ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



There is also extant another set of inventories for the Hundred of 

 Buckingham, dated 6 May 1553, containing lists of the church goods 

 delivered back again to each parish by the king's commissioners. 1 Here 

 at any rate is no lack of uniformity : each church might have a chalice 

 and paten, a table-cloth, and a surplice ; perhaps two of each, but 

 nothing further. Everything else had been sold for the king's use. It 

 was no doubt a little trying to the feelings of churchwardens and 

 parishioners when within a year they had again to provide at their own 

 expense 2 most of the ornaments of which they had been so recently 

 deprived. 



There are but few records of the discontent or the joy which these 

 changes must have aroused in many minds : only a sign here and there 

 may be noticed. In November 1 549 three men of Edlesborough were 

 committed to the Fleet ' for assembling of companies to withstand 

 payment of tithes,' 3 which looks like an outbreak of the old Lollard 

 spirit of the county : while on the other hand, in the same year, John 

 Bisse of (High) Wycombe was released from the Fleet to make open 

 and solemn declaration of his fault in having ' spoken and done incon- 

 veniently against the taking down of images abused ' in his parish 

 church. 4 In 1550 the inhabitants of Great Marlow sent up a complaint 

 to the Privy Council about ' certain wrongs that had been offered 

 them ' possibly in connection with the alienation of church lands, as 

 the matter was referred to the Court of Augmentations. 6 In June 1553 

 a letter was sent by the Privy Council to the gentlemen of the county 

 of Buckingham to recommend to them ' Mr. Knockes the preacher": 

 it is probable that he found no lack of hearers. A month or so later 

 the open preaching of Calvinism became dangerous. 



At the beginning of the new reign we may notice again a few 

 signs of the times. Fisher, parson of Amersham, was summoned before 

 the Privy Council in August 1553 as a 'seditious preacher' on account 

 of a sermon lately delivered 7 ; at this date seditious preaching could 

 scarcely imply anything else except some expression of dissatisfaction at 

 the accession of Mary and the probable changes it involved. The vicar 

 of Burnham was also summoned about the same time. 8 In the parish 

 church of Wing, however, the old order was restored with joyful alac- 



pretation of rubrics. For instance, in the church of Edlesborough mentioned above the present tense 

 shows the pyx still in use : at Chearsley the mention of one that ' honge ' over the altar shows that it 

 had lost its place of honour. Five churches were said to have candlesticks on the altar ; at least eighteen 

 had no candlesticks left at all ; at Hambleden they had been sold with the pyx, censers and some old 

 vestments, ' for reparation, for the relief of the poor, and the comfort of the parish.' At Buckingham 

 too it is definitely stated that the censers had been sold : in thirty cases they were absent without ex- 

 planation offered. The lists therefore do give some clear evidence of disuse : but of use they prove very 

 little. No one who had really read the lists would suppose that everything named in them without 

 comment was in use. 



i Exch. Q. R. Church Goods (7 Edward VI.) 7 V 



> The Churchwardens' Accounts at Wing show that at the beginning of Mary's reign the candle- 

 sticks, vestments, etc., were purchased out of the ordinary funds of the parish (ff. 55-60). 



3 Acts of the Privy Council, ii. 2. 



Ibid. ii. 147. Ibid. ii. 461. e Ibid. iii. 283. 



1 Ibid. iii. 321, 328. " Ibid. iii. 361. 



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