ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Surrey born archbishop, George Abbot, belonged of course to this con- 

 forming Puritan party. He was no doubt born and educated in the 

 opinions which he subsequently held. To the poor clothiers of Guild- 

 ford and Godalming, the class from which he sprang. Protestantism and 

 Calvinism were convertible terms. Arminianism they had only heard of 

 as a heresy ; and Anglicanism, whether as understood by Parker, by 

 Hooker, by Bancroft, by Andrewes, by Laud, or as now understood, was 

 unintelligible to them. Such a state of things was the lasting result of 

 the ruin of the moderate reformers under Edward VI. and Mary. When 

 a man of this class, like Abbot, became a man in authority, he was as 

 keen in the suppression of nonconformity as Laud himself. The rule of 

 the Calvinists in power was the more dangerous, because it aimed at 

 enforcing uniformity of opinion, whereas Laud tried to enforce chiefly 

 uniformity of practice. Yet perhaps the latter produced more immediate 

 dissatisfaction, because it could be enforced, while the former could not. So 

 far as Surrey was concerned there was little nonconformity which attracted 

 attention in those days. There was certainly widespread Calvinism every- 

 where. The changes in favour of outward decency in the care of 

 churches and their furniture, and above all the removal of the Communion 

 tables from the body of the church to the east end, do not seem 

 to have provoked any special resistance in Surrey as they did in some 

 places. This last change, we must remember, fell to the lot of Dr. Curie to 

 carry out chiefly, after the judicious rule and immense personal influence 

 of Andrewes had paved the way by peaceful means. When Laud carried 

 out his metropolitan visitation of the whole province of Canterbury, 

 which began in 1634, he found little to complain of in the whole diocese 

 of Winchester ; only, it is said, that there was a small increase of 

 Romanist recusants in some places, which means that the laws were less 

 rigorously executed and concealed recusants showed themselves, and three 

 or four ministers were lax in their catechizing of children. The whole 

 diocese, including Surrey, had been brought into very good order.' 



There had been one pleasing feature of the period under review, 

 the foundation of institutions which to some extent took the place of the 

 destroyed monasteries, with regard to the needs of the time. Practical 

 religion, and philanthropy enlightened for the age, was manifested by the 

 foundation of Archbishop Whitgift's Hospital at Croydon in 1596 for 

 poor men and women and for scholars ; of Edward AUeyn's College of 

 God's Gift at Dulwich, begun in 161 3, for poor men and women and 

 for scholars ; and of Archbishop Abbot's Hospital of the Blessed Trinity 

 at Guildford, for poor men and women, incorporated in 1622. 



To revert however to the more contentious side of ecclesiastical 

 history. As in secular so in ecclesiastical matters the county of Surrey 

 was close under the eye of authority, and the form of churchmanship 

 favoured by the authorities of the time was likely to be enforced in the 

 greater part of the district. The archbishop lived in Surrey ; the diocesan 



* Rymer, Fadero, xx. zi Feb. 1636-7. 

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