and as an entire change in the religious institutions of the country was intended, we may not uncharitably believe the assertion that every means of influence and intimidation was employed to secure the return of reactionary members. These efforts were crowned with complete success. The Houses had not sat for three weeks, when a bill was sent down from the Lords repealing all the Acts of Edward's reign concerning religion, including specifically those which permitted the marriage of priests and legitimated their offspring; and after a debate of six days it passed the Commons.1

1

The effect of this was, of course, to revive the statute of the Six Articles, and to place all married priests at the mercy of the Queen; and as soon as she felt that she could safely exercise her power, she brought it to bear upon the offenders. A day or two after the dissolution of Parliament she commenced by issuing a proclamation inhibiting married priests from officiating. The Spanish marriage being agreed upon and the resultant insurrection of Sir Thomas Wyatt being suppressed, Mary recognised her own strength, and her Romanising tendencies, which had previously been somewhat restrained, became openly manifested. On the 4th of March 1554 she issued a letter to her bishops, of which the object was to restore the condition of affairs under Henry VIII., except that the royal prerogatives as head of the Church were expressly disavowed. It contained eighteen articles, to be strictly enforced throughout all dioceses. Of these the seventh ordered that the bishops should by summary process remove and deprive all priests who had been married or had lived scandalously, sequestrating their revenues during the proceedings. Article VIII. provided that widowers, or those who promised to live in the strictest chastity,

1 1 Mary c. 2 (Parl. Hist. I. 609-10).-Burnet II. 255.

2 Strype's Eccles. Memorials, III. 52.

should be treated with leniency, and receive livings at some distance from their previous abode, being properly supported meanwhile; while Article IX. directed that those who suffered deprivation should not on that account be allowed to live with their wives, and that due punishment should be inflicted for all contumacy.1

2

No time was lost in carrying out these regulations. By the 9th of the same month a commission was already in session at York, which cited the clergy to appear before it on the 12th. From an appeal which is extant, by one Simon Pope, rector of Warmington, it appears that men were deprived without citation or opportunity for defence; and that this was not infrequent is probable from the proceedings commenced against offenders of the highest class, designed and well fitted to strike terror into the hearts of the humbler parsons. On the 16th a commission was issued to the Bishops of Winchester (Stephen Gardiner), London (Bonner), Durham, St. Asaph's, Chichester, and Llandaff, to investigate the cases of the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of St. Davids, Chester, and Bristol, who, according to report, had given a most pernicious example by taking wives, in contempt of God, to the damage of their own souls, and to the scandal of all men. Any three of the commissioners were empowered to summon the accused before them, and to ascertain the truth of the

1 Burnet II. Append. 264. According to Strype, Bonner's impatience did not wait for the royal injunctions, for in February he deprived of their livings all the married priests in his diocese of London, and commanded them to bring all their wives within a fortnight, in order that they might be divorced.-Memorials of Cranmer, Bk. III. chap. 8.

Julius III. issued a bull, 8 March, 1554, defining Cardinal Pole's legatine powers, among which was that of removing the excommunication from married clerks and legitimating their children, the fathers being removed from function and benefice, separated from their wives, and subjected to penance (Cardwell's Documentary Annals, I. 131). This was the course adopted for a time, but as the kingdom was not yet formally reconciled to Rome, the action had was under the local authorities.

2 Strype's Eccles. Memor. III. Append. 33.-In the same place (p. 31) may be found a copy of the summons served upon offenders of this class.

report without legal delays or unnecessary circumlocution. If it were found correct, then they were authorised to remove the offenders at once and for ever from their dignities, and also to impose penance at discretion. This was scant measure of justice, considering that the marriage of these prelates had been contracted under sanction of law, and, if that law had recently been repealed, that at least the option of conforming to the new order of things could not decently be denied; yet even this mockery of a trial was apparently withheld, for the congé d'élire for their successors is dated March 18th, only two days after the commission was appointed.' Neither party, in fact, had much ceremony in dealing with bishops. Five had been deprived under Edward VI.; under Mary there were fourteen deprivations, and under Elizabeth fifteen.2

During the summer the bishops went on their visitations. The articles prepared by Bonner for his diocese are extant, among which we find directions to inquire particularly of the people whether their pastors are married, and, if separated, whether any communication or intercourse takes place between them and their wives; also whether any one, lay or clerical, ventures to defend sacerdotal matrimony. Few of the weaker brethren could escape an inquisition so searching as this, and though some controversy arose, and a few tracts were printed in defence of priestly marriage, such men as Bonner were not

3

1 Burnet II. 275 and Append. 256.-Rymer (T. XV. pp. 376-77) gives a similar commission dated March 9, issued to Stephen Gardiner to eject the canons and prebendaries of Westminster in the same summary manner. The proceedings throughout England were doubtless framed on these models.

