ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Considering the number of benefices and the comparatively easy reach 

 of London and its turmoils the number of known deprivations during this 

 period is remarkably small. But evidence in this respect is almost entirely 

 confined to parishes within the diocese of London owing to the serious gap 

 in the Lincoln registers. Though few details have been preserved there 

 seems little doubt that Nathaniel Baxter, vicar of Redbourn, was deprived in 

 the spring of 1579—80 when the churchwardens presented that it had been 

 ' appoynted by my lorde of Canterberyes grace that Mr. Baxter shall departe 

 and Mr. Spendlove to be in full possession of [the] vicarage in consideration 

 whereof he must paye unto Mr. Baxter a certen sume of monye.' " Edward 

 Spendlove apparently met with the approval of the authorities ; he was an 

 examiner of unlearned ministers, a preacher and a scholar. For a time all 

 went well, but in the summer of 1588 he wrote to the archdeacon that 

 ' whereas by reason of a certain crime objected against me, I was convented 

 before the Justices at the last Sessions, and by them adjudged either to sustain 

 open punishment or else to resign my benefice ... I chose rather to forego 

 my benefice, for my profession's sake, than to incur that open infamy.' " 

 Humphrey Wildblood was instituted to the vacant living in November 

 1589, apparently by the influence of Francis Bacon." Though little is 

 known of his career, his views may be judged from the fact that in May 

 1590 Lady Bacon wrote to her son that she thanked God ' for the comfort- 

 able company of Mr. Wyborne and Mr. Wylblud.' "^ He seems from the 

 first to have been hostile to the established order of things, and in 1590 he. 

 White of Northaw and Warren of Hexton were the only clergy in the arch- 

 deaconry who ignored the summons to an inspection of the military equipment 

 charged on the clergy." He was deprived before October 1592," probably 

 for Puritanism, for immediately afterwards he was acting as preacher at 

 St. Michael's, though refusing to appear before the archdeacon to show any 

 letters of orders or any^ other instruments.*" His successor at Redbourn was 

 Rodolph Bradley " ; he, while performing the military service expected from 

 him, refused to produce letters of orders or other documents for the satisfac- 

 tion of the officials in January 1592-3,*' and he may have maintained this 

 recalcitrant attitude, for in June 1602 Richard Gardton was instituted on 

 Bradley's cession of the vicarage.*' 



A better index of the progress of Puritanism than is afforded by these 

 deprivations can be found in the character of the services and ministry of 

 the day. In 1566 'moderate men' complained that 'in the public prayers, 

 although there is nothing impure, there is, however, a kind of popish 

 superstition,'** but by 1583 this had given place to a thorough hatred of the 

 Book of Common Prayer, not only for its papistry, but for the length of its 



'6 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 1 1. 



'^ Ibid. 61. No entry regarding this case is to be found among the Sessions Records. 

 '' Clutterbuck, op. cit. i, 182 ; Spedding, Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, i, 115. 

 "» Spedding, op. cit. 114. 

 '8 Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 80-1. 

 '^ Clutterbuck, loc. cit. 

 8" Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 88. 



81 Clutterbuck, loc. cit. 82 jf^g^. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 88. 



8' Clutterbuck, loc. cit. It must have been Bradley that Lady Bacon maintained to be 'a Papist or 

 lome sorcerer or conjurer or some vild name or other' (Spedding, op. cit. i, 312). 

 8* Zurich Letters, 1558-79 (Parker Soc), 163. 



