■ ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



from people.''^ In the bishop's register the clergyman instituted is not infre- 

 quently decorated with a distinctively puritan title such as ' minister ' or 

 'preacher of God's word.' Sabbath breaking is in 1573 a punishable 

 offence.'^''' If prayer books are scanty in i 574 it is a sign, not of recalcitrance, 

 but of the confusion occasioned by the late troubles.^*'* Another result of the 

 rebellion was to involve the bishop in difficulties with the queen on the question 

 of the forfeitures.^^* A long dispute was the issue, and this impoverished the 

 already attenuated Palatinate, and still further diminished the prestige of the 

 bishop. Pilkington was held in very little account in the north ^^^ at a time 

 when a prelate strong and good might have done much. He complained with 

 justice of the harm done to religion by the constant bickerings over the posses- 

 sions of the see.^'* His lamentation might have had more influence had he not 

 ■contrived to amass a large fortune, which he bestowed largely in dowry upon 

 his daughters. He was never very happy in his northern home, and a letter 

 written three years before his death pictures pathetically the trial which he 

 found in the bleakness of the Durham winters : ' the common griefs that he 

 had suffered there for sundry winters past made him to think what he should 

 look for in the winter that was then at hand.'^^^ Pilkington was a poor 

 business man, and left the episcopal property in great neglect at his death. '^* 



Bishop Barnes (1575—87) followed Pilkington, being promoted according 

 to a tradition known to Strype '^' in order to watch the borders against the 

 passage of messengers to and from Mary queen of Scots. Barnes followed 

 in the footsteps of his predecessor in trying to enforce conformity, but with- 

 out the genuine puritanism of Pilkington. He certainly copied him in his 

 servility to the queen, carrying the alienation of parcels of the bishopric to an 

 outrageous extent. ^^° His relations with his own tenants were somewhat 

 strained. °" He seems to have done his best with what was left of the 

 diminished bishopric, raising the rents and also repairing the see houses. As 

 a true Elizabethan bishop, he was much concerned with the compulsory 

 discipline expected from him, and coerced the Nonconformists. Regular 

 recusant lists were drawn up and injunctions were issued at his visitations. "°^ 

 He had the reputation of reforming the north. His picture, however, of the 

 bishopric is gloomy enough, and he describes the cathedral as an augie stabuluin, 

 the people as ' truly savage.'^^^ There was no love lost between him and his 

 flock, who ' practised to deface him by all slanders, false reports, and shameless 

 lies.' He connived at the rapacity of his brother, who was his chancellor, and 

 received a celebrated rebuke in consequence from Bernard Gilpin, the most 

 influential clergyman in the diocese.^'* Yet he must have credit for some 



"• Surtees Soc. Publ. vol. xi, 168-9. '"'' ^"^- ^^l- "'. 'S^- 



'" S. P. Dom. Eliz. Add. vol. 23, No. 59. 



'** See Hutchinson's summary. Hist. Dur. i, 560-3. "* For. Cal. Eliz. 1571, No. 21 14. 



"" Quoted in Hutchinson, op. cit, 562. "' Ibid. 561. 



'" Ibid. 565. '*' Strype, Jnn. ii, 431, App. 105. 



™ A list is given in Hutchinson, op. cit. i, 561, from Strype, Jnn. App. 



'" S. P. Dom. Eliz. vol. 159, No. 48, and vol. 160, No. 35. 



^" The most material references are : 15 7'/, list of persons refusing to attend church, S. P. Dom. Eliz. 

 Add. vol. 25, No. 42 ; 1577, visitation injunctions, "Surtees Soc. Publ. vol. xxii, 13 ; letter about 

 sectaries, 1578, ibid, xvii, 59 ; cases of church discipline, ibid, xxii, 113-42 ; inquiry into conventicles, 1582, 

 S. P. Dom. Add. vol. 27, No. 128; Barnes' dealings with recusants, 1586, S. P. Dom. Eliz. vol. 187, 

 No. 49 ; Papists in Durham, ibid. vol. 192, No. 57. Seefassim, Surtees Soc. Pub/, vol. xxii. 



"' Quoted in Hutchinson, op. cit. i, 570-1, from Strype, Ann. ii, 482. 



"'* Ibid. 572. There were dean and chapter disputes too over their lands. Hutchinson, op. cit. ii, 193. 



37 



338074 



