A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



useless, he was committed to the Fleet prison on 1 1 December, 1 " and deprived 

 of his see in September, 1551," John Scory being appointed in his place. 



Upon the accession of Mary, Day was at once released from confine- 

 ment and restored to his bishopric, being further honoured by being selected 

 to preach at the funeral of King Edward and again at the queen's corona- 

 tion. 171 The churchwardens' accounts of this year 173 show the immediate effect 

 of the change of sovereign upon the ritual of the Church. Instead of the 

 Bibles, Homilies, and Erasmus's ' Pharaphrase,' which occurred in the pre- 

 vious years, are payments for c graylle bookes,' ' hime bookes,' and ' anty- 

 fyners,' with outlays upon vestments, censers, and tapers, for painting roods, 

 'for making of Mary and John and Sent Aundero,' and mending defaced 

 windows, and receipts from such ceremonies as ' crepyng to ye cros.' There 

 was naturally a considerable section of the populace to whom these changes 

 did not commend themselves, and in August, 1554, a letter was addressed 

 to the justices of Sussex to be more diligent in punishing such ' evill dis- 

 ordered persones as use to raile uppon the mysteries of Christes Religion,' 173 

 which was followed in April, 1555, by a definite order for the arrest of one 

 Holden of Withyham for seditious preaching, 17 * and in June of the same year 

 by writs for the burning, at Lewes, of Derrick Carver, a Flemish brewer of 

 Brighton, and of two other heretics at Chichester and Steyning. 176 Early in 

 June, 1556, four men were burned at Lewes, and later in the month two 

 more, one of them being a minister ; two men and a woman suffered at East 

 Grinstead in July, and four more men at Mayfield in September. 176 The 

 persecution culminated in June, 1557, when five men and five women were 

 burnt in one fire in the market place of Lewes. Of these ten martyrs the 

 most prominent was Richard Woodman, a wealthy ironfounder of Warbleton ; 

 he first attracted the attention of the authorities by publicly rebuking his 

 rector, who in King Edward's days had been a vehement upholder of the 

 Protestant religion, but had gone with the tide and become as vehement on 

 the other side. Of Woodman's many examinations before the bishops of 

 Chichester and Winchester, the rector of Buxted, James Gage and others, a 

 long account written by himself has been preserved by Foxe ; 177 from this it is 

 clear that he was treated with great courtesy both by the sheriff, Sir Edward 

 Gage, and by Christopherson, bishop of Chichester, who exhibits a spirit of 

 kindliness very far removed from the character of him drawn by Fuller, who 

 represents him as having ' no meekness, mildness nor mercy, being wholly 

 addicted to cruelty and destruction,' and declares that his burning of 

 Protestants would speedily have thinned out the Sussex woods. 178 The names 

 of eight more are known as having suffered in Sussex during Mary's reign, and 

 Henry Adlington of Grinstead in this county died for his faith at Stratford- 

 le-Bow in 1556, and Stephen Gratwick of Brighton, at Southwark, in the 

 following year. 179 



Again the wheel turns, and with the accession of Elizabeth the altar 

 stones are once more cast out, the pictured windows once more defaced. 180 



.. (NewSer.), iii, 178. Ibid. 396. '" Ibid, iv, 339 



See the accounts of West Tarring, Cartwright, Rape of Bramber, 15 ; also those of St. Michael, Lewes, 

 Sun. Arch. Coll. xlv, 56. 



' Act, cfP.C. (New Ser.), v, 61. ' Ibid. 1 10. ' Ibid. 147. 



Lower, The Sussex Martyrs, 10-11. i" ibid 12-75 



Ibid. 14, note. i Ibii ?6 . i toa-Jlti. Coll. xlv, 56, 57. 



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