ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



After his metropolitical visitation of Gloucester in 1635, Laud issued 

 several injunctions to the dean and chapter. 1 He ordered that the muniments 

 should be set in order and kept in the former muniment room under the 

 charge of the chapter clerk. The petty canons and singing-men should have 

 their houses according to the Chapter Act when he was dean, and the 

 choristers, whose bad behaviour was most unseemly, should be kept under 

 strict discipline. All preachers in the cathedral should say the whole of the 

 bidding prayer as enjoined in the 55th Canon of 1604. He required the 

 chapter also to substitute movable seats for all fixed seats in the nave, as 

 ' contrary to the course of cathedrals,' with the exception of those used by 

 the mayor and his brethren, and by the dean and prebendaries during sermon 

 time. 



The condition of Bristol Cathedral and the order of the services there 

 were far less satisfactory to Laud than they were at Gloucester. Most of the 

 clergy were guilty of non-residence, and had recently framed a statute fixing 

 twenty- eight days as sufficient.* The places allotted by the foundation were 

 not filled, an usher was needed and two more petty canons, while the other 

 four officiated elsewhere ; some of the singing-men were clerks of parishes in 

 the city, or organists, which hindered their attendance at the cathedral. In 

 1537 Robert Skinner became bishop of Bristol, and Laud reported to the 

 king that he had taken great care in his first visitation, and if he continued would 

 quickly settle the diocese into better order. 8 However, Skinner complained 

 that ' they of the preciser faction ' endeavoured to disquiet the people daily, 

 by strange inventions, giving out that the liturgy for Scotland had sundry 

 notorious points of popery in it. In 1639 the diocese was reported to be in 

 good order.* Yet for some years previously there had been a conventicle of 

 Puritans at a house in the High Street. 1 Some who refused to kneel 

 at the communion took houses in parishes outside the diocese of Bristol, and 

 went thither with their families to spend Sunday.' Among them was 

 Dorothy Kelly, who sat sewing in her open shop on Christmas Day in 

 contempt of * invented times and feasts.' 7 In 1639 she married a Puritan 

 clergyman named Hazzard, who was chosen by the parishioners of 

 St. Ewens as their minister. In 1 640 Mrs. Hazzard and four other persons, 

 including Bacon, a young minister, seceded and met by themselves, and shortly 

 afterwards, under the teaching of Cann, a Baptist minister, the Baptist 

 community of Bristol was established. In the space of three years it increased 

 to 1 60 persons from the city and neighbourhood. 



The Puritan party in Gloucestershire was also gaining in strength, and 

 in 1 640 John Allibond, curate of St. Nicholas, Gloucester, noted the names 

 of their leaders in the county election, in a satirical letter to Heylin, 

 ' principally men of our own coat, a pack of deprived, silenced, or puritani- 

 cally affected men.' 8 Besides Geering, Fox and his sons Help-on-High and 

 Sion-Build, he mentioned Marshall of Elmore, who ' practises conformity 

 more out of awe than love, as does also Stansfield, a lecturer of Rodborough' ; 

 Guilliam of Hatherley, Prior of Sandhurst, Baxter of Forthampton, Whynnell,. 



1 Laufi Worki, v, pt. ii, 479. * Hist. MSS. Com. Ref. T, App. pp. 141-4. 



' Laufi Worki, v, pt. ii, 353. 4 Ibid. 368. 



* Bnadmead Ret. (Hanserd Knollys Soc.), 1 1. * Ibid. 1 3. 



' Ibid. 1 5-28. * Clou. N. and Q. i, 41 3. 



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