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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2020
It is well known that many of the English clergy took advantage of the statutory authorization of clerical marriage under Edward VI, but then suffered deprivation when that authorization was rescinded in Mary's reign. Less familiar are the proceedings that enabled incumbents who had lost their livings as a penalty for marriage to recover them after Elizabeth I's accession. This article focuses on a neglected source, an act book kept during the royal visitation of the eastern dioceses (London, Norwich and Ely) in 1559. It seems likely that this document records a large majority of the suits undertaken by deprived married clergy for the recovery of their livings in those dioceses. Most claimants were successful, but some suits failed, for a variety of reasons. Other sources, and the work of previous scholars in the field, shed some light on the recovery of their livings by men who do not appear in the act book. Probably rather more than a quarter of the men deprived for marriage under Mary in these dioceses recovered their livings in or after 1559. Many others had died or for various reasons did not seek restoration to the benefices of which they had been deprived.
I should like to thank Felicity Heal, Peter Marshall and the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
1 The most recent study is Parish, Helen L., Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy and Practice (Aldershot, 2000)Google Scholar.
2 Grieve, Hilda E. P., ‘The Deprived Married Clergy in Essex, 1553–1561’, TRHS 4th series 22 (1940), 141–69Google Scholar; Baskerville, Geoffrey, ‘Married Clergy and Pensioned Religious in Norwich Diocese, 1555’, EHR 48 (1933), 43–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; E. L. C. Mullins, ‘The Effects of the Marian and Elizabethan Religious Settlements upon the Clergy of London, 1553–1564’ (MA thesis, London University, 1948), 122.
3 Gee, Henry, The Elizabethan Clergy and the Settlement of Religion 1558–1564 (Oxford, 1898), viii, 251Google Scholar.
4 Birt, Henry N., The Elizabethan Settlement of Religion: A Study of Contemporary Documents (London, 1907), 197Google Scholar.
5 For an extensive list of references, see Peter Marshall and John Morgan, ‘Clerical Conformity and the Elizabethan Settlement revisited’, HistJ 59 (2016), 1–22, at 2 nn. 5–8. The works there cited include G. R. Elton, England under the Tudors, 3rd edn (London, 1991), 276 (‘240–300 beneficed clergy … in the years 1560–6’); Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford, 1993), 244 (‘probably about 300 lost their benefices in the first two years of the reign’); Felicity Heal, Reformation in Britain and Ireland, OHCC (Oxford, 2003), 211 (‘after 1559 … all but between 200 and 400 of the beneficed men remained in place’).
6 Marshall and Morgan, ‘Clerical Conformity’, 10.
7 Only the letters patent for the northern province survive. The instructions in all six commissions were almost certainly identical. The universities and Eton College were visited separately. See Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 89–93, 130–6; Bayne, C. G., ‘The Visitation of the Province of Canterbury, 1559’, EHR 28 (1913), 636–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 645–6.
8 Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 94–5; R. Houlbrooke, ‘Horne, Robert (1513x15–1579)’, ODNB, 3 January 2008, online at: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13792>, accessed 3 August 2019; Joseph Foster, ed., Alumni Oxonienses 1500–1714, 4 vols (Oxford, 1891–2), 2: 780. Huyck had graduated DCL at Oxford in 1554, and had probably not been a Genevan exile: pace Patrick Collinson, Archbishop Grindal 1519–1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church (London, 1979), 101.
9 Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 95–7; Kew, TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 1r, 61r–v, 121r, 160r, 163r (isolated act of 19 January 1559/60).
10 The Royal Visitation of 1559: Act Book for the Northern Province, ed. C. J. Kitching, SS 187 (Durham, 1975).
11 ‘Causis Beneficialibus siue Restitucionis beneficiorum ecclesiasticorum &c inter partes inferius descriptas’.
12 For an exceptional listing of unbeneficed men, see Baskerville, ‘Married Clergy’, 44, 53, 57, 60–2, 64.
13 For example, TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 51v, 53v, 55r, 76v, 83r, 96r, 107r, 112v.
14 Strype, John, Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion … in the Church of England during Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign, 4 vols (Oxford, 1824), 1/1: 248–55Google Scholar; Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 143.
15 London, LPL, clerical subscriptions in CM XIII/2/57, 58.
16 Mullins acknowledged the volume's discovery at Somerset House by Dr L. Hotson of Arlington, USA: ‘Effects’, 172–3.
17 But see the brief references in Heal, Felicity, ‘The Parish Clergy and the Reformation in the Diocese of Ely’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 66 (1976), 141–64Google Scholar, at 157; Parish, Clerical Marriage, 227.
18 The act book used by Mullins, frayed and damp stained in some places, consisted of five unequal gatherings of unnumbered paper sheets, and fourteen loose ones. The folios have been numbered, although fols 77–92 are out of chronological sequence: see Mullins, ‘Effects’, 172; and the heading on fol. 93r: ‘Liber actorum iudicialium in negotio restitucionum Clericorum ob matrimonii causam depriuatorum’.
