ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



that there must be clear and distinct pronunciation, and ordered them to preach 

 every Sunday and festival day, and catechize the children in the afternoon. 

 He bade them bestow their time on reading and study instead of mis-spending 

 it in hunting and hawking, and told them plainly that the marriage of the 

 clergy was holy and agreeable with God's Word. In the course of his 

 visitation during the year, he issued thirty-one injunctions. 1 He ordered that 

 all roodlofts, screens, tabernacles, and sepulchres should be removed ; that all 

 images painted on the walls should be defaced ; that when any glass windows 

 were repaired or new made, no saints should be portrayed, but if they wanted 

 anything painted, it should be either branches, flowers, or posies taken out of 

 Holy Scripture. After a separate examination of 311 of the clergy, he 

 discovered that 168 were unable to repeat the ten commandments, thirty-one 

 of them being further unable to state in what part of the scriptures they 

 were to be found.* Forty-one could not tell where the Lord's Prayer was 

 written, and of these thirty-one did not know who the Author was. Some of 

 the clergy were men of learning, and found favour with him, among them 

 the incumbents of St. Michael and Holy Trinity, Gloucester, Cleeve, Tewkes- 

 bury, Alderton, Kemerton and Cold Aston.* The bishop ordered that in the 

 course of the next year all the clergy should learn by heart and recite to 

 him or his assigns the books of Genesis and Deuteronomy, the Gospel of 

 St. Matthew, and the Epistle to the Romans in Latin and in English. He told 

 them to fix the hours for morning and evening prayer on Sundays, and other 

 holy days, with the advice and consent of the whole parish, that no one 

 might have an excuse for absence, and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays 

 at least one member of every household should be present at the services. 

 He found it necessary to forbid the holding of markets on Sundays during 

 the hours of service ' within the church, churchyard, or parish.' He also 

 insisted that there should be ' no noise, bruit, walking, talking or jangling, or 

 any other unquiet behaviour in the church in the time of service.' William 

 Phelps, the curate of Cirencester, in contempt of previous royal injunctions 

 was teaching the doctrine of Transubstantiation to his people, but on 27 April, 

 1 551, he accepted the articles administered to him by Hooper, renouncing 

 his errors and false opinions. 4 John Wynter, the parson of Staunton, made 

 a formal profession of his belief in the articles in the cathedral on 8 November.' 

 Early in 1552 Hooper was translated to Worcester on the understanding that 

 he should hold the see of Gloucester in commendam, but within a few 

 months it was united to Worcester. On 6 July, after a brief visit to 

 Worcester, he informed secretary Cecil that the negligence and ungodly 

 behaviour of the ministers in Gloucestershire compelled him to return.* ' I 

 have spoken with the greatest part,' he wrote, ' and I trust within these six 

 days to end for the time with them all.' He urged that the forty-two 

 articles which had been recently drawn up should be issued with the king's 

 authority; he would force the ministers to confess them openly before their 

 parishioners, as their private subscription to them on paper proved useless. 

 ' I have a great hope of the people,' he added. 



1 Hooper, op. cit. 1 30-40. ' Ibid. 151. 



1 Transcript of Hooper's Visitation Book, MS. Misc. I, iii, 17-77, /*/'*, Dr. Williams's Lib. 



' Hooper, op. cit. 15* ' Ibid. 154. 



* Stiype, op. cit. ii, 871. 



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