10 INTRODUCTORY. 



struggle, and that none of them suffered any loss for being 

 faithful to either side. Bourchier, elected archbishop of Can- 

 terbury during the period of Henry's first insanity, served all the 

 monarchs for more than thirty years with equal fidelity, dying 

 in the early part of Henry the Seventh's reign. He was brother 

 of the Earl of Essex. The other bishops were like-minded, 

 were nearly all equally noble, and were all equally versatile. 



They sacrificed, it is true, one of their order, who is chiefly 

 known by a surviving work of his, preserved in the Cambridge 

 University Library, and printed some time ago by the Master 

 of the Rolls. It is unnecessary to deal with the literary and 

 historical merits of ' Pecok's Represser, 3 but it is expedient in 

 a work which deals with the social history of England to say a 

 few words on the career of this singular personage. Reginald 

 Pecok, we are told by Gascoigne, the principal author of such 

 facts as bear on the character and fortunes of this prelate, was 

 a Welshman by birth, a fellow of Oriel College (and therefore 

 constantly brought into Gascoigne's company, who was a com- 

 moner of Oriel, and a resident within its walls, till his death), 

 a person of considerable parts and capacity, who attached him- 

 self to the faction of Suffolk and of the Court prelates. By this 

 means he was allowed to graduate with special privilege at the 

 University of Oxford, and was promoted to the bishopric of 

 St. Asaph, from whence, after the murder of De Moleyns, he 

 was translated to the see of Chichester. Here he incurred all 

 the unpopularity of his brethren, and partly for political reasons, 

 partly because he was charged with innovations in customary 

 beliefs, he was sacrificed in the winter of 1457, was degraded 

 from his bishopric, and consigned to imprisonment in a 

 monastery. 



Pecok undertook the defence of the secular clergy in his 

 famous Represser, and, like many others who have attempted to 

 justify an establishment on lower grounds than those of super- 

 natural authority or divine right, incurred at once the hatred of 

 his clients and of the reforming party, for he lowered the pre- 

 tensions of the former, and affronted those who were bent on a 



