A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



chaser, is set out in detail down to ' iid. one olde clothe.' The most 

 interesting of these is * Item to Richard James the Good Friday's whit 

 vestments for v'- iid.' 



The churches of the island were exceptionally rich in vestments. 

 The following may be named : ' One olde cope of Redde velvet and 

 a vestment of the same bordered w t- Imagery and powdered over w t- 

 flowers and Angeles w'- the Albe to the same ' (Shorwell) ; ' One cope 

 of Redde bawdkine bordered w'- grene velvet powdrid ower w'- byrdes 

 bestes and flowers ' (Chale) ; and ' One sewt of grene sylke bordered 

 and crossed w'- embrothery of Tissewe and spangled abrode w t- the 

 same the Albe and everything to the same ' (Carisbrook). The Arreton 

 inventory includes ' iiii narrowe sepulker clothes of Arris worke the 

 story of the passione.' 



The following curious entry ends the Yarmouth inventory : ' One 

 of their belles was takine owt of the styple by the parishe in an iiii 

 E. Vlth. to be solde and the solders of the Castell supposing hit shoulde 

 be convayed ower the seas arrested it and so it remayneth upon their 

 chardge.' 



On 4 July, 1553, the young king died, and whatever may have 

 been the forebodings of many, there was much satisfaction among all 

 the decent folk of Hampshire that this death at once relieved them of 

 the presence of Ponet. The bishop joined in Wyat's attempted revolu- 

 tion, and on its failure fled across the seas to the house of Peter Martyr 

 at Strasburg, with whom he tarried till his death in August, 1556. In 

 the year of his death he published, on the continent, A Sborte Treatise 

 of Politike Power, under the initials D.I. P., B.R.W., which stand for 

 Doctor John Ponet, Bishop of Rochester and Winchester. In this 

 treatise he advocated tyrannicide in the plainest and most direct terms, 

 instancing the cases of Jezebel and Athalia as appropriate to that of 

 Mary Tudor. It was evidently written as a popular appeal, for Ponet, 

 though no mean astronomer for those days and the constructor of a 

 curious dial for Henry VIII., did not disdain to instance recent frequent 

 eclipses among the signs of heaven's wrath with England. 1 



On 3 August, 1553, Mary visited the Tower, and Gardiner was at 

 once released after five years of captivity. Two days later the old man 

 was ' sworne of the Queens Highnes Prevy Councel ; 2 on the 8th he 

 said mass for the king's soul before her ; and on the 23rd was declared 

 Chancellor of England. In the strange vicissitudes of his fortune, it 



1 Hallam (Literature, ii. 39-42) has given this extraordinary booklet some fame by his praise of 

 the vigour of its prose, though he adds that it is ' not entirely free from the usual fault, vulgar and 

 ribaldous invective.' This is very mild censure, for many parts are far too disgusting to bear quotation. 

 It must have been very trying to Ponet in his exile to think of Stephen Gardiner having been again 

 installed in the bishopric of Winchester ; but what manner of soul could a man have who would thus 

 write of an opponent who had been dead for some years. ' See how nature had shaped the outwarde 

 partes, to declare what was within. This doctour hade a swart colour, an hanging loke, frowning browes, 

 eies an ynche within the head, a nose hooked like a bussarde, wyde nosetrilles like a horse, ever snuffing 

 in to the wynde, a sparowe mouthe, great pawes like the devil, talauntes on his fete like a ryfre, two 

 ynches longer than the naturale toes and so tyed to with sinowes, that he coulde not abyde to be touched, 

 nor scarce suftre them to louche the stones.' 



* dels of Privy Council, \ 5 5 2-4, p. 311. 



70 



