A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



Cheyney's successor in 1581 was Bullingham, who had been deprived 

 of his two livings in Gloucestershire on the accession of Elizabeth, but soon 

 afterwards accepted the doctrines of the Reformation. 1 He also held the 

 see of Bristol in commendam until 1589, when Fletcher, dean of Peterborough, 

 was appointed. 



The early years of the sixteenth century are marked by the spread of 

 Puritan views in the county. None of the five bishops of Gloucester during 

 that time was in any way conspicuous except Miles Smith (1612-25), a man 

 of considerable learning, and one of the translators of the Bible, yet a stiff 

 Calvinist. Thornborough was the most influential of the four contemporaneous 

 bishops of Bristol, and his visitation articles show a determination to enforce 

 ecclesiastical discipline and to remedy such abuses as pluralism and unlicensed 

 preaching. 2 An arbitrary use of power brought him into conflict with the 

 mayor and corporation. 3 With the leave of the dean and chapter they 

 erected a gallery near the pulpit in the cathedral for their own use, but in 

 1608 the bishop ordered that it should be immediately removed, because it 

 made the cathedral look like a playhouse. The citizens complained to the 

 king, who appointed commissioners to investigate the case, and the bishop 

 was ordered to reconstruct the gallery at his own expense. Accordingly he 

 placed it three feet above the ground, and removed the pulpit to such a distance 

 that the preacher could not be heard in the gallery. In consequence of this 

 and other disputes the corporation attended service for some years at 

 St. Mary Redcliffe. Yeaman, who was vicar of St. Philip's, Bristol, for 

 over twenty years, had strong Puritan leanings and influenced a large con- 

 gregation by his zealous preaching. 4 In 1619 the corporation of Gloucester 

 provided that a yearly sum of money should be assigned for the maintenance 

 of a lecturer to preach twice a week in the city on the ground that insufficient 

 care had been taken ' for the settling and establishing of the public preaching 

 of God's Word.' 6 Lectureships were founded and endowed in other places, 

 and the Puritans thus had the opportunity of hearing ' preaching ' ministers 

 of their own persuasion on Sunday afternoons. At Deerhurst, Hayles, and 

 Winchcombe seats for communicants were set up round three sides of the 

 chancel, and the communion table stood in the middle.' At Dursley in 1618 

 a new ' table board ' of Puritan fashion took the place of the Elizabethan 

 communion table. 7 John Sprint, the Puritan vicar of Thornbury, was per- 

 suaded to conform by Samuel Burton, archdeacon of Gloucester, to whom, in 

 i6i8,he dedicated his book, Cassander Anglica nus, shewing the Necessitie of Con- 

 formity to the prescribed ceremonies of the Church* William Woodwall, the curate 

 of Stroud, was a social reformer rather than a Puritan. In a notable sermon 

 preached in 1609 he attacked the pursuit of wealth on account of the 

 suffering which it entailed on the poor, and lashed the increasing love of 

 luxury and amusement among the rich.' 



James I was informed that there was ' scarce ever a church in England 

 so ill governed and so much out of order ' as Gloucester, and in 1 6 1 6 on the 



1 Diet. Nat. Biog. vii, 250-1. ' Second Rep. of Ritual Com. 1867-8, App. E. 440. 



' Britton, Bristol Cathedral, 29. * Broadmead Records (Hanserd Knollys Soc.), 8. 



4 Lloyd, The State of Religion in Gloucester, 1640-50. 



' Brist. ana" Glouc. \Arch. Soe. Trans, xxv, 285-7; Hayles about 1 600, Deerhurst before 1606, Winch- 

 combe probably a little later. The arrangement continued until recently. 



' Blunt, Chapters of Parochial History, 59. 8 Glouc. N. and Q. ii, 327. ' Ibid, i, 201. 



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