¹ Woodford's friend, Alderman John Fisher, or his son Samuel, a clergyman. Fisher had been a central figure in the Northampton godly scene since at least 1604, when, as churchwarden of All Saints’ parish, he had been presented to the Church court accused of omitting to report the corporation's godly incumbent, Robert Catelin, for preaching that ‘all that use the signe of the crosse in baptisme ar antechristians and that all that doe kneele at the sacramt of the supper doe comitt idolatrie’ (PDR, CB37, fo. 163r). He next appears as master of the house of correction, which had been founded in 1615 as a work creation scheme to relieve the poor, who ground malt. It had been initially situated underneath the Conduit Hall, but by the 1630s had been relocated near to the Bell Inn in Bridge Street. Before Archbishop Laud's visitation of 1635, Sir John Lambe had received a Church court denunciation of Fisher, who had by that time apparently expanded his sphere of competence to include the jail. Deponents accused Fisher of selecting certain prisoners and townspeople in 1634 to congregate in a side chamber, where he ‘expounded Scripture or preached unto them’ and then prayed for the king, and for the queen ‘that god would bring her out of her false Heresie and Confound all Dumbe Dogges wch led her to Antixt’ (TNA, SP16/308/52). It is therefore likely that the layman Fisher is preaching here (with dubious legality), and again on 27 September 1640 while mayor. The ODNB details two sons called Samuel whose Oxford educations are suspiciously identical and may have been confused. One was chaplain to Sir Arthur Haselrig and a later Quaker writer, the other a godly minister in 1640s Shropshire: S. Villani, ‘Fisher, Samuel (bap. 1604, d. 1665)’ in ODNB; S. Wright, ‘Fisher, Samuel (1605/6–1681)’ in ODNB; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 108, 115, 177–178; VCH Northamptonshire, III (London, 1930), p. 35.

² John Reading, Woodford's master and patron, was an Inner Temple barrister. He had married Dorothy Morgan, the daughter of Francis Morgan of Kingsthorpe near Northampton, in 1616. Morgan was a judge in the sheriff's court of London and the patron of the conformist cleric Dr Samuel Clarke at St Peter's, Northampton. The Readings’ children included Nathaniel and John, both of whom were Inner Temple barristers: Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 135–136; Longden MS, 2 November 1608; Inderwick, F.A. and Roberts, R.A. (eds), A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records (London, 1896–1936), pp. 291–292, 327, 331Google Scholar. Reading enjoyed contacts with the puritan colonists of Massachusetts. In late 1630, John Winthrop had entrusted to him the legal preparations necessary to settle his estate before emigration. Reading wrote the following year to Governor Winthrop concerning the will of another emigrant, Isaac Johnson; the will included Winthrop, Reading, and John Hampden as executors. In 1631, acting as executor, Reading had presented Edward Reynolds, a moderate Laudian with godly connections, to the living of Braunston. The same year he received a legacy from Christopher Sherland, Recorder of Northampton: W.C. Ford et al. (eds), The Winthrop Papers, 6 vols (Boston, 1929–1992), II, pp. 49–56, 318–319, and III, pp. 36–37; R. Thompson, ‘Johnson, Isaac (bap. 1601, d. 1630)’, in ODNB; F.J. Bremer, ‘Winthrop, John (1588–1649)’, in ODNB; Longden MS, 11 August 1631; TNA, PROB/11/10.

³ William Fletcher of Old, perhaps a solicitor (Diary, p. 235): PDR, CBA63, fo. 306.

⁴ The Swan Inn in the Drapery had been listed since at least 1585 and much public business was transacted there. The county gentry met there on 14 September 1637 to co-ordinate their response to the crown's forest policy and John Bernard met Woodford there on business on 20 October 1637. It was used as a base by Sir Gilbert Pickering during his election campaign for the Short Parliament in March 1640, and by the petitioners supporting the Grand Remonstrance on 21 January 1642. After 1672 it was used as a Presbyterian meeting house before being destroyed in the Great Fire of 1675: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 306–307; BRO, St John (Bletso) MSS, DDJ 1369; TNA, SP16/489/15; Isham, Diary, p. 318.

⁵ Robert Mulshoe, lord of the manor of Finedon, was the son-in-law of the godly lawyer Robert Tanfield, who bequeathed him law books in his will. His son and heir was Tanfield Mulshoe. With John Syers of Loddington, who also married a Tanfield daughter, he was the overseer of the will of Joseph Hill, rector of Loddington and a Church court official. It is not known what office is here being referred to: Isham, Diary, p. 150, n. 14; TNA, PROB/11/55; Diary, p. 196, n. 372; Longden, Clergy.

⁶ Possibly Robert Kirkham of Fineshade Abbey; the office has not been identified: Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 90; TNA, SP16/261/117.

⁷ Thomas Freeman of Cranford.

⁸ Woodford's assistant, Hatton Farmer of Towcester, went on to become Northampton town clerk (1658) and town attorney (1660). He witnessed the will of John Loe in 1641 and was a beneficiary of the will of Woodford's lawyer friend, Henry Goodere. Hatton's mother was Woodford's sometime creditor: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 70–71; TNA, PROB/11/189.

⁹ Hannah's uncle, Christopher Haunch, lived in the parish of Cranford St Andrew, where in 1637 he witnessed the will of Thomas Freeman. In 1647, he made charitable donations to the poor not only of Cranford but of a group of parishes centred on Wellingborough – Irchester, Wollaston, and Doddington. His will was witnessed by Woodford's clerk, Thomas Pickering: TNA, PROB/11/109; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, G211; third series, B131.

¹⁰ William Spencer was a member of Lord Edward Montagu's moderate puritan circle. Montagu presented him to the rectory of Scaldwell in 1617 and in 1630 William Piers, Bishop of Peterborough, licensed him to read the Kettering lecture, but it is clear that the Book of Sports (1633) was the last straw for this moderate divine and he abandoned the earlier compromise. In 1634 he was prosecuted in the Court of High Commission for ceremonial nonconformity and for not only refusing to read the Book but for preaching against it: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 124, 130; TNA, SP16/266/54.

¹¹ Woodford means the plague, which also doubled the normal death rate at adjacent Higham Ferrers for the years 1637 and 1638. The disease did not spread to Northampton town until 4 March 1637/38 (according to Dr Clarke) or 17 March 1637/38 (according to Woodford): Diary, p. 189; A.N. Groome, ‘Higham Ferrers elections in 1640: a Midlands market town on the eve of civil war’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 2:5 (1958), pp. 243–251.

¹² Possibly Edward Chadwick, who occurs in the parish accounts from 1628 and served as sidesman in 1635 and bailiff of the town in 1651: Vestry Minutes, p. 21; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 562.

¹³ James Fryers was the son of Thomas Fryers, mayor in 1590. He was an active member of the vestry at All Saints’ parish 1623–1628, acting as an assessor for various parish rates. He was also one of the town's sergeants: Sheils, Puritans, p. 141; Vestry Minutes, pp. 16–21.

¹⁴ Possibly the Johnston who seems to have been acting as parish clerk on 24 March 1639.

¹⁵ Henry Burton, who, along with William Prynne and John Bastwick, had been condemned by the Court of Star Chamber for criticizing the religious policies of the Laudian regime: Gardiner, History, VIII, pp. 226–234.

¹⁶ Woodford purchased these items in Northampton: Diary, p. 109.

¹⁷ Robert Lambe had been appointed to the rectory of Cranford St John by the patron, Bishop John Williams of Lincoln: Longden MS, 7 February 1629.

¹⁸ Francis Freeman was a leading member of the active godly grouping at Wilby, and related to Thomas Freeman, whose will he witnessed. As patron of Wilby (with Benjamin Cave and John Lord), he had presented Francis Austin as rector in 1609 but he supported the new vicar, Dr John ‘Ever-Out’ Everard, in a Star Chamber case in 1623 when Austin challenged Everard's possession of the living. Everard was an unusually outspoken godly critic of the Spanish Match. Freeman (with Woodford's cousin Robert Ragdale and John Hackney) was presented in 1630 to the Church courts, accused of gadding to hear the famous puritan minister Thomas Hooker preach at Great Bowden in Leicestershire: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton wills, second series, G211; Longden MS, 27 July 1609; E. Allen, ‘Everard, John (1584?–1640/41)’, in ODNB; R.M. Smuts, ‘Rich, Henry, first earl of Holland (bap. 1590, d. 1649)’, in ODNB; PDR, CB61, unpaginated (1630); Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 155 and note.

¹⁹ Perne's conversion occurred during his fellowship of St Catharine's College, Cambridge (1622–1627), when the prominent godly divine Richard Sibbes was the master: J. Fielding, ‘Perne, Andrew (c.1595–1654)’, in ODNB.

²⁰ Richard Trueman was the son of the godly Northampton saddler of the same name. He had been the vicar of Dallington near Northampton since his appointment by the Hampshire justice of the peace Sir Henry Wallop in 1625. He had not previously been in trouble with the courts and had dedicated a published sermon to his patrons, Lord Robert (now deceased) and his son, Lord William Spencer. The former, at least, had a reputation as a patron of godly ministers. The sermon stated that these were the biblical last times, in which ordinary men must not be afraid to criticize those in power as John the Baptist had criticized King Herod: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 23–24; Truman, Richard, A Christian Memorandum wherein is Handled the Christian Doctrine of Reproof (London, 1629), p. 85Google Scholar.

²¹ A brief was a royal mandate recommending contribution towards a charitable appeal. The aim of the appeals in the parishes mentioned, Cranford St John and the exempt prebendal jurisdiction of Nassington, was the repair of their steeples: Tate, W.E., The Parish Chest: a study of the records of parochial administration in England (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 120–125Google Scholar; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 144v; Pevsner, Northamptonshire, p. 310; Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 19Google Scholar.

²² This refers to Humphrey Ramsden, a Laudian layman who wrote to Sir John Lambe on 20 March 1639 (TNA, SP16/414/163) from Dr William Isaacson's house at Woodford, Essex. Isaacson's father, Henry, was a conformist connected with Wren and Andrewes (P.E. McCullough, ‘Isaacson, Henry (bap. 1581, d. 1654)’, in ODNB). William was the rector of Woodford from 1619 and of St Andrew's by the Wardrobe, London, from 1629, where Lambe himself was buried in 1646 (J. Fielding, ‘Lambe, Sir John (c.1566–1646)’, in ODNB). In his letter, Ramsden referred back to his time of residence in Northampton in 1637–1638. A second document listed in the CSPD (TNA, SP16/474/80, wrongly dated 1640) is the ‘story herein enclosed’ mentioned in the letter: that is, Ramsden's information on the activities of Northampton puritans between 18 May 1637 and New Year's Day 1638, which should correctly be shown as an enclosure to it. The information came from personal experience as well as from local conformist contacts (Woodford has Ramsden arriving on 27 August 1637 and last refers to him on 26 November). Ramsden had heard that Lambe loved the ‘ancient ceremonies’ used in the primitive Church and now practised by the leaders of the English Church, to which he had been himself converted at St John's College, Cambridge. Ramsden had attended the college (as Lambe had before him) between 1629 and 1637 (see Venn), during the conformist masterships of Owen Gwynn and William Beale.

²³ Richard Lane was a Middle Temple bencher with court connections. He had been elected Recorder of Northampton in 1632, having served as deputy to the previous incumbents, Sir Henry Yelverton and Christopher Sherland. However, unlike his predecessors he was not one of the godly. He was appointed attorney general to the Prince of Wales in 1635, defended the Earl of Strafford in 1641 and the twelve imprisoned Laudian bishops in 1642, and the latter year deserted his post as recorder and joined the king at Oxford. The king appointed him Lord Keeper in 1646, but he died in exile in Jersey: D.A. Orr, ‘Lane, Sir Richard (bap. 1584, d. 1650)’, in ODNB; Prest, Barristers, pp. 230–232, 240–252, 276–277, 374–375.

²⁴ Francis Rushworth, apothecary, was granted his freedom of the borough in 1631, when he was described as hailing from Coventry. He and his wife, Joan, were central figures among the Northampton godly: Book of Orders, p. 17.

²⁵ Daniel, John Reading's ungodly brother: Diary, p. 336. Daniel was also a lawyer. He was accused by the corporation of illegal malting in 1641 and in 1642 appointed the (to Woodford) religiously imperfect James Lewis to the living of Duston. In 1648 he represented the corporation and by 1650 had been appointed town attorney. He was married to Mary Harvey, and at his death in 1659 was very wealthy: Book of Orders, pp. 13, 67, 87, 100, 108; Foster; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northampton 1618, pp. 98–99; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 345; TNA, SP23/108, p. 113; TNA, PROB/11/294.

²⁶ John Danby, attorney, had served as Bailiff of Northampton in 1605, chamberlain in 1615, churchwarden of All Saints’ in 1623, and Mayor of Northampton in 1629 (and would do so again in 1639), had had a seat assigned to him in 1634–1635 when the chancel was rebuilt, and had witnessed Thomas Pilkington's will in 1637. His daughter married John Bullivant, vicar of Abington. His will of 1651 (proved 1654) was witnessed by Woodford's clerk, Thomas Pickering, and instructed that he be buried in the chancel at All Saints’ as close as possible to his first wife, Sarah: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 552, 561, 567; TNA, PROB/11/232.

²⁷ Chapman (b. 1591) was the son of Thomas Chapman of Old. A graduate of Christ's College, Cambridge, Stephen had been the vicar of East Budleigh, Devon, since 1631; he was ejected during the Civil War: Venn.

²⁸ Abraham Ventris's inn, the Hind (or Hart) in the Market Square, had been listed since at least 1585 and was often used for official business such as meetings of the Church courts: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp, 306–307.

²⁹ William Perkins, a former soldier who was the host of the Swan Inn in Northampton: Diary, pp. 141, 219.

³⁰ One of Woodford's creditors, a Londoner: ibid., pp. 302, 303.

³¹ The George Inn had been listed since at least 1585 and was situated on George's Row on the south side of All Saints’ churchyard: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 306–307.

³² Garner rose from being a member of the Common Council of Nottingham to be town chamberlain in 1643 and sheriff of the borough by 1646: Records of the Borough of Nottingham, 9 vols (Nottingham, 1882–1956), V (ed. W.T. Baker, 1900), pp. 215, 220, 280, 430.

³³ George Coates was rector of St Peter's, Nottingham from 1617 to 1640; a godly minister, he resisted the erection of a Laudian rail around his communion table in 1636: Marchant, R.A., The Puritans and the Church Courts in the Diocese of York, 1560–1642, (1960), pp. 186Google Scholar, 193–199, 299.

³⁴ As part of Bishop Francis Dee's first triennial visitation (July 1637) he commissioned from Drs Samuel Clarke and Robert Sibthorpe a survey of the churches in the western half of his diocese. These deputies insisted on railed east end altars, in line with Dee's expressed requirements from 1634 onwards, and, indeed, the survey revealed that most parishes had by now complied. The commissioners also ordered the reception of communion there, kneeling, by minister and congregation. In addition, they drastically reorganized church interiors to accommodate the novel, altar-focused, worship and insisted on other practices such as the minister's reading of the second or communion service at the altar and the reception of communion by newly married couples: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 81–82, 109–118; J. Fielding, ‘Dee, Francis (d. 1638)’, in ODNB; PDR, Church Survey Book 5.

³⁵ Isaiah 59:15.

³⁶ The Justice Seat, or principal forest court, was held in Northampton's Market Square. In his history of the town, Henry Lee said that the court was set up on Bakers’ Hill (or Corn Hill) to the north of the Market Square: VCH Northamptonshire, III, p. 25; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 570–571; Top MS, p. 104.

³⁷ Gregory Dexter (fl. 1581–1657), lord of Knightley's manor in the parish of Old, was the son of Stephen Dexter (d. 1632) and his wife, Ann (née Turland). Stephen was the brother of Woodford's mother, Jane. Gregory married Isabel (1587–1667) and his heir was Gregory junior, the New England resident. Gregory senior is last mentioned in the will of Dr John Twickten, rector of Corby, a Church court official, 1622–1635. In 1657 Twickten made a bequest to him and to his grandson, Stephen, who had been born in Massachusetts, but not to the Baptist minister, Stephen's father, Gregory junior: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, H, fo. 33; VCH Northamptonshire, IV (London, 1937), pp. 202–203; Longden, Clergy; NRO, Old parish registers.

³⁸ Dr Samuel Clarke had been recruited to the Church courts in 1615 by Chancellor John Lambe and had established himself as an adherent of Lambe's brand of avant-garde conformist churchmanship. He had also been promoted by Bishops Richard Neile and John Overall and by Laud himself, who placed him in charge of the diocese in 1634 during a vacancy, and appointed him a commissary for his metropolitical visitation in 1635. He had been chaplain to Prince Charles and King James and had been supported by the Countess of Denbigh, the Duke of Buckingham's sister. He was a friend of Richard Steward, Clerk of the Closet to Charles I: J. Fielding, ‘Clarke, Samuel (1582–1641)’, in ODNB; PDR, CBA63, fo. 333; Fincham, K. and Tyacke, N., Altars Restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547–c. 1700 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 186–187CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Charles Newton was curate of All Saints’, 1632–1639, and jail preacher from 1635, in which year he was reported to be prepared to lose his place rather than read the Book of Sports. He appeared before the Court of High Commission on 8 October 1637 (Diary, p. 122), but the content of the charges is unknown; Ramsden accused him of administering to sitters, not bowing at Jesus’ name, and editing the Prayer Book: TNA, SP16/308/52; TNA, SP16/474/80.

⁴⁰ William Burkit was Clarke's son-in-law and an official in the Peterborough Church courts; in contrast, his brother Miles was one of the most recalcitrant resisters of Laudian policy in the county: Longden, Clergy; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 105–107.

⁴¹ Bishop John Williams of Lincoln had been suspended from his office in July 1637 after having been ‘framed’ on trumped-up charges relating to his time as Lord Keeper, partly because he opposed the altar policy: Foster, A., The Church of England 1570–1640 (London, 1994), p. 70Google Scholar. Laud and Lambe played the key roles in his downfall; however, Williams is an unlikely hero for the godly: see Fincham and Tyacke, Altars Restored, passim; M.D. Slatter, ‘A biographical study of Sir John Lambe c. 1566–1646’ (unpublished BLitt thesis, University of Oxford, 1952), p. 62.

⁴² Humphrey Ramsden stated that Ball administered to at least four unknown sitters, but his view of the magistrates was blocked; Rogers administered to four sitters, and his usher, William Swale, although only a bachelor of arts, administered, without surplice, to four. Newton likewise administered to Nathaniel Benbow (haberdasher), William Bott (linen draper), and Thomas Pendleton (shoemaker). All were members of the Northampton godly but only Benbow had form with the Church courts. He resided in Clarke's parish of St Peter, where Christopher Young was curate, and had served as town bailiff. As early as 1618 Sibthorpe had ordered him to receive communion kneeling. As churchwarden in 1635, he had joined in a presentment of several men accused of ringing the bells at the burial of a notorious drunkard. The following year, in defending himself against a charge of refusing to receive communion, he reportedly claimed that ‘he did refuse to receive the Communion for that the minister did require him to come and receive the same at the rayles of the altar’ and protested that ‘hee is willing to receive the same soe that the Co[mmun]ion table be brought downe into the body of the Chauncell as he conceaveth is required by the auncient order of this Church’: PDR, CBA63, fo. 333r–v; PDR, CB48, fo. 69r–v; PDR, CBA63, fo. 266r; TNA, SP16/474/80; TNA, PROB/11/185.

⁴³ Peter Farren, baker and member of the Northampton godly, and Francis Rushworth were the churchwardens for All Saints’ parish. At Dee's visitation in July the communion table had stood altarwise with its short ends pointing north–south. By turning it east–west the wardens were ensuring that it was an altar no longer: TNA, SP16/474/80.

⁴⁴ The passage beginning ‘Glory be to the Father’ in the Prayer Book service.

⁴⁵ ‘[Heu] quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore qui redit exuvias indutus Achilli’ ‘[Alas], how greatly changed from that Hector who came back arrayed in the armour of Achilles!’: Virgil, Aeneid, II, lines 274–275. William Martin was an unbeneficed minister; by 1641 he was preacher at Horton: Anon., A Certificate from Northamptonshire. Touching pluralities. Defect of maintenance. Of not preaching. Of poor ministers (London, 1641), p. 5.

⁴⁶ Mary, the wife of Samuel Crick, Woodford's landlord. They owned a haberdasher's shop.

⁴⁷ Ann (‘Nan’) Spicer was the widow of George Crick.

⁴⁸ John Loe (d. 1642) was an ironmonger, and (with his wife, Ann) part of the godly scene in Northampton. Woodford and Daniel Reading acted as overseers of Loe's will, while William Spicer, Thomas Crutchley, and Hatton Farmer, served as witnesses. Loe was a freeman of the borough by 1640: TNA, PROB/11/189; NRO, Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 3501.

⁴⁹ Daniel Rogers was the godly master of the free school. He had gained an MA from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1631, and was the grandson of the godly Essex minister Richard, and half-brother of the diarist Samuel. He was associated with the Knightleys of Preston Capes (Thomas Dugard met him there in 1633) and a key member of the Northampton godly (he witnessed Thomas Martin's will in 1644). In 1641 he subscribed to William Castle's missionary effort to convert native Americans and in 1642 preached the Wellingborough lecture. By 1646 he was minister at Wootton and by 1658 of Stoke Bruerne. He married first Dorothy, daughter of Lawrence Ball, and, second, Martha, the daughter of John Reading: Webster, Godly Clergy, pp. 55–56, 233; Webster, T. and Shipps, K. (eds), The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 1634–1638, Church of England Record Society XI (Woodbridge, 2004), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar; D.K. Shearing, ‘A study of the educational developments in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1561–1700’ (unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Nottingham, 1982), p. 350; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 166 n. 24, 186–188, 255, 226 n. 9; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, A178, and fourth series, Book 10, p. 110; British Library, Add. MS 23,146, fo. 21r; Longden, Clergy.

⁵⁰ Thomas Morse had reported that in 1555 Gregory Crow had been shipwrecked on a voyage to Kent and had been forced to jettison all his goods but retained his New Testament. Having found his money among the wreckage he threw it away, stating ‘If the Lord will save our lives, he will provide us a living’. Rescued by Morse, a merchant operating out of Antwerp, he related his story to the townsmen there, who duly donated money and clothes to him: Foxe, J., Actes and Monuments of These Latter and Perillous Dayes Touching Matters of the Church, ed. Cattley, S. R., 8 vols (London, 1841), VIII, pp. 148–149Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Charles I revived the medieval forest laws (which had fallen into desuetude) as an expedient to raise revenue without recourse to Parliament. Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, was made chief justice of the forests and placed in charge of the process in the areas where it was enforced – Essex, the forest of Dean, and the three Northamptonshire forests of Rockingham, Whittlebury, and Salcey. This took two forms: first, from 1635 the forest courts were revived to prosecute trespasses against the forest – the Swanimote for lesser offences, the Justice Seat for greater. More controversially, from 1637 the boundaries of the royal forests were arbitrarily extended to their medieval limits, one observer stating, with minimal exaggeration, that the bounds of Rockingham forest were extended from six miles to sixty. It is clear that the scheme was primarily intended to be a windfall tax on the rich or, as Pettit described it, ‘quasi-legal extortion’: Royal Forests, pp. 83–88, 93 (quotation).

⁵² That is, Sir Christopher Yelverton. Yelverton's father, Sir Henry, was a Jacobean attorney general, and Sir Christopher had in 1636 entertained Charles I at his Easton Maudit estate. Sir Christopher's will contained an unusually lengthy godly preamble and he and his wife, Ann (the daughter of Sir William Twisden of Kent), supported godly ministers such as Edmund Calamy and the Calvinist bishop Thomas Morton. He was obliged to pay £200 to purchase a pardon for disafforestation, and was later a very obstructive ship money sheriff: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 22–23; TNA, PROB/11/217; Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 90; Isham, G., Easton Maudit and the Parish Church of Saints Peter and Paul (London, 1962)Google Scholar, passim.

⁵³ Henry Allen (and his wife, Helen) and Thomas Watts were friends of Woodford's living at Easton Maudit: Book of Orders, p. 46.

⁵⁴ The unidentified Mr Eccleston: see Diary, pp. 170, 229.

⁵⁵ Woodford's friend Thomas Pentlow of Wilby, who should not be confused with his kinsman and namesake, who lived at Broughton: see Introduction, p. 37.

⁵⁶ Woodford's friend Mayor John Gifford.

⁵⁷ This is the town's not the county's quarter sessions, and was conducted by the recorder, Richard Lane.

⁵⁸ William Filkins had in 1614 refused to receive communion, claiming that he had not prepared for it: PDR, CB44, fo. 42.

⁵⁹ Vexatiously commencing lawsuits, which was the professional offence of attorneys: Brooks, C.W., Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: the ‘lower branch’ of the legal profession in early modern England (Cambridge, 1986), p. 137CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁰ Twice.

⁶¹ Edward Bagshaw of Moreton Pinckney was a Middle Temple barrister with wide-ranging godly connections stretching back to the puritan divine Robert Bolton and including Francis Nicolls of Faxton, John Sawyer of Kettering, Francis Downes of Pytchley, Sir John Pickering of Titchmarsh, Sir John Dryden of Canons Ashby (uncle of the Restoration poet), and Sir Thomas Crewe of Steane. During the 1630s he was prominent in protecting those godly harassed by the Church courts. For his godly zeal (according to Sibthorpe) John Crewe appointed him Recorder of Banbury. Bagshaw's Lenten reading at the Middle Temple in 1639 criticizing Laudian bishops was terminated by Archbishop Laud himself but earned him great popularity at his inn and political recognition in the form of the Parliamentary seat of Southwark in the Short Parliament. However, by 1641 he had moved towards the king and was thenceforth a Royalist: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 26, 209, 239–240; P.R.N. Carter, ‘Bagshaw, Edward (1589/90–1662)’, in ODNB; Keeler, M.F., The Long Parliament (Philadelphia, 1954), p. 94Google Scholar; TNA, SP16/447/33; Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1880, 28 April 1639.

⁶² Lady Marie Crane (d. 1642) was the French widow of Sir Francis Crane (d. 1636), who had been a courtier and head of the Mortlake Tapestry Works. In 1629 he had lent the crown money on the security of ten Northamptonshire manors, including Grafton Regis wherein lay Grafton House in which he came to reside. He had commissioned his other mansion of Stoke Park (which was located in the parish of Stoke Bruerne) from Inigo Jones, and Crane had entertained the king there in 1635. On his death he had bequeathed £500 to Archbishop Laud's restoration of St Paul's Cathedral and allowed his widow, Lady Marie, to live on at Stoke Park, but required her to leave Grafton, which was to be leased out. Clearly, she had not yet done so. After her death the Crane properties passed to Sir Francis's brother, Sir Richard (d. 1645); and in 1643 Grafton was the scene of a famous Civil War siege. The Grafton manorial court was held in the King's Arms, which was owned by Crane's enemy at court, Sir Miles Fleetwood: TNA, PROB/11/105; W. Hefford, ‘Crane, Sir Francis (c.1579–1636)’, in ODNB; Pevsner, Northamptonshire, pp. 415–416; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 143, n. 48; VCH Northamptonshire, V (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 142–176.

⁶³ Joseph Bryan (1590–1639) was a Gray's Inn bencher. His father, John, had been a godly Elizabethan mayor of Northampton, who had petitioned Secretary Robert Cecil to protect the corporation's godly minister, Robert Catelin, from deprivation in 1605, and had been involved in a Star Chamber case in 1607 against John Lambe as one of the godly accused of circulating scurrilous poems parodying the Church court's officials. Joseph was closely connected to the godly lawyers Christopher Sherland and Robert Tanfield, and chose Zouch Tate as one of the overseers of his will, which was witnessed by Francis Rushworth, the godly Northampton apothecary, John Bullivant, the godly minister of Abington, and John Speed (d. 1640), the heir of the famous cartographer and himself the first anatomy lecturer at Oxford: TNA, PROB/11/10, 55; Sheils, Puritans, pp. 83, 117, 122–123; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 52; TNA, STAC8/205/19; TNA, PROB/11/179; S. Bendall, ‘Speed, John (1551/2–1629)’, in ODNB; Prest, Barristers, pp. 346–347.

⁶⁴ Thomas Bunning was curate of Grafton and Lady Crane's chaplain. He was present at Parliament's storming of Grafton House in 1643, having already been sequestered: Matthews, A.G. (ed.), Walker Revised (Oxford, 1948), p. 277Google Scholar; VCH Northamptonshire, V, p. 76.

⁶⁵ Horace, Epistles, Book 1, epistle II, lines 47–49; the full quotation reads, ‘Non domus et fundus, non aeris acervus et auri, aegroto domini deduxit corpore febris, non animo curas’ (‘Neither house nor farm, nor store of brass and gold, can banish fever from the ailing body or care from the mind’). It may have been a popular maxim: Burton quoted it in his Anatomy of Melancholy, and so did the Shropshire antiquary, Richard Gough: Gough, R., The History of Myddle, ed. Hey, D. (London, 1988), p. 158Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Still.

⁶⁷ Allowing the plaintiff to obtain damages from the defendant when the defendant had caused the plaintiff loss by a failure to fulfil a promise: Brooks, Pettyfoggers, pp. 67, 88–89.

⁶⁸ Butler resided at Alderton. One Thomas Buncher of nearby Paulerspury had explained his absence from church in 1625 by claiming to be excommunicate: PDR, CB64, fo. 537r–v; Diary, p. 348.

