tion towards the repair of the churches, but it is not easy to get detailed information on the subject. The Churchwardens' Book at Wing gives us perhaps a fair average specimen of changes that had to be made, and the cost involved in carrying them out. In the year 1660 the Kings' Arms were purchased for £10 15s., and put up at a cost of 32s. : the church was painted and 'sentenced' for £28 ; other work done cost £5 9s. ; a new cloth (perhaps for the pulpit [1] ) was bought for £5, a hearse cloth for £2, a prayer book for 14s. 6d., and a Bible for £3 0s. 0d., amounting altogether to £56 10s. 6d.., a considerable outlay at that time in a small country church.[2] In some places order would only be gradually restored: in 1699 when Browne Willis came to Bletchley he found the altar in a ' dinner posture '[3] out in the middle of the chancel, and the same arrangement might have been seen at Grandborough and Tattenhoe even in 1847.[4] At Little Horwood the archdeacon ordered the purchase of a book of Common Prayer in 1684,[5] as if up till then they had only a shabby or mutilated copy.
A good specimen of the ideal which an ordinary good Churchman of the Restoration period would set before him is found in the will of George Bushope,[6] vicar of Edlesborough from 1664 to 1707, who left £50 to his successors on condition that they should preach a special sermon on the Sunday before Lent (presumably to set forth to the parishioners their duties at that season) and should read prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent and all through Holy Week, and administer the Blessed Sacrament on Good Friday ; there were special bequests in the same will to poor widows who should attend the services in Lent regularly. It may have been that the clergy were growing remiss in their performance of week-day services towards the close of this good vicar's life, and he hoped by this legacy to supply his successors with an additional incentive.
The imaginary 'Popish plots' of 1678 led to a fresh return of recusants, and a list of fourteen names in Buckinghamshire was drawn up in connection with the proposed ' Bill for the Removal and Disarming of Papists.' [7] The best known name on this list is that of Sir John Fortescue of Salden ; and it is stated that Sir Francis Throgmorton of Weston Underwood and Rowland Dormer, heir of the family once settled at Wing, were no longer living in this county. [8] Among the various redistributions of Romanists involved in this scheme, it was
- ↑ There was a ' new communion cloth and napkin ' bought in 1657, and a ' new carpet for the communion table ' in 1664, so that this new cloth of 1660 cannot have answered either of those purposes
- ↑ Churchwardens' Book, 1660-1.
- ↑ W. Cole in Add. MS. 5821, f. 200. The roof was at that time out of repair, and the windows still stopped up with brick and mortar.
- ↑ Lipscomb, History of Bucks, iii. 251 and 489. He may perhaps be trusted to report correctly of his own time.
- ↑ MS. Records of the Archdeaconry of St. Albans.
- ↑ Add. MS. 5840, f. 33d.
- ↑ Hist. MSS. Com., Rep. xi. pt. ii. p. 232.
- ↑ The descendants of the youngest son of the first Lord Dormer were still living at Great Missenden, and the parish register contains entries of their names from 1696 to 1733 as ' baptized by their own Popish priest ' (Records of Bucks, vi. 316-7). Upon these the peerage finally devolved.
