A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



had been made for over a year after his death. It was probably about 

 the time of the northern visitation that Edwin Sandes was nominated to 

 Carlisle, but he gave no reasons for declining it except a general reluct- 

 ance to undertake the responsibilities of the episcopal office. 1 In urging 

 Bernard Gilpin, the Apostle of the North, to accept the nomination 

 early in the following year, Sandes reminded him that there was no man 

 in that part of the kingdom fitter than himself to be of service to religion. 

 He informed him also that by the Queen's favour he should have the 

 bishopric just in the condition in which Dr. Oglethorpe left it ; nothing 

 should be taken from it, as had been the case with some others. Gilpin 

 is said to have replied that if any other bishopric but Carlisle had been 

 offered to him, he might possibly have accepted it, but in that diocese 

 he had so many friends and acquaintances, of whom he had not the best 

 opinion, that he must either connive at many irregularities, or draw 

 upon himself so much hatred, that he should be less able to do good 

 there than any one else. 2 Ultimately, the see was filled by the conse- 

 cration of John Best on 2 March 1561," a man who had been a select 

 preacher for the northern visitors, and who had been instituted by them 

 to the benefice of Romaldkirke, 4 in the diocese of Chester, void by the 

 deprivation of Bishop Oglethorpe. There can be little doubt that 

 Sandes was the instrument of his preferment. 



In a few months after the see was filled by the consecration of 

 Bishop Best, steps were taken to bring those clergy to conformity who 

 had refused subscription to the suscepta religio during the royal visitation 

 of 1559. Early in 1561 the lord president of the north was ordered 

 to inquire into certain secret conventicles of recusants which were 

 reported to have been held in Cumberland and Westmorland and the 

 other northern counties. In the following May a commission, consisting 

 of the civil and ecclesiastical rulers of the northern province, was issued 



Zurich Letters (Parker Society) 1558-1579, No. xxxi. : Burnet, Coll. of Rec., iii. 382-3. In this 

 letter, Sandes told Peter Martyr, on I April 1560, that he had returned to London fatigued in mind and 

 body after his labours in the northern parts of England. The see of Worcester had been thrust upon him 

 by the Queen, though he had wished to decline it, as he had done that of Carlisle, to which he had been 

 nominated before. He relates his action in the northern visitation in taking down and burning ' all 

 images of every kind.' Then he adds significantly : ' Only the popish vestments remain in our church, 

 I mean the copes, which, however, we hope will not last very long.' This hope of the good bishop 

 was never realized. The dean and chapter of Carlisle, replying to Bishop Rainbow's articles of 

 visitation in 1666, stated that ' necessary utensils for the performance of Divine Service we have, and 

 ornaments, as copes, etc., we intend shortly to have. But some of the Church utensils were imbezilled 

 in the late times of usurpation, as the brazen Eagle, upon which y e chapters were read ' (Statutes of 

 Carlisle Cathedral, ed. J. E. Prescott, p. 30). In an inventory dated I February, 1674, belonging 

 to the same church, there are mentioned ' two wrought and embroidered copes ' which the dean and 

 chapter still possess (ibid. p. 35). 



2 Memoirs of Bernard Gilpin, ed. C. S. Collingwood, pp. 122-5 5 '/* f Bernard Gilpin, ed. William 

 Gilpin, pp. 58-60 ; Fuller, Church Hist., bk. ix. 63-4. 



3 Strype, Life of Parker, edition 1711, p. 67 ; Machyn's Diary, Camden Soc., p. 252. Sir John 

 Hayward gives the surname of ' Beast ' to this bishop, the way in which ' Best ' was probably pronounced 

 in the sixteenth century (Annals of Eliz., Camden Soc., p. 27). John Best had been deprived of his 

 benefice in I555i an d afterwards went about privately from place to place in Lancashire and the adjoining 

 counties preaching the Gospel to select companies assembled by assignation, and sometimes giving 

 the Communion (Strype, Mem., ed. 1721, iii. 222, 471). 



* S.P. Dom. Elizabeth, vol. x. 



66 



