There is also extant another set of inventories for the Hundred of Buckingham, dated 6 May 1553, containing lists of the church goods delivered back again to each parish by the king's commissioners.[1] Here at any rate is no lack of uniformity : each church might have a chalice and paten, a table-cloth, and a surplice ; perhaps two of each, but nothing further. Everything else had been sold for the king's use. It was no doubt a little trying to the feelings of churchwardens and parishioners when within a year they had again to provide at their own expense [2] most of the ornaments of which they had been so recently deprived.
There are but few records of the discontent or the joy which these changes must have aroused in many minds : only a sign here and there may be noticed. In November 1 549 three men of Edlesborough were committed to the Fleet ' for assembling of companies to withstand payment of tithes,' [3] which looks like an outbreak of the old Lollard spirit of the county : while on the other hand, in the same year, John Bisse of (High) Wycombe was released from the Fleet to make open and solemn declaration of his fault in having ' spoken and done incon- veniently against the taking down of images abused ' in his parish church. [4] In 1550 the inhabitants of Great Marlow sent up a complaint to the Privy Council about ' certain wrongs that had been offered them ' possibly in connection with the alienation of church lands, as the matter was referred to the Court of Augmentations.[5] In June 1553 a letter was sent by the Privy Council to the gentlemen of the county of Buckingham to recommend to them ' Mr. Knockes the preacher' [6]: it is probable that he found no lack of hearers. A month or so later the open preaching of Calvinism became dangerous.
At the beginning of the new reign we may notice again a few signs of the times. Fisher, parson of Amersham, was summoned before the Privy Council in August 1553 as a 'seditious preacher' on account of a sermon lately delivered [7] ; at this date seditious preaching could scarcely imply anything else except some expression of dissatisfaction at the accession of Mary and the probable changes it involved. The vicar of Burnham was also summoned about the same time. [8] In the parish church of Wing, however, the old order was restored with joyful alac-
- ↑ Exch. Q. R. Church Goods (7 Edward VI.) 1/20.
- ↑ The Churchwardens' Accounts at Wing show that at the beginning of Mary's reign the candlesticks, vestments, etc., were purchased out of the ordinary funds of the parish (ff. 55-60).
- ↑ Acts of the Privy Council, ii. 2.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 147.
- ↑ Ibid. ii. 461.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 283.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 321, 328.
- ↑ Ibid. iii. 361.
pretation of rubrics. For instance, in the church of Edlesborough mentioned above the present tense shows the pyx still in use : at Chearsley the mention of one that ' honge ' over the altar shows that it had lost its place of honour. Five churches were said to have candlesticks on the altar ; at least eighteen had no candlesticks left at all ; at Hambleden they had been sold with the pyx, censers and some old vestments, ' for reparation, for the relief of the poor, and the comfort of the parish.' At Buckingham too it is definitely stated that the censers had been sold : in thirty cases they were absent without explanation offered. The lists therefore do give some clear evidence of disuse : but of use they prove very little. No one who had really read the lists would suppose that everything named in them without comment was in use.
