

ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



diocese, beginning in March, 1553-4, are more complete than for any other 

 diocese, and work out at about one in five of the whole clergy. 1 



One of the most interesting cases of Suffolk deprivations on account of 

 marriage is that of the well-known parson of Hadleigh, Rowland Taylor, who 

 was a considerable pluralist. He was not only rector of Hadleigh, but also 

 archdeacon of Cornwall, prebendary of Hereford, and canon of Rochester. 

 On being summoned to account for his alleged marriage, Taylor had to admit 

 that he had been married after an irregular fashion twenty- nine years before 

 to one Margaret, at the house of John Tyndale, merchant tailor of London, 

 not in the face of the church, but in the presence of one Benet, a priest, and 

 of Tyndale and his wife. By this union he had had nine children, of whom 

 five survived. He had received minor orders at Norwich, was ordained 

 deacon by Bishop Holbeach, then suffragan of Bristol, in 1539, and priest by 

 Ingworth, bishop of Dover, in 1543. He was a married man with wife 

 and family at the time of his ordination both as deacon and priest, such 

 ordinations being then uncanonical and illegal. 3 



Suffolk had no small share in the shocking persecutions of Mary's brief 

 reign. The most eminent of the victims was Dr. Rowland Taylor, who was 

 burnt on 8 February, 1555, which was the same day as the martyrdom of 

 Bishop Hooper of Gloucester. 3 In the following year three men were burnt 

 as heretics at Beccles, one at Whiston, and two at Debenham. 4 Another 

 notable Suffolk martyr of this period was John Noyes, shoemaker of Laxfield, 

 whose story is told at considerable length by Foxe. He was burnt at Laxfield 

 on 22 September, 1557.* Suffolk attained to a gruesome notoriety during 

 the Marian persecution ; it is said, according to Foxe's estimate, that no 

 fewer than thirty-six persons were burnt to death during her reign within the 

 limits of the county." 



John Hopton, confessor to Queen Mary, and bishop of Norwich during 

 her reign, died about the same time as his royal mistress, in the month of 

 November, 1558. Elizabeth chose to keep the see vacant for nearly two 

 years after her accession, and eventually promoted John Parkhurst, who had 

 been in exile at Zurich, to the bishopric. 



1 Frere, Marian Reaction, 49, 51, 53. The list of the deprived clergy of this diocese gives 243 beneficed 

 and 100 unbeneficed ; but the institution book gives only 172 as the number of deprivations. The balance 

 are probably entered as merely ' vacant ' ; not a few of the married and puritanically disposed clergy fled to 

 the Continent at the beginning of the reign. 



8 Reg. D. and C. of Canterbury, cited in Frere, Marian Reaction, 65-6. 



' Foxe, Acts and Monts. (Townsend), viii, 676-703. In the church of Hadleigh is a brass tablet to the 

 martyr's memory, on which is engraved a rhymed doggerel epitaph. The last four lines run : 



O Taillor were thie myghtie fame 



Uprightly here inrolde, 

 Thie deedes deserve that thie good name 



Were syphered here in golde. 

 Those, however, who were responsible for erecting this monument did not even go to the expense of a piece of 

 brass to his memory. The plate turns out (from the reverse) to be a portion of a fine fifteenth-century brass 

 to a former merchant of the town, which must have been torn off from his grave, and then re-used from motives 

 of economy. 



On Aldham Common the site of the burning is marked by a rough unhewn stone, about two feet long 

 and a foot high, on which are rudely cut the words : 



1555. D. Taylor in defending that was good, 



At this place left his blode. 



4 Ibid, viii, 145. 4 Ibid, viii, 424-7. 



6 Raven, Hist, of Suffolk, 169. This is probably a considerable exaggeration ; see the list of 'such as were 

 burned for religion' in Mary's reign in Strype's Memorials (iii, pt. 2, pp. 554-6), where twenty-one are 

 assigned to Suffolk. 



35 