⁶⁹ Sir Miles Fleetwood of Aldwincle, a senior official in the Court of Wards, supported the Duke of Buckingham in the parliaments of the 1620s but spoke out against Laudian ceremonies in the Short Parliament of 1640: Russell, C.S.R., Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 129, 168, 173, 199–200, 220, 246, 248; Maltby, J.D. (ed.), The Short Parliament (1640): diary of Sir Thomas Aston, Camden fourth series XXXV (London, 1988), pp. 16Google Scholar, 20, 35, 73, 134–135, 165; S.M. Jack, ‘Fleetwood, Sir Miles (d. 1641)’, in ODNB.

⁷⁰ ‘In consequence of which’.

⁷¹ Henry Neale (d. 1641), Sibthorpe's former father-in-law, and the member of a Northampton gentry family with its own chapel in All Saints’ church: Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, pp. 117–118; TNA, PROB/11/186.

⁷² The feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary.

⁷³ Mixed grains – usually rye and wheat.

⁷⁴ William Rushton, attorney, succeeded Woodford as Steward of Northampton on the latter's death in 1654. Rushton's son Henry similarly succeeded his father on his death in 1665 and served until 1683. Ramsden claimed that Thomas Pendleton omitted to perform hat honour (the custom of removing one's hat in church) at this service: Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 181–182; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 570; TNA, SP16/474/80.

⁷⁵ In August 1637 a meeting of the vestry ordered the raising of £50 to recast the church bells: the renewed bells rang again on 13 December 1637. The Leicester bell founder was Hugh Watts, who was to recast the tenor bell at the parish of Old in 1639: Vestry Minutes, p. 33; L.M. Middleton, ‘Watts, Hugh (1582/3–1643)’, rev. A. McConnell, in ODNB; Bridges, History of Northamptonshire, II, p. 203.

⁷⁶ John Spicer (apothecary) was the son of Christopher Spicer of Cogenhoe and his wife, Rachel, the daughter of the puritan radical Percival Wiburn. The elder Spicer had been the titular rector of Fawsley appointed by Sir Richard Knightley to provide cover for the de facto pastor, the ejected minister John Dod. John Spicer, whose friends included Peter Whalley and Curate William Holmes, was married to Frances Cartwright. He was elected town bailiff in 1637: Longden, Clergy, Spicer; TNA, SP16/308/52; Ford, G., ‘Where's Whalley? The search for Sir Samuel uncovers a Whalley–Cartwright alliance in Northamptonshire’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 62 (2009), p. 34Google Scholar; Book of Orders, p. 32.

⁷⁷ Woodford always refers to John Bernard (Barnard) (1604–1665), lord of the manor of Abington, as captain. Bernard was the son of Baldwin Bernard and the stepson of Sir Edmund Hampden, one of the leaders of opposition to the forced loan of 1627. John married first Elizabeth (d. 1642), the daughter of Sir Clement Edmondes of Preston Deanery, Secretary of State, and secondly, in 1649, William Shakespeare's granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall: Isham, Diary, p. 230, n. 3.

⁷⁸ John Bullivant was the rector of Abington, 1628–1651, to which he was appointed by Eleanor Hampden, widow of Sir Edmund Hampden. He was a member of the Northampton godly and was married to Mary Danby: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 22; Isham, Diary, p. 62, n. 15.

⁷⁹ Francis Cook (d. 1638) was an attorney from Kingsthorpe and repeatedly undersheriff of the county, 1628–1638. His wife was the daughter of the wealthy townsman George Coles: VCH Northamptonshire, IV, pp. 80–82; Diary, p. 147, n. 208; J.H. Burgess, ‘The social structure of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire 1524–1764’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of York, 1978), p. 186.

⁸⁰ Christopher.

⁸¹ Sir Richard Samwell of Upton was a patron of godly ministers opposing court policies of the 1620s and 1630s (such as Benjamin Tompkins and George Preston) and played a leading part in resisting the forced loan of 1627 and (with Miles Burkit, vicar of Pattishall) the ecclesiastical policies of the 1630s: Diary, pp. 136 n. 180, 210 n. 430; Cust, R.P., The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626–1628 (Oxford, 1987), p. 301Google Scholar; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 22, 105–107.

⁸² John Craven (1610–1648) had attended the Middle Temple with Bulstrode Whitelocke before marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of Lord William and Lady Penelope Spencer. He had forged close links with his in-laws and had returned to live with them at Althorp in 1637 following a quarrel with Lord Maynard. A Royalist, he was created Baron Craven of Ryton (Shropshire) in 1643. On his death in 1648 he made a bequest to the Arminian Sir Richard Spencer: I.W. Archer, ‘Craven, Sir William (c.1545–1618)’, in ODNB.

⁸³ Francis Nicolls of Hardwick (with his uncle Sir Augustine of Faxton, d. 1616) was the patron of the moderate Northamptonshire godly divine Robert Bolton, and the overseer of his will, together with other godly friends such as his brother-in-law Edward Bagshaw, John Sawyer, and Francis Downes. Bagshaw dedicated his life of Bolton to Francis Nicolls, who took a leading role in opposing the forced loan and was rewarded with a Northamptonshire seat in the parliament of 1628. During the 1630s Nicolls was associated with divines who spoke out against ecclesiastical policy such as his chaplain, William Clarke, John Baynard, and John Baseley, and was himself pursued by the Church courts for puritan practices. He counted John Reading among his godly friends and had been appointed by Sir John Pickering as the guardian of his son Gilbert, whom he supported in the knight of the shire contest for the Short Parliament: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 26, 129–130; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, A198 (Nicolls); TNA, PROB/11/19 (John Pickering).

⁸⁴ Robert Tanfield of Loddington (1584–1639) was a Middle Temple barrister and the son and nephew of lawyers. He acted as counsel to Lord Montagu of Boughton. His godly uncles, Sir William and Francis Tate, had lived at Delapré Abbey just outside Northampton. He was a graduate of that godly seminary Emmanuel College, Cambridge, a godly associate of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, and spoke in his will of his assurance of being one of the elect: TNA, PROB/11/124 (Sir William Tate), PROB/11/46 (Francis Tate), and PROB/11/55 (Tanfield); Prest, Barristers, p. 394.

⁸⁵ Geoffrey Palmer was lord of the manor of East Carlton, and was himself forced to pay a fine for the disafforestation of his estates. He was a high-flying lawyer, who had been called to the bar in 1623. Although a member of the Long Parliament and a manager of the Earl of Strafford's impeachment, he changed his political allegiance during the debates on the Grand Remonstrance in 1641 (after John Hampden moved to print the document) and became a staunch Royalist. At the Restoration he was knighted and appointed Charles II's attorney general: Isham, Diary, p. 15; Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 90; L.A. Knafla, ‘Palmer, Sir Geoffrey, first baronet (1598–1670)’, in ODNB.

⁸⁶ This was phase two of the revival of forest law, the extension of the forest boundaries to their medieval limits. In theory, it brought enormous swathes of land and scores more villages within the competence of forest law. From the first, however, the real intention was to raise a lump sum from wealthy landowners. Since the Middle Ages the crown had alienated large areas of forest to private individuals, often withdrawing the land from the restrictions of forest law, and it was for this disafforestation (which Charles I declared illegal) that those individuals were now to compound. The enormous fines imposed on leading noblemen such as the Earls of Westmorland and Salisbury were massively reduced: Pettit, Royal Forests, pp. 88–92.

⁸⁷ Edward Chamberlayne of Warwickshire, who also held lands in Northamptonshire. He is probably the same who occurs as the Undersheriff of Northamptonshire to Sir John Dryden in 1635 and who was a feodary (a local official of the Court of Wards) who was particularly zealous for the collection of ship money in Leicestershire. In his will he bequeathed law books to his heir and mentioned a son called Knightley Chamberlayne: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, p. 25; Cogswell, T., Home Divisions: aristocracy, the state and provincial conflict (Manchester, 1998), p. 233Google Scholar; TNA, PROB/11/264.

⁸⁸ Richard Knightley came from a puritan dynasty based at Fawsley which had sheltered the notorious Martin Marprelate press. With their friends, the Drydens of Canons Ashby, they had consistently supported godly ministers through the tergiversations of the seventeenth century. Knightley protected the eminent John Preston and, through him, was connected to a nationwide godly network led by Viscount Saye and Sele and others including Lord Brooke, John Hampden, John Pym, Sir Arthur Haselrig, Christopher Sherland, Sir Thomas Crewe, John Crewe, Edward Bagshaw, and ministers such as John Dod and Daniel Featley. This network protected godly ministers and organized parliamentary and non-parliamentary resistance to court policy from the 1620s onwards. Knightley had himself led opposition to the forced loan in 1627: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 13–19, 218–219.

⁸⁹ John Whitwick (1581–1645) was an Inner Temple barrister and Steward of Coventry. He was a Royalist in the Civil War: Prest, Barristers, p. 403.

⁹⁰ William Adams of Hardingstone was a bencher of the Middle Temple. Before 1631 he married either Dorothy or Ann, the nieces of Judge Sir Francis Harvey of Hardingstone, and remained close to his wife's family. He was buried in the chancel of the Temple church in 1659: Sturgess, H.A.C. (ed.), Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple from the Fifteenth Century to the Year 1944, 3 vols (London, 1949), I, p. 106Google Scholar; Inderwick, F.A. and Roberts, R.A. (eds), A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records, 5 vols (London, 1896–1936), II, p. 367Google Scholar; TNA, PROB/11/165, PROB/11/171.

⁹¹ Sir John Hanbury of Kelmarsh was unusually non-partisan in his clerical patronage, which included the moderate godly ministers Thomas Alford (his chaplain) and Archibald Symmer, but also Thomas Turner, Archbishop Laud's chaplain. His friendships were just as wide-ranging. In his will he bequeathed inscribed rings to a large number of people ranging from the godly Richard Knightley, John Reading, and Edward Bagshaw through moderates such as Lord Edward Montagu and the Earl of Manchester to the arch-Laudians Sir John Lambe and Turner: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 45; TNA, PROB/11/97.

⁹² Sir Anthony Haslewood was squire of Maidwell: Isham, Diary, p. 27.

⁹³ The Justice Seat, the principal forest law court and the only one able to impose fines, proceeded with almost regal pomp. It had been resurrected in 1635 but had been repeatedly adjourned until this time, when fines were first imposed. The listed judges and lawyers were Sir John Finch, William Jones, Sir Thomas Trevor, Sir Francis Crawley, Sir Oliver Bridgman, Ralph Whitfield (serjeant-at-law), and Sir Edward Littleton (Solicitor General), who prosecuted John Hampden on the crown's behalf. In addition, fifteen members of the county gentry formed a grand jury: Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 86; Cockburn, J.S., A History of English Assizes 1558–1714 (Cambridge, 1972), p. 293CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, Bench, pp. 19, 20–21, 37, 41–42, 139.

⁹⁴ John Gifford.

⁹⁵ Either Christian, the widow of Judge Sir Francis Harvey of Cotton End (Justice of Common Pleas), or Mary, the widow of Sir Francis's son, Sir Stephen, who predeceased his father. Sir Francis had enjoyed wide-ranging contacts among the godly (John Sawyer, Francis Nicolls, John Freeman) and non-godly gentry (Sir Anthony Mildmay, Sir Arthur Throckmorton, Robert Breton, and John Wake): TNA, PROB/11/88; NRO, Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 4678; TNA, PROB/11/100, PROB/11/106, PROB/11/18; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, pp. 98–99.

⁹⁶ Ramsden claimed Thomas Pendleton again failed to perform hat honour during another baptism on this day: TNA, SP16/474/80.

⁹⁷ Moses Hodges was as yet unbeneficed but was presented to the rectory of Upper Isham on 2 November 1637 and again in 1653 by Lord Protector Cromwell: Longden MS, 2 November 1637, 1653.

⁹⁸ Thomas Hill (with Thomas Ball) had been one of John Preston's inner circle at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He obtained his benefice of Titchmarsh on 11 July 1633, when the godly patron, Sir John Pickering, granted the right to present to his godly friends Viscount Saye and Sele, Sir Erasmus Dryden, and Robert Horsman: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 18, 31.

⁹⁹ Sir John Finch was zealous in enforcing the forest laws, and indeed was an aggressive exponent of royal authority: Hughes, A., The Causes of the English Civil War (London, 1991), pp. 24Google Scholar, 156; Jones, Bench, pp. 139–141; Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 86; L.A. Knafla, ‘Finch, John, Baron Finch of Fordwich (1584–1660)’, in ODNB.

¹⁰⁰ A judge's circuit. This refers to proceedings in the other forest county of Essex, where the crown had stated that the alienation of forest land had been illegal and had imposed large composition fines on offenders: Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 84.

¹⁰¹ The fines were mainly for trespasses against Rockingham forest. There were relatively light fines for trivial thefts of wood (usually for maypoles, as here) or deer; larger ones for the more serious offences of felling large numbers of trees (Sir Giles Mompesson) or keeping cattle in the forest (Sir John Wake), through to the high penalties imposed on the grantees of forest land. William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, as the heir of Robert, the first Earl, was fined £20,000, and the Earl of Westmorland £19,000 for numerous offences. Other magnates to incur enormous fines included Sir Christopher Hatton, Lord Thomas Brudenell, the Earl of Peterborough, and Lord Edward Montagu: Pettit, Royal Forests, pp. 86–88.

¹⁰² This was a common offence, so much so that in 1637 stocks were erected at Wakefield Walk in the forest of Whittlewood, south of Northampton, for the punishment of wood stealers: Pettit, Royal Forests, pp. 86, 152.

¹⁰³ Christopher.

¹⁰⁴ Woodford's account receives corroboration from a surprising source, the private papers of Thomas, Lord Brudenell of Deene, a Catholic recusant magnate and friend of the king. Attempting to persuade Charles to abandon the policy, he concurred in Woodford's opinion of Whitwick's performance, referring to a submission made at the Justice Seat by ‘one that had neither interest in the country nor understood the subjects’ rights’: NRO, Brudenell, E, XXIII, 21, Brudenell's draft memorandum dated 1637 and entitled ‘Reasons to induce his Majesty not to enlarge his forest of Rockingham’ (quoted in Pettit, Royal Forests, pp. 92–93).

¹⁰⁵ That is, now that the royal forests had been extended to their medieval size. In November 1637 commissioners were appointed to compound with forest offenders and in April 1638 landowners were ordered to appear before the commissioners at London House, while Holland ordered the Surveyor General, Sir Charles Harbord of Potterspury, to confirm the extent of the new bounds. Only a small percentage of the fines was collected: Pettit, Royal Forests, pp. 88–90.

¹⁰⁶ William Collis, mercer, had served as a bailiff in 1628, churchwarden in 1636, and chamberlain, 1631–1636. According to Woodford, he died on 18 May 1639. The son of Ursula (the sister of John Crick), he was an integral part of Woodford's godly society, as were his wife and daughter Sarah: Freemen of Northampton, unpaginated, under Collis (dated 1635); Vestry Minutes, pp. 21, 32; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 552, 562, 567–568; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, Book AE, p. 86.

¹⁰⁷ Mayoral elections took place on the first Thursday in August but the new incumbent did not take up his duties until Michaelmas (29 September): Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 32–34.

¹⁰⁸ On the day of the mayor's proclamation in office, the town assembly was to appear wearing its best clothes to accompany the mayor to All Saints’ church, where the bell was tolled thrice. Then proceedings adjourned to the guildhall, where the steward tendered the mayor his oath of office. Finally, the party repaired to the mayor's for the feast: ibid., pp. 30–33.

¹⁰⁹ Richard Lane.

¹¹⁰ The Coldwells enjoyed a long godly pedigree: Benoni was the brother of Tobias, who was town clerk between 1618 and 1654, and the writer of a manuscript history of the town. Their father, George, had been mayor in 1606 and town clerk from 1592 to 1618, during which time he had been presented before the Church court for sending his son to the free school while the master, Simon Wastell, was excommunicated for nonconformity. Among the godly friends mentioned in his will of 1612, in which he expressed confidence of his election, were Wastell, Robert Catelin (the divine), Dr John Cotta (the physician), and Francis Harvey (the lawyer). In 1608 Coldwell and his sons had been involved in a Star Chamber case against John Lambe, who accused the Northampton godly of circulating scurrilous verses deriding the personnel of the Church courts. A third son, George, was a Northamptonshire clergyman supported by the Tate family of Delapré Abbey. Benoni served as a sidesman in 1633, 1635, and 1641, and (as here) as a bailiff of the town in 1637. John Spicer was the apothecary who had treated Woodford's son John: TNA, STAC8/205/19 and STAC8/205/20; PDR, CB37, fo. 193r; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton wills, first series, Book Z, p. 194; Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–36; Sheils, Puritans, p.26; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 562, 570; Longden MS, 12 July 1610 and 16 December 1616.

¹¹¹ Ramsden claimed that Ball administered the communion to six unknown female sitters, and Newton to a further six including John Smart, hosier, and Samuel Martin: TNA, SP16/474/80.

¹¹² Probably Thomas Porter, who had married Mary Collis, the sister of William, Mayor of Northampton, 1637–1638. He is probably the same as the Flintshire minister mentioned by Calamy. Born in Northamptonshire, he was a Cambridge MA and later a Presbyterian, ordained at Peterborough in 1623: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, Book AE, p. 86.

¹¹³ William Collis.

¹¹⁴ Elizabeth (‘Besse’) Curwyn: see next note.

¹¹⁵ Elizabeth Curwyn (1611–1668) was the daughter of Alderman John Harbert, the former mayor. She had married a freeman called John White, who had died in 1633, leaving her with two children – Woodford's maid Elizabeth or Besse (1631–1688) and Mary (1632–1675). It was a peculiarity of Northampton's constitution that marriage to the widow of a freeman conferred freedom of the borough. This George Curwyn (Curwin, Corwin) (1610–1685) obtained in 1634 by marrying Widow White, and thereby gained two stepdaughters. George was clearly a tradesman and is seen extending credit to Woodford. The whole family emigrated after 2 April 1638 to Salem, Massachusetts, where Captain Curwyn became a rich merchant. His second wife was Governor Winslow's daughter. See Book of Orders, p. 35; C. Partridge, ‘Elizabeth Herbert wife of 1) John White 2) George Corwin’, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 150 (April 1996), pp. 190–193; ‘Pedigree of Curwen’, ibid., 10 (1856), p. 304; Diary, pp. 141, 171, 176, 194; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 311; Upham, C.W., Salem Witchcraft with an Account of Salem Village, 2 vols (New York, 1978), I, p. 98Google Scholar; Savage, J., A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 vols (Boston, 1860–62), IGoogle Scholar.

¹¹⁶ Northampton's Norman castle, where Thomas Becket had clashed with King Henry II.

¹¹⁷ Obadiah Wallop was probably related to Richard of Bugbrook, a relation of the Wallops of Farley Wallop, Hampshire, and Wappenham, Northamptonshire, who was under attack from George Jay, the conformist incumbent, for paying salaries to the previous three incumbents, while living in the parsonage and retaining the income, £300 per annum: TNA, SP16/372/110; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 48.

¹¹⁸ Sir Thomas Brooke of Great Oakley was closely allied with the moderate puritan magnate Edward, Lord Montagu of Boughton, and was the patron of the godly minister Archibald Symmer: TNA, PROB/11/99; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 26, 77–79.

¹¹⁹ Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire.

¹²⁰ Perhaps Thomas Watts.

¹²¹ Sir Christopher Hatton was a cousin of the Elizabethan Lord Chancellor of the same name, and a patron of aggressively conformist clergymen. His main residence was Kirby Hall, a prominent Elizabethan mansion which he was improving over the period 1638 to 1640 with the aid of Nicholas Stone and, possibly, Inigo Jones: Pevsner, Northamptonshire. Hatton had sat as an MP for Peterborough in the parliaments of 1624 and 1625. He was the Steward of Higham Ferrers (part of the queen's jointure) from 1636, a fervent Royalist in the Civil War, and spent many years in foreign exile before the Restoration: V. Stater, ‘Hatton, Christopher, first Baron Hatton (bap. 1605, d. 1670)’, in ODNB; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 46; Keeler, M.F., The Long Parliament (Philadelphia, 1954), p. 208Google Scholar.

¹²² William Filkins.

¹²³ Presumably Nathaniel Some.

¹²⁴ Probably John's brother, William: Higgins, S.E.N., The Bernards of Abington and Nether Winchendon, 4 vols (London, 1903), I, pp. 55, 59Google Scholar.

¹²⁵ Elizabeth (‘Besse’) Curwyn.

¹²⁶ 2 Corinthians 6:8.

¹²⁷ Ann Morris.

¹²⁸ Chapping: cracks in the skin.

¹²⁹ Possibly related to Valentine Davison of Butchers’ Row, Market Square: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, A 236 (will of William Spencer, 1646).

¹³⁰ Robert Beeton was the high constable of Hamfordshoe Hundred. In April 1636 Sibthorpe had accused Thomas Bacon, lord of the manor of Burton Latimer, of combining with ‘puritan high constables’, including Beeton, to prevent the collection of the ship money tax in Burton. Beeton was also singled out by Sheriff Charles Cokayne as obstructive to the tax and sent for by the Council. This latter dispute, whose conclusion is unknown, was refereed by Sir John Isham and Sir Lewis Watson: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 42, 48–49.

¹³¹ William Chapman, senior, attended musters 1605–1619, while one of the same name (either senior or junior) was supported by the priest at Old, James Forsyth, in claiming exemption from the burdens of knighthood in 1631, and occurred as churchwarden in 1634 and 1637: Wake, J. (ed.), The Montagu Musters Book 1602–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society VII (Northampton, 1935), pp. 7, 205Google Scholar; HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, III (London, 1926), p. 361; PDR, CBA63, fo. 194r–v; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 135r–v.

¹³² Possibly the minister appointed by Daniel Reading to the living of Duston in 1642, the son of Jeremiah Lewis, godly incumbent of Northampton All Saints’, 1616–1628. James was possibly living unbeneficed in St Giles's parish, where in 1632 a parishioner bequeathed him money to preach his funeral sermon. One of that name served in the Church courts in 1634, which would not have improved Woodford's view of him: Longden MS, 8 November 1642; Longden, Clergy; PDR, Miscellaneous Book Va, fo. 16r.

¹³³ Thomas Perkins, a Cambridge BA and client of Edward Shuckburgh of Naseby, had resisted Laudian policy by refusing (initially at least) to relinquish his afternoon sermon in favour of a catechism class and by refusing to administer the communion at the altar rails. Instead, he removed the communion table from the rails to the body of the chancel at communion time: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 144 n. 52, 205; PDR, CBA63, fos 320, 381; Matthews, A.G. (ed.), Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934), p. 387Google Scholar.

¹³⁴ Francis Nicolls's manor.

¹³⁵ Sir John Isham of Lamport had amassed a fortune in the 1620s, mainly by moneylending. He was a patron of conformist clergy and numbered Lord Keeper John Williams and Sir John Lambe among his allies. However, he had married the godly Judith Lewin and allowed the famous divine John Dod access to his family for the purposes of preaching and spiritual counsel. During the Civil War he attempted to remain neutral, unlike his more openly Royalist progeny, Justinian and Elizabeth: Finch, M.E., The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540–1640, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society XIX (Oxford, 1966), pp. 33–34Google Scholar; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 57 n. 81, 79; Stephens, I., ‘“My cheefest work”: the making of the spiritual autobiography of Elizabeth Isham’, Midland History, 34 (2009), pp. 183, 189–191CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I thank Isaac Stephens for this reference.

¹³⁶ John Cole was active in the vestry 1628–1633, and had served as a sidesman. The Church court had arraigned him and his wife in 1629 for attending conventicles organized by Jeremiah Warner at the houses of Thomas Martin and George Crick. He served as chief sergeant of the town from 1652 until 1657: Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–30; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 78, 571; PDR, CBA2, unfoliated, dated 15 June 1629.

¹³⁷ A freeman of Northampton since 1631, and a beneficiary of the will of Everard Tebbot of Old, possibly his brother: Book of Orders, p. 15; TNA, PROB/11/193.

¹³⁸ William Collis.

¹³⁹ The corporation paid royal messengers who brought writs and proclamations down from London: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 33.

¹⁴⁰ Elizabeth (‘Besse’) Morris.

¹⁴¹ Woodford's close friend Thomas Martin, the father of Samuel, for both of whom see Introduction, p. 32.

¹⁴² Alexander Eakins of Weston Favell, whose servants were accused of brawling in the belfry of St Peter's church in Northampton in 1634. One Alexander (perhaps the same) died in 1666 at Ringstead (where the family also owned property), leaving money to a kinsman, Henry Raymond, a puritan divine who read a lecture at Ringstead sponsored by patrons from London in which he condemned the Laudian Book of Sports: Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 178; PDR, CBA63, fo. 150r–v; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, fourth series, X84; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 130, 156, 161 n. 24.

¹⁴³ Thomas Morgan (1609–1665), the son of Francis, a barrister whose friends included Edward Bagshaw and whose sister married John Reading. Some of his servants had reportedly refused catechism at the hands of Dr Clarke in 1628. Thomas's grandfather was another Francis, a judge who had been Dr Clarke's patron: Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 135–136; TNA, PROB/11/130, PROB/11/133; PDR CB A2, unfoliated, under 23 July 1628; Serjeantson, R.M., A History of the Church of St Peter, Northampton (Northampton, 1904), pp. 107Google Scholar, 206.

¹⁴⁴ Still.

¹⁴⁵ William Tompson of Wilby (chapman) was clearly regarded as godly by Woodford. The overseer of his will (dated 1649) was the radical godly leader Robert Welford of Earl's Barton, who in 1592 had been accused of supporting the Brownist William Hackett, and who had been presented for gadding as late as 1634: E.A. Irons, ‘A calendar of a court book’, Northamptonshire Notes and Queries, new series, III (1911), p. 239; Sheils, Puritans, pp. 16, 22, 111n, 128–129, 141; PDR, CB64, fo. 44r–v; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 134r–v. The maid in question was Temperance (surname unknown) from (possibly) Charwelton (see Diary, p. 129).

¹⁴⁶ Elizabeth Morris.

¹⁴⁷ Francis Atterbury had been the godly incumbent of the living of Milton Malsor since 1627 and enjoyed the patronage of the lord of the manor there, Stephen Harvey, son of Sir Francis Harvey: Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 233n; Longden MS, 16 April 1627; TNA, PROB/11/88.

¹⁴⁸ William Collis.

¹⁴⁹ Woodford's friend Thomas Pentlow of Broughton, who should not be confused with his kinsman and namesake, who lived at Wilby: see Introduction, p. 37.

¹⁵⁰ Possibly Charwelton.

¹⁵¹ The godly minister Joseph Bentham had been appointed to the benefice of Broughton on 24 December 1631 by Edward, Lord Montagu of Boughton, on the advice of the godly ministers Robert Bolton and Nicholas Estwick, although he had been part of his patron's godly coterie since 1617. Bentham was far from enthusiastic about Laudian policies but, like his patron, his response to them was more moderate than that of many of his godly colleagues: J. Fielding, ‘Bentham, Joseph (1593/4–1671)’, in ODNB.

¹⁵² Roger Sargent, mayor of the town in 1625: Cox and Markham, Northampton, II, pp. 551–552; Book of Orders, unfoliated, under the year 1636.

¹⁵³ Near Bedford.

¹⁵⁴ That is, Sir Richard Fenn, who was in the process of succeeding Sir Edward Bromfield: Beaven, A.B., The Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols (London, 1908–1913), I, pp. 201Google Scholar, 219.

¹⁵⁵ Thrice.

¹⁵⁶ Dr John Stoughton was the perpetual curate and lecturer at St Mary Aldermanbury. Rejecting pleas from John Winthrop to accompany him to Massachusetts, Stoughton had staved off attacks from Bishops Laud and Juxon during the 1630s with the help of godly patrons such as Sir Robert Harley. He was a key godly figure on the steering committee for John Dury's ecumenical project and took part (with Thomas Ball) in the compilation of the ‘Body of Divinity’. He died in 1639 while preparing sermons for publication dedicated to Henry Rich, Earl of Holland, and to Sir Gilbert Harrison: P.S. Seaver, ‘Stoughton, John (bap. 1593, d. 1639)’, in ODNB.

¹⁵⁷ The Moroccan ambassador, Alcayde Taudar Ben Abdala. The King of Morocco, who was involved in a local conflict, purchased the neutrality of the English fleet by surrendering the European captives of the Barbary pirates: CSPD, 1637–1638, p. 476; Gardiner, History, VIII, p. 70.

¹⁵⁸ All Saints’ Day. Ramsden claimed that Newton had by now returned from the Court of High Commission, that at afternoon prayers he read from Philippians 3 but failed to bow when Jesus’ name occurred, and that he persisted in editing the Prayer Book by omitting the Lord's Prayer at morning prayer, and at churching and marriage services: TNA, SP16/474/80.

¹⁵⁹ Richard Robins of Long Buckby, who was associated with Thomas Watts of Long Buckby and Easton Maudit, Woodford's friend and creditor. He was involved (with Watts) in obstructing the work of Sir Robert Banastre, the assiduous ship money sheriff, at Buckby in January 1638. His son, Obedience Robins, was an apothecary who emigrated to Virginia: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, p. 157, n. 88; Wilheit, M.C., ‘Obedience Robins of Long Buckby: a 17th century Virginian’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 53 (2000), pp. 7–18Google Scholar.

