ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



that the responsibility for their state rested upon her immediate prede- 

 cessors. At Newport Pagnel 1 the vicarage was vacant, and the church 

 destitute of services ; no one could be found to serve the cure on account 

 of its poverty. In a few places people were put to penance for various 

 offences against order : at Wendover and Stowe for refusing to join in 

 processions, at Stoke Poges for not coming to church, and at Great 

 Marlow a butcher for keeping his shop open on Sundays ; cases of 

 immorality were also reported and punished. Two of the clergy were 

 reprimanded : the rector of Saunderton for non-residence, the vicar of 

 Great Stewkley for giving the Blessed Sacrament to some of his parish- 

 ioners who were unshriven, and for refusing to hear the confessions of 

 others who came to him ; the former was ordered to reside from the 

 next Michaelmas, the latter was imprisoned for a while and then made 

 public satisfaction for his fault. 2 



The accession of Elizabeth brought changes yet again. The lately 

 re-erected roods and images had to come down ; the stone altars were 

 once more exchanged for wooden tables ; there were more new books 

 to buy, none of those used either in the reign of Edward or of Mary 

 exactly serving the necessities of the new regime. The archdeacon of 

 Bucks 3 seems to have been the only priest connected with this county 

 who was deprived in 1559. 



It is not easy to discover the popular feeling with regard to 

 religion in any particular county during the early years of Elizabeth's 

 reign ; we only know the expressed statements of a few notable persons 

 here and there ; how far they were spokesmen for larger circles can 

 only be inferred from evidence that comes in later recusant lists, 

 visitations of churches, events of the next century. It is a matter of 

 history that during the second half of the sixteenth century there were 

 three lines of action open to those in England who were in earnest 

 about matters of religion. In the minds of some the only hope of 

 saving the Catholic faith from the attacks of heretics was to hold fast 

 the ideal of a visibly united Christendom under the primacy of the 

 pope, who seemed to them indeed the rock on which the Church was 

 built, the one point immoveable in a world of change. To another 

 section there seemed a better hope in the principles set forth in the 

 Book of Common Prayer : namely, the ideal of an independent national 

 church, with a right to reform and govern itself, so long as it remained 

 faithful to Apostolic tradition, and kept the Apostolic succession un- 



1 Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, iii. 399. 



8 Ibid. 393-400. 



3 Named R. Porter (Dr. Gee, The Elizabethan Clergy, 262). The numbers ejected under Mary 

 (if there were any) cannot be recovered for Lincoln diocese, as the registers are missing. Cole (Add. MS. 

 5840, f. 38) says that John Gale of Edlesborough (instituted 1550) was deprived in I5S4 anc * his pl ace 

 taken by William Downham, formerly canon of Ashridge ; but does not name his authority (or rather 

 the authority of Browne Willis, whose note he was reproducing). It may be noted that William Down- 

 ham of Ashridge was Rector of Dachworth, Herts, in 1552, and married, so that it seems unlikely that he 

 would be preferred by Mary to another living : while the inventory of Edlesborough in 1552, noticed 

 above, does not suggest that the incumbent was one who would object to the Marian reaction. There 

 may, however, have been circumstances unrecorded which would explain away both these difficulties. 



3" 



