ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Horsley between the churchwardens and people on the one side and a 

 minister presented by the committee in 1645 on the other. But the 

 late incumbent, Mr, Twisse, whom the parishioners favoured, was him- 

 self put in by Parliament in 1643,' ^^'^ ^^^ '^^ royalist but sat in the 

 Assembly of Divines. The right of presentation to East Horsley lay 

 with the archbishop, who was dead in 1645. Compton may be pro- 

 bably added. In addition to Mirth Waferer's reflections upon the lords, 

 he was also accused of an enormity committed in the company of Dr. 

 Nicholas Andrewes, who was vicar of Godalming and rector of St. Nicho- 

 las' Guildford. Four inhabitants of Godalming were prepared to swear 

 that the two had gone together to Southampton to eat fish, and had 

 drunk the pope's health and called him ' that honest old man.' We are 

 tempted to ask. Were the four witnesses there disguised as ' drawers ' ? 

 Such pitiful rubbish was thought good enough to be presented to Parlia- 

 ment, and seriously considered. Andrewes was a pluralist, but the real 

 secret of the denunciation of him was that he was not a Calvinist. 

 He would not preach at burials and baptisms, he would not admit a 

 Calvinist lecturer into his church, he said that week day sermons were 

 only an occasion for women to come together to gossip, and ' that the 

 silliest creatures had the longest ears.' All which was gravely told to 

 the Parliament, with the farther enormity that when he did preach he 

 said, ' Fie upon the doctrine that the greatest part of the world shall be 

 damned." The prevalent Calvinism of Godalming could not abide such 

 opinions. He was deprived and imprisoned, and according to Walker 

 died of the hardship of his imprisonment. 



The complaints against Dr. Andrewes are set out at greater length 

 than most of those preserved, but they are all much alike. It is not 

 the fact that the ' scandalous ministers ' were as a rule very scandalous. 

 Whatever fault might be found with Laud's administration, we may re- 

 member that he had been wholly without fear or favour in visiting 

 offences against morality, and that he and the bishops under him had for 

 some years been doing their best to correct irregularities of conduct 

 among what was not a wholly satisfactory body of clergy, of whom the 

 worst were undoubtedly the nominees of laymen. Drinking and tip- 

 pling in alehouses is often alleged. In the absence of specific evidence 

 about this we may remember that it might merely mean frequenting 

 what answered to the club, where yeomen and gentlemen even were 

 accustomed to meet. There is too much evident animus displayed to 

 make us believe that it was always drunkenness that could be proved. 

 The charges were some of them ridiculous, for instance the Rev, John 

 Allen, curate of Capel, was accused inter alia of having written a charm 

 against the toothache. One curious point is connected with his story. 

 The tithes of Capel, which had once belonged to the priory of Reigate, 

 were wholly in lay hands, and the impropriator paid the curate what he 



* Commons Journals, iii. 344. 



2 Loseley MSS. A paper dated only 1642. A complaint of the parishioners of Godalming, etc. 



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