¹⁶⁰ Henry Weltden was the son of William Weltden of Thornby (d. 1631), who had been a barrister and auditor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Sir John Wolstenholme (1562–1639) was a wealthy merchant and customs farmer; a keen Laudian, he rebuilt Stanmore church in Middlesex: Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 236–237; J.K. Laughton, ‘Wolstenholme, Sir John (1562–1639)’, rev. H.V. Bowen, in ODNB; Fincham, K. and Tyacke, N., Altars Restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547–c. 1700 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 167–168CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶¹ Mark 4:19.

¹⁶² Oliver St John (1598–1673), Hampden's famous advocate: William Palmer, ‘St John, Oliver (c.1598–1673)’, in ODNB.

¹⁶³ Hum: to make a low inarticulate vocal sound as a sign of approbation.

¹⁶⁴ Suggestions were informations recommending a prohibition: that is, the order of a superior court forbidding the proceedings of an inferior in a case falling outside its cognisance. The case referred to is Richard Denton vs. Alexander Eakins over rights of common: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 458.

¹⁶⁵ That is, Denton swore by affidavit to present to Eakins the court's order. Sir George Croke was judge of the Court of King's Bench: Jones, Bench, p. 125; C.W. Brooks, ‘Croke, Sir George (c.1560–1642)’, in ODNB.

¹⁶⁶ The plague.

¹⁶⁷ The chief justice of the Court of King's Bench was Sir John Bramston: Jones, Bench, pp. 125–127.

¹⁶⁸ Possibly Robert Travell, rector of Weston Favell, who was deprived for nonconformity by Bishop Thomas Dove in 1605 and immediately reinstated by his patron (and father-in-law), Richard Leverich; or else Travell's son, Immanuel: Longden, Clergy.

¹⁶⁹ The Fleur de Lis, Fetter Lane.

¹⁷⁰ Giving food and water to horses during a journey.

¹⁷¹ Andrew Broughton of Seaton in Rutland worked for the Northamptonshire attorney Theodore Greene of Marston Trussell and Clement's Inn. In later life, Broughton served as clerk of the High Court of Justice that tried Charles I, whose death sentence Broughton read out. He died in exile in Vevey, Switzerland: S. Kelsey, ‘Broughton, Andrew (1602/3–1687)’, in ODNB.

¹⁷² Matthew Longstrap was later executed for burglary: Diary, p. 151.

¹⁷³ Jailbreaks were a recurring problem in early seventeenth-century Northampton, necessitating expenditure in 1613, 1619, and 1653 to improve security: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 175–176.

¹⁷⁴ Northampton had three jails and it is often difficult to know which one is being referred to. Here, the town's own jail is clearly intended. It was situated underneath the Conduit Hall, a second town hall built in 1460 which derived its name from its position over the water supply, the Great Conduit. There were, in addition, two jails controlled by the county's justices of the peace: the castle itself and the house of correction. The latter had been instituted in 1615 as a work creation scheme for the relief of the poor, and had also initially been situated under the Conduit Hall. By the 1630s it had been moved to a location at or near the Bell Inn on Bridge Street. The separatist Robert Browne died in one of the three in 1633. The godly repeatedly attempted to make religious provision for the prisoners: Thomas Bradshaw, curate of All Saints’, had in 1616 admitted burying executed criminals; John Fisher was reported for preaching to a selected audience of prisoners and townsfolk at (probably) the castle in 1635, and the courts were informed that the curate Charles Newton was soon to take over this jail evangelism; finally, in 1641, Francis Nicolls made provision in his will for monthly sermons at the county jail (at the castle): Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 175–178; VCH Northamptonshire, III (London, 1930), pp. 35–36; M.E. Moody, ‘Browne, Robert (1550?–1633)’, in ODNB; PDR, CB41, fo. 24r–v; TNA, SP16/308/52; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, A198.

¹⁷⁵ As part of the church survey of 26 and 27 October, Ball had been ordered to administer the communion only from within the rails to those who came up, and not to leave the rails to administer to any ‘factious or disobedient person’ (TNA, SP16/370/57), and to provide sufficient communions for the entire parish to receive kneeling at the rails by Candlemas (2 February 1638): ibid.

¹⁷⁶ The Rise family of Northampton, Woodford's creditors, were descended from the Richard Rise who occurred at musters in 1591. Elizabeth was perhaps the mother of the brothers – Richard, Harry, and Edward – who ran foul of the law in 1638: Wake, J. (ed.), A Copy of Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons, and Subsidies etc in the County of Northampton ad 1586–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society III (Kettering, 1926), p. 36Google Scholar.

¹⁷⁷ A stay of legal proceedings.

¹⁷⁸ Christopher Iblehigh (who was formerly apprenticed to Isaac Greenough, tailor) occurs as a sidesman of the parish in 1643. His wife occurs in the diary as a wet nurse: Freemen of Northampton, unpaginated, under Greenough (dated 1623) and Iblehigh (dated 1632); Vestry Minutes, p. 38.

¹⁷⁹ William Collis.

¹⁸⁰ Benjamin Tompkins (rector of Harpole, 1628–1670) had many godly connections, including Sir Edmund Hampden and Sir Richard Samwell. In 1627 he had publicly denounced the prerogative tax known as the forced loan: Longden, Clergy; TNA, PROB/11/53 and PROB/11/23; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 218, 261 n. 9.

¹⁸¹ Henry (‘Harry’) Goodere (d. 1660), Woodford's godly friend, was a Gray's Inn barrister married to Elizabeth Wright of Brixworth but with Northampton friends including Hatton Farmer and the Bott family. Perhaps originally from Baginton, Warwickshire, he settled at Cransley, and served conscientiously as a justice of the peace from 1653: VCH Warwickshire, VI (n.p., 1951), p. 23; TNA, PROB/11/301.

¹⁸² Susan (‘Sue’) Tue was the Woodfords’ servant and creditor.

¹⁸³ Mayo (Mayhoe, Maiho) was, according to Ramsden (whose information came from Dr Clarke's curate, Christopher Young), Lord Saye and Sele's chaplain and a minister whom the authorities had banned from public preaching. John Mayo (1598–1676) was a Northamptonshire man who had matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1615, but had left without taking a degree. Ramsden claimed that on this occasion he preached at Ball's invitation (who invited him back on 28 December) ‘that it is utterly unlawfull to make or have the picture of Christ his arguments I do not remember the scripture alledged but mistaken though we have known Christ after the flesh yet henceforth know we him so no more [2 Corinthians 5:16]’ (TNA, SP16/474/80). Woodford heard him preach again in London on 30 December 1638, after which he emigrated to New England and was ordained a minister at Barnstaple, Massachusetts, in 1640, where he served as the assistant of John Lothropp: Moore, S.H., Pilgrims: New World settlers and the call of home (London, 2007), p. 197Google Scholar; R.L. Greaves, ‘Lothropp, John (bap. 1584, d. 1653)’, in ODNB.

¹⁸⁴ Ball's third marriage was to Jane Hatch, the widow of John Hatch (d. 1635), gentleman, of Simpson, Buckinghamshire: J. Fielding, ‘Ball, Thomas (1590–1659)’, in ODNB; TNA, PROB/11/169.

¹⁸⁵ ‘ffr’ is probably James Fryers; ‘L’ might be John Loe or Thomas Lamport.

¹⁸⁶ This was follow-up action by Bishop Dee's commissioners in the wake of the church survey. At Wilby, the responsible churchwarden was Robert Ragdale, and defects included a failure to rail the communion table, curate Ainsworth's preaching unlicensed, and individuals (including Perne and Pentlow) with seats that were too high: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 134.

¹⁸⁷ Deuteronomy 28:5.

¹⁸⁸ A townsman and clearly regarded by Woodford as godly, Turland was perhaps related to Thomas Turland, a Northampton joiner employed in repairing the church in 1634, who witnessed the will of Woodford's friend Richard Trueman, and who occurred in town politics in 1640: Diary, p. 227; Vestry Minutes, p. 31; NRO Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H)3501.

¹⁸⁹ Frances Chapman (d. 1650) was the widow of Thomas Chapman of Old, who witnessed the will of Woodford's father in 1636, and was the trustee (with Woodford senior) appointed in 1620 by Woodford's kinsman John Ragdale to support his children. Frances was lending money to Woodford at a rate of interest of 8 per cent: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, P104, C168; ibid., third series, A71; Wake, J. (ed.), The Montagu Musters Book 1602–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society VII (Northampton, 1935), p. 7Google Scholar; Diary, pp. 256–257.

¹⁹⁰ John Dillingham was a Northamptonshire tailor related to William Dillingham, rector of Cranford St John (d. 1621), and Thomas Dillingham, rector of All Saints’, Barnwell, 1618–1640, and St Andrew's, Barnwell, 1639–1647. Both were connected to the circle of moderate godly clergymen centred on Edward, Lord Montagu of Boughton, and occasionally served in the Church courts. John moved to London, from where he wrote newsletters to Montagu about foreign (and probably also Scottish) affairs. Dillingham was forced to flee to Paris after Archbishop Laud received information that he was sheltering a Scottish knight (possibly Johnston of Wariston: Diary, p. 378) as part of a puritan conspiracy of Scottish and English malcontents to force the calling of Parliament. By 30 November 1640 he was back in London, and by 1643 edited the Parliament Scout newspaper, wherein he allied himself with the Parliamentary ‘middle group’ organized by Montagu's nephew Edward Montagu, second Earl of Manchester, Oliver St John, and others: J. Raymond, ‘Dillingham, John (fl. 1639–1649)’, in ODNB; Cotton, A.N.B., ‘John Dillingham: journalist of the “middle group”’, English Historical Review, 369 (1978), pp. 817–834CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cope, E.S., The Life of a Public Man: Edward, first Baron Montagu of Boughton, 1562–1644 (Philadelphia, 1981), pp. 157–158Google Scholar, 168–169, 184–185, 197; Longden, Clergy; Longden MS, 11 June 1617, 24 February 1618, and 16 January 1639.

¹⁹¹ Robert Heyes (Hayes, Heighes), shoemaker, occurs in the parish records in 1628 and 1632 and went on to serve as bailiff of the town in 1634. Woodford refers to him as cousin, so he must have been one of Hannah Woodford's Heighes relations: Vestry Minutes, pp. 21, 29; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 562; TNA, PROB/11/209 and PROB/11/274.

¹⁹² Thomas Lamport, haberdasher, wrote his will in 1649. He was doubtless related to Richard Lamport, who died in 1654 at the reputed age of 129 years: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, B243; Top MS, p. 107.

¹⁹³ Possibly Mary Harvey, the widow of William Harvey of Weston Favell, and the mother of Francis Harvey the barrister: TNA, PROB/11/165.

¹⁹⁴ Henry Hall was the schoolmaster of Paulerspury: D.K. Shearing, ‘A study of the educational developments in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1561–1700’ (unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Nottingham, 1982), p. 339.

¹⁹⁵ Woodford was clearly sceptical that Ramsden would derive any benefit from reading the catechism written by the godly divine William Ames, which was dedicated to the sons of Lady Vere and was entitled Chief heads of divinitie [. . .] in forme of catechising (Dordrecht, 1612): K.L. Sprunger, ‘Ames, William (1576–1633)’, in ODNB; Green, I., The Christian's ABC: catechisms and catechizing in England c. 1530–1740, (Oxford, 1996), p. 219CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹⁶ William Collis.

¹⁹⁷ Thomas Gibson (fl. 1624–1640): Vestry Minutes, p. 35.

¹⁹⁸ This refers to his servant, Hatton's, trip to Charwelton on 24 October 1637 and the outward leg of Woodford's trip to London on 26 October, since on 10 November 1637 he states that he was returning on John Cox's horse.

¹⁹⁹ John Holman: Diary, p. 150.

²⁰⁰ Possibly Nicholas Marriot, who was a member of the grand jury in 1630: Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 76; Wake, J., Quarter Sessions Records of the County of Northampton [. . .] 1630, 1657–1658, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society I (Hereford, 1924), p. 87Google Scholar.

²⁰¹ Undoubtedly the eleven-shilling ‘Edward peece’ that Woodford was forced to spend on 23 December 1637.

²⁰² Perhaps Heyes (Heighes).

²⁰³ 2 Peter 3:18.

²⁰⁴ Matthew 5:6.

²⁰⁵ William Flaxney occurs in the records in 1656: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 457.

²⁰⁶ Simpson, Buckinghamshire.

²⁰⁷ Robert Rich, second Earl of Warwick, was one of the leaders of moderate opposition to the crown from the 1620s until the Civil War: Coward, B., The Stuart Age: England 1603–1714 (London, 2003), pp. 164Google Scholar, 177, 181, 190; S. Kelsey, ‘Rich, Robert, second earl of Warwick (1587–1658)’, ODNB.

²⁰⁸ George Coles was a wealthy member of the urban gentry, with lands in Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire as well as Northamptonshire. His brother Roger and his wife, Susan, had in 1636 resisted taking communion kneeling at the altar rails at Samuel Clarke's parish of St Peter. Coles was connected to several Northampton lawyers: his daughter married Francis Cook, an attorney from Kingsthorpe; Richard Lane, the recorder, was called upon to oversee his will, which was witnessed by William Rushton, the future steward, and Matthew Sillesby, the godly scrivener. Coles's lasting legacy is detailed in a table of benefactions dated 1719, in which it is stated that he had conveyed lands to trustees for charitable uses for the benefit of the poor. Alms were to be distributed (and a sermon preached) on the first Thursday after the Purification of the Virgin Mary (2 February): NPL MSS, 420; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 363–364; TNA, PROB/11/185.

²⁰⁹ Thomas Judkin, tanner, was chamberlain of the town from 1635 until 1637 and Joseph Sargent in 1637. Judkin and his father of the same name were active godly townsmen with many contacts: Freemen of Northampton, unpaginated, dated 1625; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 551–552, 567–568; Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–34; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, O34; Sheils, Puritans, p. 83.

²¹⁰ In 1612, William Wheelowes of Hardingstone had accused (in the Court of Star Chamber) Edward Mercer, Mayor of Northampton and farmer of the rectory of Hardingstone, and George and Tobias Coldwell of conspiring to accuse him of the rape of Margaret Evans: TNA, STAC8/305/9, 10; PDR, CBA20, fo. 207v.

²¹¹ The end of the lane leading from the village of Roade to that of Hardingstone, just south of Northampton.

²¹² Margaret Lane (aunt to the poet Thomas Randolph) was married to Richard Lane, Recorder of Northampton and attorney to the Prince of Wales. Randolph dedicated a work to Richard Lane in 1632: D.A. Orr, ‘Lane, Sir Richard (bap. 1584, d. 1650)’, in ODNB; Prest, Barristers, pp. 374–375.

²¹³ The feast of the Conception of the Virgin Mary.

²¹⁴ John Eakins, an attorney living at Isham, had been prosecuted in the Court of High Commission in 1634 (his co-defendant being the lord of the manor, John Pickering, the father of Woodford's clerk, Thomas) by Robert Weldon, the conformist minister of Stoney Stanton near Leicester. Weldon had accused him of the puritan practice of refusing hat honour during the church service, profaning the communion table, and insulting the clergy. Eakins had been found guilty by the court and fined, but the verdict was later overturned by the Long Parliament, which stated that the commission had had no competence to try the case. Eakins had also served as high constable for the Hundred of Higham Ferrers (in which hundred lay his other estate, at Ringstead), thereby provoking the condemnation of Robert Sibthorpe in 1636 during the Bacon ship money case. Sibthorpe derided him as one of Sheriff Sir John Dryden's ‘puritan high constables’ (TNA, SP16/318/6) bent on sabotaging the tax, and he was duly arrested by the Privy Council in 1637. The same year he was named (with Thomas Pentlow) as the overseer of the will of the godly Thomas Freeman of Cranford. In 1640 he was accused of canvassing for Sir Gilbert Pickering, the godly candidate for knight of the shire in the Short Parliament. His will (dated 1652) was witnessed by Robert Guy: VCH Northamptonshire, IV (London, 1937), p. 189; TNA, SP16/26, fos 15v, 23v, 39v, 86v, 90r–v, 93v–94v, 121r–v, 127v, 154r–v, 163v, 182v, 192r–v; Longden, Clergy; Hart, J.S., Justice upon Petition: the House of Lords and the reformation of justice 1621–1675 (London, 1991), pp. 79–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 101n; TNA, PROB/11/235; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, G211; Bodleian Library, Oxford, Bankes MSS, R6.64.18/5 A; TNA, PC 2/47/241; TNA, PROB/11/355; Longden, Clergy.

²¹⁵ (William?) Fery served as parish clerk in September 1640, although one Mr Johnston is seen performing the function in the Diary on 24 March 1638/39. He was possibly the same Farie of Gold Street who challenged Humphrey Ramsden for bowing on entering church and who occurs (as Ffayery) in the Diary on 13 September 1640. His wife, Sarah, died in 1638: Wake, J. (ed.), A Copy of Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons, and Subsidies etc in the County of Northampton ad 1586–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society III (Kettering, 1926), p. 155Google Scholar; TNA, SP16/468/76; TNA, SP16/474/80; NRO, 223P/1, All Saints’ burial register, April 1638.

²¹⁶ That is, Richard Lane, attorney to Charles, Prince of Wales, and Recorder of Northampton.

²¹⁷ The baptism of Martha, daughter of Joseph Sargent, Chamberlain of Northampton: NRO, 223P/1, All Saints’ baptismal register, 10 December 1637.

²¹⁸ William Collis.

²¹⁹ William Bott, a creditor whom Woodford regarded as godly, appears as a sidesman from 1641 until 1642. He and Henry (‘Harry’) Bott were related to Alderman John Bott, who had been mayor of the town in 1630. Ramsden reported William for receiving communion sitting. The case referred to must be Bott's suit against Clayton: Diary, p. 209; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 552; Vestry Minutes, pp. 36–38; TNA, SP16/468/76 and SP16/474/80.

²²⁰ The sessions were for the town not the county.

²²¹ William Collis.

²²² Henry Lee confirms that an area known as ‘Wall Bank’ was used for hangings when noting the execution of Leonard Bland in 1651. This probably refers to a stream called the Wallbeck (or Walbeck) which runs through Kingsthorpe Hollow to the north of Northampton on the border of the town lands and Kingsthorpe parish, and which had been the site of a short-lived medieval leper hospital: Top MS, p. 107; Bridges, History of Northamptonshire, I, p. 413; VCH Northamptonshire, II (London, 1906), p. 162; ibid., IV, p. 82; Serjeantson, R.M., ‘The leper hospitals of Northampton’, Natural History Society and Field Club, XVIII, no. 141 (1915)Google Scholar; ‘Archaeological sites and churches in Northampton’, in Royal Commission of Historical Monuments of England, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in the County of Northampton (London, 1985), V, p. 55.

²²³ Robert Harrison, a freeman by 1640: NRO, Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 3501.

²²⁴ Bradford occurs in the vestry minutes in 1628 and is possibly the Thomas Bradford who was harried in the Church courts in 1615 by Robert Sibthorpe for a puritan attitude to the baptismal service. See also the town election for the Long Parliament: Vestry Minutes, p. 21; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 73; NRO, Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 3501.

²²⁵ According to the Church court records, Rushworth and Farren appeared before Clarke on 17 (not 16) December at the Hind Inn. The wardens having failed to comply with their previous admonition made at the time of the church survey in October, Clarke ordered them to rail the communion table where it now stood at the east end of the chancel and to call up the communicants to receive kneeling there: they were given until the first court day after Christmas to comply. In their petition of 1641 the churchwardens claimed (as Woodford records here) to have defied Clarke boldly, stating that his demands were contrary to the requirements of the Book of Common Prayer and the Canons of 1604: TNA, SP16/378/74 and SP16/474/80; HLRO, main papers, petition dated 6 February 1641.

²²⁶ William Collis.

²²⁷ Samuel Martin was the son of Woodford's close friend Thomas Martin: see Introduction, p. 32. Nathaniel Sharpe was active in the vestry from 1624 until 1633: Vestry Minutes, pp. 15–36; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 52, 562, 568.

²²⁸ The town's chamberlains (accountants): Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 568.

²²⁹ Susan Tue.

²³⁰ Cook's son was also called Francis. He married the daughter of Richard Lane. His other son may have been the attorney Tempest Cook: VCH Northamptonshire, IV, pp. 80–82.

²³¹ William Collis, Benoni Coldwell, and John Spicer.

²³² That is, the forty-eight burgesses who formed part of the ruling town assembly: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 18–20.

²³³ A John Blomeley was a beneficiary of the will of Sir Christopher Yelverton in 1654; another possibility is one of the brothers Thomas and Brian Blomeley of Easton Maudit, who were mentioned in a 1660 table of Northampton benefactions as donors to the poor. Mrs Pryor of Hardingstone might be related to John Pryor of All Saints’ parish, who last occurs in the records in 1628: Diary, p. 216; TNA, PROB/11/217; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 361; Vestry Minutes, p. 21.

²³⁴ A deed conveying property.

²³⁵ The Woodfords had hoped to save this for a rainy day: Diary, p. 145. It was probably an angel, a gold coin issued during the reign of Edward VI and by Woodford's time worth eleven shillings.

²³⁶ Ramsden's account of Ball's sermon was rather different: ‘Mr Ball often uses very homely comparisons on Xtmas day s[ai]d many did serve the King for their owne ends that they may domineer in the countrey but gods children &.’: TNA, SP16/474/80.

²³⁷ Colson had, since at least 1637, been curate to Richard Holbrooke, the vicar of St Giles's parish and a Church court official appointed to his living by Sir John Lambe. He had probably been curate of St Sepulchre's under Richard Crompton, vicar from 1624 until 1639, another Lambe appointee and Church court operative: NRO 233P/107, unfoliated, under the year 1637; Longden MS, 21 January 1624 and 7 June 1628; NRO 241P/42, unfoliated, under the year 1634.

²³⁸ William Collis.

²³⁹ Ramsden gives this account of Mayo's attendance at Northampton on Holy Innocents’ Day (28 December): ‘he came agayne [he had preached at All Saints’ on 19 November] in the forenoone did stand with his hat on all sermon tyme wt a light browne coat on scarcely like a clergie man and in thafter-noone preached on these words Grow in Grace was very vehement in his use of reprehension saying these ar [. . .] decaying tymes wherein many did oppose those who grow in grace but they must have fellowship one with another and fortifie theymselves against evill tymes’: TNA, SP16/474/80.

²⁴⁰ Hatton lived at Kirby Hall in the parish of Gretton, but this may refer to Moulton Park just north of Northampton. He had obtained a royal grant of this extra-parochial area, which contained two lodges, in 1634: VCH Northamptonshire, IV, p. 218.

²⁴¹ Daniel Cawdrey was the son of Robert Cawdrey, the author of the first English dictionary, and was a central figure in the Northampton godly community. Appointed rector of Little Billing in 1625, he delivered Sir Edmund Hampden's funeral oration in 1627. In the 1630s he publicly preached in criticism of Archbishop Laud at Kettering and evaded the altar policy by removing the communion table from the rails during the eucharist. In July 1637 he buoyed up the godly minister John Barker of Pytchley at his execution. Cawdrey also penned condemnations of the Book of Sports and the altar policy, apologias for which were written in the 1630s by John Pocklington, but Cawdrey claimed that he was unable to publish his rebuttals until the 1640s: J. Fielding, ‘Cawdrey, Daniel (1587/8–1664)’, in ODNB.

²⁴² The brothers William and Thomas Waters, of Eastcote in the parish of Pattishall, were godly attorneys. They had been summoned before the Privy Council in 1632 (William as Constable of Towcester) at the behest of Lord Lieutenant William Cecil, Earl of Exeter, for encouraging eight inhabitants of Towcester (including the mayor) to default over payment of the muster rates and for disrupting the service by delaying payment to the deputy lieutenants of the money they had received. In October 1636 William admitted pulling down the churchyard cross at his parish of Pattishall, and both sided with the godly Miles Burkit in his conflict with his fellow vicar, Richard Powell, a conformist. Both brothers petitioned the Long Parliament on 21 January 1641 against the Privy Council's verdict in favour of Powell: TNA, SP16/211/85; PDR, CBA63, fos 404r–v, 427r–v; Hart, J.S., Justice upon Petition: the House of Lords and the reformation of justice 1621–1675 (London, 1991), pp. 87–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, p. 177.

²⁴³ Thomas Houghton served as an assessor for a church rate in All Saints’ parish in 1627, and by 1656 was serving as a night watchman: Vestry Minutes, pp. 19, 21; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 457–458.

²⁴⁴ The messenger might be Nicholas Kenning of Kisslingbury; the Vernams are John and Robert of Cold Ashby. Francis Perrin has not been identified, but there were members of families bearing that name at the neighbouring parishes of Guilsborough, West Haddon, and Cottesbrooke: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, G217; HLRO, main papers, 1641; Wake, J. (ed.), A Copy of Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons, and Subsidies etc in the County of Northampton ad 1586–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society III (Kettering, 1926), pp. 149–151Google Scholar; PDR, Visitation Book 8, unfoliated, under Cold Ashby.

²⁴⁵ That is, Richard Lane and Sir Christopher Yelverton.

²⁴⁶ Ramsden claimed that, at this communion, Ball administered to ten sitters, including Joseph Sargent (draper), George Goodman, John Friend junior (barber, son of the sexton of the same name, who had been accused during the 1637 survey of insulting Dr Clarke's curate, Christopher Young), and John Hall (a sergeant). Newton reportedly administered to another ten, including Thomas Pendleton and William Bott: TNA, SP16/474/80.

²⁴⁷ On 16 December, the commissioners had ordered them to confirm their railing of the table at the east end. Ramsden confirmed that it was the usual practice at All Saints’, once Clarke and Sibthorpe had created an altar there, to bring the table down from the east end and set it tablewise (short ends pointing east to west) during the communion: ibid.

²⁴⁸ A person's recovery of goods wrongfully distrained from him.

²⁴⁹ Later in the year the Privy Council, incensed at the poor progress of Sheriff Sir John Hanbury's efforts to collect ship money, censured him and committed him to the custody of Powell, royal sergeant-at-arms, who then escorted him about his official business until 10 September, when an appeal to the Earl of Manchester, Lord Privy Seal, set in train events leading to his release: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 115, 147.

²⁵⁰ There was a Thomas Cowper living in Northampton itself. His father had written to Robert Cecil in 1605 to protect Robert Catelin, the godly minister of All Saints’, from deprivation for nonconformity. Cowper junior had been mayor in 1621 and, with Woodford and Lawrence Ball, acted as overseer of the will of his fellow godly ironmonger, John Loe, in 1641: Sheils, Puritans, p. 83; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 552; TNA, PROB/11/189; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, B243; Vestry Minutes, p. 21.

²⁵¹ The reluctant ship money sheriff, Sir John Hanbury.

²⁵² Deborah Morgan née Gregory (d. 1681) was married to Thomas Morgan of Kingsthorpe. Their son was Francis Morgan (1638–1705), who grew up to be a bencher of the Middle Temple: Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 135–136; Isham, Diary, p. 140n.

²⁵³ William Spicer, whose wife, Ann, had swooned on 30 November.

²⁵⁴ Christopher.

²⁵⁵ James Cranford had been presented to the living of Brockhall in 1627 by John Thornton (who, like his neighbours the Knightleys and Drydens, supported the puritan divine John Dod). Cranford was also connected to the Yelvertons: in 1641 he was to dedicate a sermon to Sir Christopher's wife, Ann (née Twisden). According to Humphrey Ramsden, Cranford had preached at the lecture on Ascension Day (14 May) 1637 to a gate of 800 as confidently as if he had been in New England. Ramsden's most likely source of information (he did not yet reside in the town) was Christopher Young, Dr Clarke's curate at St Peter's parish. Ramsden claimed (all quotations are from TNA, SP16/474/80) that Cranford preached against Laudian fasting (‘The kingdom of heaven stands not in meate & drink but in righteousnes where speaking his pleasure concerning fasting, this comforts, saith he, those who are so much for Ceremonyes’, who forced these rites on ‘godly ministers for wch they are content to loose their liveings & libertyes’); altars (‘Theres now such cringing before the altar as though they had god pent up in a narrow roome whom heaven and earth be not able to containe’); the use of candles (‘as though he wanted light who gives light to the sun, moone and starrs’); bowing at the mention of Jesus; the use of singing and organs (‘such pr[o]phaning and singing in the church & that organs ar but as childrens calls’); holy churches (‘Some attribut too much holynesse to the church but know that a prayer in thy closet thy chamber doore being shut is as acceptable to god as in a church. God is not tyed to places: there is noe holynesse there but in the tyme of p[er]forming holy dutyes no more than there is in consecrated bread that remains after communion’); and bodily worship of god (‘God regards not bodily worship sith he is a spirit we must worship him in spirit. The very heathens could say deus est animus. To ye king indeed we may doe reverence because he is visible, but to do so to god invisible hath a show of Idolatrie’): Longden MS, 25 October 1627; TNA, PROB/11/147; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 17–18, 23; Longden, Clergy.

²⁵⁶ Simons had obtained his freedom of the borough in 1635, after apprenticeship to William Collis, mercer; he served as a sidesman in 1639, and a watchman in 1656: Freemen of Northampton, under 1635; Vestry Minutes, p. 34; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 456–459.

²⁵⁷ At a meeting of the town assembly in 1629 during the mayoralty of Woodford's friend John Gifford, it had been decided to provide St Thomas's house as a rent-free dwelling for Thomas Ball, together with an annual salary of £80 (for the maintenance of him and a curate), and £20 for reading a lecture. This was to be paid quarterly at the time of the meeting of the town assembly. Lawrence Watts seems to have received this quarterage for Ball, judging from the entry for 6 January 1637/38 (Epiphany), when Woodford paid Ball via Watts on behalf of the corporation: Book of Orders, pp. 3, 9.

