A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



Wakefield issued a mandate to the archdeacon of Gloucester and all the 

 clergy, forbidding them to allow Aston, Purvey, Nicholas of Hereford, John 

 Parker, Robert Swinderby, or any of their following to preach again in their 

 churches or cemeteries or anywhere in their parishes. 1 Nevertheless the 

 teaching bore fruit, and throughout the fifteenth century Lollard beliefs held 

 ground among the artisans of Bristol, for they were not stamped out as in the 

 diocese of Norwich. 2 In 1420 William Taylor, a well-known Lollard who 

 was burnt at Smithfield three years afterwards, preached at Holy Trinity, 

 Bristol, by the invitation of the vicar, Thomas Drayton. 3 On the informa- 

 tion of a Carmelite friar, the mayor and sheriff arrested Taylor and Drayton. 

 In the trial at the Worcester consistory court it was alleged that they had 

 drawn many away from the Catholic faith. Drayton was charged with 

 preaching that the prayers of a priest living in mortal sin availed no more 

 than the lowing of cattle or the grunting of pigs, and with making use of the 

 parable of the pharisee and the publican in an attack on the religious orders. 

 He denied these charges, but submitted himself to correction for committing 

 the cure of souls in his church to Taylor, who had so inflamed the people 

 that they were ' almost in insurrection.' When the monks of Worcester 

 elected Bishop Bourchier in 1433, they urged that he was ' very necessary for 

 the expulsion of heresies which were daily exercised in divers parts of the 

 diocese.' * Yet in the ten years of his episcopate Bourchier is only recorded 

 to have petitioned Henry VI to order the arrest of a heretic named John 

 Brent of Bristol in 1436.' When William Fuere, a weaver of Gloucester, 

 was tried before Bishop Carpenter in 1447, he said that he had learnt his 

 opinions from a number of weavers dwelling in Bristol whom he mentioned by 

 name." William Smyth, a smith by trade, had given him the English book 

 which had been taken from him, bidding him study it that he might know 

 the reason of his beliefs. Fuere admitted that he had held and taught that 

 the Church ought not to have possessions, that friars should not beg but labour 

 with their hands, that although pilgrimages might be laudable no offerings 

 should be made at shrines, that relics should not be venerated, and that 

 Sunday should be kept like the Sabbath of the Old Testament. He con- 

 sented to abjure his heresies, and was condemned as a penance to visit all the 

 churches of Gloucester on Good Friday to adore the cross, and to be publicly 

 whipped in the market-place on Easter eve. When James Willis, a ' lettered ' 

 weaver, aged fifty-nine, was tried for heresy before Chedworth, bishop of 

 Lincoln, in 1462, he said that he had served his apprenticeship as a weaver 

 in Bristol. 7 He knew the Epistles of St. Paul and the Apocalypse in English, 

 and had bought the books from William Smyth of Bristol, who taught him 

 his doctrines, and was himself afterwards convicted of heresy in the diocese 

 of Winchester and burnt. Only one case of heresy in a country parish is 

 entered in the bishops' registers of the fifteenth century. In 1425 the abbot 

 of Winchcombe; arrested John Walcote, the curate of Hazleton, and sent him 

 to Bishop Morgan for trial ; he admitted his errors and was reconciled to the 

 Church. 8 As a portion of a manuscript of three treatises by Wycliffe, now in 



1 Wilkins, Concilia, iii, 202. ' Jessopp, Diocesan Hist, of None. 137, 147. 



3 Wore. Epis. Reg. Morgan, fol. 1 6-1 8. ' Reg. Sc<tc Vac. (Wore. Hist. Soc.), 431. 



6 Wore. Epis. Reg. Bourchier, fol. 26. Ibid. Carpenter, i, fol. 58. 



7 Line. Epis. Reg. Chedworth, fol. 57^. Wore. Epis. Reg. Morgan, fol. 46 d. 



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