ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



loafing out-of-works. Every one of these statements is doubtful or untrue, 

 for (i) Henry probably suppressed some of the chantries ; (2) What was done 

 j" ^ 547-8 was only a first instalment, successive commissions of inquiry being 

 issued all through his reign ; (3) Mary did not restore a single chantry : on 

 the contrary, fresh commissions of inquiry were issued during her reign, and 

 she herself gave leases of chantry lands to laymen ; (4) In Elizabeth's reign 

 there were no chantries left to suppress — the bones had been picked too clean 

 for that ; (5) There is evidence that some of the old chantry priests remained 

 as pensioned clergy, performing service and administering the sacraments in 

 the localities where they are supposed to have been thrown out of work, and 

 the presumption is that many more of them did so than we have actual 

 proof of 



The series of commissions of inquiry relating to Lancashire which were 

 issued in the time of Edward VI and Mary are recorded in an appendix 

 (pp. 96-8 infra), ^^^ and other evidence on the matter will be found in the 

 accounts of the churches in the topographical section of this work. 



Many of the chantry priests continued to enjoy their pensions long into 

 the reign of Elizabeth, being paid by the separate local or county receivers 

 of the various parts of the duchy."* It is evident from the contemptuous 

 way in which some of them are later referred to as ' old popish chantry 

 priests ' that a portion of them remained recalcitrant ' papists.' But such a 

 statement applies to only a portion, possibly a small portion, and others 

 remained on active service as priests administering the sacraments in the 

 chapelries.'" 



As to the larger question of the general attitude of the parochial 

 clergy and of the laity of Lancashire towards the various phases of the 

 Edwardian Reformation there is a remarkable dearth of information. There 

 does not appear to have been any appreciable displacement of the clergy 

 at any time during Edward's reign, i.e., such a displacement as would 

 argue revolt against the reforming measures of authority."* Nor is 

 there any record of any protest on the part of the laity against the 

 stripping of churches or the abolition of the chantries. Does this prove 

 that the clergy of the county had become Protestant ? By no means. It 

 merely proves that the clergy clung to their livings, casting conviction to 

 the winds. 



How then was the county taught the reformed doctrine ? Of the 

 actual process we catch few glimpses, but these, though mainly retrospective, 

 are significant. An entry in Edward's Diary under 18 December, 1551, 

 affords the earliest form of the institution which was later to grow into the 



'" By the aid of the list it will be possible in future to arrange the existing skins of returns in accordance 

 with the actual commissions, and thus to give a scholarly account of both the suppression of the chantries and 

 the sale of church goods. 



'" It is on account of this method of payment that there is no general account of the payment of pensions 

 preserved among the records of the duchy. In his annual account the receiver-general of the duchy only 

 accounts for the net sum received by him from each separate or local receiver, and the subsidiary accounts of 

 these local receivers have not survived. 



'" A direct statement to this eiFect is contained in the chantry lease No. z (Duchy Rec. bdle. 5) with 

 regard to the chapel of Bailey, near Ribchester, where it is said of Robert Taylor, late incumbent of the late 

 dissolved chantry there, that the 'said incumbent doth at this day [1548] celebrate there and doth minister to 

 the inhabitants adjoining at such times as the curate of the parish church cannot repair to them for the floods 

 of the river' (See also Strype, Eccl. Mem. ii (i), 100). 



'" Details as to the clergy will be found in the accounts of the parish churches. 



47 



