A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



of resistance and wounded so badly that his arm had to be amputated at 

 the end of the journey. 1 



Those of the extreme reformers who at the beginning of the war 

 had hoped not merely for the abolition of episcopacy, but for complete 

 freedom of worship, were however doomed to disappointment. The 

 new system established by Parliament required as strict a conformity as 

 the old. Some incidents in the career of the famous Sir Samuel Luke 

 show the spirit in which a typical Presbyterian would regard the Inde- 

 pendents and other sectaries so numerous at this time in the army. To 

 the former, the parish church, purified from all superstitious services 

 and ornaments, was still the proper and official meeting-house for religious 

 exercises ; those who absented themselves or organized private assemblies 

 were viewed with disfavour. Just after Naseby, Sir Samuel, then 

 governor of Newport Pagnel, ordered a public thanksgiving to be made 

 on the next Sunday in the parish church. But when the day came, he 

 found a great many places vacant ; inquiring into the matter, he heard 

 that two captains of Colonel Fleetwood's regiment, who had passes 

 for London, were stopping in the town, and at the hour appointed for 

 the general thanksgiving had drawn away a large crowd of men and 

 women to Lathbury for the purpose of holding religious exercises after 

 their own fashion. The irate governor at once had them arrested 

 under an ordinance of Parliament for the apprehension of stragglers from 

 the army, and sent them back to Sir Thomas Fairfax. In a letter 

 written to that general shortly after, he expresses in scornful terms his 

 disapproval of such methods. ' For you to draw my parishioners away 

 and so leave the church empty I could no longer endure. If they 

 return back again to me I shall send them up to your Assembly, and 

 then I hope you will take order that such Anabaptistical companions 

 trouble us no more. I hear the praying and preaching regiments, as 

 they term you, trusted more to earth than to heaven ' (at a recent 

 engagement), 'for their heels were their chiefest refuge. . . . most of 

 you found four legs under you.' 3 



Another instance of the desire for religious liberty carried to its 

 utmost extreme is found in this county, in Roger Crab the hermit, who 

 could not find a resting place in any of the sects, and after a chequered 

 career, first in the army (when he was once condemned to death for 

 disobeying orders) and afterwards as a tradesman at Chesham, ended by 

 selling all his worldly goods, and departing to Uxbridge, that he might 



1 No other record has as yet been found of this story except in the Mercurius Rusticus ; and Anthony 

 Tyringham was still serving the cure in 1650. Walker says he was sequestered, but this may only refer 

 to his canonry of Worcester. He belonged to a good family in Buckinghamshire, and his brother died 

 in the Royalist army. A pardon for delinquency was issued by the House of Commons in 1646 to 

 William Tyringham of Tyringham, and the fact that the rectory of that place was not actually sequestered 

 may be in some way connected with this fact (Add. MS. 5839, f. 196 ; the pardon being quoted with 

 reference from the Commons Journals). In those days of infrequent celebrations of the Holy Eucharist 

 the loss of an arm would not seem so terrible a misfortune as it would to a priest of this century ; and as 

 the benefice was sufficient to provide a curate, the old rector may still have felt justified in retaining it, 

 even if the story be all true. 



* Records of Bucks, ii. 357. The letter is from Egerton MS. 786, f. 2. 



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