A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



Pierrepont. Their deputy, William Philpote, brought into the Jewel House, on 

 i June 1553, 97 oz. of broken or damaged church plate of Nottinghamshire ; 

 54 oz. were parcel-gilt, and 43 oz. ' white ' or silver. 118 



Under Queen Mary, Archbishop Holdegate, the ex-canon of the 

 Gilbertine Order, was deprived by reason of his marriage, and for a time 

 committed to the Tower. 113 Holdegate was deprived on 13 March 1554; 

 he lived in retirement, being warned to exercise no episcopal functions, 

 and died in 1556."* The see remained vacant for some months; it was 

 not until January 1555 that Nicholas Heath was translated from Rochester 

 to York. Although there were various isolated cases of deprivation of 

 incumbents on account of marriage, there can be no doubt that the Marian 

 reaction was generally accepted by the clergy in Nottinghamshire as else- 

 where. 



' Archbishop Heath was a learned and most exemplary prelate, devout 

 in the exercise of his own personal religion, but mild and tolerant as re- 

 garded the conscientious convictions of those who took opposite views.' 115 

 The happy immunity which the north of England enjoyed from the 

 grievous persecutions of the later years of Queen Mary an immunity in 

 which Nottinghamshire fully shared was to a great extent due to the gentle 

 nature of Nicholas Heath, who put every impediment in the way of 

 making martyrs of the reformers. By his influence with the queen, 

 Southwell and five other Nottinghamshire manors were restored to the 

 archbishopric. 116 With Mary's death, on 17 November 1558, came the 

 end of Archbishop Heath's ministration. In common with the whole of 

 the bishops, except Kitchin of LlandafF, Heath refused to take the oath of 

 supremacy under Elizabeth, and was deprived. Several of his episcopal 

 brethren were imprisoned ; but the new queen fully recognized Heath's 

 amiable qualities, and visited him on more than one occasion in his retire- 

 ment at Cobham in Surrey. 117 



Elizabeth's Act of Uniformity, to which was annexed the third revision 

 of the Book of Common Prayer, was passed on 28 April I559. 118 By this 

 Act it was provided that the revised book should come into use on the 

 ensuing festival of St. John Baptist. In June commissions were issued to 

 inquire into the carrying out of the new regulations, and to secure the sub- 

 scriptions of the clergy to the book and to Elizabeth's supremacy. The 

 visitors for the Northern Province were Edward Earl of Derby, Thomas 

 Earl of Northumberland, William Lord Evers, several knights and esquires, 

 Edward Sandys, D.D., and Henry Harvey, LL.D., ; most of the work was 

 done by the last two. Their commission was dated 24 June 1559. The 

 full record of this visitation of the Northern Province has been happily 

 preserved. 119 The commission paid its first visits to the archdeaconry of 

 Nottingham. 



The visitation was opened in the church of St. Mary, Nottingham, on 

 Tuesday, 22 August 1559. When prayers were ended, and a sermon had 

 been preached by Dr. Sandys, the preacher, with Sir Thomas Gargrave, 



113 Ch. Gds. (Exch. K.R.), y. lls Sede Vacante Reg.' Canterbury, fol 38. 



114 Rymer, FoeJera, xv, 370 ; Stubbs, Reg. Sacr. Angl. 100. " 5 Dm. Hiit. oj York, 332. 

 16 Ibid. " 7 Ibid. 334. " Stat. i Eliz. cap. 2. 



"* S.P. Dom. Eliz. x ; it is a volume of 400 pages. On the subject of the Elizabethan clergy and their 

 deprivation, see Gee, The Elizabethan Clergy (1898), and Birt, The Elizabethan Settlement (1907). 



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