²⁵⁸ The attorney Tempest Cook (possibly the son of the attorney Francis Cook of Kingsthorpe) had obtained the freedom of the borough in 1631 and later witnessed the will of Sir William Willmer of Sywell, a Royalist, in 1646. He served as town clerk, 1654–1657: Freemen of Northampton, unpaginated, dated 1631; TNA, PROB/11/198; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 570.

²⁵⁹ Thomas Pilkington, London merchant and former Undersheriff of Northamptonshire, was Woodford's defeated rival for the post of steward. He had died in 1637 but Woodford and Martin were still clearly involved in concluding Pilkington's legal challenge to Woodford's position. Pilkington's brother William was the vicar of Dodford, where he quarrelled with his conformist patron, Sir Arthur Throckmorton. The beneficiaries of Thomas Pilkington's will included Matthew Sillesby and Peter Farren: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 117; Longden MS, 13 May 1625; Rowse, A.L., Raleigh and the Throckmortons (London, 1962), pp. 280, 289CrossRefGoogle Scholar; NPL MSS, 420, 1581; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, L120; PDR, CBA55, fo. 195; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 129.

²⁶⁰ Woodford's tenant, mentioned below on 20 September 1638.

²⁶¹ Thomas Pendleton served as bailiff of the town in 1628, chamberlain from 1642 until 1644, and mayor in 1648. He served as a churchwarden from 1634 until 1635, when he reported the parish's failure to carry out Bishop Dee's altar policy. Ramsden mentions him as a nonconformist who received communion sitting from Newton and failed to do hat honour during the sacrament of baptism on 3, 10, and 17 September 1637. He was the leader of Northampton's embryonic shoe industry, which was to receive its initial stimulus in 1642, when Parliament placed an order worth £1,000 for boots and shoes to equip its army to suppress the Irish rebellion. By 1648 Parliament had authorized the sale of the lands of the catholic recusant and delinquent William Baude of Walgrave to pay the bill, but in 1651 Pendleton and others told a committee that £208 was outstanding: Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–34; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 551–552; TNA, SP16/474/80; TNA, SP23/108, p. 113.

²⁶² This sum was additional to the £50 assigned in August 1637 towards recasting and hanging the bells of All Saints’: Vestry Minutes, pp. 33–34.

²⁶³ Based on Psalm 51:8.

²⁶⁴ As a corporation Daventry employed waits – professional musicians – to play on official occasions, but the local gentry also paid them to play privately, as John Bernard did here (and as Sir Justinian Isham did in 1671). The Brackley waits became embroiled in a dispute between Sibthorpe and his puritan neighbours in 1639. For the Northampton waits (who had previously been employed by the Spencers of Althorp), see Diary, p. 380; Isham, Diary, p. 72, n. 25; Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1880, 28 April 1639.

²⁶⁵ Peter Whalley (1605–1656), a stationer trading in Northampton and Coventry, had been identified by the Privy Council in March 1634 as having sold copies of Histriomastix (1632), Prynne's attack on stage plays. Whalley married Hannah Cartwright (1605–1675) and counted John Spicer and the curate William Holmes among his intimates. He served as chamberlain of the town from 1640 until 1643, mayor twice, and MP for the borough in the first Protectorate Parliament. His funeral sermon was preached by the moderate Laudian Edward Reynolds, who dedicated its later publication to John Crewe. Referring back to the 1630s, Reynolds wrote of him: ‘he was as is said of Mnason Acts 21: 16 an old disciple a Professor of Religion in the worst times when piety was nicknamed preciseness and he that departed from evil made himself a prey Isaiah 59:15’: Deaths Advantage Preached Last Summer (1656) at Northampton at the Funeral of Peter Whalley the Mayor (London, 1657), p. 26. Whalley was the progenitor of a dynasty of clergymen and of a historian of the county: McKerrow, R.B. (ed.), A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England and Ireland and of Foreign Printers of English Books 1557–1640 (London, 1910), p. 287Google Scholar; Gardiner, S.R. (ed.), Documents Relating to the Proceedings against William Prynne in 1634 and 1637, Camden Society, new series, 18 (London, 1877), pp. 58–60Google Scholar; Vestry Minutes, pp. 19–35, 36, 38; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 441, 551–552, 561–562, 568; Isham, Diary, p. 200, n. 24; Ford, G., ‘Where's Whalley? The search for Sir Samuel uncovers a Whalley–Cartwright alliance in Northamptonshire’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 62 (2009), pp. 31–44Google Scholar.

²⁶⁶ Easton was Woodford's tenant at Old: Diary, pp. 192, 259.

²⁶⁷ John Percival occurs as the curate of Abthorpe from 1630, when he was presented to the Church court for stating that the parson, Hugh Alloway, had preached on Christmas Day ‘and spoke of a greyhound of Edward Parsons eating pie meat’ (PDR, CB1, fo. 310r). At the 1637 visitation it was reported that Percival was not a graduate: PDR, X639–642/8, unfoliated, under Abthorpe; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 37v.

²⁶⁸ Mary, the sister of Francis Harvey of Weston Favell (1611–1703), a Middle Temple barrister and MP for Northampton from 1656 to 1660: Foster; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northampton 1618, pp. 98–99.

²⁶⁹ Richard Mottershed, attorney, was from a recusant family living at Kingsthorpe and descended from John Mottershed, the Elizabethan diocesan registrar. Several Mottersheds served as notaries public in the Church courts, and later members of the dynasty included Thomas, registrar of the Court of High Commission, and his son Edward, another civil lawyer and key follower of Richard Neile, Archbishop of York. Thomas was one of Sibthorpe's allies who signed the certificate of good character for Plowright during the Burton Latimer ship money dispute. In partnership with Sir John Lambe's factotum in the courts, Richard Stockwell, Richard Mottershed had in 1628 presented the conformist royal chaplain Robert Skinner to the living of Pitsford, which he had relinquished only in 1636 when promoted to the bishopric of Bristol: PDR, Instance Book 14, passim; PDR, CB40, fo. 46r; PDR, CB56A, fo. 334; PDR, CB55, fo. 83; VCH Northamptonshire, IV, pp. 82–83; Levack, B., The Civil Lawyers of England (Oxford, 1973), p. 257Google Scholar; Sheils, Puritans, p. 6; Longden MS, 22 May 1628; Longden, Clergy; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 38; TNA, SP16/409/2i.

²⁷⁰ John Oagles and his son Thomas occur in the records from 1636 until the 1640s: Book of Orders, p. 75; Freemen of Northampton, under Thomas Oagles (dated 1636).

²⁷¹ Thomas Crutchley, who, with his wife, Elizabeth was part of Woodford's godly circle, was one of the town's sergeants. He proved the will of the godly saddler Richard Trueman: TNA, SP16/468/76; Cox and Markham, Northampton, II, p. 49; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, G100.

²⁷² Traditionally, all quarter sessions meetings had been held in Northampton, in the west of the county, until, in 1624, the custos rotulorum, Sir Francis Fane (later Earl of Westmorland), had summoned them to Kettering, nearer to his dwelling in the east. The eastern gentry, led by Lord Montagu, agreed with this removal but resented the actions of Fane, who was regarded as a parvenu. The Privy Council's compromise was that Kettering would thenceforth be host only to one of the meetings, Northampton to the other three. Fane duly held the sessions at Kettering in January 1626 and in 1629 built a new sessions house at his own expense; his son Mildmay Fane continued the policy when he succeeded as custos. Clearly this compromise was operating in the 1630s, with the January meeting still being the one held at Kettering (see also Diary, p. 275): Cope, E.S., The Life of a Public Man: Edward, first Baron Montagu of Boughton, 1562–1644 (Philadelphia, 1981), pp. 104Google Scholar, 109–111, 135, 171; Bull, F.W.M., A Sketch of the History of the Town of Kettering Together with Some Account of its Worthies (Kettering, 1891), p. 16Google Scholar.

²⁷³ This dismissal of Robinson is puzzling, as he seems to have enjoyed a godly pedigree: connected by friendship or kinship to the godly Downes and Tanfield families (as well as to Sir Robert Rich), he supported his local minister, Leonard Pattinson, formerly a leader of the Elizabethan classis at Kettering. During his shrievalty in 1629 Robert Bolton preached the assize sermon, which was later published by Edward Bagshaw. In his will, Robinson expressed no doubts that Christ's merits alone had assured him of the salvation prepared for ‘the elect Saints and servants of God’: TNA, PROB/11/176; Sheils, Puritans, pp. 41, 54, 97; Bridges, History of Northamptonshire, p.164; Bolton, , Two Sermons Preached at Northampton at Two Severall Assizes There (London, 1635)Google Scholar, title page.

²⁷⁴ 2 Samuel 12:8.

²⁷⁵ This is possibly Thomas Pratt (junior) of Mears Ashby who served as a sidesman for his parish in 1637 and whose wife, Isabel, had been accused in 1634 of gadding to Wilby, where Andrew Perne was the incumbent: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 135r–v; PDR, CBA63, fo. 192r–v. Woodford clearly regarded the Mrs Pratt he mentions on 20 and 21 February 1637/38 as godly.

²⁷⁶ John Wilkins was born in the house of his maternal grandfather, the godly divine John Dod, and, like his grandfather, was a protégé of the Knightley family (on 2 June 1637 Richard Knightley had presented him to his vicarage at Fawsley). Wilkins was also chaplain to their friend Viscount Saye and Sele. Saye and Knightley were among the parliamentary visitors who installed Wilkins as Warden of Wadham College, Oxford. He went on to marry Oliver Cromwell's sister Robina in 1656, and became both President of the Royal Society and a bishop after the Restoration: J. Henry, ‘Wilkins, John (1614–1672)’, in ODNB; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 17.

²⁷⁷ John Parker of Northampton was called to the bar between 1639 and 1642 as a member of Gray's Inn. A Parliamentarian and active justice of the peace during the 1640s, he was a serjeant-at-law at his death in 1668: P.R. Brindle, ‘Politics and society in Northamptonshire, 1649–1714’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 1983), p. 135; Prest, Barristers, p. 275, n. 98; TNA, PROB/11/326.

²⁷⁸ Farren and Rushworth again appeared before Clarke on this day at the Hind. Since they had failed to rail in the table altarwise at the east end (and had in fact brought the table down into the chancel and placed it tablewise during the communion), they were excommunicated: TNA, SP16/378/74.

²⁷⁹ Probably the father of Woodford's servant, Richard.

²⁸⁰ For the fire iron (see later in the same entry), as John Loe was an ironmonger.

²⁸¹ There is no mention of this victory in the Church court records and, indeed, by 28 January the wardens’ excommunication had been published.

²⁸² For the Warrens of Old, see Diary, p. 226, n. 482.

²⁸³ Possibly Edward Machen, a Middle Temple barrister: Prest, Barristers, p. 336.

²⁸⁴ Brian Ball made his will in January 1638. An apothecary, he chose Samuel Snell to act as a trustee: Lichfield Record Office, D/C/11.

²⁸⁵ Samuel Snell was added to Coventry's council in 1644 and replaced a Royalist alderman in 1651: Coventry City Record Office, A 14 (a, b), Council Minute Books 1557–1696, A14 (b), fo. 99v. I am grateful to Richard Cust and Ann Hughes for this reference.

²⁸⁶ Kilsby.

²⁸⁷ Faxton chapel was attached to the rectory of Lamport, where Sir John Isham's protégé, the Church court official William Noke, was the incumbent. The anonymous A Certificate from Northamptonshire. Touching pluralities. Defect of maintenance. Of not preaching. Of poor ministers (London, 1641) claimed (p. 7) that Isham impoverished the living by retaining the tithes, resulting in incumbents who were of a poor standard and did not preach. Francis Nicolls of Hardwick owned the manor of Faxton and maintained William Clarke there, a godly minister who doubled as his household chaplain: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 26; VCH Northamptonshire, IV, p. 199; Longden MS, 22 November 1636; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, A198.

²⁸⁸ William Collis.

²⁸⁹ William Bernard, John's brother, lived at Ecton: Diary, p. 122.

²⁹⁰ Worlidge was a tenant of Thomas Bacon, squire of Burton Latimer: NRO, 55P/57, p. 69.

²⁹¹ Thomas Cox was a landowner from Mears Ashby and a reputed gadder to other parishes according to a presentment of 1633: Wake, J. (ed.), The Montagu Musters Book 1602–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society VII (Northampton, 1935), pp. 73, 146Google Scholar; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 135r–v; PDR, CBA63, fo. 19r–v.

²⁹² John James of Earl's Barton had been prosecuted by Drs Heath, Clarke, and Roane, and by Henry Alleyn (a conformist ally of Sir John Lambe) for nonconformity to Laudian ceremonial since 1632, and Woodford was clearly representing him. In 1641 James claimed that Clarke had previously excommunicated him, despite his having compounded with the court, and had thereafter, in 1634, promoted a suit against him in the Court of High Commission. The case was referred to Lambe, who only released James when he had paid £10 towards the repair of St Paul's and the fees of the Northampton court. Subsequently he moved to Olney, Buckinghamshire, where Lambe again proceeded against him for gadding to sermons and entered a caveat preventing him from appealing to the Courts of Arches and Audience: this was perhaps the result of Laud's rumoured blocking of the appeals procedure for cases originating in Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, and Bedfordshire (see Diary, p. 382, n. 913). He was thus forced to conform to Laudian ceremonial, especially standing at the gloria patri. He was later excommunicated for holding a conventicle in his house: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 102; HLRO, main papers, James's petition, 9 February 1641; Hart, J.S., Justice upon Petition: the House of Lords and the reformation of justice 1621–1675 (London, 1991), pp. 77–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹³ Richard Chapman was active in the vestry from 1622 until 1628: Vestry Minutes, pp. 15–25.

²⁹⁴ John Harbert was active in the vestry from 1626 and in the corporation – he was mayor in 1629 when he presented Thomas Ball to All Saints’: Vestry Minutes, pp. 18–25; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 551–552.

²⁹⁵ William Collis.

²⁹⁶ There are three candidates for the Mr Sea mentioned here: Francis Say of Great Doddington (who married Alexander Eakins's daughter Elizabeth), their son, Alexander (b. 1614), or Francis's brother Thomas, rector of Whiston. Lambe is probably Robert, rector of Cranford St John from 1629 until 1640: Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, pp. 134, 178; Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, p. 43; Longden MS, 7 February 1629; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 130r–v.

²⁹⁷ That which is owed.

²⁹⁸ That is, Edmund Heighes of London, haberdasher, Hannah Woodford's uncle. Pyke has not been identified.

²⁹⁹ Sir Francis Crawley and Sir Richard Weston. The other judges to declare for the king were Berkeley, Vernon, Trevor, Jones, and Finch. Croke, Hutton, Denham, Bramston, and Davenport declared for Hampden: Russell, C.S.R., ‘The ship money judgements of Bramston and Davenport’, English Historical Review, 77 (1962), pp. 312–318CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Jones, Bench, pp. 139, 143.

³⁰⁰ Christopher.

³⁰¹ Richard Lane, attorney general to Prince Charles: D.A. Orr, ‘Lane, Sir Richard (bap. 1584, d. 1650)’, in ODNB.

³⁰² Woodford was related to the Ragdale family of Old through his grandmother Mary Ragdale, who had married Edward Woodford, his grandfather, in 1560. Edward Ragdale, Woodford's cousin, lived in the parish of St Mary, Staining Lane, of which by 1638 he was a prominent resident; Dale, T.C. (ed.), The Inhabitants of London in 1638 (London, 1931), p. 120Google Scholar; Woodforde, D.H. (ed.), Woodforde Papers and Diaries (London, 1932)Google Scholar, genealogical table at the end.

³⁰³ Thomas Turner was Laud's chaplain: Tyacke, N., Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987), p. 240Google Scholar.

³⁰⁴ This letter from William Collis to Sir George Sondes probably concerns the charitable bequest made by Sir Ralph Freeman to his native town of Northampton. Sondes, who had married Freeman's daughter and heiress, Jane, was the executor of his father-in-law's will. Freeman, a wealthy clothworker and merchant, had died in 1634 as Mayor of London, and had bequeathed £1,000 to be used by local tradesmen and clothiers to provide work for the poor and to augment the stipend of the master of the grammar school. Sondes was the nephew of Lord Montagu and had been educated by Dr John Preston at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Freeman had also enjoyed friendly dealings with Montagu, but had been a supporter of the Duke of Buckingham, and had bequeathed £1,000 towards Archbishop Laud's renovation of St Paul's Cathedral. Sondes had already failed to administer Freeman's legacy properly. In August 1636 the Privy Council summoned him to London following their receipt of a petition from the Mayor of Northampton, William Knight, complaining that Sondes was withholding the money. Collis's letter was probably a further reminder. A later meeting of the town assembly (in March 1638) complained that only £500 had been received; on 31 October 1640 the assembly despatched Thomas Martin to petition the Long Parliament for redress, and in March 1641 the assembly resolved to prosecute Sondes for the balance. His refusal to pay came back to haunt him. In 1655 his home county of Kent was scandalized by his son's, Freeman Sondes's, execution for the murder of his brother, George. Local godly clergy blamed the fratricide on the sins of the father, prominent among which was his misadministration of Freeman's charity: T. Seccombe, ‘Sondes, George, first earl of Feversham (1599–1677)’, rev. S. Kelsey, in ODNB; Jordan, W.K., The Charities of London 1480–1660: the aspirations and the achievements of the urban society (London, 1960), pp. 124Google Scholar, 179, 305, 345 n. 145; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 350–351; HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, III (London, 1926), p. 362; TNA, PC2/46/337 and PC2/46/368; TNA, PROB/11/99; Book of Orders, pp. 59–62; TNA, PROB/11/165.

³⁰⁵ Possibly the John Sampson mentioned as a trusted servant in Sir Ralph Freeman's will: TNA, PROB/11/165.

³⁰⁶ Leonard Wilcox of Horton had been Freeman's steward of that manor since at least 1625 and performed the function for the next owner, Henry Montagu, Earl of Manchester. He may also have been the same attorney who, in 1633, had been the source of anti-papist rumours concerning Lady Digby: TNA, PROB/11/223; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 90r–v; VCH Northamptonshire, IV, p. 261.

³⁰⁷ William Collis.

³⁰⁸ Derrington near Stafford.

³⁰⁹ Legal information not given on oath.

³¹⁰ Matthew Wren, as Bishop of Norwich, was the most vigorous exponent of Laudian policies: N.W.S. Cranfield, ‘Wren, Matthew (1585–1667)’, in ODNB.

³¹¹ Gaining possession of some property or right by the verdict of a court.

³¹² Woodford's client may be the same Pettiver with whom he later stayed at Kettering and whom he considered ungodly. This individual may be the John Pettiver (mercer) whose will was witnessed by Thomas Harris, rector of Kettering, in 1640. It is debatable whether this is the John Pettiver prosecuted by William Spencer, rector of Scaldwell, around 1629 as ‘a Common drunkard and altogether unfit for the company of God's people’, who had reputedly ‘come into the Church amongst them that receaved the sacrament and went out irreverently’ and who by April 1630 was reported for standing excommunicate: Diary, p. 243; PDR, CB61, unfoliated, under 9 July 1629 and 23 April 1630; Longden, Clergy.

³¹³ That is, judges Sir Robert Berkeley and Sir George Vernon: S. Doyle, ‘Berkeley, Sir Robert (1584–1656)’, in ODNB; D.X. Powell, ‘Vernon, Sir George (c.1578–1639)’, in ODNB; Jones, Bench, pp. 139–143.

³¹⁴ Following his condemnation by the Court of Star Chamber, the godly Henry Burton had been imprisoned at Lancaster Castle until November 1637, when he had been moved to Guernsey: K. Gibson, ‘Burton, Henry (bap. 1578, d. 1647/8)’, in ODNB.

³¹⁵ William Sargent, who was active in the vestry from 1628 until 1630, was a haberdasher who, in later life, served as lay minister at the settlement of Barnstaple, Massachusetts: Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–26; R.L. Greaves, ‘Lothropp, John (bap. 1584, d. 1653)’, in ODNB; Moriarty, G.A., ‘Genealogical research in England: Gifford: Sargent’, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 74 (1920, 1921), pp. 231–237Google Scholar, 267–283.

³¹⁶ William Collis.

³¹⁷ Lord Henry Spencer of Althorp, the future Earl of Sunderland, was still a minor and under the wardship of his mother, Lady Penelope (née Wriothesley). One John Owen had been curate at the Spencers' home parish of Great Brington since 1634 under her husband, William, the second Baron. Possibly Spencer was now promoting Owen to the rectory of Brington: Finch, M.E., The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540–1640, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society XIX (Oxford, 1966), pp. 55–56Google Scholar, 60, 62n, 65; PDR, CB64, fo. 133r; PDR, X639–642/8, unfoliated, under Brington.

³¹⁸ William Collis.

³¹⁹ Spencer Compton, second Earl of Northampton, had seats at Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire, and Compton Wynyates, Warwickshire, and was related to the Mordaunts, earls of Peterborough. He was Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire but was relatively inactive in the local politics of either county – he was above all a courtier on close personal terms with Charles I. The Comptons had a history of supporting conformist ministers, notably Bishop John Towers, Peter Hausted, and Isaac Casaubon: J. Fielding, ‘Towers, John (d. 1649)’, in ODNB; M. Bennett, ‘Compton, Spencer, second earl of Northampton (1601–1643)’, in ODNB; V. Stater, ‘Mordaunt, Henry, second earl of Peterborough (bap. 1623, d. 1697)’, in ODNB; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 40–41.

³²⁰ The minister of Grantham North from 1608 until 1647 was Thomas Dilworth, with Edward Harrys ministering in Grantham South from 1634 until 1638: J.E. Swaby, Lincolnshire Parish Clergy in the Seventeenth Century (1883) (typescript held at the Lincolnshire Record Office).

³²¹ William Collis.

³²² James Nalton was the puritan minister at Rugby: Eales, J., Puritans and Roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), p. 157Google Scholar; Hughes, A., Politics, Society, and Civil War: Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³²³ This seems to be the same Mr Pratt mentioned on 10 January 1637/38, who has been tentatively identified as Thomas Pratt of Mears Ashby.

³²⁴ Sir Richard Hutton was famous for his protestant piety and popular for his resistance to prerogative taxation. He had led the judges’ opposition to the forced loan in 1626 and had refused (even after a personal confrontation with the king) to sanction the Star Chamber prosecution of the imprisoned MPs following the stormy parliamentary debates of 1628 and 1629. In 1635 he had refused to join the other eleven common law judges in endorsing the extension of the levying of ship money to the whole kingdom. While eventually signing under pressure the unanimous judicial opinion of 1637 in favour of ship money, he dismissed the crown's case when Hampden came to trial in 1637 – such a levy might not be made by the monarch without parliamentary consent unless in time of war. This verdict, issued on 28 April 1638 according to Woodford, was widely circulated and greatly applauded: Jones, Bench, pp. 125–127; W. Prest, ‘Hutton, Sir Richard (bap. 1561, d. 1639)’, in ODNB.

³²⁵ Thomas Alford was domestic chaplain to Sheriff Sir John Hanbury of Kelmarsh and vicar of Daventry from 1635. Hanbury's will of 1639 stipulated that his loving friend preach the funeral oration: TNA, PROB/11/97.

³²⁶ Francis Williamson was the clerk of assize for the Midland circuit from 1633 until 1642, his deputy being John Tourney: Cockburn, J.S., A History of English Assizes 1558–1714 (Cambridge, 1972), p. 315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³²⁷ The churchwardens later claimed that Clarke had berated them at the Northampton court because of their appeal to the Court of Delegates (and Newton, the curate, for publishing, as described here, the inhibition issued by that court): ‘called yor peticoners Coxcombes dishonest churchwardens and giddy headed fellowes. And that they went to London and told Lyes and offered a false oath’ (HLRO, main papers, petition 1641). Sir John Lambe, they said, then reinforced Clarke's effort by initiating a suit against them in the Court of High Commission (which was still current on 6 February 1641), forcing them finally to create the railed, east end altar: Diary, pp. 188–189.

³²⁸ John Tourney was the associate clerk of assize on the Midland circuit from 1633 until 1656: Cockburn, History of English Assizes, p. 315.

³²⁹ Cockburn states (ibid., p. 31) that the Midland assize circuit was fixed during the early seventeenth century – commencing at Warwick and concluding at Northampton. However, on this and two further occasions in the Diary (pp. 288, 341), the judges are described moving from Northampton to Warwick.

³³⁰ A writ of fieri facias authorized the sheriff to distrain a defendant's goods to the value of money owed. John Sillesby was the son of Matthew Sillesby, a scrivener who had been mayor of the town in 1631, and who had been a leading participant in the godly obstruction of the conformist policies of John Lambe over the period 1614 to 1624. According to Woodford, Matthew died on 28 March 1639. John had been an active parish officer from 1628 until 1635: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 71–72; Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–31.

³³¹ James Longman was chaplain to Sir Christopher Hatton of Kirby. It was later alleged that he illegally obtained the living of Aynho in 1644 by imprisoning and torturing the Parliamentarian widow of the lord of the manor, Richard Cartwright, at Banbury Castle with the connivance of its governor, Sir William Compton, until she signed away her rights and those of the heir, John. Longman was ejected from the living by Parliament around 1646, by which time he had fled to the Royalist headquarters at Oxford, where he became chaplain to New College. He was replaced at Aynho by John Cartwright's candidate, Robert Wild: Longden, Clergy; Matthews, A.G. (ed.), Walker Revised (Oxford, 1948), p. 282Google Scholar; S. Ransom, ‘Squire Cartwright and Parson Drope’, Cake and Cock Horse, IV, no. 5 (1969), pp. 67–73; R.L. Greaves, ‘Wild, Robert (1615/16–1679)’, in ODNB.

³³² William Collis, his wife, and possibly his daughter, Sarah, were clearly regarded as godly despite Woodford's constant bickering with the mayor over official business. Mrs Harbert was the wife of John Harbert, mayor in 1629; Mrs Gibson, the wife of Thomas Gibson, who was active in the vestry from 1624 until 1640. Rebecca Bushell was the niece of John Bushell (d. 1630), cutler and London citizen: Cox and Markham, Northampton, II, p. 252; Vestry Minutes, pp. 15–35; TNA, PROB/11/157.

³³³ Newton was under the censure of the Church court: Diary, p. 105, and n. 39. The Prayer Book prayer for which Woodford is expressing his disapproval is probably that for ‘the whole state of Christ's Church militant here in earth’, part of the second (communion) service, which blesses God's ‘holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear [. . .]’.

³³⁴ Haman was the enemy of the Jewish hero Mordecai. He was defeated and executed on the gallows intended for Mordecai.

³³⁵ William Beeley (here described as living at Stoke Goldington, Buckinghamshire) was the Archdeacon of Carmarthen, which was under the See of St David's.

³³⁶ William Collis and Benoni Coldwell.

³³⁷ An obligation to perform an act or observe a condition; alternatively, the money pledged as surety for such performance.

³³⁸ Clarke had banned the afternoon sermon on 4 March, but the practice resumed on 11 March.

³³⁹ Mr House or Howes has not been definitely identified, although there were brothers of that name (John, Thomas, and Robert) living at Wootton in 1631: PDR, CB1, fo. 410.

³⁴⁰ Portable stocks had been used since 1634, when soldiers, incensed at the condemnation of one of their number to punishment at the fixed stocks in Market Square, had burned them down: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 196.

³⁴¹ For the town jail (under the Conduit Hall) and the house of correction, see Diary, p. 135, n. 174.

³⁴² William Collis.

³⁴³ The records of All Saints’ show Jane Gifford's baptism on the previous day, 12 March 1638: NRO, 223P/1.

³⁴⁴ Possibly Richard Pulley (d. 1649) of Ingatestone, Essex: TNA, PROB/11/207.

³⁴⁵ This might be the William Wilson who – along with Daniel Reading and Thomas Adkins – was found guilty by the town assembly in 1641 of various infringements of Northampton's liberties, including illegal malting. He was listed as a servant in the will of the Northampton barrister Joseph Bryan. The two Mrs Wilsons whose deaths the diary records (pp. 274, 384) were presumably related to him: Book of Orders, pp. 13, 67; TNA, PROB/11/179.

³⁴⁶ There were six Adkins brothers descended from an aldermanic grandfather, Thomas Adkins. These are possible candidates for identification as Woodford's godly townsman. Perhaps the most likely were Thomas, Edward, or their cousin, John; a Peter Adkins also occurs: Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 60; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, L108.

³⁴⁷ Towards the extra £100 voted on 5 January 1637/38 (and due on 10 March) for recasting and hanging the church bells: Vestry Minutes, p. 34.

³⁴⁸ Work on creating a railed, east end communion table had now resumed (and was nearing completion on the next day, 17 March) following Sir John Lambe's and Dr Clarke's overthrowing, in the Court of High Commission, of the churchwardens’ hard-won inhibition out of the Court of Delegates mentioned in the entry for 21 February: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 97.

³⁴⁹ Thomas Case of Norwich diocese was a vocal opponent of the Laudian policy of Bishop Matthew Wren and a future member of the Westminster Assembly. During this period he had taken refuge in Manchester, where he was evangelizing the surrounding area at the request of the godly divine Richard Heyrick: Richardson, R.C., Puritanism in North-west England: a regional study of the Diocese of Chester to 1642 (Manchester, 1972), pp. 31Google Scholar, 35, 54–55, 150–151; M. Mullett, ‘Case, Thomas (bap. 1598, d. 1682)’, in ODNB.

