A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



grievously in many districts, but chiefly through being held as strongholds 

 by the one party or the other during the stress of war. On 1 2 Decem- 

 ber, 1642, the parliamentary forces under Waller besieged Winchester, 

 which soon yielded. The city compounded for 1,000 to be saved 

 from any general sack, but much violence was done to the cathedral 

 church and its fittings. In March, 1643, Waller was again at 

 Winchester, and levied 600 fr m i ts inhabitants. Bishop Curie, Dr. 

 Heylin and other distinguished churchmen remained in the county 

 supporting the royalists. In October, 1 645, Oliver Cromwell approached 

 Winchester to effect its complete reduction. The castle was successfully 

 assaulted, and the clergy of the close, together with the bishop and his 

 chaplains, were suffered to depart. Bishop Curie retired to his sister's 

 house at Soberton, where he died in 1647. 



On two occasions (1642 and 1646) the muniment room of the 

 dean and chapter was ransacked by 'the soldiers, but the zeal of the 

 chapter clerk, John Chase, recovered a considerable number of the 

 documents. In 1 649 the deanery and prebendal houses, which had been 

 stripped of their lead, were given to various friends of the parliamentary 

 party. In 1651 a parliamentary committee advised that all cathedral 

 churches, where there was sufficient other church accommodation, be 

 surveyed, pulled down and sold for the use of the poor. Winchester 

 in alarm petitioned, through their recorder, against this proposal, and 

 nothing came of it. In 1654 there was a small collection made in the 

 city towards the repair of its glorious minster, headed by some of the 

 principal parliamentarians. 1 



The abolition of episcopacy by parliament in 1641, the making 

 even the private use of the Prayer Book penal, and the imposition of the 

 Directory for Worship in 1644, made little impression on a considerable 

 portion of Hampshire where loyalty and Church principles were in the 

 ascendant. But after the driving forth of the clergy from Winchester in 

 1 645-6, the general ejection of all from their livings, save those who 

 thoroughly abandoned episcopacy, was ruthlessly carried out. Their 

 number and their sufferings were larger in Hampshire than in most 

 counties, owing no doubt to the sustained resistance of the royalists in 

 many parts of the county. 2 



In 1648 the dean and chapter estates throughout England were 

 sold. From the general sum thus realized grants were made of 150 

 each for nine months' service to Leonard Cooke and Humphrey Ellis, 

 the two ministers appointed by parliament to serve the cathedral church 

 of Winchester. 8 



1 Documents relating to the Hist, of Cath. Church of Winchester in Seventeenth Century (Hants Record 

 Society, 1897). 



2 See Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, passim, and Dioc. Hist. ch. xv. Peter Heylyn, the historian, 

 rector of Alresford, is the most interesting case. He had been so active a supporter of Laud that Waller, 

 when the first parliamentary army entered the county, sent a troop of soldiers to arrest him, but he 

 escaped and joined the king at Oxford. His house and library were stripped and he was reduced to 

 destitution. Nominally the ejected clergymen and their families were entitled to a fifth of the living, 

 but this rule worked very fitfully and had many exceptions. 



3 Shaw's Hiit. of the English Church during the Commonwealth, ii. 543. 



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