* I am most grateful to Patrick Collinson and Nicholas Tyacke for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

¹ For a recent discussion-of this subject see O’Day, R., The English Clergy: the emergence and consolidation of a profession 1358–1642, Leicester 1979, 126–47Google Scholar.

² There are a number of valuable regional studies of puritanism, e.g., Marchant, R. A., The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York 1560–1642, London 1960Google Scholar; Richardson, R. C., Puritanism in North-West England, Manchester 1972Google Scholar; Haigh, C., ‘Puritan evangelism in the reign of Elizabeth I’, EHR, xcii (1977), 30–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sheils, W. J., The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough 1558–1610 (Northamptonshire Record Society, xxx, 1979)Google Scholar.

³ The surveys are discussed in Collinson, P., The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, London 1967, 280–2Google Scholar.

⁴ The survey is briefly considered in P. Collinson, ‘The puritan classical movement in the reign of Elizabeth V, unpublished London University Ph.D. thesis 1957, 521–2.

⁵ Manning, R. B., Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex, Leicester 1969, 199–200Google Scholar.

⁶ For Norden, see Ibid., 212–13 and Collinson, Puritan Movement, 454.

⁷ The Journals of all the Parliaments, S. D’Ewes, (ed.), London 1682, 349.

⁸ British Library (hereafter cited as BL), Add. 38492, fos. 91–2.

⁹ Ibid., fo. 91b. ‘Mr Hopkinson’ is referred to in a note about the payment of tithes in an unnamed parish which is almost certainly Salehurst.

¹⁰ Hopkinson resigned the rectory of Holton-cum-Beckering on 29 May 1571; Lincolnshire Record Office (hereafter cited as LRO.), RES 1571/3.

¹¹ BL Add. 39326(49), fo. 2718a; Alumni Cantabrigiensis, J. and J.A.Venn (eds.), Cambridge 1922–7, I, ii. 406. For Curteys see Dictionary of National Biography (hereafter cited as DNB.), s.v. Richard Curteys; Manning, Religion and Society, passim; Porter, H. C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, Cambridge 1959, 119–35Google Scholar. A Lincolnshire man, he had been Hopkinson’s immediate predecessor as rector of Holton-cum-Beckering; LRO., RES 1569/2 & 3. Hopkinson may have been a native of Lincolnshire also: the surname was very common in the county in the sixteenth century, no fewer than 40 Hopkinson wills being proved in the Lincoln consistory court in the period 1506–1600, Calendar of Lincoln Wills, C. W. Foster (ed.), (British Record Society, xxviii, 1902), 186.

¹² Public Record Office (hereafter cited as PRO.), REQ, 2/177/58. He was still commissary in Feb. 1573, East Sussex Record Office (hereafter cited as ESRO.), W/A 6/165. As commissary he would have presided over some of the clerical ‘exercises’ that Curteys had introduced into his diocese at the beginning of his episcopate; for these, see Manning, Religion and Society, 190.

¹³ BL Add. 39326(49), fo. 2718a. Hopkinson may already have been known to the patron of Salehurst, Sir Henry Sidney, among whose Lincolnshire tenants was a Robert Hopkinson of Maltby; LRO. LCC Wills 1572, i. 245.

¹⁴ The Seconde Parte of a Register, Peel, A. (ed.), Cambridge 1915, i. 114–15Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Dr Williams’s Library (hereafter cited as DWL.), Morrice B ii, fos. 39–47; only a part of Hopkinson’s contribution to the discussions is printed in Seconde Parte, i. 209–2.

¹⁶ Cf. F.M.Butler, ‘“The Erie of Leycester and his friendes” and ecclesiastical patronage in the Elizabethan era: a study of the religious patronage of the earls of Leicester, Bedford, Huntingdon, Warwick, Sir Francis Knollys, Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir Henry Sydney, Sir Philip Sydney and Sir Francis Walsingham’, unpublished University of London M.Phil, thesis 1979, 67–9.

