ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Cumberland within his diocese he stated that William Pennington of 

 Muncaster was favourable and Henry Curwen of Workington and John 

 Lamplugh of Lamplugh were unfavourable to the established religion, 

 but that so far as he knew there were no other persons in that district 

 fit to be made justices. 1 It cannot be denied that the reformed doctrine 

 had met with some acceptance among the educated laity of the north- 

 western counties ; and though there is evidence of a strong opposition, 

 active resistance was destined to decline as the new ideas made progress 

 among the clergy, and men became more assured that the settlement of 

 religion was permanent and irreversible. 



The uncertainty which prevailed about the permanence of the 

 settlement had a serious effect on the supply of a good class of clergy in 

 the northern diocese. Throughout the years of Bishop Best's episco- 

 pate, when the strain of the Reformation was greatest, few men were 

 admitted to holy orders by him for work in his own diocese. Two 

 deacons and one priest make up the sum of his ordinations for the first 

 eight years of his episcopate, 1561-8. The educational equipment of 

 candidates for ordination during the episcopates of his successors, Bishops 

 Barnes and May, appears deplorable in the extreme. The mention of 

 a graduate in long lists of deacons and priests is of very rare occurrence. 

 As a rule the clergy had little education except what they received at 

 the village school. It was no uncommon thing for a candidate to be 

 admitted to the diaconate on one day and to be instituted to a benefice 

 on the day following. Early in the struggle for uniformity, when the 

 want of clergy was most acute, the bishops constituted a new order of 

 ' Reader ' to tide over the dearth of the right sort of men. These 

 readers were placed in parishes destitute of incumbents, and were obliged 

 to live according to certain rules laid down by the bishops. The new 

 order was not allowed to preach or interpret, but only to read what had 

 been appointed by authority. The ministration of the sacraments and 

 other public rites was forbidden, except the burial of the dead and the 

 churching of women. To the constitution of this new departure in 

 ecclesiastical order Bishop Best gave his adhesion. 2 The influence of 

 such a staff of parochial clergy for the Christian edification of the mass 

 of the people can be well imagined. From the pen of Bishop Henry 

 Robinson, a native of the parish of St. Mary, Carlisle, successively 

 Fellow and Provost of Queen's College, Oxford, we get an authoritative 

 account of the moral condition of the diocese the year after his conse- 

 cration to its oversight. Writing from Rose Castle on 26 December 



1 These letters are now at Hatfield in the possession of the Marquess of Salisbury, and have been 

 calendared by the Hist. MSS. Com. (Hatfield House MSS., i. 306-312) as ' A Collection of Original Letters 

 from the several Bishops, etc., to the Privy Council, with Returns of the Justices of the Peace and others, 

 within their respective Dioceses,' 1564. Miss Mary Bateson has printed those letters in full for the Cam- 

 den Society in the Camden Miscellany, vol. ix. 



" This is a very interesting document of date not earlier than 1561. It is called ' Injunctions to 

 be confessed and subscribed by them that shalbe admytted Readers,' and bears the signatures of the two 

 archbishops and nine bishops, including Bishop Grindal of London and Bishop Best of Carlisle (Add. MS. 

 19,398, f. 59). Strype says that its provisions were enjoined in 1559 and confirmed by the Convocation 

 of 1562 (Annals of the Reformation, ed. 1709, i. 306-7). 



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