³⁵⁰ Martin Tompkins was regarded as godly by Woodford and served as bailiff from 1640 until 1641: Diary, p. 360.

³⁵¹ James Hart was an Edinburgh-born physician and client of Edward, Lord Montagu. In 1625 he had dedicated Klinik or the Diet of the Diseased to his patron, which Hart had intended as a companion volume to Robert Bolton's Some Generall Directions for a Comfortable Walking with God, which was dedicated to Montagu in the same year. A member of the Northampton godly since around 1612, in his writings Hart accepted the description of himself as a puritan. In 1614 he was presented to the Church courts for neglecting to receive Easter communion at All Saints’ at a time when Dr John Lambe and the conformists had expelled Robert Catelin, the corporation's minister, and replaced him with the vehemently anti-puritan Dr David Owen. He was a leading member of that community, in 1631 overseeing the will of Simon Wastell, the retired headmaster of the free school and leader of godly resistance to Lambe: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 51, n. 32; Cope, E.S., The Life of a Public Man: Edward, first Baron Montagu of Boughton, 1562–1644 (Philadelphia, 1981), p. 147Google Scholar; J. Symons, ‘Hart, James (d. 1639)’, in ODNB; PDR, CB44, fo. 63r–v; Longden, Clergy.

³⁵² This outbreak of plague hit Northampton and villages to the north of it such as Ringstead (where it may have started: Diary, p. 98), Denford, Holcot, and Old. By Woodford's estimation it lasted for nearly a year. Dr Samuel Clarke gave an earlier date than Woodford (ibid., p. 98, n. 11) for its commencement at Northampton. The death rate (as recorded by Clarke) ran at twenty-six, sixteen (these figures were confirmed by Woodford on 5 June), and twenty-nine per week during the period 27 May to 17 June, peaking around 24 July at forty-two (as recorded in the diary). Woodford did not announce the all clear until 16 February 1638/39, although by 17 November 1638 he recorded that the situation had improved sufficiently for St Hugh's fair to be held, and that only three had died in the previous week. The parish register in the parish of St Sepulchre tells a similar story, giving the dates 29 March 1638 for the commencement and 1 January 1639 for the conclusion. The overall Northampton death toll of 565 means that the outbreak was second in severity in the seventeenth century only to that of 1605 (when the total was 625), since the town escaped the Great Plague of 1665. All Saints’ parish, the most populous, naturally bore the brunt of the attack, with 247 fatalities (compared with 411 in 1605). The Privy Council rapidly showed concern, on 10 April writing to the mayor (William Collis) instructing him to prevent the spread of the disease and offering practical advice: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 118–121; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 237–239; TNA, SP16/393/15.

³⁵³ Susan Tue.

³⁵⁴ Henry Sprig was active in the vestry of All Saints’ from 1628 until 1638, and was regarded by Woodford as godly. He was elected bailiff in 1640: Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–34; Diary, p. 360.

³⁵⁵ William Whately, the ‘roaring boy of Banbury’, was lecturer there and also operated a godly seminary: Webster, Godly Clergy, pp. 20, 27–28, 54, 159 (quotation), 160.

³⁵⁶ George Hopkins of Holcot was probably the son of Thomas Hopkins, the brother-in-law of the godly alderman John Bryan, both of whom had been prosecuted in Star Chamber in 1607 by John Lambe for circulating satirical verses about the Church courts: TNA, STAC8/205/19.

³⁵⁷ Potter had been town bailiff as early as 1605 and served as churchwarden of St Peter's parish in 1635: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 561; PDR, X639–642/8.

³⁵⁸ The annual fair had been due on 25 March (Lady Day) but had been postponed because this fell on a Sunday.

³⁵⁹ Christopher Haunch.

³⁶⁰ This is the ship money phase of the factional rivalry at Burton Latimer between the squire, Thomas Bacon (1601–1642), and the rector, Dr Robert Sibthorpe. Bacon is here being prosecuted in the Star Chamber at the instance of Sibthorpe's ally, George Plowright, as a result of a rating dispute over the ship money writ of 1635: see Introduction, pp. 79–81. Bacon's father, Edward (1547–1627), had moved from Hessett, Suffolk, and had married the daughter of George Poulton, the Catholic recusant squire of Desborough, and his wife, Elizabeth Isham, the aunt of Sir John Isham of Lamport. Thomas was the eldest of three sons, the others being John – with whom Woodford prayed – and Edmund. Their sister, Ann, had married the conformist clergyman William Noke. Thomas had married Margaret Franklin (d. 1627), the daughter of George Franklin of Bolnhurst, Bedfordshire. After Margaret's death he married one Elizabeth (d. 1648). The family remained close to its Isham kinsmen, Sir John and his son Justinian. Sir John presented Noke to his rectory of Lamport in 1636, while Bacon made Noke a pluralist in 1640 by presenting him to that of Great Addington. During the Civil War he was ejected from both. Bacon also possessed an estate at Long Buckby. According to his monument, after a life involving various hardships (‘varias aerumnas’), he died quietly. He was succeeded by his son Edmund: memorial inscriptions in Burton parish church; Isham, Diary, p. 66, n. 45; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, pp. 66, 191; Longden, Clergy, under Noke; Longden MS, under 22 November 1636 and 23 September 1640; TNA, PROB 11/207/162 (will of Elizabeth Bacon); Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 55, n. 81.

³⁶¹ This refers to a horse race. Lord William Spencer and other gentry had in 1632 supplied the set-up costs, and Northampton corporation had purchased the silver cup, which was to be ridden for annually on the Thursday in Easter week. Spencer had encountered opposition from Sir Richard Samwell, who had claimed that the activity offended God, who usually inflicted supernatural punishment on those who bred match horses. Such meetings, Samwell had claimed, bred disorder, which contravened the Book of Sports, and he had refused to contribute. He had received short shrift from his patron, who had stated that Sir Anthony Mildmay and Thomas Elmes kept such horses and prospered, while the king himself enjoyed the sport. Northampton Heath was situated to the north-east of the town, adjacent to the Kettering Road. Later sources in the 1670s mention a race on the same day at Harlestone Heath (or Firs) on land owned by Spencer near Althorp: VCH Northamptonshire, II (London, 1906), p. 382; Isham, Diary, pp. 99, 100 n. 10, 103; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 539; British Library, Add. MSS 25,079, fo. 101; NRO, Spencer (Althorp) MSS, S(A), A3/3.

³⁶² The sessions reconvened at Wellingborough on 22 May.

³⁶³ Mincing his words, speaking euphemistically.

³⁶⁴ The brother of Thomas and Edmund Bacon.

³⁶⁵ Thomas Dowsing was the vicar of Long Buckby: Longden MS, 13 May 1629.

³⁶⁶ John Pocklington was a prebendary of Peterborough and a royal chaplain. He was a close friend of Bishop Dee and a dedicated advocate of Laudian policies, his written apologias for which were burned by the public hangman on the orders of the Long Parliament: V. Larminie, ‘Pocklington, John (d. 1642)’, in ODNB; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 253; Longden, Clergy.

³⁶⁷ Francis Downes (d. 1640), the owner of the manor of Pytchley, was a younger son of a Lancashire gentry family whose seat was at Wardley Hall, Worsley, and had represented the town of Wigan in the parliaments of 1624 and 1625. Downes and his brother Roger (d. 1638), the squire of Wardley, were members of Gray's Inn. Francis was a justice of the peace and possessed a puritan pedigree: in 1631 he had witnessed the will of the godly divine Robert Bolton, and he had himself acted as a patron to the godly ministers John Baseley and John Baynard (the client of Francis Nicolls). Downes had previously clashed with Pocklington in 1634 over a similar commission, albeit an ecclesiastical one. He and Edward Bagshaw had been deputed by the Court of High Commission to take evidence in the case of the justices of the peace John Sawyer of Kettering (his fellow commissioner here) and Francis Nicolls (both also connected to Bolton), who had been charged with holding puritan conventicles with Nicolls's chaplain, William Clarke; but Pocklington's complaint that Downes had protected the defendants resulted in charges being preferred against Downes. In 1635 Sir John Lambe uncovered evidence that Downes had protected John Fisher's conventicle in Northampton from the attentions of Sibthorpe, and that the godly incumbent at Pytchley, John Barker, had held conventicles with Downes at the manor house, as also at the houses of Goodwife Burley, the wife of Downes's coachman and gardener, and of Henry Wyne, another of Downes's servants. The sympathetic account of Barker's execution for murder at Northampton in 1637, which was found at Pytchley later in the century, had belonged to Downes: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 26, 129–130; Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1880; Notes and Queries, CLXIX (1935), pp. 64–65, 301–302; Lancashire Record Office, WCW 1638 (will of Roger Downes); TNA, PROB/11/183 and PROB/11/241 (wills of Francis and Alice Downes); TNA, SP16/308/52; Prest, Barristers, p. 357; NRO Isham (Lamport) MSS, I(L) 2570.

³⁶⁸ John Sawyer was a godly justice of the peace based at Kettering, a patron of Robert Bolton, and, with his brother Francis and the friends detailed in the previous note, a leader of opposition to crown policy in the 1630s. In 1639, at the height of the First Bishops’ War, Sibthorpe complained of Sawyer setting a watch for papists in the town of Kettering and subsequently arguing with Sibthorpe about it at the meetings of the justices of the peace: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 26, 129–130; Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1880.

³⁶⁹ This might be Francis Say, squire of Great Doddington. His sister Susan had married the conformist vicar of the parish, Anthony Waters. Alternatively, it could be their brother Thomas, the conformist rector of Whiston: Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 13; Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, p. 43; TNA, SP16/375/82; Longden, Clergy.

³⁷⁰ Thomas Dishley had attained the freedom of the borough in 1630: Freemen of Northampton.

³⁷¹ Joan, the wife of the diarist's uncle, Henry Woodford of Old.

³⁷² John Syers, lord of the manor of Loddington, was the son of the catholic recusant Robert Syers, and the son-in-law of the godly lawyer Robert Tanfield of Loddington, who bequeathed law books to him in his will of 1639. With Robert Mulshoe he was the close friend of the rector, Joseph Hill, a Church court official. Syers was a Civil War Royalist, and in 1671 bequeathed his own library to Sir Justinian Isham of Lamport: Isham, Diary, p. 64, n. 30; Longden, Clergy.

³⁷³ Eleanor, the daughter of Daniel Washington, a tailor who had achieved the freedom of the borough in 1623, died soon afterwards. Thomas Dishley's son and daughter were buried on 3 and 6 April: Freemen of Northampton, unpaginated, dated 1623; NRO, 223P/1, All Saints’ burial register, April 1638.

³⁷⁴ Susan Tue.

³⁷⁵ Simpson, Buckinghamshire.

³⁷⁶ Robert Pearson of Walgrave. Robert Wyne, who also held land at Burton Latimer, was one of his tenants: NRO, Isham (Lamport) MSS, IL 1714, 1715.

³⁷⁷ William Lovell of Burton Latimer. Hopkins may be Thomas, the son of George Hopkins of Holcot, and was probably Lovell's tenant: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fos 138r, 140r–v.

³⁷⁸ The fair was held on Northampton Heath, to the north-east of the town on the Kettering Road, owing to the plague: TNA, SP16/393/15.

³⁷⁹ On 1 May 1638 Mayor Collis wrote to Recorder Lane complaining that this decay in trade had been occasioned by an exaggeration of the severity of the plague. Northampton traders had been prevented from conducting business in the surrounding countryside: for example, Sir Hatton Fermor, a justice of the peace, had forbidden any Northampton men from attending the May Day fair at Towcester. As a result, many Northampton inhabitants had fled the town, rendering multitudes of labourers unemployed. Alderman Gifford disagreed with Collis's view that the level of plague had been over estimated: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 118–119; TNA, SP16/389/7, 8.

³⁸⁰ For the Warrens of Old, see Diary, p. 226, n. 482.

³⁸¹ Possibly Francis Smith, saddler: TNA, SP16/468/76; NRO, Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 3501.

³⁸² William Ireland of Sutton Bassett on the Leicestershire border, attorney, was undersheriff of the county in 1618, 1622, 1632, and 1638: J.H. Burgess, ‘The social structure of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire 1524–1764’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of York, 1978), p. 186; Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 115, 147; Finch, M.E., The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540–1640, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society XIX (Oxford, 1966), p. 33Google Scholar.

³⁸³ Tresham (1611–1683) was the son of William Tresham of Old and Elizabeth (née Isham). William was a member of a cadet branch of the Catholic Tresham family of Rushton: his sister Eliza married the godly Northampton barrister Joseph Bryan. In 1648 Richard witnessed the will of Frances Chapman of Old, presumably some relation of his son-in-law John Chapman, who was later to be Sir Justinian Isham's bailiff: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, A71; Isham, Diary, pp. 21–22; TNA, PROB/11/179; Prest, Barristers, pp. 346–347.

³⁸⁴ William Prichard, a freeman of the town in 1640: NRO, Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 3501.

³⁸⁵ John Fosbrooke, the rector of Cranford St Andrew, a client of Bishop John Williams of Lincoln. Fosbrooke had been a regular preacher at the (now abolished) Kettering lecture; in 1633 he had dedicated a collection of published sermons to his patron, who, he claimed, had attended many of them. His family owned the manor, and he was also connected to the moderate godly in the area: Margaret Tomlin, widow of James Tomlin, a clerical appointee of the Montagu family, named him an executor of her will and made him responsible for the godly education of her children, and Woodford's friend Thomas Freeman made him a bequest in 1637. Fosbrooke was chosen by Bishop Dee to preach at his primary visitation in 1634, in what was an attempt to win over the moderate godly to Laudian policies: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 26; Sheils, Puritans, pp. 40, 99, 105, 114–115; PDR Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, M201 and G211.

³⁸⁶ The Covenant was now rapidly winning support in opposition to the crown's imposition of the Prayer Book: Gardiner, History, VIII, pp. 325–348.

³⁸⁷ A dispute between the Royal College of Physicians and the Society of Apothecaries, which lasted for most of the century, over the latter's encroachment on the former's rights: Thomas, K., Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 14Google Scholar.

³⁸⁸ Justice William Jones died just in time to avoid impeachment by the Long Parliament: Jones, Bench, p. 139.

³⁸⁹ Of the minority of five judges who eventually (by June 1638) supported John Hampden, only Hutton and Sir George Croke did so on general principles as opposed to technicalities. The aftermath of Hutton's verdict was his being accused of high treason by Thomas Harrison, who had been presented to the rectory of Crick by William Laud as Master of St John's College, Oxford. Harrison claimed that Hutton, while riding on the East Midlands circuit, encouraged Northamptonshire folk to resist this prerogative tax, the legitimacy of which had been asserted by orthodox divines. Clearly Harrison expected his views to fall on sympathetic ears, but the verdict went heavily against him: Jones, Bench, pp. 125–128; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 133.

³⁹⁰ All Hallows', London Wall.

³⁹¹ Possibly Lord Thomas Brudenell's kinsman Thomas Brooke of Madeley, Shropshire, who was impeached for treason against Parliament during the Civil War as a delinquent papist. He was the son of Sir Basil Brooke (d. 1646), a leading Catholic close to the king, and his wife, Etheldreda Brudenell: M. Bennett, ‘Brooke, Sir Basil (1576–1646)’, in ODNB.

³⁹² Old was badly hit by the plague, recording eighteen plague burials for April and May, after which, in the words of the parish register, God turned ‘from wrath to mercie’: Shrewsbury, J.F.D., A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1971), p. 398Google Scholar; Cox, J.C., Parish Registers (London, 1910), p. 157Google Scholar (quotation).

³⁹³ William Vincent of Finedon had two brothers, Francis and Augustine. They were the nephews of Augustine Vincent, Rouge Rose Pursuivant of Arms, who had conducted the visitation of Northamptonshire in 1618: Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 150.

³⁹⁴ George Goodman was a key member of Woodford's godly clique. He served as bailiff of the town from 1636 until 1637 and chamberlain from 1643 until 1645. He was a sidesman at All Saints’ from 1634 until 1635, when he reported the parish's failure to create an east end altar, and a churchwarden in 1643. Ramsden claimed that he received communion sitting from Thomas Ball on 3 September 1637: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 562, 568; Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–38; PDR, CB64, fo. 75r–v; TNA, SP16/474/80.

³⁹⁵ Ann Spicer.

³⁹⁶ William Collis.

³⁹⁷ Everard Tebbot of Old, whose nuncupative will of 1643 mentioned his wife, Ann (Woodford's aunt), and Gilbert Tebbott: TNA, PROB/11/193.

³⁹⁸ A member of the godly Langley family of Harrowden. In 1620 William Langley had been reported for gadding from his own parish (whose vicar was Thomas Nicholas) to hear sermons at Robert Bolton's parish of Broughton. Robert Langley appeared in the ecclesiastical court in 1626 accused of insulting James Forsyth, minister at Old, ‘sayinge yt the Judmt of god was come upon that town because I [. . .] did not preach upon Wensdaies being fastinge daies lately appointed by the Kinge’. In 1636 Robert appeared again, this time admitting gadding in the afternoon away from his own parish (where now Thomas Campion was vicar, a client of George Charnock from the Catholic recusant family of Wellingborough) to Wilby (where Andrew Perne was the minister), Pytchley (John Barker and his curate, John Seaton), and Hardwick (John Baynard) ‘to hear the minister[s] there deliver doctrine accordinge to trueth’. The silenced minister mentioned on 20 May is possibly another member of the family, James Langley, unbeneficed at this stage but instituted as vicar of Harrowden on 29 May: PDR, CB48, fo. 465r–v; PDR, CB58, unfoliated, under May 1626; PDR, CBA63, fo. 408r–v (first quotation); PDR, CBA20, fo. 248v; Longden, Clergy; Longden MS, 30 October 1622 and 29 May and 6 July 1638.

³⁹⁹ Rothwell.

⁴⁰⁰ The godly Ponder family of Rothwell (Owen, his son John, and John's four children, including William, a minister), together with their friend John James, had been prosecuted for ceremonial nonconformity in the Church courts by Sir John Lambe and Dr Samuel Clarke since at least 1634 (and their friend William Dodson since 1612): Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 73, 102.

⁴⁰¹ In 1636 Francis Lewis of Walgrave was reported to the Church courts for omitting to pay the parish clerk's wages. Samuel Male was presented to the vicarage of Litchborough on 9 March 1632 by Sir Samuel Luke of Bedfordshire, who was Sir Valentine Knightley's grandson and later an officer in the Parliamentarian army: S. Kelsey, ‘Luke, Sir Samuel (bap. 1603, d. 1670)’, ODNB; PDR, CBA63, fo. 309r.

⁴⁰² John Gurney of Hanging Houghton was a landowner: Isham, Diary, p. 160, n. 16.

⁴⁰³ The county quarter sessions had been adjourned at Northampton on 3 April 1638.

⁴⁰⁴ Richard Rainsford of Dallington had been Recorder of Daventry since 1630 and a barrister since 1632. He had married Dr Samuel Clarke's daughter Katherine in 1637. According to Woodford, he was elected Northampton town attorney on 16 January 1638/39 (he lived in St Giles's parish), in which position he served until rising to deputy recorder in 1653 (the recorder was the Earl of Manchester). He was ousted during the Protectorate, but at the Restoration he was knighted and ended his career as Chief Justice of the King's Bench: S. Calkins, ‘Rainsford, Sir Richard (1605–1680)’, in ODNB; NRO 233P/107, unfoliated, under 16 January 1640; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 103–106.

⁴⁰⁵ Following an appeal from the mayor, William Collis, to the recorder, Richard Lane, dated 1 May, complaining about the economic dislocation caused by the disease, Lane had approached the Privy Council, who on 10 May had instructed the justices of the peace to arrange (at their next quarter sessions on 22 May) for Northampton to be provisioned and for a weekly tax to be levied on the county for the town's relief. In the meantime, Lane and Dr Clarke, acting as a justice of the peace, had made temporary provision for relief by ordering a weekly collection of £48 from towns within five miles. The constable of Marston Trussell, to the south of Northampton, recorded raising £4 14s 0d. Here Rainsford (supported by his father-in-law, Clarke, and Sibthorpe in the teeth of St John's reluctance) is proposing the raising of an additional £100 per week, to be drawn from the county, in addition to that raised by the nearby towns. In June Clarke asserted that the increased county contribution had been achieved (despite resistance) on 22 May, and the market moved to Northampton Heath for safety. Sheriff Sir John Hanbury stated that the combined weekly total of £148 was still being paid on 10 September 1638. Shrewsbury estimates that such relief was generally paid at a rate of 1s per head per week, and that therefore at least 2,960 were in receipt of it out of a total population of less than 5,000. There were problems accounting for the money raised. The town assembly petitioned Parliament in 1640, requesting action to call the justices to account for money in their possession that had been intended for Northampton's relief: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 118–121, 150, nn. 17 and 20; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 239; Shrewsbury, Bubonic Plague, p. 398. For Woodford's money-raising efforts in the capital, see Diary, pp. 202, 210, 218–220, 230, 252.

⁴⁰⁶ A zealous conformist and anti-puritan Church court official, Sibthorpe held an absolutist view of royal power that had come to the fore over his infamous apologia for the forced loan. His first wife was called Douglas Neale. His second wife was Sir John Lambe's sister Susan, and through his brother-in-law he was closely allied with Laud. A royal chaplain, he had been actively involved in the fall of Archbishop George Abbot and Bishop John Williams, and had narrowly escaped impeachment by the parliament of 1629: J. Fielding, ‘Sibthorpe, Robert (d. 1662)’, in ODNB.

⁴⁰⁷ Sir Rowland St John, the younger brother of Oliver, first Earl of Bolingbroke, had lived at Woodford since 1621 and had been one of the county's most conscientious deputy lieutenants. However, he enjoyed godly connections – his daughter Judith married Francis Nicolls's son Edward – and Sibthorpe certainly regarded him as one of the puritan conspirators determined to undermine Church and state. He drew up petitions complaining about government policies, but his relationship with the court was not straightforward. He supported the candidacy of his fellow deputy, Thomas Elmes, for knight of the shire for the Short Parliament, and his account of the misconduct of the supporters of the successful candidate (Sir Gilbert Pickering) may have been used in evidence when Elmes appealed, unsuccessfully, against the result. As civil war approached, St John took on the mantle of mediator. He did not sign the county petition of 21 January 1642 in support of the Grand Remonstrance, but was persuaded to present it to Parliament, and was a Parliamentarian in the war itself, albeit a lukewarm one: Stater, V.L., ‘The lord lieutenancy on the eve of the Civil Wars: the impressment of George Plowright’, Historical Journal, 2 (1986), pp. 279–296CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 244–249, 251–260; Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1876–77, 1880.

⁴⁰⁸ This was part of a dispute between the godly and their enemies in the parish of Pattishall. Henry Folwell (a tanner) had previously lived at Northampton, where he had been involved in a dispute with the mayor and aldermen, but had by now moved to Foster's Booth in Pattishall parish. Here he had given evidence to the High Commission concerning the ceremonial nonconformity of the vicar, Miles Burkit, since when, he claimed, Burkit had persecuted him, including having him here bound over to appear at Northampton assizes. On 14 May he had written to Archbishop Laud for redress, who had referred the matter to Sir John Lambe. Mistress Clarke was possibly the wife of William Clarke of Eastcote near Pattishall, near to whose seat (according to the Church commissioner Richard Powell, the other, anti-puritan, vicar of Pattishall) ‘ye puritans and Nonconformists doe all sitt soe that their revered gestures cannot be seene’ (PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 50r–v). Woodford and Dr Clarke concurred on her godliness: Clarke reported to Lambe in June 1638 that this ‘puritan’ had been condemned in the Peterborough Church courts for ‘calling the Divine sermons porradg, and the long puritan sermons Roaste Meate’ (TNA, SP16/393/15), and had successfully appealed against the verdict in the Archbishop's Court of Audience. The charge of incontinency (a favourite line of attack for the godly's enemies) was part of the same campaign. Folwell's servant was Thomas Pinckerd: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 102–107, 242 n. 11; TNA, SP16/387/70; Book of Orders, p. 30.

⁴⁰⁹ William Spicer, Samuel Crick's stepfather.

⁴¹⁰ Betty was probably Samuel and Mary Crick's servant.

⁴¹¹ Wormwood was a bitter-tasting plant; leme the husk of a nut.

⁴¹² William Collis.

⁴¹³ Matthew Sillesby: see Diary, p. 181, n. 330, on John Sillesby.

⁴¹⁴ The wife of William Knight, mayor of the town in 1626 and 1635: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 252; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, L120.

⁴¹⁵ Brockhall.

⁴¹⁶ The Roman road (or port way) of Watling Street ran through Towcester to Stony Stratford: Camden, W., Britannia (London, 1637), p. 506Google Scholar; Pevsner, Northamptonshire, p. 435; Hoskins, W.G., The Making of the English Landscape (London, 1977), p. 233Google Scholar.

⁴¹⁷ Sir Humphrey Davenport and Sir John Denham: Jones, Bench, pp. 126–127.

⁴¹⁸ Sir Richard Wiseman was found guilty of slandering Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry. Wiseman had accused him of taking bribes, but the Star Chamber found against Wiseman and he was heavily punished. In 1641 he appealed to the House of Lords but was killed in the London riots before the case was heard: Jones, Bench, p. 106; Hart, J.S., Justice upon Petition: the House of Lords and the reformation of justice 1621–1675 (London, 1991), pp. 131–132CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴¹⁹ Diary, p. 179, n. 324 on Sir Richard Hutton.

⁴²⁰ The royal favourite, James, third Marquess and later first Duke of Hamilton (1610–1674), heir to the premier aristocratic dynasty in Scotland, was royal commissioner to the Glasgow Assembly of 1638 that abolished episcopacy and the royal supremacy in the Church of Scotland: J.J. Scally, ‘Hamilton, James, first duke of Hamilton (1606–1649)’, in ODNB.

⁴²¹ Edward Chetwind, Dean of Bristol from 1617 until his death in 1639, was associated with the godly minister Richard Bernard, and had obtained his position through the patronage of James Montagu, the Calvinist Bishop of Bath and Wells: Fincham, K., Prelate as Pastor: the episcopate of James I (Oxford, 1990), p. 194Google Scholar.

⁴²² John Goodwin was the vicar and lecturer of St Stephen's, Coleman Street, from 1633 until 1661, and a later Independent. During the 1630s he was accused of failing to conform to Laudian ceremonial but he was abandoning Calvinist predestinarianism and became an Arminian under the Commonwealth; T. Liu, ‘Goodwin, John (c.1594–1665)’, in ODNB; Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 327 and passim.

⁴²³ Proverbs 20:16: ‘Take his garment that is surety for a stranger: and take a pledge of him for a strange woman’. Lord Edward Montagu's father gave him similar advice (taken from Proverbs 11:15): ‘He that hateth suertyship is sure’: quoted in Cope, E.S., The Life of a Public Man: Edward, first Baron Montagu of Boughton, 1562–1644 (Philadelphia, 1981), p. 8Google Scholar.

⁴²⁴ The plague.

⁴²⁵ Obadiah Sedgwick was the curate and lecturer at St Mildred's, Bread Street, from 1630 until 1639, the godly protégé of Lord Horace Vere and Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, and a future Parliamentarian and member of the Westminster Assembly: B. Donagan, ‘Sedgwick, Obadiah (1599/1600–1658)’, in ODNB.

⁴²⁶ Ravenstone near Olney, Buckinghamshire.

⁴²⁷ A stay of legal proceedings.

⁴²⁸ His chamber at Clement's Inn.

⁴²⁹ Sir Paul Pindar was a merchant prince and diplomat with Northamptonshire roots. In 1634 he had donated a full communion service to his birthplace, the town of Wellingborough, and in 1640 he would give a bell. In 1638 he donated two silver flagons to Peterborough cathedral: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 120; R. Ashton, ‘Pindar, Sir Paul (1565/6–1650)’, in ODNB; Pevsner, Northamptonshire, p. 452.

⁴³⁰ Miles Burkit was one of the two vicars of the polarized parish of Pattishall. The poles were personified by the incumbents. The godly Burkit was the protégé of George Steward, whose family owned the manor. However, the remaining Steward brothers supported conformists: Richard (an Arminian) was Clerk of the Closet to Charles I, and John appointed Burkit's predecessors – William Paule (the royal chaplain) and Miles's brother, William, a conformist Church court official. Miles Burkit and his followers were harried constantly by the Church courts in the 1630s. The iconoclastic attorney William Waters was presented for demolishing the churchyard cross in 1636, while Miles, after being reported to Sir John Lambe in 1635, was repeatedly prosecuted by the Church courts (including High Commission in 1637 and 1638), charged with various offences, including support for Burton, Bastwick, and Prynne, and removing the communion table from its railed enclosure and placing it tablewise in the chancel to administer the sacraments. The latter episode was quoted by Prynne at Laud's trial. Burkit's main allies included the godly divines Daniel Cawdrey and James Cranford, the justice of the peace Sir Richard Samwell, and perhaps Woodford. Ranged against him were his fellow vicar, Richard Powell, Sir John Lambe, and his clerical conformist allies, led by Sibthorpe and Clarke, and, ultimately, Laud himself. Burkit was forced to submit in December 1638, but he was not absolved until after the opening of the Long Parliament, when he claimed to have suffered for six years, at a cost of £300. One spin-off of the dispute involved Powell and Samwell (Diary, p. 269, n. 609): Longden, Clergy; Longden MS, 20 March 1634, 17 February 1626, and 19 December 1628; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 138; Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 209–210; PDR, CBA63, fo. 404r–v; Prynne, W., Canterburies Doome or the First Part of a Compleat History of the Tryall [. . .] of William Laud (London, 1646), pp. 96–97Google Scholar, 488, 494; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 105–107; HLRO, main papers, 18 January (Burkit) and 21 January (Waters) 1641.