¹⁷ That the survey was sent up to Sidney by an estate official at Salehurst is indicated by the memorandum on the reverse of the document referred to in note 9 above. That it was later forwarded by Sidney to Lewkenor is suggested by the endorsement: ‘To the worshipful and his very good cousin Mr Edward Lewkenor, give these.’ A distant Lewkenor-Sidney ‘cousinhood’ can be established by combining the pedigrees in Cooper, W. D., ‘Pedigree of the Lewkenor Family’, Sussex Archaeological Collections (hereafter cited as SAC), iii (1850), 89–102Google Scholar, and in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ii (1876), 161–5.

¹⁸ BL Add. 38492, fo. 91a.

¹⁹ See map on p. 349.

²⁰ Seconde Parte, i. 209–20. It was Hely’s custom to baptise children with names of ‘godly signification’; N. R. N. Tyacke,’ Popular puritan mentality in late Elizabethan England’, in Clark, P., Smith, A. G. R. and Tyacke, N. R. N. (eds.), The English Commonwealth, Leicester 1979, 77–233Google Scholar, at 78.

²¹ West Sussex Record Office (hereafter cited as WSRO.), Ep II/9/5, fo. 264b.

²² Ibid., 9/3, fo. 69a.

²³ BL Add. 39336, fo. 205a; ESRO., W/A 7/124, 133; WSRO, Ep 11/9/5, fo- 198a; Seconde Parte, i. 209–20.

²⁴ The surveys and the abstracts are printed in Seconde Parte, ii. 88–174.

²⁵ The list of impropriations provides the clearest indication of the ‘compass’ of the survey: vicarages in East Sussex that were not listed were presumably outside the region.

²⁶ BL Add. 38492, fo. 91a. Part of the passage is printed in Manning, Religion and Society, 181, where ‘judgment’ is rendered ‘indigence’.

²⁷ Collinson, Puritan Movement, 281.

²⁸ I hope to discuss this question elsewhere.

²⁹ Seconde Parle, ii. 94.

³⁰ Jones is described as MA in the list of clergy subscribing the oath in 1583; Lambeth Palace Library (hereafter cited as LPL.), CM XIII/51.

³¹ WSRO. Ep II/9/2, fo. 178a; 9/3, fo. 9a.

³² Ibid., Ep 11/5/2, fos. 56–60.

³³ Ibid., Ep I/66/1/1.

³⁴ Curteys, R., An Exposition of Certaynt Words of S. Paule, London 1577Google Scholar, preface. There are close parallels with the situation in York diocese in Grindal’s day; Collinson, P., Archbishop Grindal, London 1979, 207–8Google Scholar.

³⁵ Stephen Bathurst (Ewhurst), William Hopkinson (Salehurst and Warbleton), Denis Hurst (Alfriston), Thomas Kirkby (Guestling), John Large (West Dean), Thomas Maudesley (Iden and Warding) and John Miles (Heathfield).

³⁶ There is no direct evidence that Curteys took the initiative in getting Hopkinson presented to Salehurst but, having collated him to Warbleton, he was almost certainly on the lookout for a second benefice near at hand which his protege could hold in plurality. For Curteys’s connection with Burghley, see Manning, Religion and Society, 65–6, 69–70.

³⁷ For the influence of Burghley’s brother-in-law, Lord Keeper Bacon, upon appointments to crown livings, see R. O’Day, ‘The ecclesiastical patronage of the Lord Keeper, 1558–1642’, Trans. Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xxiii (1973), 89–109.

³⁸ Information about Sussex advowsons is from BL. Add. 39327–50.

³⁹ For the names of Curteys’s enemies in the county, see Manning, op. cit., 91–112.

⁴⁰ The incumbents of Chiddingly, Folkington and Ripe.

⁴¹ Cf. Manning, Religion and Society, 171–2, 186.

⁴² O’Day, English Clergy, 135.

⁴³ BL Add. 39333, fo. 237b; 39341, fo. 61a. Bathurst and Frewen were both nonsubscribers in 1583; LPL. CM XIII/51.

⁴⁴ Curteys, An Exposition, preface.

