quenter of ale-houses ; at Ashendon a ' quarreller and unquiet man, not fit to serve any cure.' At Chesham the minister would not wear the surplice ; at Thornton there was no surplice to wear, nor even a cloth for the communion table. At Cheddington they had no sermons ; at Water Stratford it was complained that ' they lack their quarterly sermon,' showing what was the minimum requirement in this par- ticular. At Edlesborough they had ' no table of commandments ' a decoration which had evidently already become necessary. Week-day services, and especially the reading of the Litany on Mondays, Wednes- days, and Fridays, seem to have been quite customary : only one or two omissions of these are noticed.
It seems that the churches of this county were generally poorly endowed at this time : several which had been completely appropriated by religious houses, and had no vicarage ordained, were left without any regular endowment.[1] It is noticed in the account of the four churches of this county which belonged to the diocese of London [2] that they were ' not able to maintain a preacher ' besides the vicar : the average income of a parish priest seems to have been still £5 to £10 a year. [3]
Four churches were lost to the county during this reign : Creslow and Filgrave, with the free chapels of Okeney and Petsoe. The last two, as well as Creslow, had become sinecures, owing to the shifting of the population. The church of Filgrave was still available for use in 1 58 5, though the services had ceased through the neglect of the rector ; but it is probable that nothing was done to supply the need, for in 1636, when it was visited by delegates from the High Commission Court, there was no roof remaining, and trees were growing on the walls.[4]
This county was connected by one slight link with an important event at the beginning of the next century. The pilgrimage made to St. Winifred's well in Flintshire by several members of the families of Vaux and Digby, joined by Rookwood and others of his fellow- conspirators and conducted by Father Garnett, began and ended at Sir Everard Digby 's house at Gayhurst about a month before the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot.[5] Robert Catesby had visited the same house about a year before. The details of the further development of the plot, and the flight of the conspirators, belong to the history of other counties. Something of suspicion, however, seems to have clung for a long time to the house at Gayhurst. Nearly twenty-five years later the foolish words of a boy, a mole-catcher's son who lived in the neighbour-
- ↑ Especially the churches which had once belonged to Nutley Abbey Chetwode, Barton Hartshorn, Hillesden, Chearsley, Chilton, Dorton, as well as Biddlesden, Boarstall, Brill, Little Lynford had still no endowment in 1652 at the time of the Surveys then taken.
- ↑ Winslow, Abbots Aston, Grandborough and Little Horwood.
- ↑ See records of the archdeaconry of St. Albans, in the watch-loft of the abbey church.
- ↑ The last institution to Creslow was in 1554 (Add. MS. 5840, f. 10) and to Petsoe in 1560 (Linc. Epis. Reg. Inst. Bullingham, 19). Petsoe was returned as ' nee ecclesia nee populus ' in 1561 (Add. MS. 5839, f. 73d-74). Filgrave appears in the Visitation of 1585 mentioned above ; for its state in 1636 see S. P. Dom. Chas. I. cccxlvi. 39.
- ↑ Jardine, True History of the Gunpowder Plot, 180 and elsewhere.
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