2 W. H. Frere, The Marian Reaction in its relation to the English Clergy, p. 24 (London, 1896).

Bishop Bird, of Chester, who was deprived March 20, 1554, repudiated his wife, became vicar of Dunmow, and then suffragan of Bishop Bonner, of London.Ibid. p. 23.

3 Burnet II. Append. 260.

4 Bishop Poynette wrote a book entitled "An Apologie on the Godly Marriadge of Priestes," in rejoinder to Martin's "Traictise declaryng and plainly prouying that the pretensed marriage of priestes and professed persones is no marriage,"

likely to shrink from the thorough prosecution of the work which whey had undertaken.

When the Convocation assembled in this year, it was therefore to be expected that only orthodox opinions would find expression. Accordingly, the Lower House presented to the bishops an humble petition praying for the restoration of the old usages, among the points of which are requests that married priests be forcibly separated from their wives, and that those who endeavour to abandon their order be subjected to special animadversion. This clause shows that many unfortunates preferred to give up their positions and lose the means of livelihood, rather than quit the wives to whom they had sworn fidelity, demanding, as we shall see, much subsequent conflicting legislation. The social complications resulting from the change of religion are also indicated in the request that married nuns may be divorced, and that the pretended wives of priests have full liberty to marry again.

Everything being thus prepared, the purification of the Church from married heretics was prosecuted with vigour. Archbishop Parker states that there were in England some 16,000 clergymen, of whom 12,000 were deprived on this account, many of them most summarily; some on common report, without trial, others without being summoned to appear before their judges, and others again while lying in jail for not obeying the summons. Some renounced their wives, and were yet deprived, while those who were deprived were also, as we have seen, forced to part with their wives. We can readily believe that the most ordinary forms of justice were set aside, in view of the illegal and indecorous haste of the proceedings against the married bishops described above, but Parker's estimate of the which was a reply to Poynette's previous work. Bale also issued a bitter attack on Bonner's Articles (Cardwell's Documentary Annals, I. 135), and Dr. Parker, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, published a voluminous rejoinder to Martin. 1 Wilkins IV. 96-7.

number of sufferers is greatly exaggerated. According to the latest investigator, Mr. Frere, the number of beneficed clergy deprived in London was 150, to whom perhaps about half as many unbeneficed may be added. At Canterbury, where the records seem complete, the number was 68; in Norfolk, 343. The registers elsewhere are mostly too imperfect to allow of satisfactory estimates, but the general conclusion is drawn that throughout the kingdom about one in every five or six beneficed priests was deprived, substantially all for marriage, and of these a certain proportion succeeded in being reconciled and restored.1 It is probable, therefore, that the list throughout England would not exceed three thousand; but this is sufficient to indicate that the privilege of wedlock had been embraced with considerable eagerness.

The proceedings in the case of John Turner, rector of St. Leonard's, London, would seem to show that the extremity of humiliation was inflicted on these unfortunates. Cited on March 16 to answer to the charge of being a married man, he confessed the accusation, and we find him on March 19 condemned to lose his benefice and be suspended from all priestly functions, to be divorced from his wife, and to undergo such further punishment as the canons required. The sentence of divorce soon followed, and on May 14 he was obliged to do penance in his late church in Eastcheap, holding a lighted candle in his hand and solemnly declaring to the assembled congregation "Good people, I am come hither, at this present time,

1 Burnet II. 276; III. 225-6.-Frere, op. cit., pp. 47, 49, 53, 77, 78.

A specimen of the form of restitution subscribed by those who were restored on profession of amendment and repentance has been preserved: "Whereas . . . I the said Robert do now lament and bewail my life past, and the offence by me committed; intending firmly by God's grace hereafter to lead a pure, chaste, and continent life . . . and do here before my competent judge and ordinary most humbly require absolution of and from all such censures and pains of the laws as by my said offence and ungodly behaviour I have incurred and deserved: promising firmly ... never to return to the said Agnes Staunton as to my wife or concubine," &c.— (Wilkins IV. 104.)