A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



which one John Baron of Amersham confessed that he had in his pos- 

 session : for it includes 'the second book of the Canterbury tales.' 1 



It was in 1464, two years after the burning of Wyllis, that most 

 of the examinations of heretics took place. Richard Benett of High 

 Wycombe was the first to abjure his errors. On 4 June of this year in 

 the parish church of High Wycombe seven men of the same town and 

 one from Princes Risborough abjured ; on the next day another purged 

 himself of the accusation of heresy by the oath of twenty fellow- 

 townsmen. On 12 September, before the bishops of Lincoln and 

 Exeter, in the same place, five men of Amersham and three of High 

 Wycombe made their recantation ; on i October eleven more from 

 High Wycombe,* Turville, Great Marlow and Hughenden did the 

 same, while one from Hambleden managed to purge himself, though 

 'vehementer suspicatus'. All of these were required to do penance by 

 bearing faggots and wax candles in the parish church of High Wycombe 

 and in the market place of Aylesbury. 



Unfortunately the methods of the bishops at this time seem to have 

 been, like those of the heretics, more negative than positive ; and the 

 care they took to bring the erring to recantation and penance was not 

 accompanied (so far as it is at present possible to judge) by any earnest 

 effort to establish the faithful and confirm the wavering by a better and 

 more intelligent teaching of the Catholic faith. The results were just 

 what might have been foreseen. During the episcopate of Bishop Smith 

 (14951514) there was found in Buckinghamshire a 'godly and great 

 company ' of men and women who, though they were for the most 

 part still in external communion with the Church, had lost faith in some 

 of her most distinctive doctrines. What their actual numbers were we 

 can only gather from the testimony of Foxe, as there is no allusion to 

 the matter in the Memoranda of Bishop Smith's register, and it is 

 evident that Foxe's sources of information were not in this case of a 

 very reliable kind. He assures us that one man, William Tylsworth, 

 was burned at Amersham in 1506, and that sixty other persons carried 

 the faggot at the same time, amongst whom was Tylsworth's daughter, 

 who was compelled to lay a faggot on her own father's fire. This he 

 knew from the testimony of an old man and woman still living in his 

 day, the latter indeed more than a hundred years of age. He also 

 asserts, though not so positively, that one ' father Roberts ' (elsewhere 

 called ' Dr. Cosin,' as being a teacher of the congregation), a miller of 

 Missenden, suffered death at Buckingham about the same time, and 

 that over twenty bore faggots at his burning. At Amersham again, 

 about two years later, two men were burned in one fire and three others 

 branded in the cheek, while about thirty more bore faggots. He adds 

 that of the three who were branded one was afterwards burned, another 



1 Also The Lift of Our Lady, The Life of Adam and Eve, The Mirror of Sinners, The Book of the play 

 of St. Dionyse, The Mirror of ^Matrimony, 



1 One of these, Robert Spicer of Wycombe, may have been of kin to Richard Spicer of Wycombe, 

 pardoned in 1414. 



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