BOOK ing to the statute that for that purpose was published in the first year of his reign. The form of the King's letters Anno 1548. patents, whereby he constituted Farrar bishop, is extant in the register, dated from Leghes, August 1, in the second year of his reign. Some ac co unt of At this Bishop of St. David's I will stay a little: proving this Bishop. unhappy by his preferment unto a church, whose corruptions while he endeavoured to correct, he sunk under his commendable endeavours. He was an active man, and made much use of in public affairs in King Henry and King Edward's days; having been first a Canon of St. Mary's in Oxon. He was with Bishop Barlow when he was by King Henry sent ambassador to Scotland, anno 1535. Another time employed in carrying old books of great value from St. Oswald's, a dissolved monastery, as it seems, unto the Archbishop of York. And in the royal visitation in the beginning of King Edward, he was one of the King's visitors, being appointed one of the preachers, for his great ability in that faculty: and being chaplain to the Duke of Somerset, was by his means advanced to be bishop; and upon his fall he fell into great troubles. This Bishop, not long after his first entrance upon his bishopric, resolved to visit his diocese, like a careful pastor, hearing of very great corruptions in it, and particularly among those that belonged to the chapter of the church of Carmarthen; and chiefly Thomas Young, chaunter, after Archbishop of York, (who pulled down the great hall in the palace there for lucre of the lead,) and Rowland Merick, one of the canons, after Bishop of the said see of St. David's, and father to Sir Gilly Merick, that came to an untimely death, by being in the business of the Earl of Essex. These two, having been before commissaries of this diocese, had spoiled the cathedral church of crosses, chalices, and censers; with other plate, jewels, and ornaments, to the value of five hundred marks or more; and converted them to their own private benefit: and had sealed many blanks (sede vacante) without the King's license or knowledge. Whereupon the Bishop issued out his commission to his Chancellor for visiting the chapter, as well as the rest of the diocese. But the commission was, it seems, drawn up amiss by the said Chancellor, to whom the Bishop : IX. left the forming the draught for it ran in the old CHAP. popish form, and so the King's supremacy not sufficiently acknowledged therein; though he professed to visit in the Anno 1548. King's name and authority. This these two, in combination with his own ingrateful register, George Constantine, whom he had preferred, took their advantage of; not only to disobey the said commission, but to accuse the poor Bishop of a pramunire: for which he was fain to go down from London, whither they had before brought him up, to answer at the assizes of Carmarthen. And when, by reason of the molestations they gave him, and their detaining him in London, he could not be so exact in paying in the tenths, and first-fruits, and subsidies, due from the clergy of his diocese; they took hold of this as another crime to lay to his charge. And hereupon, in fine, he was kept in prison a 185 long time, and so remained when Queen Mary entered upon the government: upon which occasion he fell into the hands of the Pope's butchers: who at last, for maintaining the truth, sent him into his diocese, and burnt him at a stake. And thus these men became the instruments of his death. swayed by enemies. In their vexatious suits against this good Bishop, under- The Archtaken the better to conceal their own faults, our Archbishop bishop seemed to be engaged, giving too much credit to the ill Farrar's reports that Farrar's enemies raised against him, in a great heap of frivolous and malicious articles, exhibited to the King's council who appointed Sir John Mason and Dr. Wotton to examine them; though, I suppose, our pious Archbishop afterwards saw through this malice, and forbore any further to give influence to those that prosecuted this honest man: understanding by letters, which that afflicted man sent, both to him, and Bishop Goodrick, Lord Chancellor, his unjust vexations wrought by his adversaries. One whereof, I mean his register, remained register to that very popish Bishop that succeeded him; nay, and was assistant at his trial and condemnation. In short, hear what one writes that lived nearer those times, and might therefore be presumed to know more of these matters: "This was a conspiracy of his enemies against him, and Answer to "of wicked fellows who had robbed the church, kept Parson's concubines, falsified records, and committed many other Convers. o Sutclif's Threefold England. BOOK gross abuses." II. To conclude, I find, by a private letter written to John Fox, that these men, knowing how they Anno 1548. had wronged the good Bishop, came to him before his death, and asked him forgiveness; and he, like a good Christian, forgave them, and was reconciled to them. in Devon. CHAP. X. The Archbishop answers the Rebels' Articles. : Anno 1549. THE commons this year brake out into a dangerous Rebellion rebellion; and though they were once or twice appeased, and scattered in some places, yet they made insurrections in others and chiefly in Devon, where they were very formidable for their numbers. The reason they pretended was double. The one was, the oppression of the gentry in enclosing of their commons from them: the other, the laying aside the old religion; which, because it was old, and the way their forefathers worshipped God, they were very fond of. The Lord Russel, Lord Privy Seal, who was sent against them, offering