⁴³¹ Probably John Sillesby.

⁴³² Hunsbury Hill stands two miles south-west of Northampton. In 1631 a Mrs Lucas had been burned at the stake there for poisoning her husband: Pevsner, Northamptonshire, p. 355; Top MS, p. 103.

⁴³³ This contravened the Privy Council's order of early June cancelling the fair at plague-free Boughton Green (24–26 June) because of the plague at nearby Northampton: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, p. 120; Isham, Diary, pp. 119, 125 and note.

⁴³⁴ The assizes had been moved to Daventry from Northampton owing to the plague. According to Sibthorpe, the business of the removed assizes was slight: TNA, SP16/393/75.

⁴³⁵ There are two possible candidates. William Brittaine (Breton) had been rector of Clopton since 1631 and served in the Church courts at Oundle in 1641. He was the appointee of Edward Dudley, lord of the manor, and a friend of Edward, Lord Montagu, while his brother John Breton was master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Alternatively, Zaccheus Bredon had been appointed rector of Croughton in the south of the county in 1631, through the patronage of Sir Francis Staunton of Bedfordshire: Longden, Clergy; Longden MS, 13 and 23 July 1631; TNA, PROB/11/72; PDR, X639–642/8a, fo. 26v.

⁴³⁶ The final stage of a trial concerning debt in the Court of Common Pleas or the Court of King's Bench; heard before a jury at the local assizes.

⁴³⁷ The Catesby family hailed from Ecton and Whiston; the most likely candidates here are George or Clifton: TNA, SP16/375/82.

⁴³⁸ Nicholas Rawlins of Daventry had been listed as a physician in 1636: Raach, J.H., A Directory of English Country Physicians, 1603–1643 (London, 1962), p. 76Google Scholar.

⁴³⁹ Edward Reynolds was a moderate Laudian with godly connections. He had been presented to his living of Braunston by John Reading, acting as the executor of the will of Isaac Johnson, who was associated with Viscount Saye's Massachusetts Bay Company. A former incumbent of All Saints’, Northampton, but also a royal chaplain, Reynolds preached conformity to Laudian ceremonial. Indeed, in July 1637 he had been employed to preach to this effect when Bishop Dee's visitation reached Daventry. He was an Interregnum vice-chancellor of Cambridge University and Bishop of Norwich after the Restoration: Longden, Clergy; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 20–21, 125, 228–230; Webster, Godly Clergy, pp. 117, 225–226.

⁴⁴⁰ Robert Proctor was a Cambridge MA who had been vicar of Little St Mary's, Cambridge, from 1620 until 1630, and who served the living of Holy Trinity, Coventry, from 1638 until his death in 1644. I am grateful to Ann Hughes for this reference.

⁴⁴¹ Thomas Gibson obtained his MA from Oxford in 1627 and the following year achieved the living of Baginton, Warwickshire. I thank Richard Cust and Ann Hughes for this reference.

⁴⁴² Elizabeth, the widow of Brian Ball, apothecary: Diary, p. 168.

⁴⁴³ Kilsby.

⁴⁴⁴ John Baynard was a member of the godly group centring on the clergyman Robert Bolton and the overseers of his will, Francis Downes and Francis Nicolls. As curate of the Nicolls family's parish of Faxton, Baynard had been presented to the Church courts in 1620 for attracting godly gadders to his sermons, and by 1629 Francis Nicolls had appointed him to the benefice of Hardwick. In the 1630s Baynard became an opponent of religious policy, taking a lead by refusing to read the Book of Sports. During the Interregnum and Restoration periods he continued to enjoy the support of the Downes and Nicolls families, and in 1672 he was licensed as a congregational preacher in the house of Robert Guy: Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 26, 51 n. 35, 114 n. 64, 152, 160 n. 15; TNA, PROB/11/111 (Downes); PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, A198 (Nicolls).

⁴⁴⁵ A deed conveying property.

⁴⁴⁶ Great and Little Houghton are to the south-east of Northampton.

⁴⁴⁷ Samuel Ainsworth, the son of a Northampton tanner, was Perne's curate at Wilby from about 1636, and the following year was reported to the Church courts for preaching without a licence. He went on to become the Presbyterian minister of Kelmarsh during the Interregnum under the Hanbury family and was also connected to the Shuckburghs of Naseby: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 134r–v; J. Fielding, ‘Perne, Andrew (c.1595–1654)’, in ODNB; Matthews, A.G. (ed.), Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934), pp. 3–4Google Scholar.

⁴⁴⁸ Philip Willoughby owned a manor at Grendon and was the farmer of the parsonage. He was a servant of Spencer Compton of nearby Castle Ashby, the second Earl of Northampton, and of James, the third Earl, and a Royalist during the Civil War: Isham, Diary, p. 156, n. 38; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 85v.

⁴⁴⁹ Helen, the wife of Henry Allen of Easton Maudit.

⁴⁵⁰ Henry Fleming was a public notary who worked for the ecclesiastical courts and lived in St Giles's parish, Northampton. By 1640 he was a freeman of the town: NRO, 241P/42, unfoliated, under the disbursement section for 1634; NRO, 233P/107, unfoliated, 16 January 1640; Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 3501.

⁴⁵¹ The widow of John Rowland (d. 1636), lord of the manor of Wootton, who went on to marry Sir Arthur Smithes: VCH Northamptonshire, IV (London, 1937), p. 293.

⁴⁵² Either Great or Little Houghton near Northampton.

⁴⁵³ For the Warrens of Old, see Diary, p. 226, n. 482.

⁴⁵⁴ Christened.

⁴⁵⁵ His house was situated in the parish of Whitefriars: see Diary, p. 141, n. 190.

⁴⁵⁶ Moorfields, London's first civic park, was north of the city, near to the Haunches’ parish of All Hallows’, London Wall: Brett-James, N.G., The Growth of Stuart London (London, 1935), pp. 452–454Google Scholar.

⁴⁵⁷ William Abell (1584–1665), vintner and politician, was a native of Oundle in Northamptonshire, where his grandfather, William, had endowed the school. He was a London alderman in the 1630s but lost popularity with the godly when, as Sheriff of London in 1637, he arrested Henry Burton. He was also associated with an unpopular wine monopoly: D. Freist, ‘Abell, William (b. c.1584, d. in or after 1655)’, in ODNB.

⁴⁵⁸ Sir Richard Fenn.

⁴⁵⁹ Richard Kinsman of Broughton: Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 103; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 131; Isham, Diary, p. 118, n. 2.

⁴⁶⁰ St Antholin's lecture in Budge Row was served by members of a seminary run by the godly divine Charles Offspring (who worked in co-operation with other London ministers such as William Gouge). From 1627 until 1633 the lecture had been run by the Feoffees for Impropriations: Webster, Godly Clergy, pp. 26–27, 55.

⁴⁶¹ James Enyon of Flore, a Royalist who was knighted in 1642: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 102r; Isham, G. (ed.), The Correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham 1650–1660, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society XVII (Lamport, 1955), p. 210Google Scholar.

⁴⁶² Verse 24: ‘God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.’

⁴⁶³ The incumbent of St Mary le Bow was Jeremy Leech, who was sequestered during the Civil War, accused of Royalism: Newcourt, R., Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense, 2 vols (London, 1708–1710), I, p. 440Google Scholar.

⁴⁶⁴ Hosea 14:8.

⁴⁶⁵ Joseph Simonds was the rector of St Martin's, Ironmonger Lane, and later fled to the Netherlands: Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 257; Webster, T. and Shipps, K. (eds), The Diary of Samuel Rogers, 1634–1638, Church of England Record Society XI (Woodbridge, 2004), p. xlviiGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁶⁶ The outbreak was reaching its height during the summer: compare this with weekly totals of twenty-six, sixteen, and twenty-nine for the period 27 May to 17 June: TNA, SP16/393/15.

⁴⁶⁷ A servant of Robert Haunch: Diary, p. 355.

⁴⁶⁸ Obadiah Sedgwick's brother, John (an Oxford BD), had married a Northamptonshire woman – Ann, the daughter of Fulke Buttery of Marston St Lawrence – in 1632. The living mentioned by Woodford (which was probably a curacy) has not been confirmed – Hugh Alloway was the rector of Slapton, appointed by Sir Henry Wallop – but perhaps more likely locations were nearby Stuchbury chapel (where Sedgwick's father-in-law was the patron), or the Butterys’ home parish of Marston St Lawrence, where the incumbent was Francis Cheynell, a godly minister who was suspended by Sir John Lambe in 1638 for refusing to bow to the altar. Around this time Sedgwick was also lecturer at St Giles's, Cripplegate, London: Bridges, History of Northamptonshire, II, pp. 253–54; Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 260; B. Donagan, ‘Sedgwick, Obadiah (1599/1600–1658)’, in ODNB; R. Pooley, ‘Cheynell, Francis (bap. 1608, d. 1665)’, in ODNB; Longden MS, 27 September 1617, 29 July 1619, 15 May 1627, 13 October 1635; Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 39–40; Webster and Shipps, Diary of Samuel Rogers, p. 160n.

⁴⁶⁹ Hockliffe, Bedfordshire.

⁴⁷⁰ Dr William Roane had been born in Wellingborough, the son of Anthony and Eleanor Roane. His parents were close to Thomas Jones, the conformist vicar of Wellingborough, and his father had been presented to the Church courts in 1607 for heckling the lecturer as he condemned the pride displayed in wearing sumptuous clothes. William was an official in the court of the Laudian Archdeacon of Buckingham, Robert Newell, and an ally of Robert Sibthorpe, with whom he co-operated in 1639 to prosecute Miles Burkit: Levack, B., The Civil Lawyers of England (Oxford, 1973), p. 266Google Scholar; Fincham, K. and Tyacke, N., Altars Restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547–c. 1700 (Oxford, 2007), p. 209CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Longden, Clergy; PDR, CB40, fo. 114v; Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1891.

⁴⁷¹ Probably John, whom Woodford had met on 27 July.

⁴⁷² William Sandford (fl. 1618–1646) was a Gray's Inn barrister: Prest, Barristers, p. 337.

⁴⁷³ The town took its name from its iron-rich or chalybeate springs. It had become a fashionable spa following visits by the Duchess of Buckingham in 1624, the king and queen in 1627, and the queen alone in 1628; Oliver Cromwell also found the waters efficacious against depression: Camden, W., Britannia (London, 1637), p. 510Google Scholar; VCH Northamptonshire, IV, pp. 137–138; J. Morrill, ‘Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658)’, in ODNB.

⁴⁷⁴ Or Dr Willis: one of that name discovered healing wells at Astrop in the south of the county in 1664: Isham, Diary, p. 134, n. 28.

⁴⁷⁵ Great Bowden, Leicestershire: Diary, p. 225. Pentlow was in the process of taking out a lease of the parsonage. He owned it by 1657: TNA, PROB/11/263.

⁴⁷⁶ Election day was the first Thursday in August. Richard Fowler (d. 1649) occurs in the parish and town records from 1628 on, as do Henry Hill (who had served as churchwarden) and John Cole. Like Cole, Hill had had a brush with the conformists in the Church courts: in 1614 Dr David Owen had accused Hill's maidservant, Mary Crist, of refusing Easter communion at his hands after he and his allies, Lambe and Sibthorpe, had secured the expulsion from All Saints’ of the popular godly vicar, Robert Catelin, and his replacement by Owen: TNA, PROB/11/208 (Fowler); Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–29; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 72; PDR, CB44, fo. 42r–v.

⁴⁷⁷ Holcot had been hit hard by the plague or pest. There were sixty plague burials there during 1638; contrast this with the yearly average of seven: Shrewsbury, J.F.D., A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1971), p. 398Google Scholar.

⁴⁷⁸ John Rickards of Scaldwell (d. 1638) or his son James: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton wills, second series, L172.

⁴⁷⁹ The wife of one of the sons of John Ragdale of Old. Daniel's wife was called Frances, while the names of Henry's and John's wives are unknown: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, second series, P104.

⁴⁸⁰ Market Harborough, Leicestershire.

⁴⁸¹ Ann (née Turland), the widow of Woodford's maternal uncle Stephen Dexter.

⁴⁸² John Warren of Old was possibly married to Woodford's cousin Emme Warren, who is mentioned here, and was either the daughter of his uncle Henry Woodford or of one of his mother's Dexter siblings. The other Warrens mentioned in the diary (Thomas, William, and James) were probably related. In 1631 John had claimed exemption from the status of knighthood and had been supported by his parish priest, James Forsyth; he was the overseer of the will of Woodford's father in 1636. Forsyth, rector of Old from 1620 until 1643, was a fervent anti-puritan whom Bishop Dee had selected to preach at his primary visitation in 1634, and who had in the same year been the promoter of a High Commission case against Francis Nicolls and John Sawyer for holding illegal conventicles (Diary, p. 195, n. 367). A close ally of Sir John Lambe and his informer, Humphrey Ramsden, Forsyth had clashed with the godly Langley family of Harrowden: HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, III (London, 1926), p. 361; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton wills, second series, C168; Longden, Clergy; TNA, SP16/414/163; PDR, CB58, unfoliated; PDR, A42, fo. 566r–v.

⁴⁸³ John 4:24.

⁴⁸⁴ Richard Trueman, the father of the minister of the same name, was the godly owner of the saddler's shop; his will was proved by Thomas Crutchley: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton wills, second series, G100.

⁴⁸⁵ Holland had appointed Richard Batten in May 1638 to collect fines imposed on delinquents in the Northamptonshire forests: Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 91.

⁴⁸⁶ Francis Gray of Wellingborough served as the clerk of the peace from 1623 until his death in 1642: J.H. Burgess, ‘The social structure of Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire 1524–1764’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of York, 1978), pp. 178–180.

⁴⁸⁷ The Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.

⁴⁸⁸ The Kentish Twysdens and Finches were relatives of the Yelvertons of Easton Maudit. Sir Christopher Yelverton was married to Ann Twysden, whose parents were Sir William (d. 1629) and Ann Twysden, the latter the daughter of Sir Mayle Finch and sister of Heneage, Roger, Thomas, and John, one of whom is probably referred to here. Thomas Rudd was a justice of the peace and former mayor of his home town of Higham Ferrers. A military engineer and mathematician who had served in the Low Countries, he became a Royalist ally of Edward, Lord Montagu in the Civil War and died in 1656: P.D. Halliday, ‘Twisden, Sir Thomas, first baronet (1602–1683)’, in ODNB; D.L. Smith, ‘Twysden, Sir Roger, second baronet (1597–1672)’, in ODNB; M.-L. Coolahan, ‘Twysden, Anne, Lady Twysden (1574–1638)’, in ODNB; A. Saunders, ‘Rudd, Thomas (1583/4–1656)’, in ODNB.

⁴⁸⁹ Still William Collis.

⁴⁹⁰ Thomas Bacon here requested Woodford to provide continuing assistance in his Star Chamber case against George Plowright concerning ship money.

⁴⁹¹ Andrew Perne was here preaching at the invitation of the minister, Thomas Harris. Kettering had previously possessed its own combination lecture, which had taken place on a Friday. In 1630 Bishop William Piers had introduced regulations to exclude from it those ministers regarded as puritan, but the prohibited clergy had returned and preached in opposition to Laudian policies. It seems to have been abolished as part of Laud's metropolitan visitation in May 1635, which was partly organized by Lambe: Longden MS, 6 May 1633; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 125.

⁴⁹² Either Richard or Robert Ouseley, the sons of Sir John Ouseley, lord of the manor of Courteenhall. Their father had also been a captain in the local militia (1614): VCH Northamptonshire, IV, p. 243; P.R. Brindle, ‘Politics and society in Northamptonshire, 1649–1714’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester, 1983), p. 126; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 190; Wake, J. (ed.), A Copy of Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons, and Subsidies etc in the County of Northampton ad 1586–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society III (Kettering, 1926), p. cxxiiGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁹³ Possibly the Morris Henchman of Isham (perhaps the same high constable referred to by Sibthorpe as a puritan for his obstructiveness over ship money collection) who gave evidence in the High Commission case of Alban Eales, who in 1634 had obtained archiepiscopal institution to the rectory of Isham while it was still occupied by Richard Rainsford, and who was forced to resign and pay costs: TNA, SP16/261, fos 121r–v, 127v, 192r–v; TNA, SP16/318/6; Longden, Clergy.

⁴⁹⁴ The wife of Thomas Kimbould of Northampton.

⁴⁹⁵ Constable John Dingley of Long Buckby had been arrested by the Privy Council (with Richard Robins and others), accused of failing to support Sheriff Sir Robert Banastre's agents, who were distraining the goods of those who had refused to pay ship money around the beginning of 1638: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 145, 157 n. 88; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton wills, first series, Book AE, fo. 112.

⁴⁹⁶ Edmund Bacon, the brother of Thomas and John.

⁴⁹⁷ Lady Harvey might be Christian, the widow of the godly Judge Sir Francis Harvey of Cotton End, who had survived his death in 1632, or Mary, the widow of Sir Francis's son, Sir Stephen, who predeceased his father. Sir Francis had made provision in his will for his orphaned grandsons to be educated at university and the inns of court, fervently ‘hopeinge they will follow their father's good example to lyve religiously’ (TNA, PROB/11/88). The Harveys were a large dynasty of lawyers taking their lead from the judge: his son, Sir Stephen, three of his sons-in-law, and four of his nephews attended the Middle Temple. The family enjoyed godly connections with the Nicolls family of Hardwick and the Sawyers of Kettering, both of whom were closely allied with Francis Downes of Pytchley, who is the host here. The Palmer referred to is Edward (1588–1642), son of Anthony Palmer (d. 1633), squire of Stoke Doyle and kinsman of Sir Richard Knightley. Anthony had previously protected the Elizabethan puritan extremist William Hackett, whose career had ended in execution, although he later patronized many moderate ministers, some of whom served in the Church courts. A Middle Temple barrister since 1616, Edward had married Sir Stephen Harvey's sister Frances. He acted as recorder of the soke of Peterborough from 1629 and Woodford mentions him as such on 11 January 1638/39. He served as escheator for Northamptonshire from 1630 until 1631 and as a justice of the peace. He was also an ally of Bishop John Williams of Lincoln and a member of the Company of Mineral and Battery Works. He supported Sir Gilbert Pickering at the shire contest for the Short Parliament but was a Royalist in the Civil War: TNA, PROB/11/88 (Sir Francis Harvey); TNA, PROB/11/41 (Anthony Palmer); W. Prest, ‘Harvey, Sir Francis (c.1568–1632)’, in ODNB; Pevsner, Northamptonshire, p. 353; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, pp. 98–99; BRO, St John (Bletso) MSS, DDJ 1369; NRO, Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 133; Venn; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 28; Prest, Barristers, p. 383; Sheils, Puritans, pp. 118, 137, 139.

⁴⁹⁸ Richard Oulton?

⁴⁹⁹ Sir Gerard, the son of John Harvey and Mary (née St John of Bletso, Bedfordshire, which was adjacent to the Harveys’ parish of Thurleigh), was a soldier who had been knighted by the Earl of Essex at Cadiz. By 1634 he was living at Cardington near Bedford, his elder brother, Oliver, having inherited the family manor. Sir Gerard had married Dorothy Gascoigne, who was also related to the St Johns; their daughters were Ann, Elizabeth, and Dorothy: Blaydes, F.A., The Visitations of Bedfordshire 1566, 1582 and 1634, Harleian Society Publications, XIX (London, 1884), p. 116Google Scholar.

⁵⁰⁰ Philippa Sill was the widow of Wellesbourne Sill (d. 1634), who had owned the rectory of Westbury in Buckinghamshire. She was acting on behalf of their son, Wellesbourne, a royal ward: VCH Buckinghamshire, IV, p. 267; TNA, WARD 7/89/249.

⁵⁰¹ In Buckinghamshire.

⁵⁰² See p. 403, additional entry dated 29 August 1638.

⁵⁰³ See ibid.

⁵⁰⁴ That is, Woburn, Bedfordshire, and Olney, Buckinghamshire.

⁵⁰⁵ Orlingbury.

⁵⁰⁶ Possibly Jeremiah Dyke, son of Jeremiah Dyke, the godly minister of Epping, Essex, from 1609 until 1639. He had proceeded MA from St Catherine's College, Cambridge, in 1636, and had been ordained a deacon at Peterborough on 20 May 1638. He may now have been based at Wellingborough prior to his ordination as a priest at Peterborough on 10 March 1639: Venn; Webster, Godly Clergy, pp. 49, 154, 159n, 260; Longden, Clergy.

⁵⁰⁷ Probably John Smith of Northampton, attorney, who was connected to the godly minister Thomas Knightley, and who acted as the overseer of the will of Jeremiah Lewis, minister of All Saints’. Samuel Danvers, a future Parliamentarian, was the son of Sir John Danvers of Culworth (the regicide and brother of Henry, Earl of Danby), and cousin of Francis Downes of Pytchley: S. Kelsey, ‘Danvers, Sir John (1584/5–1655)’, in ODNB; J.J.N. McGurk, ‘Danvers, Henry, earl of Danby (1573–1644)’, in ODNB; NRO Finch (Hatton) MSS, F(H) 133; Longden, Clergy; Records of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, 2 vols (London, 1896), I (Admissions, 1420–1799), p. 221.

⁵⁰⁸ Thomas Kimbold of Northampton was a counsellor at law who worked in the ecclesiastical courts from 1629 until 1638, and the father-in-law of Sir John Lambe, who married his daughter, Elizabeth: Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 99–100; J. Fielding, ‘Lambe, Sir John (c.1566–1646)’, in ODNB.

⁵⁰⁹ John Maunsell, squire of Thorpe Malsor (1605–1677), supported the Grand Remonstrance and was a prominent justice of the peace during the Commonwealth. In 1672 his house was licensed as a congregational meeting place. In the latter half of 1637 he lived in Northampton, where he was involved in an acerbic dispute with his lodger, Humphrey Ramsden, a supporter of Laudian ceremonial. Ramsden claimed that Maunsell had been William Prynne's chamber-fellow at Lincoln's Inn, and that Maunsell hated Laudian ceremonial but did not openly challenge him: ‘and I was ever jealous of him, knowing hee did not inwardly approve of what I did; and I have heard him wish yt these Ceremonies had never beene thought of, for they are a burden to ye Consciences of many good men, and that those who are called Puritans are for the most part religious, conscionable, honest men, and when Prin[ne] suffered condigne punishment, he said no doubt but he tooke it patiently and joyfully, wheras his Adversaries might have quakeing hearts’: TNA, SP16/414/163 (quotation); Isham, Diary, p. 154, n. 30.

⁵¹⁰ Robert Eakins had been presented to the rectory of Barton Seagrave in 1632 by his father, Thomas. He had conformist connections – Robert Sibthorpe helped him to buy the advowson of his living – and was sequestered from the benefice by Parliament in 1644: Longden, Clergy; Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1881; Matthews, A.G. (ed.), Walker Revised (Oxford, 1948), p. 278Google Scholar. Michael Kipling was a public notary who had worked for the Peterborough Church courts since 1633 but around the period 1637–1639 was registered in the Diocese of York: PDR, CBA63 and PDR, Church Survey Book 5, passim.

⁵¹¹ Francis Downes, squire of Pytchley, was engaged in a dispute with John Clynt, a minister from Wichenford, Worcestershire, over the tithes of Cransley parish. Downes was married to Alice, the sister of Sir Henry Robinson of Cransley (d. 1637), and through his wife had controlled part of the manor since 1627 (he also owned property at Broughton, Isham, and Loddington). Downes was Alice's second husband – she had previously been married to John Washbourne of Wichenford – and when the living of Cransley fell vacant in 1639 the right to present to it lay with the crown, which was the guardian of the patrons (Alice's son John Washbourne and Sir Henry's heir and namesake) in their minority. There followed a competition to win the royal patronage (involving a dispute in the Court of High Commission) between Downes, who tried to prefer his candidate, John Baseley, and John Goodman, a conformist client of Sir John Lambe and later of Sir John Isham. Goodman ultimately achieved the living for himself. The Washbourne family resided at Pytchley manor after 1663 and it was from among their papers that the Ishams obtained for their collection a separate manuscript (NRO Isham (Lamport) MSS, I(L) 2570) describing sympathetically the death of the puritan divine John Barker, who was executed at Northampton in 1637 for murder, which had probably belonged to Barker's patron, Francis Downes: VCH Northamptonshire, IV, p. 164; NRO Isham (Correspondence), I (C) 3228, and I (L) 708, 731, 735, 736, 740; TNA, PROB/11/176 (Robinson) and PROB/11/183 (Downes); Isham, Diary, p. 102, n. 13; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 42, 55 n. 73; Longden MS, 21 August 1639 and 11 June 1641; Longden, Clergy (Goodman).

⁵¹² A popular garden feature providing a viewing point: Isham, Diary, p. 68, n. 56.

⁵¹³ The conformist Joseph Hill had been the incumbent of Loddington, owing to crown patronage, since 1618. He served in the Church courts from 1622 until 1631 and was named by Bishop Piers in 1630 as a conforming minister permitted to serve the Kettering lecture: Longden MS, 24 June 1618; Longden, Clergy; TNA, SP16/531/135. The godly minister John Basely was the sole lecturer at the town of Rothwell, although he was not the vicar until 1641; he received bequests from the godly justices of the peace Francis Downes and Francis Nicolls: TNA, PROB/11/111; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton Wills, third series, A198.

⁵¹⁴ I have not been able to identify ‘The New Hunt’. The Laudian royal chaplain, Dr William Beale, had been vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge since 1635, but before that had been active in the Peterborough Church courts. He had obtained the rectories of Cottingham in 1625 and Paulerspury in 1637 – the former by royal patronage during Hatton's minority and the latter by the influence of Archbishop Laud himself: N.W.S. Cranfield, ‘Beale, William (d. 1651)’, in ODNB; Longden MS, 4 February 1625 and 31 October 1637; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 43.

⁵¹⁵ Peter Hausted, a native of Oundle, was Dr Edward Martin's curate at Uppingham, Rutland, and was one of a number of conformists who flourished under Hatton's protection. Martin, who had been Laud's domestic chaplain when Laud was Bishop of London, was a conformist partisan as President of Queen's College, Cambridge, where he had protected Hausted, his chaplain, from charges of crypto-popery. Both Martin and Hausted preached at the primary visitation of Bishop Dee in 1634, and struggled to impose Laudianism in their parish in the teeth of great opposition. Hausted was also connected to the conformist earls of Northampton, Spencer Compton and his son James. Hatton's household functioned as a miniature court, affording patronage to many (mainly conformist) artists and ministers. He accepted the dedication of Hausted's sermons in 1636 and also clearly delighted in his plays (and those of his rival, Thomas Randolph, another Northamptonshire man and a former disciple of Ben Jonson). He pursued various antiquarian projects with William Dugdale and Roger Dodsworth and employed the musician George Jeffreys, who lived locally and who went on to be Charles I's organist at his Civil War headquarters at Oxford. Masculine Humours is not listed as part of Hausted's canon. VCH Northamptonshire, IV, p. 89; A. Milton, ‘Martin, Edward (d. 1662)’, in ODNB; W.H. Kelliher, ‘Randolph, Thomas (bap. 1605, d. 1635)’, in ODNB; D. Kathman, ‘Hausted, Peter (c.1605–1644)’, in ODNB; J.P. Wainwright, ‘Jeffreys, George (c.1610–1685)’, in ODNB; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 46, 118–120; Loyd, L.C. and Stenton, D.M. (eds), Sir Christopher Hatton's Book of Seals, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society XV (1942), pp. xx–xxxGoogle Scholar.

⁵¹⁶ Sir Christopher Hatton.

⁵¹⁷ Thomas Canon was another Hatton protégé as rector of Church Brampton. A Church court official by 1640, he was ejected from his living as a delinquent. He served as a chaplain in the royal army: Longden, Clergy.

⁵¹⁸ Robert Fowler was the son of the mayor elect, Richard Fowler: TNA, PROB/11/208. Yorke might have been a member of the puritan family from Hardingstone: Sheils, Puritans, p. 57.

⁵¹⁹ Probably the son of either Gregory Dexter senior or his brother, Alexander.

⁵²⁰ Kettering lay east of the River Ise. Woodford would have crossed either Hall or North Bridge back to the town side of the river.

⁵²¹ Sir William Willmer of Sywell (a future Royalist) steadfastly refused to pay ship money around this time and was involved in disputes with the parishioners of Sywell and Byfield; Jackson, ‘Ship money’, p. 167; Foster, C.W., A History of the Willmer Family (Leeds, 1888), p. 56Google Scholar.

⁵²² Possibly arrangements for holding the county quarter sessions at Wellingborough again (as on 22 May 1638), owing to the persistence of the plague at Northampton. The sessions were duly held at Wellingborough on 2 October 1638: Diary, p. 244.

⁵²³ John Mosse had been presented to the rectory of Hannington in 1611 by the conformist Bishop William Barlow of Lincoln: Longden MS, 9 November 1611; Longden, Clergy.

