ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



a pension of 40 a year. 1 But none of the prebendaries followed Dean 

 Salkeld into retirement. The reaction under Queen Mary was attended 

 with few inconveniences. In 1554 Dean Salkeld was restored to the 

 deanery, though Sir Thomas Smith was very loth to yield it to him. 

 ' About May,' he said, ' I gave up quasi sponte the provostship of Eton 

 and the deanery of Carlisle, and I had a pension from the queen of 

 100 a year.' As Dean Smith had never visited his deanery, the return 

 of Salkeld to his old home must have been welcome to his former col- 

 leagues. With the exception of a couple of the clergy, 2 who were 

 deprived because they were married men, we have met with no other 

 cases of mishap during Mary's reign. The atrocity of the stake and the 

 faggot, thanks perhaps to the enlightened instincts of Bishop Aldridge, 

 had not gained an entry into the diocese of Carlisle. Owen Oglethorpe 

 who succeeded in 1557 was not the style of prelate, if we may judge 

 him by the part he took in the theological discussions of the late reign, 

 who would willingly consent to the penalty of death as a punishment for 

 doctrinal aberrations. 3 



The intentions of Queen Mary to restore to the church what had 

 been confiscated by the legislation of the late reigns, that is from 20 

 Henry VIII., are matters of general history. When she could not pre- 

 vail on her subjects to relinquish the spoils of the religious houses, she 

 determined to set them an example by making a full restitution of all 

 the church property vested in the Crown. With the masterly firmness 

 of Tudor resolve, the Queen informed the privy council that her con- 

 science would not suffer her to retain it, but with all her heart, freely 

 and willingly, she surrendered all the said lands and possessions that order 

 and disposition might be taken of them to the honour of God and the 

 wealth of her realm. 4 Parliament was prevailed upon to pass an Act 5 

 for this purpose as far as the Crown was concerned. By it, under the 

 direction of Cardinal Pole, all rectories, impropriations, tithes, glebe 

 lands, and other ecclesiastical possessions, which had been perquisites of 

 the Crown since the twentieth year of Henry VIII., were to be employed 



1 Archaeologia, xxxviii. 97-127. In this paper Mr. J. G. Nichols has collected many additional 

 particulars about the life of Sir Thomas Smith. Writing to the Duchess of Somerset in 1550, Smith 

 stated among other things that the revenue of ' the deanery of Carlisle, paieing 40 /'. pencion to him that 

 resigned it to me, is 8o/.' (Harl. MS. 6989, f. 141). Nichols questions the truth of Strype's statement 

 that Sir Thomas ' repaired to his deanery of Carlisle,' as the order of the Council, which he quoted, does 

 not support the inference that Smith ever visited the church of which he was nominally dean. 



3 The names of these incumbents were Thomas Atkinson, rector of Ormside, and Percival Wharton, 

 vicar of Bridekirk, but they were restored by the royal commissioners at the accession of Elizabeth (S.P. 

 Dom. Elizabeth, x. ff. 147, 149). 



' Fuller, the historian, accounted for the absence of martyrs in Cumberland during Mary's reign 

 by the facts that the people were ' nuzzled in ignorance and superstition,' and that those who favoured 

 the Reformation were connived at by Owen Oglethorpe, the courteous bishop of Carlisle ' (Worthies of 

 England, ed. S. Jefferson, p. 8). If we can believe Fox, Isabel Foster, wife of John Foster, cutler, of the 

 parish of St. Bride's in Fleet Street, London, who was burnt on 27 January 1556, was a Cumberland 

 woman ' This foresaid Isabel was born in Greystock, in the diocese of Carlisle ' (Ac ts and Monuments, 

 Ch. Hist, of England, vii. 748). 



* Fox, Acts and Monuments, Ch. Hist, of England, vii. 34. 



B 2 & 3 Philip and Mary, cap. 4. This Act was repealed by I Elizabeth, cap. 4, as that queen had 

 intentions somewhat different from those of her deceased sister. 



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