A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



Sundays except during the winter, when to suit his parishioners' convenience 

 he preached only in the morning, but then he combined both sermons and 

 never preached less than two hours. One of the accusations brought against 

 him was superstition for keeping up the custom, which he defended as 

 inoffensive, of breaking a cake over the bride's head at weddings. 



Occasionally the charge of ' insufficiency ' could not be upheld by even 

 the most prejudiced, and once at least it recoiled upon the accusers, for when 

 three ' triers ' called upon the aged Aquila Cruso, rector of Button, to give an 

 account of his faith he at once wrote it in Greek and Hebrew to the 

 confusion of his less learned adversaries ; he was therefore or rather in 

 consideration of his age allowed to retain his living, though he lost his 

 prebend, as did all the cathedral dignitaries, who were, naturally, the special 

 objects of the Puritans' enmity and suffered greatly at their hands. 



That care for the parishioners that moved the authorities to sequestrate the 

 living of Bexhill for its vicar's non-residence and employment of ' scandalous 

 and unworthy ' curates seems to be contradicted by the fate of Wivelsfield, 

 where the pulpit was filled during the Commonwealth by ' a Presbyterian 

 jack-maker, a drummer, and a maltman ' in turn ; but such an example was 

 exceptional, and as a whole the control exercised over the religious life of the 

 county was honest and efficient though far from broad-minded. Preaching, 

 which had been discouraged under Elizabeth and neglected under her 

 successors, had now become of paramount importance. For some time 

 before the Civil War it had been customary to appoint ' lecturers ' to the 

 larger towns, a course which sometimes led to ill-feeling on the part of the 

 local minister, as for instance at Rye in 1623 when the curate refused to 

 allow the lecturer to have the use of the church in spite of the corporation's 

 express desire for the lecture to be continued. 256 Under the Puritan govern- 

 ment many of these lecturers appear to have been appointed to livings, and 

 in December, 1642, the inhabitants of Horsham petitioned that their vacant 

 vicarage might be bestowed not upon the archbishop's nominee, but upon 

 Mr. John Chatfield, who had been lecturer there for six months. 267 



The Parliament, moreover, took good care that the ministers they sup- 

 plied should have a sufficient stipend to live upon, the funds for the payment 

 or augmentation of these stipends being usually drawn from the forfeited 

 estates of royalists. In 1645 the citizens of Chichester sent up a petition 

 stating that they then had a learned and godly ministry to their great 

 comfort, but were like to lose the same for want of maintenance, and begging 

 that three houses and 600 yearly might be set apart out of the revenues 

 of the cathedral for the support of three ministers. 268 Similarly the 

 inhabitants of East and West Dean, Singleton, Binderton, and Didling 

 petitioned in 1 647 that 80 might be allowed them out of the estate of 

 John Lewkenor, who held the great tithes of those parishes, for the sup- 

 port of a preacher, as they had been impoverished by the plundering of 

 the king's forces;" 9 and in 1654 a similar request was made for the 

 payment of ' the young man Nehemiah Beaton, eminently qualified for the 

 work of the gospel,' minister of Wiston, whose stipend was withheld by 

 the earl of Thanet. 360 



** Cal. S.P. Dm. Jas. I, cliii, 91 ; clxxiii, 67. House of Lords MSS. (Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. v), 61. 



18 Ibid, vi, 45. * Cal. S. P. Dom. Chat. I, dxv, 146. * Ibid. Interregnum, Ixvi, 59. 



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