A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
the chantries attached to them. Endowments for lamps and obits, 
offered in nearly all the churches by those who could not afford the com- 
plete pay of a chaplain, were swept away at the same time. 
Some further local details may be gathered from the scanty remains 
of the inventories taken, at the end of the reign of Edward VI., of the 
movable goods of the churches. Only fourteen lists relating to Bedford- 
shire are still preserved." They serve to show that nearly every church 
was still in possession of some of the vestments, etc., allowed by the first 
Prayer Book of the reign. But they are so incomplete that they could 
not have been still in use ; if they were, the services of the church must 
have presented a curious appearance. Most churches still retained the 
two prescribed candlesticks ; some had copes, two or three had censers 
and pyxes for the reservation ; one had a holy water stoup of ‘ lattyn,’ 
more than one a sanctus bell, another a pax, another a processional cross. 
Stagsden had a nearly complete set of Eucharistic vestments, but no 
candlesticks ; Houghton Regis was the richest in plate, having three 
chalices, two pyxes and a pair of censers still, although it had been 
lately robbed—a misfortune not peculiar to this church by any means. 
In the Suffragan Bishops Act of 1534” the town of Bedford was 
included amongst the proposed sees for suffragans ; and, in accordance 
with the provisions of the Act, John Hodgkins was consecrated Bishop of 
Bedford on 19 December 1537.. As however he was suffragan to the 
Bishop of London, he had no jurisdiction in this county, and could have 
no influence on its history.“ A greater (though melancholy) interest is 
attached to the plan, formed a little later, of erecting a new bishopric 
for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire® out of a portion of the spoils of 
the religious houses ; its see was to be at Dunstable,” and its revenues 
were to be obtained from the property of the dissolved monasteries of 
Dunstable, Elstow and Newnham. Full details of the proposed cathe- 
dral establishment are still preserved’; but the plan was never realized. 
So far as can be discovered, the county of Bedford received no com- 
1 Printed in Beds N. and Q. 277-311. These entries give some examples of the way in 
which smaller men in those days followed the example of their betters. One good lady had helped her- 
self to a pair of bells which had been left in the churchyard of Sandy at the last inventory—for the 
payment of her husband’s debts. At Meppershall the mutual accusations of present and past church- 
wardens leave only one thing clear—that some one had been plundering the church. __Holcutt was re- 
duced to one broken chalice ; Husborne Crawley to one of tin. 
2 Documents Illustrative of English Church History, pp. 253-6. 
3 Rymer, Fadera, vi. (3), 12 ; Beds N. and Q.1. 40. 
4 The only other suffragan Bishop of Bedford was the Rev. W. Walsham How, consecrated 1879 ; 
he was also suffragan to the Bishop of London. 
5 From the draft in the king’s own handwriting, of which a facsimile is printed as frontispiece to 
Cole’s King Henry VIII.’s Scheme of Bishopricks. 
6 In the first draft (from Cott. MS. Cleop. E iv.) ‘Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire’ are bracketed 
opposite the three monasteries mentioned above ; but in the detailed scheme (printed in the same volume, 
from a MS. in the Record Office) the name of Dunstable appears. 
7 Cole, King Henry VIII.’s Scheme of Bishopricks, pp. 60~6. The scheme for Dunstable is similar 
to the rest, only it does not begin with ‘ First a Busshope,’ like some of them. It includes a dean, six 
prebendaries, a reader and four students in divinity, twenty scholars and a schoolmaster, six ‘ peticanons ’ 
to sing in the choir, with six singing men and eight choristers, a gospeller and a ‘ pisteler,’ besides such 
minor officials as two porters ‘to keep the gates and shave the company.’ There were also sums of 
money set apart for distribution to the poor. 
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