⁵²⁴ This might refer to an incident in which the Constable of Wilby, Francis Freeman, who had been accused of dilatoriness in collecting ship money, fell foul of Sheriff Sir John Hanbury's distraining bailiffs: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, p. 222.

⁵²⁵ Richard Lane, attorney general to Prince Charles, was Holland's deputy in the forest court, which is here being held at Wellingborough, instead of Northampton, owing to the plague: Pettit, Royal Forests, p. 91.

⁵²⁶ A watermill on the River Nene situated at Great Doddington, just south of Wilby.

⁵²⁷ A Mr Winstanley held the position of Keeper of the Privy Lodgings and Galleries at Whitehall in 1660 and was presumably the same individual: R.O. Bucholz, ‘Dependent sub-departments house and wardrobe keepers 1660–1837’, in Office Holders in Modern Britain, Volume 11: court officers 1660–1837 (2006), pp. 119–135.

⁵²⁸ Statements by Sheriff Sir John Hanbury's agents dated 6 and 8 September 1638 claimed that Sawyer, whose brother John was a leading godly magistrate, had delayed paying his ship money. When they attempted to distrain a horse, Sawyer, his wife, and servants had attacked them, Sawyer threatening to ‘knock all your brains out’. The council reacted quickly, despatching Sergeant Henry Middleton to arrest Sawyer on 16 September, and ordering Attorney General Sir John Bankes to examine him by 29 September: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 159–163; TNA, PC 2/49/422, 440.

⁵²⁹ That is, Middleton and Winstanley.

⁵³⁰ William Walker was the Chief Constable of Wymersley Hundred, immediately south of Northampton. His parson, the conformist Charles Stockwell of Hardingstone, had reported Walker to the justice of the peace Robert Sibthorpe for stating that ship money was an ‘oppression’, that the king was ‘under a law as any subject’, and that (referring to the recent verdict against John Hampden) ‘some judges had determined it to be law, but the best and most honest had not’. Arrested by Middleton at the council's behest, by 30 September Walker was being examined by Attorney General Sir John Bankes. He was eventually released, but was repeatedly harried in the local courts by Sibthorpe, who clearly also regarded him as a puritan: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 128–129 (quotations), 130; Longden, Clergy.

⁵³¹ Henry Middleton.

⁵³² Gregory Dexter senior was lord of Knightley's manor at Old. William Dexter of London was a relation, possibly the scrivener mentioned on 1 December 1638: VCH Northamptonshire, IV, pp. 202–203.

⁵³³ John Baxter was the host of the Swan. He achieved a degree of revenge against the godly by supplying Sir John Lambe with information regarding a clerical conference held at his inn on 25 August 1640 in opposition to the ‘Etcetera’ oath: TNA, SP16/465/8; Introduction, p. 86, n. 208.

⁵³⁴ The Michaelmas visitation of John Quarles, who had been Archdeacon of Northampton since 1629. Little is known about his churchmanship: his only extant visitation articles (dated 1639) are unexceptional (although they do contain the requirement to bow at the name of Jesus) and are completely silent on the position of the communion table. The conformist Simon Gunton preached at Rothwell on Friday 5 October, while at Northampton on 3 and 4 October Quarles himself preached, along with Lionel Goodricke, the vicar of Little Houghton and client of the godly lord of the manor, William Ward: Longden, Clergy; Longden MS, 10 July 1638; PDR, CB70, fo. 24r.

⁵³⁵ Sir Thomas Cave, squire of Stanford on Avon, supported conformist ministers such as Anthony Scattergood and William Laud himself, whom he had presented to Stanford in 1607. Cave's sister Eleanor had married the diplomat Sir Thomas Roe: TNA, PROB/11/17; Longden MS, 6 November 1607; H. de Quehen, ‘Scattergood, Anthony (bap. 1611, d. 1687)’, in ODNB; M. Strachan, ‘Roe, Sir Thomas (1581–1644)’, in ODNB.

⁵³⁶ The county's quarter sessions had also been held at Wellingborough (instead of Northampton) on 22 May 1638, owing to the plague.

⁵³⁷ This might be Gregory Leet of Badby or one of his descendants. Around 1604 Leet was accused in the Church courts of receiving communion either sitting or standing and of refusing to receive kneeling: PDR, CB37, fo. 208r; Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, p. 87.

⁵³⁸ At Clement's Inn.

⁵³⁹ Theodore Greene of Marston Trussell, a lawyer of Clement's Inn, had been an attorney since at least 1633, when he acted for Thomas Bacon; he represented Justinian Isham from 1638: NRO 55P/57, p. 63; Isham, Diary, pp. 72 n. 26, 73 n. 27.

⁵⁴⁰ The Catholic Marie de Medici, widow of Henri IV, and mother of Louis XIII and Queen Henrietta Maria.

⁵⁴¹ Heaven was a tavern located in Old Palace Yard adjacent to Westminster Hall. It is mentioned in Jonson's Alchemist (1612), was used by Pepys in 1660, and was referred to by Butler in Hudibras (1677): Wheatley, H.B. (ed.), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 8 vols in 3 vols (reissued London, 1962), I, pp. 33Google Scholar and note, 215, 261.

⁵⁴² Dr Aaron Gourdon (Guerden) was a native of Jersey who had obtained his degree in medicine from Rheims University in 1634 but who was currently practising illegally in London. In 1640 the court of physicians charged him with operating without a licence. In 1649 he was appointed master of the mint: J. Morrill, ‘Guerden, Aaron (c.1602–1676?)’, in ODNB.

⁵⁴³ Possibly some relation of John Benbow of Westminster (d. 1625), who had been a Chancery clerk: J.B. Hattendorf, ‘Benbow, John (1653?–1702)’, in ODNB.

⁵⁴⁴ The seven Auditors of the Exchequer were crown-appointed officials responsible for receiving and auditing crown revenue.

⁵⁴⁵ Richard Fowler.

⁵⁴⁶ John Snart (Smart) was a Northampton hosier who married Thomas Pentlow's daughter Susan. He served as churchwarden of All Saints’ from 1639 until 1640, when Humphrey Ramsden claimed that he received communion sitting: Vestry Minutes, pp. 21, 34–36; TNA, SP16/474/80.

⁵⁴⁷ The barrister Thomas Kittermaster of Warwickshire had been admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1634: Records of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, 2 vols (London, 1896), I (Admissions, 1420–1799), p. 225.

⁵⁴⁸ Samuel had been born at his grandparents’ house (the Two Wrestlers) in All Hallows' parish, London Wall, on 15 April 1636: N.H. Keeble, ‘Woodford, Samuel (1636–1700)’, in ODNB.

⁵⁴⁹ Presumably lodgings belonging to William Warren of Old, with whom Woodford had travelled to London on business on 25 April 1638.

⁵⁵⁰ Jeremy Leech, the incumbent of St Mary le Bow.

⁵⁵¹ Possibly some relation of the Watkin brothers of Watford, wool dealers connected to the Ishams: Finch, M.E., The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540–1640, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society XIX (Oxford, 1966), p. 31Google Scholar, n. 4.

⁵⁵² Robert Porter was a member of the minor gentry living at Edgbaston, Birmingham, and later a supplier of swords to the Parliamentarian army: TNA, SP28/201/47. I thank Richard Cust and Ann Hughes for this reference.

⁵⁵³ According to William Prynne, Archbishop Richard Neile had connived to have Bostock's house searched for seditious books by pursuivants during his absence in London in 1637. Prynne has Bishop John Bridgeman of Chester informing Neile of ‘one Bostock a Yong Lawyer, but an old Puritane’: Prynne, W., A New Discovery of the Prelates Tyranny (London, 1641), p. 225Google Scholar. John Bostock of Tattenhall near Chester, counsellor at law, served during the Civil War as clerk to the council of war based at Nantwich. His godly credentials took a hammering in 1643, when his employers found him guilty of adultery and sentenced him to perform a penance in the market square: Hall, J. (ed.), Memorials of the Civil War in Cheshire [. . .] Providence Improved by Edward Burghall, Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society XIX (1889), pp. 61–62Google Scholar.

⁵⁵⁴ William Pinson of Birmingham, a puritan nonconformist, was charged before the Court of High Commission. Proceedings continued until November 1640, when he was discharged: TNA, SP16/388, fo. 167; CSPD, 1640, pp. 379, 384, 389, 428; CSPD, 1640–1641, pp. 383, 388, 392.

⁵⁵⁵ John Scryven, shoemaker, appears as a member of the Northampton trained band in 1612 and was active in the vestry of All Saints’ parish from 1621 until 1640, repeatedly acting as churchwarden and sidesman: Wake, J. (ed.), A Copy of Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons, and Subsidies etc in the County of Northampton ad 1586–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society III (Kettering, 1926), p. 156Google Scholar; Vestry Minutes, pp. 15–35; Book of Orders, p. 57.

⁵⁵⁶ In which is described how God decided not to punish the people of Nineveh when they renounced their evil ways.

⁵⁵⁷ For William Knight, see Diary, p. 206, n. 414; he later made a charitable benefaction to the town: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 361. Richard Woollaston had been a wealthy wood merchant in Northampton since at least 1617 and had become mayor of the town by 1622. As churchwarden of All Saints’ around 1616–1617 he had denied inviting Leicestershire ministers to preach in the parish without a licence, saying that the minister of All Saints’, Jeremiah Lewis, had invited them: Pettit, Royal Forests, pp. 63, 70 n. 52; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 552; PDR, CB45, fos 52r–52v.

⁵⁵⁸ Thomas Wheatley, alderman of Coventry and ironmonger, had, by his will of 1566, bequeathed money to the corporation of Northampton to be loaned to ‘artificers’ of the town at 4 per cent interest. The charity, which was to be overseen by the mayor and corporation of Coventry, was still in operation in 1648: TNA, PROB/11/49; Book of Orders, pp. 100, 103; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 360.

⁵⁵⁹ Tristram Dymond, a Cambridge MA in 1612, was the vicar of Foleshill near Coventry from 1612 until his ejection in 1662: Venn.

⁵⁶⁰ Godfrey Legg had been Sheriff of Coventry in 1627 and had supported the non-corporation candidate in the 1628 parliamentary election. He had been admitted to Coventry Council in 1635 and served as mayor from 1637 until 1638: Coventry City Record Office, Coventry Council Minute Book A14(a), fo. 332r; Poole, B., Coventry, its History and Antiquities (London, 1870), p. 372Google Scholar. I am grateful to Richard Cust and Ann Hughes for these references.

⁵⁶¹ St Mary's Hall, a medieval structure.

⁵⁶² Thomas Forest became alderman of Bayley Lane ward in 1641 and took up the mayoralty again in 1646, when another man was ejected by Parliament: Coventry City Record Office, Coventry Council Minute Book, A14(b), fo. 19r; TNA, SP28/248, 24 August 1646; Firth, C.H. and Rait, R.S., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, 3 vols (London, 1911), I, p. 1244Google Scholar. I am grateful to Richard Cust and Ann Hughes for this reference.

⁵⁶³ Possibly connected to James Naylor, who was a receiver of Parliament's monthly assessment from 1647 until 1648 and Sheriff of Coventry in 1650: Coventry City Record Office, Coventry Council Leet Book A3(b), p. 194; TNA, E179/240/278. Again, I thank Richard Cust and Ann Hughes.

⁵⁶⁴ Thomas Judkin: Diary, p. 147, n. 209.

⁵⁶⁵ Richard Fowler's.

⁵⁶⁶ Henry Hill and John Cole.

⁵⁶⁷ Presumably the son of the saddler Richard Trueman: Diary, p. 227, n. 484.

⁵⁶⁸ Hare coursing was a popular sport among the gentry, who kept greyhounds for the purpose. Woodford's client John Bernard quarrelled with Alexander Eakins over the issue: Diary, p. 127; Isham, Diary, pp. 30–31.

⁵⁶⁹ Market Harborough, Leicestershire.

⁵⁷⁰ One Hodges was the usher of Wellingborough school from 1637 until 1649: D.K. Shearing, ‘A study of the educational developments in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1561–1700’ (unpublished MPhil thesis, University of Nottingham, 1982), biographical appendix.

⁵⁷¹ Joseph Bechins paid Daventry corporation's ship money contribution in 1636, and was presented to the Church courts throughout 1636 and 1637 for maintaining too high a pew within the chancel of the church and because his wife had allegedly brawled in church: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 50, 63 n. 80; PDR, CBA63, fo. 395r–v; Church Survey Book 5, fo. 63r.

⁵⁷² Richard Fowler.

⁵⁷³ There were frequent jailbreaks from the three jails in the town: Fisher may have been referring to the escape of Matthew Longstrap mentioned by Woodford on 11 November 1637: Markham and Cox, Northampton, pp. 175–178.

⁵⁷⁴ Either Great or Little Houghton to the south-east of Northampton.

⁵⁷⁵ Counterpart.

⁵⁷⁶ Dr Richard Holdsworth, Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and Archdeacon of Huntingdon, probably preached this sermon at his London parish of St Peter the Poor (Pentlow had been in London around 20 October and did not return with Woodford on 24 October: Diary, pp. 251–252). He was one of the most famous preachers of his generation but, as a moderate Calvinist, was under pressure from both sides of an increasingly polarized political and ecclesiastical scene: P. Collinson, ‘Holdsworth, Richard (1590–1649)’, in ODNB.

⁵⁷⁷ John Twigden had been mayor of the town from 1632 until 1633 when he was involved in investigating rumours, details of which were forwarded by Sir Robert Banastre to the Privy Council, that the Catholic recusant Lady Digby of Gayhurst, Buckinghamshire, was raising troops to hinder Charles I's visit to Scotland. This would be either Mary, the widow of Sir Everard Digby, who had been executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, or Venetia (née Stanley), the wife of Mary's son Sir Kenelm: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 552; M. Nicholls, ‘Digby, Sir Everard (c.1578–1606)’, in ODNB; TNA, SP16/237/45 and SP16/239/61, I–IV.

⁵⁷⁸ The Poultons (Pultons) of Desborough were Thomas Bacon's maternal relations. The individual here mentioned is probably George: PDR, CBA16, fo. 250r–v; PDR, CBA20, fo. 250r–v; PDR, CB50, fo. 143r–v; PDR, CBA63, fo. 18r–v; PDR, CB64, fo. 37r–v.

⁵⁷⁹ John Wikes, squire of Haselbech, whose pew was condemned as too high in the church survey of 1637: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 138r–v; Isham Diary, p. 60, n. 10.

⁵⁸⁰ Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, was identified with the Catholic interest at court. A hardliner against the Scots, he was appointed to command the English forces in the north. Robert Devereux, third Earl of Essex, held meetings with the Covenanters in London, and in 1640 signed the petition of twelve peers calling for the summoning of Parliament and a treaty with the Scots: R.M. Smuts, ‘Howard, Thomas, fourteenth earl of Arundel, fourth earl of Surrey, and first earl of Norfolk (1585–1646)’, in ODNB; J. Morrill, ‘Devereux, Robert, third earl of Essex (1591–1646)’, in ODNB.

⁵⁸¹ Possibly the William Dexter of London mentioned on 27 September 1638.

⁵⁸² That is, Obadiah Sedgwick's brother, John, a Northamptonshire minister.

⁵⁸³ First name unknown, the brother of Woodford's mother, Jane. He possibly resided in the parish of St Bartholomew by the Exchange: Dale, T.C. (ed.), The Inhabitants of London in 1638 (London, 1931), p. 36Google Scholar.

⁵⁸⁴ Francis Cook, the Kingsthorpe attorney, died in 1638. Perhaps this is one of his sons, Francis or Tempest.

⁵⁸⁵ Matthew 6:34.

⁵⁸⁶ Verse 10.

⁵⁸⁷ Thomas Pidgeon was a joiner by trade but also a Church court apparitor. In October 1637 Sibthorpe had visited the chapel of Upton, of which his colleague Dr Clarke was the parson, and had ordered that the communion table (standing in mid-chancel) be cut short, railed, and placed altarwise at the east end. According to the churchwardens, Clarke procured Pidgeon to do the work. They were obstructive, so Clarke excommunicated them. They appealed to the Court of Audience, then the Court of Arches, of which Sir John Lambe was the dean, for an inhibition overthrowing the verdict of the lower court, but claimed that Lambe informed them that Archbishop Laud had ordered that no inhibitions were to be issued to the counties of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, or Buckinghamshire without his express permission. The wardens were forced to pay Pidgeon for his work. Eventually, their petition to the Long Parliament resulted in a verdict by the House of Lords that Clarke pay for a new communion table in the traditional position. Pidgeon is encountered again in September 1640, being interrogated by Sibthorpe about derelictions in his duty in failing to arrest William Walker, a constable resisting ship money, and failing to distribute prayers supporting the king's military effort against the Scots: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 68r–v; HLRO, main papers, Garfield and Woolfe vs. Clarke, 22 December 1640; TNA, SP16/468/76.

⁵⁸⁸ Matthew 6:32.

⁵⁸⁹ The cup was impregnated with the element antimony, an emetic and a popular remedy for melancholy.

⁵⁹⁰ A William Staceye occurs in Northampton in 1591,who was presumably the same as the William Stansey, tanner, who obtained a loan from Elkington's charity in 1608 on the recommendation of the godly minister Robert Catelin: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 308; Wake, J. (ed.), A Copy of Papers Relating to Musters, Beacons, and Subsidies etc in the County of Northampton ad 1586–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society III (Kettering, 1926), p. 36Google Scholar.

⁵⁹¹ James Gardiner occurs in 1614: Wake, Musters, Beacons, and Subsidies, p. 156.

⁵⁹² The son of his uncle Henry Woodford of Old.

⁵⁹³ Misquotation: Psalm 107:41.

⁵⁹⁴ Misquotation: Psalm 113:7.

⁵⁹⁵ A symbol is used here, consisting of the letter ‘e’ with a tail running clockwise around it, that is, in the opposite direction to that in the commercial ‘@’, and meaning ‘excepting’.

⁵⁹⁶ Inserted above the line: ‘this 4li is to be accounted in halfes so but 122li’.

⁵⁹⁷ Illegible crossings-out above.

⁵⁹⁸ Ralph Flood appeared at musters in 1613: Wake, Musters, Beacons, and Subsidies, p. 155.

⁵⁹⁹ Edward Cooper served as a sidesman in 1636, in 1639 as town bailiff, from 1642 to 1643 as a churchwarden, and as a chamberlain from 1644 until 1646: Vestry Minutes, pp. 21, 32, 38; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 562, 568.

⁶⁰⁰ That is, ‘Omne’: ‘all, everything’.

⁶⁰¹ Psalm 88:10.

⁶⁰² Matthew 18:19.

⁶⁰³ Matthew 6:33.

⁶⁰⁴ Job 22:21.

⁶⁰⁵ Psalm 107:17–19.

⁶⁰⁶ James 1:2–3: ‘My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience’.

⁶⁰⁷ Richard Fowler.

⁶⁰⁸ Woolston was rate assessor of All Saints’ in 1635 and sidesman in 1636: Vestry Minutes, p. 32.

⁶⁰⁹ Richard Powell had been one of the vicars of Pattishall since 1609. A conformist Church court official, he had been embroiled in an acerbic dispute with a godly faction in his parish led by his fellow vicar, Miles Burkit, since at least 1637 (Diary, p. 210, n. 430). Around the beginning of 1638, Burkit and his supporters retaliated by submitting to the Court of High Commission a long list of charges against Powell, the most significant being that he had ‘preached dangerous and seditious doctrine [. . .] to pswade yor pishoners to stand out and not pay the ship money’ and had ‘inveigh[ed] agt Tirants and tyrannical princes that layd unwell uniust and tyrannical taxes upon their subiects saying that when God gives such a King he gives him in his wrath [. . .] you intended [. . .] our gratious soveraigne Lord King Charles and [. . .] the shippmoney’ (TNA, SP16/433/46). The godly faction were protected by Sir Richard Samwell (one of the justices of the peace deputed to assess the case), who had previously protected Burkit against his accusers in High Commission. Powell was supported by the conformists Sibthorpe and Clarke, the two remaining justices of the peace detailed to try the case. They advocated Powell's orthodoxy: he had encouraged loyalty to a just king and tax, and had volunteered his own payment. His opponents were dismissed as disobedient schismatical puritans, who had not paid ship money and who opposed the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England. The conformists, supported by Lambe and Laud himself, were victorious: in April 1638 the Council exonerated Powell and ordered his opponents to pay both his costs and their ship money. Furthermore, Sibthorpe and Clarke (via Lambe and Laud) persuaded Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry to remove Samwell from the Commission of the Peace: High Commission now also prosecuted him. The Council's verdict was not overturned until the advent of the Long Parliament, which condemned Powell's views on ship money as unorthodox and popish, and removed Sibthorpe and Clarke from the Commission and replaced them with Samwell and John Crewe: Longden MS, 24 March 1609; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 50r–v; Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 125–127; HLRO, main papers, 21 January 1641 (Petition of William Waters); Hart, J.S., Justice upon Petition: the House of Lords and the reformation of justice 1621–1675 (London, 1991), pp. 87–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 103n.

⁶¹⁰ Mark 4:19.

⁶¹¹ 2 Kings 1:3, 6.

⁶¹² Richard Odell.

⁶¹³ Possibly Henry Barton, who, with John Fisher, had been reported to the Church courts in 1604 for omitting to report the nonconformity of Robert Catelin, the incumbent at All Saints’: PDR, CB37, fo. 163r.

⁶¹⁴ Diary, p. 268, and n. 606.

⁶¹⁵ Richard Fowler.

⁶¹⁶ As part of his charitable bequest, Sir Ralph Freeman had made provision for an annual sermon at All Saints’ parish on St Thomas's day: TNA, PROB/11/165.

⁶¹⁷ A vigorous ship money sheriff and enthusiastic Laudian beautifier of his parish of Passenham: Fincham, K. and Tyacke, N., Altars Restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547–c. 1700 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 259–261CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 120–121.

⁶¹⁸ On the mystery of godliness.

⁶¹⁹ Nicholas Baynes of Earl's Barton was the son of Nicholas Baynes, vicar of Ecton from 1592 until 1611, who, with the anti-puritan Church court official Richard Butler, had supported the conformist candidates for convocation in 1593 against the godly candidates supported by Thomas Stone, a former classis member. Like his father he attended Clare Hall, Cambridge, and became a clergyman: E.A. Irons, ‘A calendar of a court book’, Northamptonshire Notes and Queries, new series, 3 (1911), pp. 170–171; Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, p. 147; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 134r–v.

⁶²⁰ His brother-in-law, Samuel Haunch, was studying at St Catherine's College, and Henry, the son of William Spencer, the godly incumbent of Scaldwell, was attending Emmanuel College before intrusion into the living of Wadenhoe in 1644: Venn; Longden, Clergy.

⁶²¹ Fed and watered.

⁶²² That is, Henry Weltden.

⁶²³ John Smart (Snart): Diary, p. 249, n. 546.

⁶²⁴ In November 1638 the Scottish Assembly had abolished episcopacy and established a Presbyterian form of church government, provoking a military response from the English, the First Bishops’ War: Gardiner, History, VIII, pp. 349–392; Hughes, A., The Causes of the English Civil War (London, 1991), pp. 36–37Google Scholar.

⁶²⁵ The soke or liberty of Peterborough possessed its own justices of the peace and sessions. It is not known for what visit to the county town Peterborough is here paying a levy.

⁶²⁶ Psalm 34:8.

⁶²⁷ William Scarborough, watchmaker, gained his freedom in 1636, and served as a night watchman in 1656, and bailiff in 1659: Freemen of Northampton, unpaginated, dated 1636; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 457–458, 562.

⁶²⁸ A narrow, deep, cleft.

⁶²⁹ The son and heir of the Northampton ironmonger John Loe.

⁶³⁰ Richard Rainsford.

⁶³¹ This was located in Market Square and had been established after 1585: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 306–307.

⁶³² Richard Fowler.

⁶³³ Thomas Dowsing, vicar of Long Buckby, lived at the University of Cambridge: PDR, CB67, unfoliated.

⁶³⁴ Richard Fowler's.

⁶³⁵ Hockliffe, Bedfordshire.

⁶³⁶ There was a Buckinghamshire barrister called Thomas Lane. Robert Hatton was a Middle Temple barrister and bencher based in Surrey. Robert Reynolds was the third most senior counsellor in the Court of Wards: Prest, Barristers, pp. 64, 367, 375.

⁶³⁷ The king's summons to the nobility: Gardiner, History, VIII, p. 384.

⁶³⁸ For the proclamation, dated 29 January 1639, see Larkin, J.L. (ed.), Stuart Royal Proclamations II: royal proclamations of King Charles I, 1625–1646 (London, 1982), pp. 648–650Google Scholar.

⁶³⁹ Possibly either the proclamation of 29 November 1638 dissolving the Assembly or that of 19 December 1638 denouncing its continued sitting and its proceedings: Stevenson, D., The Scottish Revolution 1637–1644: the triumph of the Covenanters (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 126Google Scholar; Brown, P.H. (ed.), Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, 8 vols (Edinburgh, 1899–1908), VII, pp. 91–102Google Scholar.

⁶⁴⁰ Part of the ill-organized opposition to the Covenant, the Declinator (which complained about abuses in the elections to the Assembly and about the Assembly's membership) was read at the 27 November 1638 session but was ineffective: Stevenson, Scottish Revolution, pp. 119, 121.

⁶⁴¹ Ann, the widow of Woodford's rival, Thomas Pilkington. She was the daughter of the godly alderman Edward Mercer, who had written to Robert Cecil in 1605 to protect the puritan minister Robert Catelin. Mercer had been presented to the Church court accused of sending his children (perhaps including Ann) to be taught by the free school's master, Simon Wastell, who had been excommunicated for nonconformity. In 1607 he was involved in a Star Chamber suit initiated by John Lambe against the writers and circulators of scurrilous verses attacking the personnel of the Church courts: Sheils, Puritans, p. 83; PDR, CB37, fo. 193r; TNA, STAC8/205/19 and STAC8/205/20; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 129.

⁶⁴² Susan Pentlow, whom John Smart would marry on 26 September 1639.

⁶⁴³ William Gouge, minister of St Ann's, Blackfriars, was perhaps the most celebrated preacher in London. He was living quietly under the protection of London businessmen and Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, but from 1639 until 1648 he published various tracts dealing with godly ethics which were to be highly influential. He and Stoughton made an adjudication shortly before 26 April 1639 (Diary, p. 302): B. Usher, ‘Gouge, William (1575–1653)’, in ODNB; Webster, Godly Clergy, pp. 56–57.

⁶⁴⁴ The Bishop of Winchester was lord high almoner to Charles I and is here appointing Woodford county almoner for Northamptonshire. Bishop Walter Curll had achieved this royal appointment in 1637 through the patronage of Archbishop Laud, and was an anti-Calvinist supporter of Laudian ritualism: M. Dorman, ‘Curll, Walter (1575–1647)’, in ODNB; Fincham, K. and Lake, P., ‘The ecclesiastical policies of James I and Charles I’, in Fincham, K. (ed.), The Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642 (Stanford, 1993), p. 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁴⁵ Probably Edward Eare (Diary, p. 298, as Ned Eyre). Constable Eare of Burton Latimer had become embroiled in the Burton ship money dispute when Sibthorpe had accused Thomas Bacon, Eare's landlord, of threatening to evict him unless he ignored his duty to collect the levy: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 34–36.

⁶⁴⁶ South Mimms, Colney, and Redbourn, Hertfordshire.

⁶⁴⁷ That is, William Tompson and George Basse, both of Wilby. Basse was presented to the Church court in 1619 accused of receiving communion either sitting or standing (but not kneeling, as required by the court) at Broughton during the incumbency of Robert Bolton. He went on to serve as churchwarden at Wilby in 1635 and was reported in 1637 (as was Tompson) for maintaining a pew which was too high. The will made for Tompson by Woodford was later superseded: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 134r–v; PDR, X639–642/8, unfoliated, under Wilby; PDR, CB48, fo. 273r–v; PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton wills, third series, C128.

⁶⁴⁸ Richard Lane.

⁶⁴⁹ Richard Lane.

⁶⁵⁰ Sir Robert Berkeley.

⁶⁵¹ This refers to the resumption of the assizes at Northampton at the end of the outbreak of plague: the sheriff involved was Philip Holman, an official charged with the unenviable task of collecting the arrears of ship money in Northamptonshire, as well as a new writ for 1638. A London scrivener made good, Holman was lord of the manor of Warkworth, and a patron of godly ministers. Warkworth itself was exempt from ecclesiastical jurisdiction and possessed no incumbent, although Holman maintained his own chaplain. He promoted the careers of two very different godly ministers at Marston St Lawrence, whose advowson was owned by the Blencowe family: in 1633 he had appointed Charles Chauncy, the vocal opponent of Laudian altar policy, who preached at Warkworth before emigrating to New England in 1638; and in 1637 Chauncy's replacement, the more moderate minister Francis Cheynell, nephew of Sir Gervase Clifton, whose appointment was advocated, to his own astonishment, by Archbishop Laud and the High Commission. Holman also enjoyed godly connections with John Crewe, Richard Knightley, Lord Saye, Thomas Ball, and Edward Reynolds: Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 176–181, 195; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 20, 96; Bridges, History of Northamptonshire, II, pp. 182, 217; Longden MS, 28 August 1633 and 28 October 1637; Longden, Clergy; TNA, SP16/311/33; Webster, Godly Clergy, pp. 221–224; F.J. Bremer, ‘Chauncy, Charles (bap. 1592, d. 1672)’, in ODNB; R. Pooley, ‘Cheynell, Francis (bap. 1608, d. 1665)’, in ODNB; Nottingham University Library, Clifton MSS, CL C600.

