ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



Angier did not stand alone in feeling the results of Laud's influence, any 

 more than did Bridgeman himself. Richard Mather, minister of Toxteth, 

 was suspended in 1633, and although restored six months after, was finally 

 suspended by Dr. Cosin in the visitation made in the following summer by 

 the archbishop of York's visitors. In 1635 he accordingly sailed for America. 

 In 1634, too, Murray, the warden of Manchester, exhibited a libel against 

 Johnson, one of the fellows of the college of Manchester, for not wearing the 

 surplice in Gorton Chapel."' 



Besides the instances of persecution already quoted, there are others to 

 which specific data of time or place cannot be assigned. John Harrison, 

 afterwards the well-known Presbyterian rector of Ashton-under-Lyne, was, 

 when at the chapel of Walmsley in Bolton parish, ' exceeding harassed.' '"' 

 William Rathband was silenced after exercising his ministry, though contrary 

 to law, for many years at a chapel (Blackley) in Lancashire.*"" 



In his own eyes Laud's work was justified by its success. When, in 

 January, 1636-7, the archbishop of York made another report on the state 

 of the northern province, he was able to state that Bridgeman had brought 

 most of the churches in his diocese to uniformity. It sounds strange to 

 find Neile in the same report claiming that in twenty-eight years he never 

 deprived any man, though he was a great adversary of the Puritan faction.*"^ 



This necessarily imperfect sketch of the Puritan side of the Church his- 

 tory of Lancashire under the first two Stuarts brings out very strongly two 

 facts : (i) The extremely moderate action of the successive bishops of Ches- 

 ter ; (2) The paucity of militant irreconcilable Nonconformists. The question 

 therefore naturally arises. Why should the majority of the Lancashire clergy 

 have become so decidedly Presbyterian as they did during the Civil War 

 period .? The answer would appear to be twofold : (i) Many of the clergy 

 simply acquiesced in the action of the State and accepted Presbyterianism as 

 tamely as their predecessors had accepted the various changes of religion from 

 Henry VIII to Elizabeth ; (2) Those who became convinced and zealous 

 Presbyterians did so because of the appeal which a Presbyterian system in- 

 evitably makes to the merely selfish clerical class instinct. In no county of 

 England did so large a proportion of the clergy become convinced and 

 aggressive Presbyterians as in Lancashire, and in few counties was there 

 less antecedent cause, either in the form of episcopal persecution or of 

 actual Presbyterian propaganda. 



At the meeting of the Long Parliament, petitions on grievances poured 

 in from the counties and separate petitions from the Puritan clergy. Some 

 such lay petition from Lancashire was presented on 9 February, 1 640-1 ;*"' 

 but of a clerical petition we hear nothing. For some time indeed the county 

 gave little promise of the important part which it was afterwards to play in 

 the religious domain. In the first two years of the Long Parliament's 



''' These instances are traceable to the influence, not of Bridgeman, but of Richard Neile, archbishop of 

 York, and it is evident from Neile's report to the king on I Jan., 1633-4, ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ "'^f .''='"5 *°''=^'^ 

 by the imperious Laud. This report of Neile's is important as affording an account of the religious state of 

 the county at the time, and also an insight into the attitude of the executive in London ; S.P. Dom. Chas. I, 

 vol. 259, No. 78. 



'^ Brook, Lives of the Puritans, ii, 443. 



""Ibid. 470-1. 



*" S.P. Dom. Chas. I, vol. 345, No. 85. The archbishop referred evidently to beneficed clergy. 



"' Com. 'J omit, ii, 8l ; Rushworth, Hist. Coll. iv, 188. 



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