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A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE been actually required by Parliament; but in 1643, at the outbreak of the war in this neighbourhood, all the clergy were called into Leicester to take the covenant, and those who refused were to be sent up to London and have their estates sequestered. 808 Others were accused individually before the Com- mittee for Plundered Ministers, and the work of sequestration by this agency went on till 1649. A few lost their benefices as late as 1651, when required to take the Engagement, and among these were one or two who had been actually approved by Parliament and appointed, like Job Grey, the earl of Kent's brother, in the place of ejected royalists.* 07 Here and there the happy accident of possessing a friendly patron enabled some incumbents to continue almost unmolested in the performance of their ordinary duties. The parish registers of Stonton Wyville show us that Joseph Holt went on marrying couples according to the Prayer Book in his church even after 1655, aided and abetted by Mr. Justice Brudenell, who lent his presence to the ceremony to satisfy the requirements of the existing statutes ; and in March, 1660, the same rector signed a licence for eating flesh in Lent as naturally and simply as if that holy season were still being observed throughout England. A few of the ejected clergy may have deserved to lose their benefices, being pluralist and non-resident, 208 or else actually negligent and undesirable ; !09 and it may be that the trials of their wives and families have been in some cases a little overdrawn ; yet there can be no doubt that the losses and suffer- ings of loyal churchmen at this time were very real. The Committee for Plundered Ministers would occasionally issue an order for payment of a fifth of the profits of some sequestered benefice to the wife of the ejected incum- bent ; 210 but it is not easy to find out whether such orders were obeyed. Three of the ejected rectors, at Loughborough, Desford, and North Kil- worth, refused to yield their parsonage houses to the intruders, or encouraged their parishioners not to pay tithes; 211 but they could gain nothing by such resistance. Nathaniel Tovey, who had been ejected from Lutterworth, was fortunate enough to get a presentation to Aylestone in i654, 213 and died there in peace ; but such cases were rare. The military operations in this county between 1643 and 1646 brought losses of another kind. Soldiers were quartered on the rectors, and some- 106 Nichols, Leu. iii, App. p. 33. The clergy are said to have come on the whole freely and cheerfully, but there were a good many sequestrations in this year. m Job Grey was appointed to Wigston's Hospital in 1644 in place of John Meredith, and to Ibstock for a short time in 1647 ; Shaw, Hist, of the Engl. Ch. under the Commonwealth, ii, 306. For his displacement and its cause, see S.P. Dom. Interr. cxxiii, 88 (505). Ralf Hotchkin of Knipton, who petitioned for restora- tion in 1660, was certainly rector till 1654 (Nichols, Leic.'ii, 237, notices the burial of his wife in that year). John Angel, confrater of Wigston's, another 'godly and orthodox divine,' and vicar of St. Nicholas', went out at the same time as Job Grey. 108 John Waybred, whom Walker alleges to have been ejected from Skeffington, appears by the parish registers to have kept that benefice till his death ; but he lost Lowesby in 1645. Nichols, Leic. iii, 347. 109 Of Francis Squire, of Queniborough, even Walker fears that he was ' not a very good man.' William Richardson, of Garthorpe, had been before the High Commission Court in 1635 on a charge of immorality. S.P. Dom. Chas. I, ccbci, fol. 284. Old Thomas Pestell of Packington, who wrote such pathetic letters about the sufferings of his two ejected sons, and is said to have been threatened by the Parliamentary soldiers for his use of the Prayer Book, had been found guilty in 1631 of vexing his neighbours with forged citations, and of violent and abusive language against Sir John Lambe and others ; and had before this been bound over to keep the peace at quarter sessions. S.P. Dom. Chas. I, cell, 6. He was not, however, among the actually ejected, as he resigned Packington in favour of his son before 1644. Nichols, Leic. iii, 927. 10 Five such orders are found in Add. MSS. 15669-71 ; to the wives of the incumbents of Church Langton, North Kilworth, Ibstock, Loddington, and Saddington ; another is quoted by Nichols from the Commons' Journ. to the wife of Thomas Rawson of Hoby. Nichols, Leic. iii, 268. rn Add. MSS. 15669-71. Nichols, Leu. iv, 28. 382