ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



ments were incomplete or out of order at Shangton and Congerstone. The 

 parishioners of Swepstone refused to pay their tithes ; at Wymondham they 

 played games in the cemetery with so much clamour that they disturbed 

 divine service, and some of them had a bad habit of going out of church 

 before the end of mattins. 



The fact that different churches were reported at different visitations 

 implies that they were effective and served their purpose. A fragment of 

 another visitation in 1544 shows that this important work was carried on 

 steadily till the end of the reign of Henry VIII. 



There is little trace of the popular feeling amongst clergy and laity in 

 Leicestershire during the period of the Supremacy Act and the dissolution of 

 monasteries. John Beaumont, who was one of the commissioners for the 

 survey of religious houses in the county, and who afterwards earned notoriety 

 as Master of the Rolls, 114 was apparently always on the outlook for suspicious 

 cases, but in this respect he had little reward for his labours. He had the 

 satisfaction, however, of reporting early in 1534 that William Peyrson, clerk, 

 in Kibworth Church, ' most devilishly spake these words, " If the king had 

 died seven years agone it had been no hurt." This unloving subject was 

 consigned to prison, and his subsequent fate is unknown ; but such speeches 

 brought men in those days into peril of their lives. 115 



The Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1534 shows very few changes in the number 

 or value of benefices since 1291. There were still as many as ninety-four 

 churches nearly half the archdeaconry which yielded to their incumbents 

 a stipend of less than 10 a year. Nor did the events of the next twenty 

 years tend to improve the value of church property. The dissolution of 

 monasteries brought the vicars under patrons not more generous than the 

 religious had been, and all churches alike suffered from the suppression of 

 chantries and obits, and the confiscation of church goods in the next reign. 



There is a single case on record of the execution of a heretic under 

 Bishop Longlands : Lawrence Dawson, a serving-man, was burned 2 1 November, 

 1536. So far as can be ascertained Longlands only took extreme measures 

 with those who were proved to have relapsed after abjuration. 116 



At the suppression of chantries in i 547, twelve parish churches lost an 

 assistant priest, and four parochial chapels were altogether abandoned. The 

 chantry of Castle Donington was specially noticed as a useful one, being 

 intended to support a grammar school, and having a schoolhouse built for the 

 purpose. The colleges of St. Mary of the Castle, of Newark, and of Noseley, 

 were all reported as useful, and the last as very well served. 117 Of these only 

 Newark survived not as a college, but merely as a hospital. Wigston's 

 Hospital also was allowed to stand. 



In the troubles which arose in connexion with the new service book of 

 1549, Leicestershire was reported to be quiet and peaceable, thanks to the 

 efforts of the marquis of Dorset. 118 The influence of the Grey family, so far 

 as it went, would doubtless be in favour of the new doctrines, and Aylmer 

 (afterwards bishop of London), while tutor to the children of the marquis at 



U4 Strype, Eccl. Mem. ii. m i. and P. Hen. PHI, xiii (i), 74. 



116 Line. Epis. Reg. Memo. Longlands, 201. Dawson had abjured under Bishop Smith. 

 I17 P.R.O. Chant. Cert. 31, 32. 

 118 Cal. S.P. Dam. 1547-80, p. 21. 



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