ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



county. It was a priest who, on the proclamation of Queen Anne at Croston 

 in July, 1533, cried out that ' Quene Katheryn shulde be Queue, and as for 

 Nan BuUen, that hore, who the Devill made her Quene ? and as for the 

 Kynge shall not be King but on his beryng ; ' nevertheless there can be no 

 doubt that he voiced the opinion of large numbers of laymen."" Grievances 

 not directly connected with the royal divorce and the ecclesiastical changes 

 which followed in its train swelled the rising tide of discontent,'"'' but the 

 spectacle of the faith of which the king was entitled Defender ' piteously and 

 abominably confounded,' the dissolution of the smaller monasteries in 1536,''" 

 and the fear of even more sweeping measures, opened the flood-gates. Lanca- 

 shire, however, as is shown below, played only a secondary part in the Pilgrimage 

 of Grace. The south and west of the county did not join in the insurrection, 

 though even there the loyalty of the commonalty, if not of the gentry, was 

 considered somewhat doubtful. No profound indignation can have been 

 aroused by the suppression of Holland and Burscough priories ; they had 

 fallen into utter decay, and at no time had they filled the same place in 

 the life of their neighbourhood as the northern houses in their wilder 

 surroundings. 



The priories of Conishead and Cartmel were included in the first 

 suppression, and the great abbeys of Furness and Whalley fell after the 

 Pilgrimage of Grace. The remaining houses did not long survive. The 

 results of the disappearance of the monasteries were not wholly beneficial. 

 A good deal of charity, indiscriminate it may be, came to an end and the 

 new owners of their lands raised rents. The parish churches which had 

 remained conventual or quasi-conventual to the last — Lytham, Penwortham, 

 Cartmel, and Ulverston — were left in an unfortunate position as compared 

 with those appropriated churches in which vicarages had been endowed. 

 It is true that the successors of chaplains or curates paid by the convent, 

 though appointed without episcopal institution by the new impropriators of 

 the rectories, were in future ensured life tenure, and so became ' perpetual 

 curates ' ; ^'^ but they had no income except what the impropriators allowed 

 them, and this was miserably low.'" 



The order for the removal of superstitious objects from the churches 

 was not more popular in Lancashire than the suppression of the religious 

 houses. A few months after his appointment to the new see of Chester 

 (1541) Bishop Bird informed the king that for lack of doctrine and 

 preaching the inhabitants of his diocese were much behind His Majesty's 

 subjects in the south. ' Popish idolatry ' was likely to continue by reason that 

 divers colleges and places claiming to be exempt from the bishop though 

 they had, in accordance with the proclamations, taken down idols and 



'" Derb. Corns. (Chet. Soc), 13. '" See 'Political History.' 



"' The Act of February, 1536, provided for the suppression of monasteries with less than jfzoo a year. 

 According to the revaluation of clerical property made in 1535 [Vahr Ecd. printed by the Rec. Com.) five 

 Lancashire houses were under this limit : Burscough, Holland, Cockersand, Cartmel, and Conishead. Royal 

 Commissioners appointed 24 April, made a new survey of them, and on their report all but Cockersand were 

 suppressed. For Cockersand see 'Religious Houses,' p. 157. 



"' Makower, Const. Hist, of Engl. Ch. 332. 



'™ Until the middle of the seventeenth century the curate of Cartmel had nothing but what the bishop's 

 farmers allowed him ; Vot. Cestr. 499. The whole salary of the curate of Ulverston in 1 560 was j(^lo ; ibid. 

 535. The curate of Lytham had then nothing but a grant from the Committee of Plundered Ministers ; 

 ibid. 447. 



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