An Elobabethan Clergy Hist of the Diocese 
of Htchfield. 
By Rev. J. CHARLES Cox. 
8}MONG the capitular muniments at Lichfield is an 
undated manuscript list of the benefices and chapelries 
of the diocese, which also gives the names of the 
officiating clergy, with their degrees and preaching 
license, and their stipend. The manuscript consists of eighteen 
paper folios loosely stitched together, and now much frayed. The 
writing is the same throughout, and is nearly complete for the 
whole diocese, with the exception of the Staffordshire deanery of 
Lapley and Tresull. By a careful collation of the names of the 
incumbents, it is proved that the time of the compilation of this 
list was the last year of Elizabeth, or the first of James I., 1602-3. 
So much of interest has ever attached to the condition of the 
State clergy at different epochs in our national history, that such a 
list as this is of no small value. That one of the immediate 
effects of the Reformation was to materially lower the influence, 
the social standing, and especially the learning of the secular 
clergy, is beyond gainsaying. Several proofs of this are extant in 
clerical rolls of the earlier part of Elizabeth’s reign. In the year 
1563, out of the one hundred and sixteen priests of the Arch- 
deaconry of London, forty-two were ignorant of Latin, thirteen 
had received no classical learning whatever, and four were in 
every way “indocti.” Thirty-one of the remaining fifty-seven 
