, with the sole object of taking effectual precautions for the security of their religion and the preservation of their liberties. The discovery, moreover, that the chapel in the palace, which had been reserved for the king, was pre-occupied by Roman priests, notwithstanding that James was nominally attended by one Knightly Chetwood, as a Protestant chaplain, who publicly announced his determination to withdraw from his service unless the others were ordered to give way, increased not only the general excitement but the distrust with which the king was now regarded. The subsequent desertion of some of the king's principal supporters, such as Lord Cornburv, the eldest son of Clarendon and nephew of James's first wife, and of Lord Churchill (afterwards Duke of Marlborough), and others, steps which ultimately shook the fidelity of the army, compelled James to retreat with all speed to Windsor, lie left Salisbury 254 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. in haste on November 22nd, 1688, publishing before his departure one more proclamation, promising a free pardon to all his subjects who had been betrayed into disloyalty, provided they returned to their allegiance within twenty days. But it was now too late ; for, within a fortnight of the king's flight from Salisbury, the Prince of Orange entered the city and was received with tumultuous joy. He, in his turn, was escorted to the palace, but he remained there only for a night. The crisis was far too important to admit of delay or of hesitating counsels. Hence, on the morrow he proceeded on his way to Oxford in pursuit of the disordered, and now discouraged, regiments of the royal army. In the prince's train was his chaplain and adviser, Gilbert Burnet, who was within a few weeks to occupy as his own the palace in which they thus found a temporary resting-place. The aged bishop, spared happily through his state of unconsciousness from the anxieties which otherwise would have harassed him, was almost in a dying state. Within a month of that eventful day Bishop Seth Ward was called to his rest. He died at Knightsbridge, Jan. 6, 1688-9, and, a few days afterwards was buried in the cathedral. It is no part of our work to detail the great events, by which, on the flight and abdication of James, the crown of England was offered to and accepted by William and Mary. Suffice it to say, that the first piece of ecclesiastical preferment which the king had to dispose of was the see of Saturn. This was bestowed on Gilbert Burnet, who had come to be described as the " champion in ordinary of the revo- THE CHURCH OF SARUM AT THE REVOLUTION. 255 lution, ready to enter the lists against all comers.' Certainly no political appointment caused so much criticism as this to our bishopric. Still Burnet, it must be allowed, had claims which could not possibly be ignored. He had been the confidential friend and adviser of William and Mary at the Hague ; lie threw in his lot and risked his all with them, came over with the prince's fleet, drew up his Declaration, and boldly advocated his cause from the pulpit. His sermon at Exeter cathedral, shortly after his landing, was a fearless proclamation of William's mission and of his claims. Many, of course, regarded him almost exclusively as a politician, and objected to his latitu- dinarian views. Still, without all doubt, he was a man not only of real piety and true zeal, but also of varied learning, large experience, and indefatigable industry. As to his election there was no difficulty, for the dean and chapter promptly carried out the king's nomination. The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, refused however to consecrate him. Burnet himself says that he even refused to see him, but at last consented to grant a commission to others. When the archbishop was complained of by his own party, and charged with what looked very much like evasion, the document was abstracted from the Diocesan Registry, and — so Burnet himself tells us — could not be recovered till after Sancroft s death, and on threat of legal proceedings. Bishop Burnet found matters in the diocese at a very low ebb indeed when he succeeded to the epis- copate. To say nothing of that general state of lax indifference which prevailed after the Restoration, of 256 ANNALS OF THE CHURCH OF SALISBURY. which we have already spoken, the long illness of his immediate predecessor had of course left many things in abeyance which it required all diligence and earnestness to remedy. As early as 1670 Arch- bishop Sheldon, as we have noticed, had issued a circular letter complaining of the slovenly way in which deans and canons performed their duties at the cathedrals, as though they were " beneath them" and only to be " performed by vicars or petty canons." 1 A fact mentioned in Kettlewell's Life will be enough to show how low church feeling had fallen, and, it is to be feared, that the diocese of Sarum was no exception to the rule. It is there said that in London, in parish churches where Holy Com- munion was once largely attended, it was now almost unfrequented ; and that in some cathedrals things were even worse, for that the alms collected did not at times suffice to pay for the bread and wine needed for the celebration of the Blessed Sacrament. One illustration from a letter addressed by Bishop Trelawny of Bristol (c. 1686) to Archbishop Sancroft, relating to the united parishes of Elberton and Little- ton, will suffice : — " I never saw," says the bishop, " so ill churches or such ill parishioners. In one the Sacrament has not been administered since the Re- formation ; in the other, very seldom ; all the plate is but a small silver bowl, and that is kept at a Quaker's house, with my late orders to the contrary." 2 1 See Wilkins's "Concilia," IV. 590. 2 Quoted by Stoughton, in his " Church of the Restoration," II. 189, from an autograph preserved in the library of the Incor- porated Law Society. THE CHURCH OF SARU.M AT THE REVOLUTION. 253 Bishop Burnet himself also, speaking of the shock of an earthquake which was felt in September, 1693, says that it frightened many people, and " brought them to more of an outward face of virtue and con- formity ;" but, he adds, that such an effect was but temporary, and that they soon relapsed into the same state of indifference as before. A few years afterwards we find him saying : — " The condition of many livings in this kingdom is most miserable ; many have not twenty pounds, and in some places three of them put together do not amount to forty pounds a year. A poor clergyman may be scandalous, but he must be contemptible and igno- rant. To this in a great measure we owe the atheism and impiety, the sects and divisions that are spread over the nation." 1 One of the earliest difficulties witli which Bishop Burnet had to contend, was the refusal of certain clergymen in his diocese to take the oath of allegiance to the new dynasty. In this the example was set them by the archbishop and some of his suffragans, two of the latter being more or less connected with our diocese ; the one, Thomas Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, who often found a retreat at Poulshot, where his nephew, Isaac Walton, was beneficed ; and the other, Robert Frampton, bishop of Gloucester, who had held the prebend of Torleton in our cathedral. Of others who followed their example, there were 1 This statement is in a memorial concerning " First-Fruits and Truths," given in to the king in January, i6 ftsriefyj far |rontoting Cpsta JtMtoldgt. NON-CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS, Fcap. Svo., Cloth boards, price 2S. 6d. each. BUDDHISM. Being a Sketch of the Life and Teachings of Gautama, the Buddha. By T. W. Rhys Davids, of the Middle Temple. With Map. CONFUCIANISM AND TAOUISM. By Robert H. Douglas, of the British Museum. With Map. COHAN (THE) : its Composition and Teaching, and the Testi- mony it bears to the Holy Scriptures. 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