⁴⁵ BL Add. 39329, fo. 149a; Collinson, ‘Classical movement’, 444; PRO. PROB 11/97/21 (will of George Scott). It is of course conceivable that Scott’s patronage of Illenden owed nothing to any zeal for the reformation of the ministry. Illenden may simply have been a ‘local boy’ to whom he wished, for purely personal reasons, to show favour. Compare the case of another young Kentish graduate, James Gourley of Maidstone, who was presented to the Sussex vicarage of Warding in 1581. At first sight it appears that his preferment was due simply to the reforming zeal of Thomas Kirkby, rector of Guestling, who had acquired a grant of next presentation to Wartling from Lord Montague. Kirkby, a signatory of the 1576 testimonial to Curteys, was a learned and pious clergyman who seems to have had no private reasons for presenting Gourley to the living. However, on closer examination it transpires that his motives were complicated; for the man whom Gourley replaced at Wartling was Thomas Maudesley, one of Kirkby’s closest friends, who had resigned the living upon presentation to the rectory of Pett by Gourley’s brother-in-law, George Courthope. There can be no doubt that at some stage, and most likely through Maudesley’s mediation, Courthope (then living at Wartling) agreed with Kirkby that each would present the other’s nominee to the living in his gift. This was a fair exchange and a very satisfactory arrangement for both parties. Maudesley acquired Pett, a more convenient benefice to hold in plurality with Iden, and Gourley went to Wartling to be near his Courthope kinsfolk. At the same time the arrangement could be said to have contributed positively to the reformation of the ministry in East Sussex. One more graduate had settled in the shire and another, by exchanging a distant for a proximate second benefice, had expunged an unacceptable piece of pluralism. BL Add. 39343, fo. 125b; 39349, fo. 95a; WSRO. Ep N/5/3, fo. 91b; Kent Archives Office, PRC 32/34/37 (will of James Gourley, senior).

⁴⁶ BL Add. 39333, fo. 51b; 39334, fo. 160a. Large, a native of Lincoln, may have had long-standing links with Hopkinson; his partner in the presentation to East Dean was Thomas Brabon, possibly a member of a prominent Salehurst family of that name and hence one of Hopkinson’s parishioners; BL Add. 39349, fo. 177a; Victoria History of the County of Sussex (hereafter cited as VCH. Sussex), ix (1937), 220.

⁴⁷ Lewkenor was almost certainly a conscientious man: in 1579 the churchwardens of Rusper, where he had been rector since 1560, described him as ‘zealous in God’s word, as is well known, from the 20th year of King Henry the Eighth to this present day’; BL. Add. 39454, fo. 42a.

⁴⁸ The appointment of new curates at Pett and Firle is indicated by the appearance of new clerical witnesses to wills made in these parishes in the aftermath of the survey; ESRO. W/A 7/144, 201, 222; 8/58, 86, 225, 251, 253.

⁴⁹ See above, p. 351.

⁵⁰ BL Add. 38492, fo. 91a. Cf. Manning, Religion and Society, 176, where ‘Leame’ is rendered ‘Bane’ and the words’ in Queen Mary’s days’ are omitted. Although’ unlearned’, the curate of Burwash was not included in the black list.

⁵¹ BL Add. 39326(58), fos. 534–5.

⁵² See below p. 366, appendix.

⁵³ According to the returns of the 1585 visitation, there were 43 impropriated rectories in the 127 parishes in the archdeaconry of Chichester; Manning, Religion and Society, 184–5. Manning’s estimate of 75 impropriations in the diocese as a whole is too low: it ignores the ones in those parts of the archdeaconry of Lewes not comprised in the 1585 survey. Compared with other parts of England the situation in Sussex was not too bad: in Ely diocese impropriated rectories constituted over 60% of the total in 1603: Spufford, M., Contrasting Communities, Cambridge 1974, 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁴ BL Add. 38492, fo. 91a.

⁵⁵ VCH. Sussex, ix. 174.

⁵⁶ Calendar of Patent Rolls 1555–7, 440–1. Cf. Loades, D. M., The Reign of Mary Tudor, London 1979, 352Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ VVSRO. Ep II/5/4, fos. 34a, 39–40, 57–8.

⁵⁸ Before coming to Ticehurst Lever had been a chaplain to the bishop of Rochester, in whose diocese Tonbridge was situated, BL Add. 39326(59), fo. 799a.

⁵⁹ WSRO. Ep II/9/4, fos. 30b, 39b, 152a.

⁶⁰ Ibid., Ep II/5/6, fos. 264–5.

⁶¹ Calendar of Assize Records: Sussex Indictments, Elizabeth 1, no. 1760; BL Add. 39333, fo. 166b.

