A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



on information received ; and the names of some of the priests here men- 

 tioned show that it was possible to continue such ministrations for ten or 

 fifteen years without arrest ; but everyone who had mass said in his house 

 knew well that at any time of alarm at home or abroad he might wake at 

 midnight to find his house surrounded by soldiers, and himself called to stand 

 trial for his life. The crisis was real, the danger and the plots were real ; 

 yet at this distance of time we can surely afford a little sympathy for 

 those who were innocent of all plots and clung to their religion at such 

 heavy cost. 



The author of the Anatomy of Melancholy was born at Lindley in 1576, 

 and died rector of Seagrave, in this county, in 1640 ; but though he speaks 

 with impartial scorn both of Papists and Brownists, it would not be fair to 

 reckon him as a representative churchman of his day. His testimony is of 

 some value, however, when he discourses on the distressed and miserable 

 condition to which many of the Elizabethan clergy were reduced by the 

 covetousness of ' griping patrons.' He says that it was almost impossible to 

 obtain a benefice without some ' simoniacal compact,' by which the incumbent 

 agreed to pay the patron an annual pension, sometimes amounting to half his 

 income. He declares that no profession was so ill rewarded as this. 165 A 

 visitation of 1585 shows several churches of this archdeaconry in decay, and 

 many other unsatisfactory features besides. There were unseemly brawls in 

 church at Medbourne and Ratcliffe Culey, and cases of immorality were 

 presented very frequently everywhere. The vicars of Stoughton, Barkby- 

 cum-Thurnby, Frolesworth, and St. Martin's, Leicester, refused to wear the 

 surplice at service time ; the homilies and injunctions were also evaded. 166 

 Nonconformity of the latter type was evidently on the increase in the county ; 

 it had, indeed, some sort of organization as early as i58a. 167 And besides 

 the clergy who held benefices in the Church without conforming to the 

 rubrics of the Prayer Book and the injunctions of their bishops there were 

 in 1590 also some sectaries, probably Brownists or Anabaptists, who were at 

 the next assizes to receive ' such punishment as was due to their deserts in 

 open professing of such dangerous errors.' 168 



Ashby de la Zouch was still a stronghold of Puritanism ; Gilby had 

 been succeeded by Arthur Hildersham, a divine much admired by Fuller, in 

 spite of his persistent refusal of conformity. He was suspended from preach- 

 ing by the High Commission Court in June, 1590, for six months; by 

 Bishop Chaderton in 1605 for more than two years ; by Bishop Neile in 

 1 6 1 1 for more than ten years ; and, finally, for a short time by the Eccle- 

 siastical Court at Leicester in 1631. His difficulties were the same as those 

 of the ordinary Puritan clergy of the day : the use of the surplice and the 

 cross in baptism, and the order for kneeling at communion. 169 A notable 

 schoolmaster called Brinsley kept school in the same town for many years 

 and brought up his scholars to the same opinions until he was deprived. 1 



170 



u Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. i, sec. 2, m. 3, sub-sec. 15. 

 66 From MS. Visit. Rep. Alnwick Tower, Lincoln. 



17 Hist. AfSS. Com. Rep. xii (9), 149. (Minute bk. of meetings of Puritan mins. divers cos.) 

 * Acts ofP.C. xx, 85. 



69 Fuller, Eccl. Hist.xi, 142. Hildersham was leader of a Puritan deputation to King James I in 1604, 

 and was imprisoned in consequence. Frere, Hut. of the Engl. Ch. 317. 

 ;o William Lilly, Hut. of his own Life and Times (ed. 171 5), 4. 



376 