to receive their complaints, the rebels sent them to him, drawn up under fifteen articles as before they had sent their demands in seven articles, and a protestation that they were the King's body and goods. In answer to which the King sent a message to them, that may be seen in Fox. They sent also a supplication to the King: to the which an answer was made by the King's learned counsel. I shall take notice only of the fifteen articles, unto which our Archbishop drew up an excellent answer at good length: for no man was thought so fit as he to open and unravel these men's requests, and to unfold the unreasonableness of them; and to shew what real mischief they would pluck down upon themselves and the nation, should all the decrees of our forefathers, and the six Articles, be revived again and what great injury religion would receive, should the Latin masses and images, and the worshipping the sacrament, and purgatory, and abbeys, : X. be restored ; and Cardinal Pole come home, and the CHAP. English Bible be called in, and such-like things, which their demands consisted of. This answer of the Arch- Anno 1549. bishop I judge worthy preserving; (and therefore, though somewhat long, I have laid in the Appendix ;) because Num. XL. it will shew his wisdom, learning, and the knowledge of the state of the kingdom that he was furnished with. I met with these writings in the manuscript library of Benet College, being the rough draught of them, all under the Archbishop's own hand. He charged them with ignorance in putting up such articles: and concluded it not to be their own minds to have them granted, had they understood them, but that they were indeed devised by some priests, and rank papists and traitors to the realm; which he would not so much as think of them. So that he gently told them, that he must use the same expression to them, that Christ did to James and John, " They asked. they wot not what." 66 count The Archbishop wrote this answer after the rout at Some acExeter given them by the Lord Russel, and the taking thereof. prisoners divers of their captains and priests, and between the condemnation and execution of Humphrey Arundel, and Bray, Mayor of Bodmin; whom he prayed God to make penitent before their deaths, to which they were adjudged. For which two the rebels, in one of their articles, had required safe conduct to make their grievances known to the King: as they had, in another article, demanded two divines of the same popish stamp, to be sent to them to preach, namely, Moreman and Crispin; who both seemed now, being priests of that country, to be under restraint upon suspicion: men, as the Archbishop told them, ignorant of God's word, but of notable craft, wilfulness, and dissimulation, and such as would poison them, instead of feeding them. Of Crispin I find little, but Crispin. that he was once Proctor of the University of Oxon, and doctor of the faculty of physick, and of Oriel College. Moreman was beneficed in Cornwal in King Henry's time, Moreman. and seemed to go along with that King in his steps of reformation, and was observed to be the first that taught his parishioners the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments in English; yet shewing himself in II. BOOK the next King's reign a zealot for the old superstitions. Hence we perceive the reason why the Archbishop charged Anno 1549. him to be a man full of craft and hypocrisy. In Queen Cardinal Pole. Mary's time he was, for his popish merits, preferred to be Dean of Exeter, and was coadjutor to the Bishop of that diocese, (probably then superannuated,) and died in that Queen's reign. Besides these two, there was another clergyman the rebels spent another article in speaking for, namely, Cardinal Pole: whom they would have sent for home, and to be preferred to be of the privy council. But Cranmer told them his judgment; first, in general, of cardinals, that they never did good to this realm, but always 187 hurt: and then in particular of this Cardinal, that he had read once a virulent book of his writing against King Henry, exciting the Pope, the Emperor, the French King, and all other princes, to invade this realm: and therefore that he was so far from deserving to be called home, and to live in England, that he deserved not to live at all. In fine, in this excellent composition of the Archbishop, his design was, to expose the abuses and corruptions of popery, and to convince the nation what need there was that such matters should be abolished, as the Pope's decrees, solitary masses, Latin service, hanging the host over the altar, sacrament in one kind, holy bread, and holy water, palms, ashes, images, the old service-book, praying for souls in purgatory: and to vindicate the English service, the use of the holy Scriptures in the vulgar tongue, and other matters relating to the reformation, made in King Edward's time. Which he doth all along with that strain of happy perspicuity and easiness, that one shall scarcely meet with elsewhere; mixed every where with great gravity, seriousness, and compassion. The Archbishop pro mons to be made rebellion. The Archbishop thought it highly convenient, in these cures ser- commotions round about, to do his endeavour to keep those people, that were still and quiet as yet, in their duty. And for against the this purpose had sermons composed, to be now read by the curates to the people in their churches, to preserve them in their obedience, and to set out the evil and mischief of the Miscell. D. present disturbances. I find in the same volume where Cranmer's answers aforesaid are, a sermon against the seditions arising now every where, with the Archbishop's |