⁶² PRO. SP 12/210/2.

⁶³ Ibid., 210/2, 5; WSRO. Ep II/9/5, fo. 41b. Most of the men of substance in Peasmarsh are listed in the 1595 subsidy return; PRO. E 179/190/332, m.8.

⁶⁴ Cf. Collinson, P., ‘Cranbrook and the Fletchers’, in Brooks, P. N. (ed.), Reformation Principle and Practice, London 1980, 181–2Google Scholar.

⁶⁵ For parochial divisions in Kent see Seconde Parte, i. 238–9.

⁶⁶ WSRO. Ep II/9/3, fos. 63b, 66.

⁶⁷ Ibid., fo. 69a. In 1583 some Dallington parishioners had complained to the archdeaconry court about Bell’s failure to wear a surplice; Manning, Religion and Society, 214.

⁶⁸ He was designated ‘Scotus’ in the 1583 list of non-subscribers; LPL. CM XIII/51.

⁶⁹ Thomas Kirkby, rector of Guestling from 1571, came from Aughton; Thomas Maudesley, rector of Iden from 1576, came from Halsall; Humphrey Swift, named in 1583 as curate of All Saints’, Hastings, came from Ormskirk, BL Add. 39334, fo. 286a; 39337, fo. 30a; 39340, fo. 82a. LPL. CM XIII/51. Pye was a native of Halsall, which adjoins Aughton and Ormskirk; BL 39343, fo. 95b.

⁷⁰ He was vicar ofBexhill from 1567 and dean of Chester from 1580, retaining both livings until his death in 1589 at the age of 85; BL Add. 39326(64), fo. 961a; Neve, J. Le, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, Oxford 1854, iii. 264Google Scholar. Like his namesake of Iden he was probably a native of Halsall. Humphrey Swift was clearly his protege: when he resigned the rectory of Meeching in 1585 (perhaps to avoid censure for pluralism), it was Swift who succeeded him; BL Add. 39340, fo. 82a.

⁷¹ Thomson, J. A. F., The Later Lollards 1414–1520, Oxford 1965, 172–84Google Scholar; the map of Kent (p. 172) takes in the Sussex parishes of Salehurst and Wadhurst.

⁷² Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, xi. no. 1424; Elton, G. R., Policy and Police, Cambridge 1972, 88Google Scholar.

⁷³ For the grammar schools at Cranbrook, Maidstone and Tonbridge see Jordan, W. K., ‘Social institutions in Kent 1480–1660’, Archaeologia Cantiana, lxxv (1961), 73–7Google Scholar, and Clark, P., English Provincial Society from the Reformation to the Revolution: religion, politics and society in Kent 1500–1640, Hassocks 1977, 193–7Google Scholar. Unfortunately, no school registers survive for this period.

⁷⁴ James Stace, an unbeneficed clergyman in Lewes or Pevensey deanery who refused to subscribe in 1583, and William Attersoll, curate of Buxtcd 1591–1600, rector of Isfield 1600–40, organiser of puritan petitions in 1603 and well-known author of religious treatises. Robert Porter, curate of Burwash and a puritan activist in 1603, may have been a third. The Register of Tonbridge School, W. G. Hart (ed.), London 1935, 120; Rivington, S., The History of Tonbridge School, London 1925, 130–1Google Scholar; DWL. Morrice B ii, fo. 40a; Historical Manuscripts Commission (hereafter cited as HMC), Hatfield MSS, xv. 262–3; DNB., s.v. William Attersoll and John Stockwood. Stockwood (headmaster 1574–87) had been Hopkinson’s contemporary at St John’s College Cambridge and later his near neighbour at Brightling, where he was designated ‘preacher’ in 1573; ESRO. PAR 254/1/1/1, fo. 8a. The two divines had other things in common: both were translators of Beza’s works and protégés of the Sidney family.

⁷⁵ Robert Adams, rector of Fairlight from 1591, was a native of Maidstone; James Gourley was the son of a leading inhabitant of the town; Thomas Hely was the brother of Stephen Hely, jurat of Maidstone in 1603 and mayor in 1618, and possibly the grandson of Richard Hely, one of the founders of the grammar school; WSRO Ep II/5/7, fos. 83–4; KAO. PRC 32/34/37; PRO. PROB 11/40/37, 106/71; Records of Maidstone, K. S. Martin (ed.), Maidstone 1926, 8–9, 10, 18, 73.

