ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



hood, were repeated and made the foundation of a story which spread all 

 over the country-side how Sir Kenelm Digby had sent his mother a 

 great store of arms, which was now laid up in her house, and how there 

 was to be a great rising of Papists in Gayhurst grounds as soon as the 

 King and his army were well out of the way in Scotland. 1 It was Lady 

 Digby herself who had the matter sifted to the bottom ; but the story 

 gives some idea of the impression made by the plot on the popular mind. 

 It was not, however, from the Papists 3 that the Church in Buck- 

 inghamshire had most to fear at this time. A visitation of the arch- 

 deaconry in 1 6 1 2 3 shows a very different source of danger. Nine * 

 churches were seriously out of repair, and in all but two s of these cases 

 it was by the default not of the priest but of the people. At Datchet 

 many of the roof tiles were missing, and the rain came in ; at Waven- 

 don the seats were in decay, and the windows wanted glass in many 

 places, so that ' starlings and other fowl ' came in and defiled the church, 

 while even the Bible was torn and defective ; at Iver it rained even upon 

 the communion table, and the pulpit was so ruinous that the steps to it 

 were unsafe ; at Chalfont St. Peter one side of the church was ' so 

 broken that a hog may creep through.' In a few cases it was com- 

 plained that the people were not provided with sermons : more often 

 that the preachers were not licensed. At Chenies the rector refused to 

 wear the surplice and administered the sacrament to seated communi- 

 cants ; at Great Marlow the vicar was said to be a man of evil life and 

 a harbourer of recusants ; he certainly had a difficult parish to deal 

 with. 6 A certain number of people were reported as refusing to come 

 to church, or for working on Sabbaths and holy days. 7 The four 

 churches which were in the archdeaconry of St. Albans were in better 

 condition, being under the supervision of the vicar of Winslow, a 







1 S. P. Dom. Chas. I. ccxxxvii. 27-30, 42, 60 ; ccxxxviii. 33, 85. The story reads rather like the fable 

 of the hen's feather. It seems to have arisen from the remark of an ostler that before the king returned 

 there would be ' much hurly burly and many a fatherless child ' : which the boy repeated as ' Sup- 

 posing men should go over their shoe tops in blood before Whitsuntide next ? ' with dark insinuations 

 of things his father knew about Lady Digby ; and this grew in a short time in the mouths of parsons and 

 attorneys of Northamptonshire into an elaborate and connected story. The last stage of it is pitiful 

 enough : for it ends with a petition from Richard Sawyer, mole catcher, and Robert Johnson, for 

 release from the Fleet prison, where they seem to have been for some long time, on the ground that they 

 were ' miserable poor men, in wonderful distress, with nothing to live by but their labours.' They had 

 starved already unless they had been something relieved by poor men, themselves prisoners in the same 

 room. 



2 There are instances just at this time of a new method of dealing with recusants. In 1608 and 

 1610 the king granted to courtiers and others ' the benefit of the recusancy ' of the Mansfields of Taplow, 

 Alice Penn, Austin Belson and others. There might be reason for compelling recusants to pay fines to 

 the State : there could be no sort of excuse for thus making them a source of profit to their fellow- 

 subjects. Cal. of State Papers, Jas. I. xxi. 48, liii., Ivii. 



3 Visitation Reports at Lincoln. 



4 Horton, Langley Marish, Twyford, Simpson, Hanslope, as well as those mentioned above. 



5 Hanslope and Iver ; the latter served at this time by a man who could not prove his orders, and 

 altogether in bad condition. 



6 His accuser was himself accused of having ' married clandestine ' and without the ring : he denied 

 this but owned he had said, ' Thou art more fit to feed swine in the field than people in the church.' 

 There were seven puritan and three Roman recusants in the parish, and it was full of complaints. 



7 At Stony Stratford a woman was presented for a ' common scold,' and another for ringing a passing 

 bell by way of a joke. 



3*9 



