THE HISTORY OF NONCONFORMITY IN PLYMOUTH. 49 
set times for prayer and thanksgiving, that continual watch be had 
over them for avoiding all profaneness, &c. whatsoever." 
It was in the reign of Charles I. that Plymouth Puritanism 
received its first check. Plymouth was one of the towns in which 
the desire for a preaching ministry had led to the appointment of 
lecturers, which was an ingenious device to supply the want of 
Puritan sympathizers among the parochial clergy, whence the 
Puritanic leaven had been rigorously weeded out. The corporation 
appointed the lecturers as well as the incumbents, and in September, 
1631, the king ordered that Thomas Forde, of Erixton, who had 
been expelled the University of Oxford for preaching against the 
stone altar set up by Dr. Fewens in Magdalen Hall Chapel, was 
not to be chosen in that capacity. The Mayor replied that the 
king should be cheerfully obeyed. Two years later more serious 
difficulties arose. There was then living here a certain Sir James 
Bagg, the contemptible tool of a contemptible master — the worth- 
less Buckingham — in whose interest he sought to use his official 
position in connection with the Customs and the Admiralty to 
govern the town. The character of this man is sketched in one 
word by himself. Writing to Buckingham he subscribes himself, 
' ' Your slave!" He seems to have been the constant fomenter of 
evil. In 1632 Upham, then vicar of St. Andrew, died. The cor- 
poration, in exercise of their undoubted right, appointed Alexander 
Grosse, the Puritan vicar of Plympton St. Mary. Grosse's institu- 
tion was refused by the Bishop, and the king illegally presented 
Dr. Aaron Wilson, a thorough-going Boyalist and Episcopalian. 
A connection so commenced could not prosper. Who was the 
aggressor I cannot say, but Wilson dragged the corporation before 
the Star Chamber on the pretence that the erection of the Hospital 
of Poor's Portion was an interference with his territorial rights ; 
and they not unnaturally sought to have a lecturer of their own 
views since they could not approve the vicar. Bagg came to 
Wilson's aid. He moved the king, who wrote to Bishop Hall that 
certain persons had been endeavouring to maintain a lecturer in 
Plymouth without the approbation of the incumbent ; and that the 
Bishop was not to admit any such, but to settle Thomas Bedford, 
and not permit him to be disquieted by Grosse, whom I hence 
gather to have been doing lecturer's duty. But the corporation 
were pertinacious ; and I have to suggest that the petition which 
was presented to the king in the following year, asking permission 
D 