⁷⁶ The only grammar schools in the eastern half of Sussex at this period were the pre-Reformation foundations at Cuckfield and Lewes, but they do not seem to have been adequately endowed: VCH. Sussex, 1907, ii. 414, 420; Goring, J. J., ‘The fellowship of the twelve in Elizabethan Lewes’, SAC, cxix (1981), 157–72Google Scholar, at 165.

⁷⁷ Cf. Hill, C., Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England, London 1964, 13–29Google Scholar; Hall, B., ‘Puritanism: the problem of definition’, Studies in Church History, 11, Cambridge 1965, 283–96Google Scholar; Christianson, P., ‘Reformers and the Church of England under Elizabeth 1 and the Early Stuarts’, in this Journal, xxxi (1980), 463–82Google Scholar; P. Collinson, ‘A comment: concerning the name Puritan’, Ibid., 483–8.

⁷⁸ LPL CM XIII/51; BL Add. 39331, fo. 8a.

⁷⁹ Seconde Pane, i. 221; BL Add. 39327, fo. 139a; Manning, Religion and Society, 104–8, 214–15; VVSRO. Ep 11/9/2, fo. 189a; 9/4, fo. 3a; 9/5, fos. 53a, 207a, 211 a.

⁸⁰ The gentry’s petition is printed in ‘Extracts from the MSS of Samuel Jeake’, SAC, ix (1857), 45–7Google Scholar; the ministers’ petition is partly printed in HMC, Hatfield MSS, XV. 390.

⁸¹ PROSP 14/3/83; ESROFRE4223, fo. ia. (I owe the second reference to Dr Graham Mayhew.)

⁸² Hatfield House, MS 101 (microfilm in BL), fos. 160–1. For the ‘fiery protestantism’ of the Collins family see J. J. Goring, ‘Wealden ironmasters in the age of Elizabeth’, in Ives, E. W., Knecht, R.J. and Scarisbrick, J. J. (eds.), Wealth and Power in Tudor England, London 1978, 204–27, at 220Google Scholar.

⁸³ HMC, Hatfield MSS, XV. 390.

⁸⁴ Based on information in BL Add. 39327–50. The proportion of graduates in the diocese as a whole was rather higher; BL Harl. 280, fo. 158. The situation was far worse in some other dioceses, e.g., Coventry and Lichfield, where the proportion of graduates in 1603 was under 25 per cent: O’Day, English Clergy, 132.

⁸⁵ Hatfield House, MS 101, fo. 161 a.

⁸⁶ Ordained deacon in 1566, he may have been born in c. 1543; he died in November 1604. Al. Cant., I, ii. 406; BL Add. 39349, fo. 32a.

⁸⁷ Lord, a product of that godly seminary, Emmanuel College Cambridge, was a man of singular piety who began his will with the words:’ Lord, guide me in all my actions…’; ESRO. W/A 27/43. His succession to Warbleton was assured because his father-in-law obtained a grant of next presentation to the living soon after his own institution; BL Add. 39444, fo. 7b. Cf. J. J. Goring, Church and Dissent in Warblelon c. 1500–1900, Warbleton & District History Group 1980, 8, 17.

⁸⁸ Cf. Rose, E., Cases of Conscience, Cambridge 1975, 175–6Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Hatfield House, MS 101, fo. 160b. The actual number given in the document is 1285: this was wrongly printed ‘2285’ in HMC, Hatfield MSS, XV. 262, and the error has been repeated in a number of secondary works; the correct number is given in Knappen, M. M., Tudor Puritanism, London 1965, 323Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ The commonalty’s petition is in ESRO. FRE 4223, fo. 26 (printed, with omissions, in ‘Extracts from the MSS of Samuel Jeake’, 47–8).

⁹¹ Peerson was evidently living in Peasmarsh when seeking ordination in 1589 and was still there in 1595 when the subsidy was assessed; ESRO FRE 4223, fo. ia; PRO E 179/190/332, m. 8.

⁹² See above, p. 358.

⁹³ Rom. xii. 2.

⁹⁴ Cf. Clark, English Provincial Society, 176.