ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



restored episcopate would be more prolific in such removals than the last 

 fourteen months. But there may have been some more, and it is at any 

 rate clear that the impending restoration of Papal authority — it was not 

 formally restored in these first fourteen months — and the removal of 

 married clergy brought about more changes than the restoration of the 

 royal supremacy brought about when Elizabeth succeeded. But at no 

 time were the personal changes such as to indicate the general prevalence 

 of any such antagonism as that which prevails between Romanists and 

 Protestants now. If all the recorded cases are taken to be instances of 

 conscientious objections to religious changes, they do not include more 

 than about twelve per cent of the beneficed clergy of the county at any 

 one time. The obvious conclusion is this, to which the secular history 

 also bids us come, that religious indifference, and a feeling in favour of 

 supporting the Government, were much more marked characteristics of 

 the clergy, and therefore more decidedly of the laity, than either Roman- 

 ist or Protestant zeal. 



The political reasons for the dealings of the Government of Eliza- 

 beth with the Catholic recusants have necessarily thrown the story of 

 the details of their persecution into the political section of this history.^ 

 Though Surrey was not originally in that attitude of decided hostility to 

 the queen's policy which existed in the northern counties, there 

 clearly was a good deal of conservative religious opinion hostile to 

 Puritanism and distrustful of the royal supremacy, a feeling which 

 could be easily excited into active recusancy by the labours of the 

 seminary priests and Jesuits. This Romanist nonconformity was no 

 doubt aggravated by the distinct Calvinistic line which was followed by 

 Home, the new Bishop of Winchester ; for it was one of the difficulties 

 of Elizabeth's position that she could not find sufficient men outside the 

 Calvinist party to man the Church, and her via media was at once de- 

 flected in practice towards the ultra-reforming side, so that fewer of the 

 conservative party could walk in it. The indictment of 120 recusants at 

 the sessions between 1572 and 1579 ; fifty-six prisoners for recusancy in 

 the gaols on the Surrey side, excluding the King's Bench, in 1582 ; 

 forty prisoners in the King's Bench in 1585, though these were not 

 necessarily Surrey people, tell a tale of widely spread dissatisfaction ; for 

 there would be ten who repined in secret to one who had the courage, or 

 the ill-luck, to be in the way of arrest. Poor men these, for the most 

 part, like those who petitioned Sir William More to the effect that they 

 were starving in the White Lion prison.^ 



On 29 August, 1 561, Bishop Home was inquiring into the con- 

 formity of laity as well as of clergy.^ In 1562 the second Ecclesiastical 

 Commission had been issued. On 19 March, 1563, Lord Montague 

 was desiring from William More his report of his ' neighbours' opinions,' 

 to lay before the bishop.* Montague's own opinions were really Roman- 

 ist, and he had spoken in the House of Lords against imposing the 



1 F.C.H. Surrey, i. 382, 387. ^ Loseley MSS. v. pt. ii. 42 ; see V.C.H. Surrey, i. 584. 



8 S.P. Dom. 3 Eliz. xix. 36. Home to Cecil. * Loseley MSS. x. 4. 



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