ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



admonition geven him, was sett at lyberty and discharged of the said 

 commandement of keping his house.' 1 



In March he voted in parliament against the Supremacy Bill, and 

 at the end of the month took part in the Westminster Abbey conference 

 between nine supporters of the late queen's policy and nine reformers. 

 It was characteristic of the spirit of the day that at the end of the 

 conference, which concluded on 3 April, the Bishop of Winchester, 

 together with the Bishop of Lincoln, who were the most conspicuous 

 disputants, were sent to the Tower and their goods sequestrated. 2 On 

 26 June, White was formally deprived of his bishopric, but in conse- 

 quence of ill-health was released from the Tower on 7 July, and suffered 

 to live with his brother, an alderman of the city of London. Bishop 

 White died in 1560, and was buried in his cathedral church. 3 



For refusing the oath of supremacy Dean Steward of Winchester 

 was also deprived, as well as Prebendaries Hill, Bilson, Harding, Lang- 

 ridge and Hyde, and Edmund Mervyn, Archdeacon of Surrey. The 

 number of clergy throughout England who were ejected for declining 

 to subscribe to Elizabeth's ecclesiastical supremacy was larger than is 

 generally supposed. The number of Hampshire incumbents deprived 

 in the early years of Elizabeth, in addition to the dignitaries, was 

 twenty-four, serving the following parishes : Alresford, Ashley, Beau- 

 lieu, Compton, Crawley, Catherington, Cliddisden, Clanfield, Ewhurst, 

 Freshwater, Farley, Hursley, King's Worthy, Nateley-Scures, North 

 Stoneham, Portsea, Sutton, Sparsholt, Sherfield-English, St. Lawrence 

 (Isle of Wight), Titchfield, Wonsington, Wootton (Isle of Wight), and 

 Wootton St. Lawrence. 4 To these must be added John Marschall, 

 Fellow of New College, Oxford, who was second master at Winchester 

 College. Prebendary Hyde, named above, was head master. This gives 

 a total for the county of thirty-three. 



The queen was no sooner settled on the throne than Cecil and 

 other advisers urged a general royal visitation of the dioceses of England 

 and Wales, on the lines of the one carried out when her boy-brother 

 came to the kingship. The visitors were, in the main, leading Eliza- 

 bethan statesmen ; but they were accompanied by certain of the clergy, 

 who were chiefly named to act as preachers during the visitation circuit. 

 Dr. Robert Home was nominated as a preacher-visitor for the southern 

 province in June, 1559, and he was also visitor for Cambridge University 

 and Eton. Winchester was one of the two dioceses that escaped this 

 general visitation. The reason was that it had been already decided to 



1 Acts of Privy Council, 1558-70, p. 45. The sermon preached by White at Queen Mary's 

 funeral is set forth in Brit. Mus. Sloane MSS. 1578 ; there is a careless copy of this in Strype's Memo- 

 rials of >ueen Mary, app. Ixxxi. The proverbial comparison quoted by the preacher between ' a live 

 dog and a dead lion' was twisted by some to refer to the two queenly sisters ; but the whole sense and 

 argument of the sermon is destroyed by any such strained interpretation. * Ibid. p. 78. 



3 Cal. Spanish State Papers (1558-67), pp. 46-8 ; Cal. Venetian State Papers (1558-80), p. 65. 

 There is no evidence to be found in support of the story that White threatened to excommunicate 

 Elizabeth (Gee's Efizabetkan Clergy, p. 32). 



4 Ibid. pp. 285, 292. Chancellor Martin is generally named as deprived at this time, but it is an 

 error. 



11 73 10 



