ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Leicestershire family with the Roman Church." 1 Sir Henry died, still a 

 recusant, while his sons were but children ; and they were brought up by 

 their mother in her own faith. Both of them, as it seems, offered to the 

 service of the Anglican Church all the devotion and piety which had marked 

 their ancestors for many generations. 833 The young Sir Charles did not live 

 long enough to distinguish himself in any special way, 233 but his brother 

 Robert, who died a prisoner in the Tower in 1656, still under thirty years 

 of age, 23 * is best remembered by the inscription placed a little later in the 

 church of Staunton Harold : 



In the yeare 1653, when all thinges sacred were throughout the Nation either 

 demolisht or profaned, Sir Robert Shirley Barronet founded this Church ; whose singular 

 praise it is to have done the best things in the worst times and to have hoped them in the 

 most calamitous. 835 



He enriched the church which he rebuilt with beautiful and costly 

 plate, 236 and in his will left not only money to be distributed among those 

 who had lost their estates in the king's service, but a special provision to 

 the orthodox and distressed clergy, for whom, while he lived, he had made 

 his house a place of refuge. 



The history of religious thought in Leicestershire at this period would 

 be incomplete without some notice of the career of George Fox, who was 

 born at Fenny Drayton in this county in 1624. Besides the record of his own 

 experience, his ^Journal furnishes us with some valuable evidence as to the 

 spiritual possibilities of the new regime. The abolition of the bishops and 

 the Prayer Book had relieved some men of what they deemed to be lifeless 

 ceremonies : but the Presbyterian system had a rigidity of its own, and did 

 not tend to produce a spiritual awakening. Those who had felt that the 

 discipline of the High Commission and the formality of the Church services 

 hindered them from a nearer and freer walk with God, were quite as much 

 tried by the dry and argumentative discourses of the ' godly and painful 

 ministers ' appointed by Parliament, and by the iron chains of predestination 

 with which they were fain to bind men's souls. To believe this we need not 

 go for support to the writings of the dispossessed clergy : the clearest evidence 

 of it is found in the lives of men like John Bunyan and George Fox. It is 

 of importance to remember that neither of these men in their early seekings 

 after God ever saw the Church as we see it, ever heard the more gracious 

 side of the Church's teachings as we hear it day by day. It was their mis- 

 fortune to come under the influence of the Church only after their own 



B1 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. (i), 228. 



*" See the will of Sir Ralf Shirley, buried at Garendon Abbey just before the Dissolution ; Nichols, 

 Leie. iii, 710. He left money for four poor men to be lodged at the abbey for ninety-nine years ; and for 

 a chantry and free school in Melbourne, Derby, as well as at Loughborough. 



*** The silver-gilt chalice and cover, of 40 ounces weight and dated 1 640, is probably his gift to Staunton 

 Harold Church. Trollope, Cb. Plate ofLeic. i, 1 1. 



134 He is said to have been a prisoner several times before. Nichols, Leu. iii, 714. 



134 Ibid. The church was not finished till 1663 ; but he had left money in his will that the work might 

 be completed according to his original design. The inscription on the tower, ' Sir Robert Shirley, Baronet, 

 founder of this church, A.D. 1653, on whose soul God have mercy,' was probably the one he chose for 

 himself; the other may be the work of Gilbert Sheldon, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, whom he made 

 one of his executors. It seemed more necessary to print it here, as the original has ceased to be accessible 

 to the general public ; the church is now merely the private chapel of Lord Ferrers. 



336 Trollope, CA. Plate of Leic. i, 1 1 . A chalice and cover, a paten, two flagons, an almsdish, and two 

 candlesticks, all in silver-gilt, bear the date 1654. 



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