A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



to have been performed, the Easter sepulchre was erected and taken down 

 and the common hghts tended." Then came the time of questioning, 

 perhaps coincident with the publication in July of the Injunctions of 

 Edward VI. The clause providing for the removal of all shrines, pictures 

 and monuments of superstition was somewhat vaguely worded ; it left, as 

 was perhaps intended, a good deal to the discretion of the churchwardens 

 and local feeling. At Bishop's Stortford the churchwardens in perplexity 

 commissioned John Laxton to hire a horse and ride to London ' for to vew 

 and se other churches ther.' ^^ The result was that on his return men were 

 employed for two days in ' takyng downe of the thyngs in the Roode loft.' 

 With great foresight the churchwardens then sold not merely their two 

 ' tabernacles ' but a silver-gilt pax, two pairs of silver-gilt censers with their 

 incense-boat, two massive silver cruets, a silver-gilt cross and stand and two 

 chalices and a paten of silver. The vestments were sold in the follow- 

 ing year and made the large sum of £6.^^ The Prayer Book was issued 

 under a royal proclamation of 8 March 1547-8, and the churchwardens 

 bought two copies. The Government contended that the book was no new 

 service, but ' none other but the old . . . the self-same words in English, 

 which were in Latin, saving a few things taken out ' *^ ; at Stortford, where 

 there was a choir, the careful churchwardens kept their old books, and with 

 the vicar's consent altered ' the servys bought of lattyne in to Ynglys.' " 

 This practice was probably widely adopted, for in December i 549 a royal 

 mandate was issued for all the old service books to be called in, burnt, 

 defaced and destroyed.** At Stortford the transposition was unsatisfactory, 

 and in 1550 at least three attempts at a successful rendering were made by 

 the command of the vicars and others, the last being completed in time for 

 use on Trinity Sunday.*^ Marbeck's T/ie Booke of Common Prater Noted 

 appeared in this year, and may have been the ' bowke of the last servys ' 

 bought in London ; the churchwardens also acquired two psalters, two 

 ' newe bokys . . . calleyd the kyngs boke of the last settyng fourth,' and four 

 manuscript ' bookes for to have in the choire.' *° 



Meanwhile royal commissioners were busy in the diocese of London, 

 but only fragmentary notices of their activities have been found." The 

 commission which sat at Ware on 19 March 1549-50 was no doubt 

 that issued to the sheriffs and justices of the peace for the county on 

 15 February 1549 to make inventories of the goods of every church and 

 chapel, and was preliminary to the general commission of April 1552.*' 



Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, and °" 3 August Queen Mary entered 

 London. One of her earliest acts was to restore Bonner to the see of 

 London, Ridley being lodged in the Tower. The Latin service, though 

 adopted in some cases at an earlier date, was officially brought back into use 

 on 2 1 December of the same year. The churchwardens' accounts of Bishop's 

 Stortford may again serve to illustrate the changes effected in the church 



's Glasscock, Rec. of St. Michael's, 46. «> Ibid. 47. 8I Ibid. 49. 



82 Foxe, Jets and Monum. (ed. 1846), v, 734. ^3 Glasscock, op. cit. 51. 



^ Cardwell, Doc. Annals, xx ; Stat. 3 & 4 Edw. VI, cap. I o. "^ Glasscock, op. cit. 5 I . 



86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. cf. p. 50. 



^ Acts of P. C. 1550-2, pp. 228, 467; 1552-4, p. 101. The inventories of 1552 are printed bj 

 Cussans, Invent, of Furniture and Ornaments remaining in all the parish churches in Hertfordshire, 



