A HISTORY OF SURREY 



the Spaniards on the first opportunity, and the imprisonment of the 

 better sort. The council answered that as the gaols were likely to be 

 over full, the bishop was to take care of the less dangerous characters in 

 his house at Farnham/ Dr. Cooper consequently lost the use of his 

 finest house, which became a sort of prison. In the dealings with 

 recusants at this time it appears incidentally that Waverley Abbey was 

 still habitable, for on 7 March, 159 1-2, the curate and four inhabitants 

 of Farnham made a presentment that the parish harboured no Jesuits, 

 seminaries (sic) nor open recusants, but that WiUiam Pyke, gentleman, 

 living at Waverley Abbey, had a wife and family who had not attended 

 service at Farnham for three years.^ The whole of Cooper's time is 

 full of the presentments of recusants, male and female, gentle and simple ; 

 though Surrey was not quite so full of them as Hampshire, and the 

 Hampshire side of Surrey was fuller than the other. Bishop Cooper 

 found the career of a bishop zealous for the rights of his see, as well as 

 for uniformity, expensive. He wrote to Sir W. More on 5 January, 

 1 59 1, that he had spent £^'^0 on litigation in the last two years, and 

 intended to put up with some injuries in the future ' in these quarrel- 

 some times when persons abound who wish ill to the church.' ^ 



Cooper died in 1594 and was succeeded by William Wickham, for 

 a few weeks of 1595, and he dying was succeeded by William Day in 

 1596, who died the same year and was succeeded by Thomas Bilson. 

 He like his predecessor was a strong supporter of authority, as under- 

 stood by the existing Government. He wrote in favour of the rebellion 

 of the Netherlands against Philip II. at Elizabeth's orders, and against 

 the want of obedience of English Romanists to the queen. He wrote 

 in favour of episcopal government, opposed the Puritan demands at 

 Hampton Court, and yet was Calvinist enough to satisfy the Calvinistically 

 educated James I.* He died in 161 6, and recusancy as a serious trouble 

 in Surrey was dead before he was. There were a few recusants still pay- 

 ing impositions and fines, but the rank and file had been crushed out of 

 existence, and they are no longer presented at sessions from all over the 

 county. James Montague followed from 1616 to 161 8, then Lancelot 

 Andrewes, clarum et vemrabile nomen, a member of the rising Laudian 

 party but more judicious, more spiritual and more successful than Laud. 

 He died at Winchester House in 1627, and was buried at St. Mary 

 Overie's. Richard Neile, of the same party but not of the same spirit, 

 a man of distinctly an inferior kind, followed till 1632, then Walter 

 Curie of the same way of thinking. The important point to notice 

 with regard to the history of the opinions of the county is that these 

 bishops had ceased to have to deal with any large number of Romanist 

 recusants, but were not free from threatenings of trouble with Puritans, 

 not generally as nonconformists but as a party in the Church. The 



' Acts of Privy Council, 1590, p. 27. 



' Loseley MSS., date cited. 3 Hjjj^ yjj[ ^g. 



* 'The elect cannot perish,' a heading in Bilson's Effects of Christ's Sufferings, is proof enough of 

 how nearly Calvinist the high churchmen were. 



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