A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



kneeling, under pain of suspension in him and deposition in his curate.' 

 Gorsuch' then appealed to Laud, alleging that he could obtain no order 

 against Humberstone in the courts of the Bishop of Lincoln as that prelate 

 would not suffer them to be presented and remitted all punishment in such 

 cases ; he prayed that the case might be referred to the court of High 

 Commission. Humberstone and his wife also petitioned the archbishop^and 

 stated their readiness 'to receive either at the rails or in the chancel.' 

 Gorsuch had thus won his point, and Laud in October issued directions to 

 Sir John Lamb, commissary to the Bishop of Lincoln, that any process 

 against Humberstone should be quashed, and that Gorsuch should ' cease all 

 further suit and do what shall be fitting in a peaceable and Christian-like 

 way.' '' A further case of a slightly simpler character occurred at Welwyn, 

 where sixteen men complained to the archdeacon of the refusal of their 

 parson to communicate them otherwise than at the altar rails. In this 

 instance there appears to have been no appeal to the bishop or his courts, 

 but Holdsworth and the men went to Laud, who, however, refused to inter- 

 fere, leaving the matter to be settled by the archdeacon." 



Contempt of the Consistory Courts seems to have been general, and in 

 1638 a correspondent wrote to Sir John Lamb that ' those refractory women 

 of King's Walden, who were enjoined to penance at your last court at 

 Hatfield . . . not only please themselves in contempt thereof,'^' but 

 threatened to appeal to the High Commission. Such cases demonstrate the 

 truth of the remark of Hacket that at this time the Consistory Courts had 

 become ' in a manner despicable.' " 



They had indeed been superseded by the court of High Commission 

 which was constituted under the Act of Uniformity. Its absorption of the 

 authority of the ecclesiastical courts may be illustrated by a few typical cases 

 from this county for 1634. The old moral jurisdiction of the episcopal 

 courts is seen in the long suit for alimony brought by his wife against Sir 

 William Cade of King's Langley.^" In this year the most distinctively 

 ecclesiastical causes brought before the court from this county were those of 

 John Downes the curate and the churchwardens of Shenley," of Robert 

 Clarke, vicar of Sarratt,^^ and of Charles Chauncey, vicar of Ware, and 

 Humphrey Packer, yeoman of the same town.^** As an illustration of the 

 action of the court as well as of the moderate Puritan thought of the time 

 it will be well to examine the case of Chauncey in detail. 



Charles Chauncey was the son of George Chauncey, esq., of Ardeley 

 Bury and New Place, Gilston ; he was born in 1592 and was related to 

 several well-known families in the county. He was educated at Westminster 

 and Trinity College, Cambridge, and proceeded M.A. in 1617.°* His college 

 gave him the living of Ware in February 1627-8,''' but he resigned this in 

 1633 after he became vicar of Marston St. Lawrence (co. Northants). His 

 immediate successor at Ware had been John Mountfbrt, rector of Anstey 

 and prebendary of Sneating, who, however, held the living for only a few 



^^ Cal. S. P. Dom. 1637, pp. 484-6. For Gorsuch and his parishioners see also Lords' Journ. ix, 389. 

 ^' Hutton, The Engl. Church, 1625-1714, p. 51. >* Cal. S. P. Dom. 1637-8, p. 492. 



19 Hacket, Scrinia Reserata, 97. 20 S. P. Dom. Chas. I, cclxi, /<7//m. ^i i},|,j. fol. 90. 



°2 Ibid. fol. 102. -- Ibid. fol. 60. "^ Clutterbuck, op. cit. iii, 3070.; Diet. Nat. Biog. 



'* Newcourt, Repert. i, 904. 



