46 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Coverdale was the bishop during the reign of Edward VI. Dodds, 
the dean of Exeter, and Tremayne, proctor for the Exeter clergy, 
were among the leading advocates of Puritan views in the Con- 
vocation of 1562. It was but a few years after this that, according 
to Neal, the Puritans were shut out of the Church by sequestration, 
imprisonment, and the revocation of their preaching licenses ; and 
that several of the leading ministers so silenced agreed that, under 
these circumstances, it was their duty to break off from the public 
churches, and provide places where they might worship God ac- 
cording to their own consciences. Hence there was erected the 
first Presbytery in England — that of Wandsworth ; and Puritanism 
first became Nonconformist. 
Plymouth does not seem to have given occasion to any disputes. 
I have shown that there was a strong Puritan feeling in Devon. 
That Cornwall shared therein is proved by a petition sent up to 
Parliament, in which it was stated that one hundred and forty 
clergymen in that county were unable to preach a sermon ; that of 
one hundred and sixty churches the greater number were supplied 
by men guilty of the grossest sins ; and in which Parliament was 
asked to dispossess these " dumb dogs and ravenous wolves," and 
appoint faithful ministers in their stead. 
The absence of reference to Plymouth in the voluminous records 
of the ecclesiastical disputes of this time shows that the Plymouth 
folk were well of one mind. That mind being Puritan, Puritanism 
here did not become Nonconformist until a much later date. The 
evidence is clear. The corporation had the patronage of the living, 
and exercised large control over church matters. And of the 
Puritan character of the corporation (a self-elected body, be it 
remembered) there can be no doubt. Take the two leading mem- 
bers. Sir Francis Drake was the son of a Puritan clergyman, who 
fled from Devon into Kent, because he had been called to account 
under the Six Articles Act. Sir Erancis himself was a strong 
Puritan, and a friend of Fox the martyrologist, whom we find 
him addressing as his " loving and faithful sonne in Christ Jesus." 
And that Sir John Hawkins, Drake's famous kinsman, was also of 
Puritanic sympathies we may gather from his great esteem for 
Emilius Paget, the silenced Puritan vicar of Kilkhampton. Erom 
these two we may judge the rest. 
But we do not rest here. The Plymouth work of those days 
was to fight Spain; and Plymouth men lived for little else. 
