A HISTORY OF SURREY 



was expected to be at St. Catherine's Fair and who was to be arrested if 

 possible, does not sound English/ In 1580 the Family of Love at- 

 tracted notice in Surrey. They were Anabaptists, but also were real 

 offenders against order and decency. The hard worked justices had to 

 vary their labours in regulating the price of corn and pedlars' licences, the 

 levy of troops, the raising of loans, the punishment of poachers and the 

 search for 'massing priests,' by examining, 'with the aid of godly preachers,* 

 ' those who are fallen into the hereasye termed the familie of love.' ' No 

 wonder that one of them describes himself as ' extreme wearie ' with ex- 

 amining suspected persons. The spread of Romanist and sectarian opinions 

 was made more probable by the decay of the parochial system owing to the 

 extreme poverty of some of the livings through lay annexations of their 

 revenues. Between 1584 and 1589 the inhabitants of Ewell complained 

 of the absolute destitution of their vicar.^ The chapelry of Okewood, 

 practically a parish, was endowed by the Government with 5 marks a 

 year in place of considerable revenues annexed in 1 547 ; and such cases 

 were not singular. There was also a dearth of well qualified men to fill 

 livings, and very little sense of responsibility must have been felt by lay 

 patrons when they made some of their presentations. Sir William More 

 was certainly a good specimen of the man in authority then, upright, 

 business-like and honourable in his dealings. But the Appendix shows 

 that suspicion attaches itself to a presentation of his to the living of Comp- 

 ton in 1554. Again in 1583 he presented John Slater, who was instituted 

 by Bishop Watson.* He was deprived by Bishop Cooper in 1586.° In 

 1598 Bishop Cooper wrote to Sir William for information concerning 

 a vagrant and mendicant person named John Slater alias Thomas 

 Edmondes, who had held the living of Compton." Clergymen, like 

 other people, may come down in the world, but the sort of case was too 

 common then ; and the two unfortunate presentations by so good a man 

 as Sir William More are suggestive. The clergy were generally of an 

 inferior social class. John Cowper gave to Sir William More a good 

 character, from her late master, of ' a very sober mayd and honest ' whom 

 his parish clergyman, perhaps of Capel or Newdigate, was desirous of 

 marrying.'' A match with a servant maid was a becoming marriage for 

 a parish priest. Bishop Cooper of Winchester was the son of a tailor. 

 Archbishop Abbot was the son of a poor cloth weaver of Guildford. 

 They were both learned men, and well worthy of advancement, but how 

 many more do they indicate, of similar birth and of a barely sufficient 

 or insufficient education who obtained minor preferments .? The care- 

 fully trained Jesuits, and even the seminary priests, were picked men. 



a f-^-f^- S«'T^y. i- 382, and Loseley MSS. 19 Sept. 1560, and 28 May, 1561. 

 Loseley MSS. 1 1 Oct. 1580, v. 17, and 30 Dec. 1580. The Council was directing a special 

 inquiry about them at the time. They were chiefly in the Winchester, Ely and Norwich dioceses 

 and were no doubt a foreign importation {Was of Privy Council, 1 580-1 p 233) 



Loseley MSS. ii. 14 (no date), but the 'poor vicar,' Richard Williamson, was instituted in 1584 

 and his successor m 1589. •* ^ 



\ Winton Epis. Reg., Watson, lib. 5 11,;^. Cooper, 8a. 



« Loseley MSS. xi. 28, 6 July, 1598. 



7 Ibid. 18 Oct. (no fiarther date). The letter is quoted in Kemp's Loseley MSS. 



28 



