ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



marriage with the wife of a butcher of Nottingham, but was divorced 

 soon after his translation to Winchester. 1 The divorce took place at 

 the end of July, and in the following October he was married again to 

 one, Maria Raymond, in the parish church of Croydon, in the presence 

 of Archbishop Cranmer and a great concourse of people. 2 



It was really a happy thing for Gardiner that he was a prisoner in 

 the sixth year of Edward VI., and could not be a witness of the way in 

 which the Hampshire parish churches were stripped bare of the beautiful 

 gifts of Bishop Wykeham and of other adornments. The council having 

 had their appetites whetted by previous spoils resolved to complete their 

 earlier work, which had in some parts been only superficially performed. 

 On 3 March, 1551, they decreed 'That for as muche as the Kings 

 Majestic had neede presently of a Masse of Mooney therefore Com- 

 missions should be addressed into all shires of Englande to take into the 

 Kinges handes such churche plate as remaigneth to be emploied unto his 

 Highness' use.' 3 A body of the gentry of every shire and important 

 town was named to take inventories of church and chapel goods, to 

 compare them with those of the former visitation, and to commit 

 to prison any who resisted them. The commissioners for Hampshire 

 were the Lord Treasurer, Sir Richard Cotton, Sir Henry Seymour, Sir 

 Richard Winxfeld, William Kelloway, Richard Worsley and John 

 Kingsmill ; for Winchester, the bishop, the mayor, John Kingsmill, 

 Thomas White and John Norton ; and for Southampton, the mayor, 

 Sir William Barkley, Sir Francis Fleming, Thomas Wells and Thomas 

 Pacy. 4 



On 8 October, 1552, the Privy Council directed Bishop Ponet and 

 John Kingsmill to certify what was the value of the ' embeselled Churche 

 goodes,' and what they had recovered. 6 



' In this,' says Canon Dixon, ' we may justly rejoice, since private 

 robbery was no more illegal than this infamous public abuse of power. 

 The loss which the arts and crafts sustained in the destruction of so 

 many exquisite vessels and fabrics of gold and silver, of cloth of gold 

 and tissue of silver, of brass and iron, of stitched work, of Naples fustian 

 and Arras tapestry and Bruges satin, a loss which was disregarded or 

 unfelt by the vigour of that new barbarism, may be lamented and cannot 

 be supplied by culture.' e 



The original inventories of 6 Edward VI. of almost the whole of 

 the churches of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight are still extant at the 



1 This scandal has been denied, but there is no doubt of its truth. Henry Machyn, in his diary, 

 (p. 8), under 1551, enters : 'The xxvii. day of July was the newe bishope of Winchester devorcyd 

 from the bucher wyff with shame enogh.' The Grey Friars Chronicle (p. 70), says : 'On 27th July, 

 1551, Poynet, the bishop of Winchester, was divorced from his wife in Paul's, the whiche was a 

 butchers wife of Nottingham, and gave her husband a certain sum of money a year during his life, 

 as was judged by the law.' 



Collect. Tof. et Geneal. iv. 91. 



8 Acts of Privy Council, 15 50- 2, p. 228. 



4 Deputy Keeper's Reports vii. Appendix ii. p. 309. 



6 Acts of Privy Council, 1552, 4, 139. 



8 Dixon's History of Church of England, iii. 453-5. 



6 7 



