POLITICAL HISTORY 



practices were not so harmless as their name, had adherents in west 

 Surrey, and these may have been their forerunners. The Brownists were 

 not yet in existence, and the Calvinistic reformers in the Church were not 

 sectaries. Later on in the reign a Baptist is in prison in Southwark. 

 The Surrey suburbs were apparently not so distinctly reforming in 

 opinion as London. A great many people in Southwark and Lambeth 

 must have been dependants upon religious houses and great ecclesiastical 

 establishments, and had suffered by the dissolution and the lessened 

 expenditure of the bishops. Southwark too was notoriously the abode 

 of persons destitute in both purse and character, who took advantage of 

 the conflicting jurisdictions of liberties and manors and of the corpora- 

 tion there to make it a practical sanctuary. The people as a whole were 

 irreligious. The modern zealot, of whatever party, who appeals to the 

 precedents and history of the Reformation period seldom realizes that 

 nine-tenths of the people of England were neither Romanists nor 

 Protestants, as at present understood, but went to church equally under 

 every changing rule. Like Elizabeth herself, More, Cawarden, 1 Copley, 

 Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord Montague and the rest had attended 

 the Communion service under Edward, the Mass under Mary and the 

 Communion service under Elizabeth. In her reign the process began by 

 which the influence of the Jesuits and the seminary priests developed 

 scruples in the minds of men like Copley and others, which turned them 

 into conscientious recusants, refusing to attend the English services and 

 denying the royal supremacy. Also the process began by which the 

 counter influence of the Genevan Bible turned the mass of the next 

 generation of the middle classes into Calvinists. Above all, in her 

 reign, the feeling was created which made adherence to the royal 

 supremacy and support of the ecclesiastical laws a test of patriotism. 

 But recusancy began to make its appearance among the landed gentry. 

 There was plenty of it among that generation in other classes too, but 

 they left less mark on the course of history. The Government was not 

 above taking notice of the absence from church of yeomen and trades- 

 men and of women, though principally of gentlewomen. 



To do the authorities justice, the prosecutions of the recusants, 

 domiciliary visits to search for concealed priests and for compromising 

 books, seizures of arms and horses, fines and confiscations became more 

 frequent in Surrey as the alarm of possible foreign attack increased. 

 The justices were very active after the date of the St. Bartholomew 

 massacre, when Spain and France were, fortunately erroneously, supposed 

 to be cordially allied for the overthrow of heresy. There was a new 

 spasm of activity when war with Spain was coming on, after the severe 

 recusancy Act 01*23 Elizabeth, from about 1582 till after the defeat of 

 the Armada. About 1594 there is less sign of recusancy in Surrey, but 

 it and the punishment of it did not cease. Here, as elsewhere, though 



1 Sir Thomas Cawarden had sat in the Parliament which restored papal supremacy and simul- 

 taneously secured the abbey lands. He quickly got over his difficulties about Wyatt's rising. He was a 

 thorough-going follower of his own interests under every Government. 



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