Page:VCH Bedfordshire 1.djvu/396

A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE and many other persecutions. 1 Another came from an ' aggrieved parishioner ' at Caddington. 2 A complaint also came from the parish- ioners of Wootton and Quinton (Northants) against Jeremy Stephens, the prebendary of Biggleswade. 3 It does not necessarily follow, because these petitions were many and urgent, that they were really the voice of the people ; but there can be no doubt, in the light of later events, that there had been discontent in the county, and that the influence of Cal- vinistic teaching was widespread. Dr. Pocklington and Hugh Reeve were arrested and deprived of all ecclesiastical preferments early in 1 641 4 ; John Gwyn, the vicar of Cople, 5 and Giles Thorne of St. Mary's, Bedford, 6 in 1642. Subsequent deprivations were as much political as religious ; the charge brought against the deprived was as a rule simply ' malignancy.' The exact number of these is not easy to obtain, as they have to be collected from different sources. But the largest number that can be made out for Bedfordshire, between 1643 and 1648, reckoning all doubtful cases, is twenty-six, and there were certainly over twenty at the lowest estimate. 7 If we add to these the names of those deprived before the civil war began, it will be no exaggeration to say that about one-fifth of the clergy of this county were ejected either for Royalist sympathies or for refusal to conform to the modes of Church service and government ordained by Parliament. It is only fair to say that not all those who were thus deprived were left quite destitute. On petition to the local ' Committee for Plundered Ministers ' 8 it was possible to secure one-fifth of the profits of the sequestered rectory or vicarage for the wives and children of the late incumbent ; and this pension was actually secured by Mrs. Thorne, and also by the children of the rector of Tillbrook. 9 An entry of 25 February 1 644 10 orders a rector to pay ' what the Parliament ordered ' out of the tithes to a curate from whom the living was sequestered. But that many suffered extreme poverty and distress there is little doubt. One of the hardest cases was that of Hugh Reeve of Ampthill, who 1 Hist. MSS. Com. p. 94, 5 Aug. 1641. 2 Ibid. p. 53, 23 Feb. 3 Ibid. iv. 74. 4 Shaw, Hilt, of the Engl. Church under the Commonwealth, ii. 296, 297. 6 Ibid. p. 298. 6 Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 45. Christopher Slater, vicar of Leighton Buzzard, would probably have come under the same condemnation if he had not died this year; his parishioners said he was a ' pro- moter of superstitious innovations,' so that they had to pay a lecturer besides to instruct them in the way of godliness (ibid. v. 4). 7 In Add. MSS. 15669-71, a rough minute book of the 'Committee for Plundered Ministers' names sixteen livings as sequestered ; two other incumbents are summoned to appear, but the result is not recorded. Walker in his Sufferings of the Clergy names six other cases. The parish register of Toddington records in 1654 the burial of Thomas Claver, rector, 'but unjustly sequestered.' Other such registers might possibly yield more ; none of the other lists pretend to be complete. The arch- deacon, John Hacket, and Jeremy Stephens, prebendary of Biggleswade, are not counted above, because they only lost part of their preferment. 8 There had been a local committee for Bedfordshire ' for the discovery of malignant ministers ' appointed by the Central Committee for Plundered Ministers in 1643 (Shaw, Hist, of the Engl. Church under the Commonwealth, ii. 194). 9 Add. MS. 15670, 4 Apr. 1646 ; although he had 'inveighed with fearefull curses' against the Parliament and said there were none in it but 'rogues and rascalls.' (Add. MS. 15669, 5 July 1645). 10 Ibid. 25 Feb. 1644. 338