⁶⁵² Richard Lane.

⁶⁵³ Either Thomas Chalenor, the son of Jonas Chalenor, who had been deprived from the living of Byfield in 1605 for nonconformity, or Jonas himself, who had lived in Shropshire since his deprivation. Thomas seems an unlikely candidate: he had been the vicar of Geddington (and the client of the Catholic Sir Thomas Tresham) until 1637, and was possibly still the schoolmaster there. He had preached at Archdeacon John Quarles's visitation in 1630, but Bishop Piers's officials thought him too indifferent to contribute to the Kettering lecture in 1630 and by 1632 he was being presented for negligence in serving his cure: Longden, Clergy; Sheils, Puritans, pp. 75, 81, 82; Longden MS, 23 September 1626 and 14 June 1637; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 64; PDR, CBA51, fo. 19r; PDR, CB40A, fo. 80r; TNA, SP16/531/135.

⁶⁵⁴ See p. 402, additional entry dated 28 February 1638/39.

⁶⁵⁵ Charles I had issued a declaration on 27 February 1639 describing the actions of the Scots as seditious, challenging monarchical government under the pretence of religion: Larkin, J.L. (ed.), Stuart Royal Proclamations II: royal proclamations of King Charles I, 1625–1646 (London, 1982), pp. 662–667Google Scholar.

⁶⁵⁶ John 4:24.

⁶⁵⁷ The fate awaiting those who condemned God's ‘little ones’, in Matthew 18:6, Mark 9:42, and Luke 17:2.

⁶⁵⁸ Probably four of the following: Richard Woollaston, William Knight, Abraham Ventris, Roger Sargent, Thomas Martin, and John Gifford: Book of Orders, pp. 51, 60.

⁶⁵⁹ See Diary, p. 288, n. 655.

⁶⁶⁰ In April 1639 the City of London refused to lend the king money to fund the campaign against the Scots: Sharpe, K., The Personal Rule of Charles I (London, 1992), p. 822Google Scholar.

⁶⁶¹ Justinian Isham of Lamport (1611–1675) had married Jane Garrard (the daughter of Sir John Garrard of Lamer, Hertfordshire) in 1634. The couple had been based at Shangton, Leicestershire, but had travelled to Sir John Isham's at Lamport for the birth of their son. Jane had died on 3 March after childbirth and had been buried on 5 March. Justinian employed Thomas Stanton to build a monument to her in the chancel at Lamport, and in 1642 praised her (‘a Religious and Discreet woman’) to their daughters, recommending that they read the same books as she had, which included works by the puritans Daniel Featley and Richard Sibbes. Justinian himself was a prominent patron of conformist ministers before and during the Commonwealth period: R. Priestley, ‘Isham, Sir Justinian, second baronet (1611–1675)’, in ODNB; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 46–47; Isham, G. (ed.), The Correspondence of Bishop Brian Duppa and Sir Justinian Isham 1650–1660, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society XVII (Lamport, 1955)Google Scholar; Pevsner, Northamptonshire, p. 285; NRO, Isham (Correspondence), I(C) 3415 (quotation).

⁶⁶² Lady Day.

⁶⁶³ Richard Fowler.

⁶⁶⁴ Woodford is here recording the beginning of Charles I's fifteenth regnal year: Cheney, C.R. (ed.), Handbook of Dates for Students of English History, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks IV (London, 1978), p. 26Google Scholar.

⁶⁶⁵ Market Harborough, Leicestershire.

⁶⁶⁶ Richard Fowler.

⁶⁶⁷ A meeting of the vestry ordered this assessment on 20 March 1639: Vestry Minutes, p. 34.

⁶⁶⁸ The Star Chamber case of Plowright vs. Bacon over ship money. The court official gave notice on 30 March 1639 that the hearing would take place on 10 May: Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1876, 12 April 1639.

⁶⁶⁹ Duplicate entry: see Diary, p. 298.

⁶⁷⁰ Probably the Harvey whom Woodford on 6 November 1639 describes as his chamber-fellow at Clement's Inn, part of the legal dynasty of Hardingstone and Weston Favell. Stephen Harvey was the younger son of Stephen Harvey of Weston, the brother of the godly judge, Sir Francis Harvey. Stephen senior had left Weston to become a wealthy London merchant and member of the Society of Grocers, and had married Sir Ralph Freeman's sister Elizabeth, although he retained close contacts with his roots – his lawyer was his kinsman William Adams, the Hardingstone barrister, and in his will of June 1636 he provided the money to construct a monument in Hardingstone church dedicated to his parents, William (d. 1606) and Ann. His religious affiliations were ambiguous: the preamble to his will was godly and he forbade any sordid funeral ostentation, but made bequests to various ministers including the conformist Samuel Baker, chaplain to Bishop William Juxon. His son Stephen, Woodford's proposed room-mate, was admitted to the Middle Temple on 26 November 1641 and called to the bar on 21 November 1651: Sturgess, H.A.C. (ed.), Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple from the Fifteenth Century to the Year 1944, 3 vols (London, 1949), I, p. 140Google Scholar; TNA, PROB/11/171; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, pp. 98–99; Howard, J.J. and Chester, J.L. (eds), The Visitations of London AD 1633, 1634, and 1635, 2 vols (London, 1880), I, p. 358Google Scholar; Tyacke, N., Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987), p. 218nGoogle Scholar; A. Hunt, ‘Baker, Samuel (d. 1658)’, in ODNB.

⁶⁷¹ A writ empowering one who is not a judge to perform an act as if he were a judge.

⁶⁷² Edward Oakley.

⁶⁷³ Diary, p. 296, n. 676, on Lawrence Ball.

⁶⁷⁴ John Danby was married twice: to Sarah and Alice. This was probably the former: TNA, PROB/11/232.

⁶⁷⁵ Friedrich Schlör of the Rhineland had been inducted to the living of Rushden on 16 September 1637 and on 26 September licensed to preach anywhere in the Diocese of Peterborough. During the Civil War he was intruded into the rectory of Old after the violent death of Peter Hausted, the previous incumbent, at the siege of Banbury: Longden MS, 16 September 1637; Longden, Clergy; PDR, Miscellaneous Book XVIA, fo. 9r; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 46, 118–120; D. Kathman, ‘Hausted, Peter (c.1605–1644)’, in ODNB.

⁶⁷⁶ John Ball attended Queen's College, Oxford, gaining a BA in 1635 and an MA in 1638. Both father and son were members of the godly grouping in the town: John witnessed the will of the saddler Richard Trueman, and Lawrence that of the ironmonger John Loe. Lawrence's father, Lawrence senior, who had been mayor in 1592, had been among the corporation members who had written to the Secretary of State Robert Cecil in 1605 to protect Robert Catelin, their minister, from deprivation. Lawrence the younger occurs in the parish records from 1628, and served as a churchwarden in 1636 and as mayor in 1641 (Diary, p. 394): Foster; Sheils, Puritans, p. 83; Vestry Minutes, pp. 21–32, 35; Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 552.

⁶⁷⁷ The deputy lieutenants of the county had written to the corporation of Northampton to request this coat and conduct money, but the town's assembly rejected the request by a large majority. The mayor, Richard Fowler, by his sole authority, next ordered the constables to collect it, but most defaulted over a levy which lacked the assembly's approval. By 21 July the assembly had paid the levy out of corporation funds: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, p. 436; Book of Orders, pp. 53, 57–59.

⁶⁷⁸ Antichrist.

⁶⁷⁹ Duplicate entry: see Diary, p. 294.

⁶⁸⁰ Ramsden had written to Lambe on 20 March 1639 declaring that Northampton men still regularly received communion sitting and advising him to send informers to the parish at Easter. Note Woodford's description of the position of the communion table, which had apparently been unrailed in the middle of the chancel since at least 16 June 1638 (Introduction, p. 62): TNA, SP16/414/163.

⁶⁸¹ Constable Edward Eare of Burton Latimer, who was involved in the Plowright vs. Bacon ship money dispute.

⁶⁸² Geoffrey Palmer of East Carlton was a high-flying lawyer who had already represented the county gentry against the king's revival of the forest laws and is clearly sympathetic to Woodford's and Bacon's ship money dispute here: Diary, p. 114, n. 85.

⁶⁸³ Desborough.

⁶⁸⁴ Bacon had been summoned to appear before the Court of Star Chamber on 10 May concerning his ship money dispute with Plowright. This second summons, to appear on 17 May, concerned a second Star Chamber case. The subject of this was Plowright's impressment (on 4 April) as a soldier for the Scottish wars by Deputy Lieutenant Sir Rowland St John after Plowright, as Constable of Burton Latimer, had failed to produce any recruits. Sibthorpe had intervened by writing to his court contacts, Sir John Lambe and Richard Kilvert. Shortly afterwards, Plowright was released and appeared before the council to accuse Bacon of conniving with St John over his impressment. Accordingly, after 17 April Bacon was imprisoned in London. St John was also arrested. On 30 April Bacon gave bond to appear before the Council on 17 May and was released: Stater, V.L., ‘The lord lieutenancy on the eve of the Civil Wars: the impressment of George Plowright’, Historical Journal, 2 (1986), pp. 285Google Scholar, 287, 289; Introduction, pp. 79–81.

⁶⁸⁵ Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester, had been recalled in February 1639 from his ambassadorship to France. He returned to France in August: I. Atherton, ‘Sidney, Robert, second earl of Leicester (1595–1677)’, in ODNB.

⁶⁸⁶ John Hall, a sergeant: TNA, SP16/474/80.

⁶⁸⁷ Bridget seems to have been a friend of Woodford's mother, Jane; James Wheelock is mentioned in the will of Woodford's father: PDR, Archdeaconry of Northampton wills, second series, C168.

⁶⁸⁸ William Castle (Castell) had, in 1627, obtained through crown patronage the benefice of Courteenhall. In 1630 he had been involved in a controversy over the possession of the living of Paulerspury. The eventual victor was William Beale, who accused Castle and Peter Fawtrart of Guernsey of acting in a puritan conspiracy against him. The case resurfaced at Archbishop Laud's trial, when Laud was accused of exploiting crown patronage to favour men of his own faction. Castle was suspended at Bishop Piers's primary visitation in July 1631 for failing to hold May Day prayers, and he may have tried his hand at being a Virginia planter around this time. At the metropolitical visitation of the diocese in May 1635 he was described as a puritan who bragged of sitting with his hat on during service. At Dee's 1637 visitation he was charged with always editing the Prayer Book service, never wearing a surplice, using an alternative catechism to that in the Prayer Book (asking ‘strong questions [like] what was the first sinne? what was the forbidden fruit? what the Divell ys?’: TNA, SP16/366/17), and fighting with his parishioners who were playing on the bowling leys. His opposition to the altar policy was dramatic. He initially prevented the churchwardens from railing the communion table, but after an admonition from Dr Clarke he promised on 25 June 1636 to allow it. His strategy was similar to that employed at All Saints’: he permitted the creation of a rail at the bottom of the chancel steps, enclosing a long table which was not placed against the eastern wall of the chancel. The Church court official complained about the rails and ordered the apparitor to measure the table, whereupon Castle pushed him away, claiming he could as easily live in New England. Castle asserted that his parishioners did not approach the rails at the communion (the charge stated they came within the rails), that they should not, and that he would never encourage them to do so, and that it was as appropriate to bow at the other parts of the Trinity as at Jesus’ name. In 1639 Sibthorpe claimed that Castle was the most averse clergyman in the diocese to the clerical contribution towards the cost of the Bishops’ Wars: NRO, Spencer (Althorp) MSS, A19; Longden MS, 13 April 1627; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, p. 43; PDR, CB1, fo. 414r–v; PDR, CBA63, fo. 392r–v; TNA, SP16/308/52; TNA, SP16/36/17; PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 89r–v; Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1891; Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 220; Gordon, P., ‘William Castell of Courteenhall: a seventeenth century pioneer of missionary work’, Northamptonshire Past and Present, 8 (5), (1993–1994), pp. 354–362Google Scholar.

⁶⁸⁹ Robert Greville, second Lord Brooke, lived at Warwick Castle, and William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, at Broughton Castle, Oxfordshire. They were connected through marriage and conviction with a network of puritan opponents of royal policy from the 1620s onwards, ranging from such aristocratic figures as Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford, and Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, to gentry figures such as John Pym, Oliver St John, Richard Knightley, and many godly ministers with whom they also collaborated on New England colonial ventures in the 1630s. Both inveterate opponents of Charles I and supporters of the Covenanters, with whom they were probably already in touch, they are here being briefly imprisoned at York for refusing to fight for the king against the Scots, and for refusing to swear an oath of loyalty to the king on the grounds that it had not been approved by parliament: Hughes, A., ‘Thomas Dugard and his circle in the 1630s: a “Parliamentary–Puritan” connexion?’, Historical Journal, 29 (1986), pp. 771–793CrossRefGoogle Scholar; A. Hughes, ‘Greville, Robert, second Baron Brooke of Beauchamps Court (1607–1643)’, in ODNB; D.L. Smith, ‘Fiennes, William, first Viscount Saye and Sele (1582–1662)’, in ODNB; Gardiner, History, IX, pp. 11–12.

⁶⁹⁰ That is, Richard Fowler's wife, Martha, the executrix of his will in 1649: TNA, PROB/11/208.

⁶⁹¹ John Clarke, Lincoln's Inn bencher, Parliamentarian, and later judge, was lord of the manor of Guilsborough and Dr Samuel Clarke's cousin. Henry Painter was the son of the ecclesiastical lawyer William Painter. He had become wealthy – in 1632 the vestry had assigned seats to him and his close friend William Rushton, the future steward. He was also the trusted confidant of Sir Robert Banastre: Prest, Barristers, pp. 334, 351; Bridges, History of Northamptonshire, II, p. 567; Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, pp. 51–55; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, p. 70; Vestry Minutes, pp. 28, 32; TNA, PROB/11/285 and PROB/11/179; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 120–121; Jackson, ‘Ship money’, pp. 66–100.

⁶⁹² Daniel Reading and John Danby.

⁶⁹³ Either Ferdinando Baude, or his son William, lords of the manor of Walgrave and Catholic recusants linked to the Brudenells of Deene: VCH Northamptonshire, IV (London, 1937), pp. 218–219; PDR, CB42, fo. 406r–v; Finch, M.E., The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540–1640, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society XIX (Oxford, 1966), pp. 85nGoogle Scholar, 91, 95n; Metcalfe, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1618, pp. 67–68.

⁶⁹⁴ Walter Curll.

⁶⁹⁵ Lord High Almoner to Charles I: Woodford was probably rendering his Easter account to his superior, Curll, as promised at his installation on 14 February 1638/39: Diary, p. 283.

⁶⁹⁶ This is a continuation of Lady Smithes's case. Britten might be John Britten of Wellingborough: PDR, Church Survey Book 5, fo. 133r–v.

⁶⁹⁷ Presumably Miles Burkit's patron, George Steward. Steward and his wife, Ann, were (like Burkit) the subjects of suits in the Court of High Commission. Steward claimed that these were the result of the malice of Sir John Lambe's conformist ally Henry Alleyn: TNA, SP16/434/fos 16r, 125v, 143v, 191v; TNA SP16/434A/fos 11r, 30v, 50v.

⁶⁹⁸ According to P.S. Seaver, ‘Stoughton, John (bap. 1593, d. 1639)’, in ODNB, Stoughton died on 4 May 1639.

⁶⁹⁹ This refers to the Star Chamber hearing of the Plowright vs. Bacon ship money dispute, but it is clear that the Council postponed the case until St John arrived, although he was not involved in the ship money, only the impressment, case. Indeed, Sibthorpe's letter to Lambe (dated 16 May) makes it clear that Lambe, to Sibthorpe's chagrin, had abandoned the ship money case, and it disappears from the records: Temple of Stowe MSS, STT 1885.

⁷⁰⁰ The identity of Sheriff Sir Gilbert Harrison's chaplain is elusive. Both Stoughton and Edward Chetwind (the Dean of Bristol, who died the next day, 13 May 1639) had been his clients: Seaver, ‘Stoughton, John’; J.M. Rigg, ‘Chetwynd, Edward (1576/7–1639)’, rev. V. Larminie, in ODNB; Beaven, A.B., The Aldermen of the City of London, 2 vols (London, 1908–1913), II, pp. 63–65Google Scholar.

⁷⁰¹ A suburb where the godly divine Calybute Downing was the incumbent: B. Donagan, ‘Downing, Calybute (1606–1644)’, in ODNB.

⁷⁰² According to Ramsden, James Cranford delivered the Thursday lecture at Northampton on this day: TNA, SP16/474/80.

⁷⁰³ Cranford was preaching at St Mary le Bow, whose vicar was Jeremy Leech: Newcourt, R., Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinense, 2 vols (London, 1708–1710), I, p. 440Google Scholar.

⁷⁰⁴ Proverbs 6:16–19.

⁷⁰⁵ See p. 401, additional diary entry dated 2 June 1639.

⁷⁰⁶ The town's sessions not the county's.

⁷⁰⁷ Richard Fowler, Henry Hill, and John Cole.

⁷⁰⁸ Previously a protégé of Bishop John Williams, Giles Thorne had been ejected from Oxford in 1631 by William Laud himself after preaching against altars. He seems to have changed sides and by 1639 was Sir John Lambe's appointee as vicar of St Sepulchre's parish, Northampton, but retained the living only until 1640. He was later ejected from a Bedfordshire living as a maintainer of the Book of Sports but was restored after 1660, awarded a doctorate, and declared in his will that he had lived ‘and will dye in the truly ancient Catholick and Apostolick [. . .] Church of England’. Henry Storke, one of Thorne's students at Oxford, wrote to Lambe in 1640 acknowledging his generosity to Thorne and asking for the living of St Giles: Longden, Clergy; Longden MS, 7 June 1639; Hill, C., A Turbulent, Seditious, and Factious People: John Bunyan and his church 1628–1688 (Oxford, 1988), p. 26Google Scholar; Serjeantson, R.M., A History of the Church of St Giles, Northampton (Northampton, 1911), p. 54Google Scholar; Fincham, K. and Tyacke, N., Altars Restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547–c. 1700 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 185CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 186 n. 43.

⁷⁰⁹ Harmful weeds growing in corn fields.

⁷¹⁰ The godly John Temple of Frankton, Warwickshire, a strenuous opponent of court policy, connected by kinship to Viscount Saye and Sele and by political affiliation to both Saye and Lord Brooke; also a future Parliamentarian captain: Hughes, A., Politics, Society, and Civil War: Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 54CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 97, 103, 109, 113, 153.

⁷¹¹ Uncle Wale was a widower: Woodford heard of the death of his wife, Woodford's aunt Margaret, on 9 November 1638.

⁷¹² Thin, white, opaque growth over the eye like a cataract.

⁷¹³ Christopher.

⁷¹⁴ Woodford had passed this money to Wallop by 30 November 1639: Diary, p. 334.

⁷¹⁵ Richard Fowler.

⁷¹⁶ Sir Arthur Haselrig was based in Leicestershire but was also lord of the manor of Alderton, Northamptonshire. Through his Greville marriage he was associated with the puritan Saye–Pym–Knightley group's opposition to the royal policies of the 1630s and with their colonial ventures. He was one of the Five Members, a Parliamentarian officer, and ultimately a regicide. His chaplain at this time was Samuel Fisher, the son of Woodford's friend John Fisher: C. Durston, ‘Hesilrige, Sir Arthur, second baronet (1601–1661)’, in ODNB; S. Villani, ‘Fisher, Samuel (bap. 1604, d. 1665)’, in ODNB; Bridges, History of Northamptonshire, II, pp. 281–282.

⁷¹⁷ This refers to the Truce of Berwick (18 June 1639) concluding the First Bishops’ War. The king agreed to a meeting of the Scottish Assembly and Parliament, and both armies agreed to disband: Coward, B., The Stuart Age: England 1603–1714 (London, 2003), pp. 180Google Scholar, 520.

⁷¹⁸ Psalm 50:10.

⁷¹⁹ Nicholas Tew was a London radical who was arrested in 1644 for publishing works by John Lilburne and William Walwyn. He was a General Baptist and later a Leveller: A. Sharp, ‘Lilburne, John (1615?–1657)’, in ODNB; B.J. Gibbons, ‘Overton, Richard (fl. 1640–1663)’, in ODNB.

⁷²⁰ See also Diary, p. 314. This is probably the case of the London merchant Richard Chambers, and others, who had in 1629 led opposition to the payment of tonnage and poundage. In 1636 he had commenced an action in King's Bench against Sir Edward Bromfield who, as Mayor of London, had jailed him for his refusal to pay ship money. The judges had not permitted the issue of its legality to be raised. Nevertheless, the case seems to have continued, as Woodford's comments demonstrate. Gardiner describes the ongoing case a year later in June 1640, when Sir Robert Heath was acting for Bromfield: Jones, Bench, pp. 76–77, 88, 123; Gardiner, History, IX, p. 161; CSPD, 1640, pp. 307–309, 335.

⁷²¹ ‘The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.’ Edmund Calamy was elected to succeed John Stoughton as perpetual curate of St Mary Aldermanbury in May 1639 on the latter's death. A client of Robert Rich, Earl of Warwick, and a famous puritan divine who had left the diocese of Norwich after pressure from its Arminian bishop, Matthew Wren, Calamy was admitted to St Mary's on 26 October 1639, although it is clear that he was already preaching there on a probationary basis (see also Diary, p. 315): S. Achinstein, ‘Calamy, Edmund (1600–1666)’, in ODNB.

⁷²² Stephen Harvey.

⁷²³ Woodford gained a useful professional handbook: A Booke of Entries: Containing Perfect and Approved Presidents of Courts, Declarations, Informations, Pleints, Inditements, Barres [. . .] (London, 1614), which included a preface by Sir Edward Coke. For this he exchanged Plutarch's Parallel Lives and two other works whose identities are less clear. Possible candidates are: STC 11273, de Comines, P., An Epitome of All the Lives of the Kings of France (London, 1639)Google Scholar and STC 23525.7, N. C., The German History Continued. The seventh part [of the Swedish Intelligencer] (London, 1634) or an earlier number in this series.

⁷²⁴ Antichrist.

⁷²⁵ Calamy was preaching on a temporary basis, pending final approval by the parish: Diary, p. 313. He was formally admitted in October: Achinstein, ‘Calamy, Edmund’.

⁷²⁶ Christopher.

⁷²⁷ Richard Massingberd served as bailiff of Northampton in 1654, chamberlain from 1660 until 1661, and mayor in 1667; his brother has not been identified: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 562, 568, 553.

⁷²⁸ Christopher.

⁷²⁹ Hide is possibly Edward Hide, a rich Warwickshire attorney. John and Jerome Keyte were brothers. John was a Gray's Inn barrister, an Oxford graduate who lived in the town: Brooks, C.W., Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: the ‘lower branch’ of the legal profession in early modern England (Cambridge, 1986), p. 258CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prest, Barristers, p. 336.

⁷³⁰ On 28 October 1639 the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford, the owners of the rectory of Sir Christopher Yelverton's parish of Easton Maudit, appealed to Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry to subpoena Yelverton in Chancery for ruining the rectory: British Library, Add. MSS 14,030, fo. 181v; Bridges, History of Northamptonshire, IV, p. 17.

⁷³¹ St Mary's is the university church. It is not known who preached this latin sermon, but Oriel College owned the advowson and one Henry Eccleston (a fellow) served as vicar from some time during 1639 until 1646. I am grateful to Anna Petre of the University Archives for this reference: Richards, G.C. and Shadwell, C.L., The Provost and Fellows of Oriel College, Oxford (Oxford, 1922)Google Scholar; Tyacke, N., Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism c. 1590–1640 (Oxford, 1987), p. 33Google Scholar.

⁷³² The Bodleian Library.

⁷³³ John Ball was the minister of Whitmore in the parish of Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. He enjoyed Northamptonshire connections to John Dod and his patron, Richard Knightley of Fawsley, and was a key player in the ecclesiological debates of the 1630s. He was perhaps in Oxford to attend the University's Act: J. Sutton, ‘Ball, John (1585–1640)’, in ODNB; Webster, Godly Clergy, passim.

⁷³⁴ Ward was bailiff of the town by 1681: Longden, Visitation of Northamptonshire 1681, p. 153.

⁷³⁵ Hills had been elected churchwarden of his parish in 1635: PDR, X639–642/8, unfoliated, under Rothwell deanery. Steffe might be Richard Steph of Wollaston, who occurred at musters there from 1605 until 1612: Wake, J. (ed.), The Montagu Musters Book 1602–1623, Publications of the Northamptonshire Record Society VII (Northampton, 1935), pp. 12, 122Google Scholar.

⁷³⁶ The articles mentioned here are those of the new bishop, John Towers, and they are being circulated in advance of his primary visitation of Peterborough diocese. The justices’ petition to the bishop survives in the papers of Deputy Lieutenant Sir Rowland St John, who was probably instrumental in its composition. (Two earlier protests, originating at the assizes of 1629 and 1633 and probably drafted by St John, had complained to Lord Lieutenant William Cecil, the Earl of Exeter, of previous bishops’ taxing the parishes to provide hoods for their ministers.) The 1639 document requests the bishop to moderate some of his ‘very strict and unusual’ articles and not to ‘presse new things to be practised in the worship and service of God wch are not enjoyned by the Rubrick and Canons of the church of England’. Towers's articles were ultra-Laudian and anti-puritan. The priest was to administer the communion from within the rails of an east end railed altar only to communicants who received at the rails kneeling. Towers insisted on strict ceremonial conformity, the necessity of auricular confession, and the Church's power of absolution. However, Woodford's depiction of the protest of the justices of the peace as unanimous was disingenuous; the issue split the bench. The two justices delegated to present the grievances to Towers were Sibthorpe and Clarke: St John claimed that there were ‘arguments that were contraverted betwixt Dr Clark and Sir Miles Fleetwood concerning some of the particular Articles, wch was drawn on by Dr Clark’: BRO, St John (Bletso) MSS, DDJ 1361 (quotations), 1323, 1331; Fincham, K. and Tyacke, N., Altars Restored: the changing face of English religious worship, 1547–c. 1700 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 240–241CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 250–253; J. Fielding, ‘Towers, John (d. 1649)’, in ODNB; Fielding, ‘Peterborough’, pp. 93–134.

⁷³⁷ Towers's primary visitation at Northampton lasted for two days. The consecration ceremony had taken place at Lambeth on 13 January, when the rabidly Laudian Peter Heylin had attacked ‘popular prelates’ such as John Williams and Joseph Hall who threatened the Church by failing to exert proper control over the godly. It is not known who delivered the two Northampton sermons, which were, judging from Woodford's reaction, equally aggressive in their Laudianism: Fincham, K. and Lake, P., ‘Popularity, prelacy, and puritanism in the 1630s: Joseph Hall explains himself’, English Historical Review, 111 (1996), pp. 876n, 877Google Scholar.

⁷³⁸ The Mayor of Coventry was Thomas Forest (Diary, p. 253), the Mayor of Northampton was Richard Fowler, and the matter under discussion was probably Wheatley's charity: ibid., p. 254.

⁷³⁹ An important annual fair held on land near the west gate of the town formerly owned by St James's Abbey: Markham and Cox, Northampton, II, pp. 187–188.

⁷⁴⁰ Presumably the success enjoyed by the partnership of the Elector Palatine and Bernhard of Weimar, who crossed the Rhine at the head of an army but who died on 28 June: Gardiner, History, IX, p. 57.

⁷⁴¹ John Danby and Edward Cooper. John Bryan, esquire, was allotted John Reading's seat in the church of All Saints’ in 1637 and was made free of the borough in 1639: Vestry Minutes, p. 33; Book of Orders, p. 53.

⁷⁴² See p. 400, additional entry dated 13 August 1639.

⁷⁴³ See p. 401, additional entry dated 16 August 1639.

⁷⁴⁴ Elizabeth Harvey, the daughter of Sir Gerard Harvey of Bedfordshire, had married Cecil Bussy, the son and heir of Andrew Bussy of Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. Bussy had been buried at Harvey's parish of Cardington, Bedfordshire, in 1632. This Mrs Bussy perhaps belonged to the same family: VCH Bedfordshire, III (London, 1912), p. 237; Blaydes, F.A., The Visitations of Bedfordshire 1566, 1582, and 1634, Harleian Society Publications, XIX (1884), p. 116Google Scholar.

⁷⁴⁵ The daughters of Thomas Pentlow of Wilby and George Coles of Northampton respectively: TNA, PROB/11/263 and PROB/11/185.

⁷⁴⁶ Simon Moore was appointed to the curacy of Frankton, Warwickshire, by the Temple family, and was chaplain to John Temple of Frankton. He also occurs as the lecturer at Atherstone in 1629 and was probably still acting as such on 24 November 1639, when Woodford refers to him in connection with the town. His later career was as a Congregationalist in Worcestershire. I am grateful to Ann Hughes for this reference. See also Hughes, A., Politics, Society, and Civil War: Warwickshire, 1620–1660 (Cambridge, 1987), p. 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lichfield Record Office, B/A/4/18 and B/V/1/62.

⁷⁴⁷ Either George Eakins of Chester, who died in 1658, leaving his estate to his wife, Alice, and mentioning John and Thomas Eakins; or Thomas Eakins, described in 1631 as of Chester: TNA, PROB/11/280; HMC, Report on the Manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, III (London, 1926), p. 363Google Scholar.