19 Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 137–42. The visitors of the northern province referred two cases to the London commissioners: Royal Visitation of 1559, ed. Kitching, 50, 55. I have found no such referrals in TNA, PROB 34/1.
20 Gee, Elizabethan Clergy, 92.
21 Ibid. 149.
22 Gerald Bray, ed., Documents of the English Reformation (Cambridge, 1994), 342.
23 Grieve, ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 161–2.
24 Bray, ed., Documents, 315–16, 342.
25 Royal Visitation of 1559, ed. Kitching, 41–56; TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 2v, 10v, 74r–v, 110v (prebends of St Paul's, Norwich and Ely), 27r, 45v (canonries of St Paul's), 25r (deanery of Norwich), 23r (archdeaconry of Ely). The two canonries are described as prebends in the act book, but neither the claimants nor the ‘usurpers’ appear in the lists of Marian and Elizabethan prebendaries in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 122, 6–8, 12–13, 17. John Leeke, who claimed the ‘fifth prebend’, appears as a ‘pettycannon in Poules churche’: ibid. 46.
26 For restorations to places in the fraternity within the hospital of St Katharine's by the Tower, not counted as benefices here, see TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 51r, 53v.
27 For example, Ibid., fols 16v, 55v, 63r.
28 Ibid., fol. 71r; cf. Bayne, ‘Visitation’, 671–2 (judgment of the south-western commissioners in a case concerning the benefice of Burscot).
29 Some undertook more than one suit.
30 TNA, PROB 34/1, fol. 62r; Corpus Christi College, MS 122, 38. However, Hilda Grieve could find no record of any such institution: ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 166.
31 Cf. Royal Visitation of 1559, ed. Kitching, 42, 43, 45, for defendants’ belief that claimants had been justly or lawfully deprived.
32 TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 12v, 35r.
33 Ibid., fols 48r–v, 91v; cf. P. Arblaster, ‘Darbyshire, Thomas (1518–1604)’, ODNB, 23 September 2004, online at: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-7142>, accessed 14 May 2019.
34 TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 44r, 78r.
35 Ibid., fols 94v, 95r; Corpus Christi College, MS 97, fol. 207r.
36 TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 111v, 143r; Corpus Christi College, MS 580B, fol. 16r.
37 TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 105r, 132v; Corpus Christi College, MS 97, fol. 235r; A. Hope, ‘Latymer [Latimer], William (1498/9–1583), dean of Peterborough and biographer of Anne Boleyn’, ODNB, 3 January 2008, online at: <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-47142>, accessed 3 August 2019. Besides Witnesham, he had had Speldhurst, Kent (1538–53) and St Mary Abchurch, London (1553–4). Grieve, ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 146–7, mentions precautionary resignations by married clergy. Latymer is nevertheless listed in the Norwich ‘Deprivation Book’: Baskerville, ‘Married Clergy’, 58.
38 TNA, PROB 34/1, fol. 56r.
39 Grieve, ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 156; TNA, PROB 34/1, fol. 66r.
40 Williams, J. F., ‘The Married Clergy of the Marian Period’, Norfolk Archaeology 32 (1959), 85–95Google Scholar, at 86, 90–2, 94; cf. Parish, Clerical Marriage, 205, 212, 214–15, 222.
41 TNA, PROB 34/1, fol. 71r; Grieve, ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 151, where the incumbent (vicar) appears as ‘John Sherman’. For the will of John Hunt alias Sherman of Herringfleet (Suffolk), clerk, proved in 1572, see Norwich, Norfolk RO, Norwich Consistory Court will register Brygge, fol. 463.
42 Mullins, ‘Effects’, 177–8, 199–200; Grieve, ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 141–69.
43 Baskerville, ‘Married Clergy’, 43–64.
44 Clergy of the Church of England Database (CCEd), 28 March 2017, online at: <http://theclergydatabase.org.uk/>, last accessed 21 August 2018.
45 C. W. Field, The Province of Canterbury and the Elizabethan Settlement of Religion (n.pl., 1973). I owe my introduction to Field's work to Marshall and Morgan, ‘Clerical Conformity’, 9. I am grateful to Peter Marshall for sending me a draft of this article in advance of publication.
46 See, for example, the suit between George Smyth and Robert Ashton for Coveney (Cambridgeshire): TNA, PROB 34/1, fol. 114r. Field, Province of Canterbury, 96, assumed that Richard Moke was the ejected ‘usurper’. Another caveat concerning Field's conclusions is that ‘ejection’ seems too strong a term to use in some cases of willing resignation.
47 These returns are in Corpus Christi College, MSS 97, 122, 580 A–C. They are being prepared for publication under the direction of Helen Parish of the University of Reading.
48 Mullins, ‘Effects’, 177–8, 199, 426 (William Tolwyn of St Antholin's, for whom see TNA, PROB 34/1, fol. 149v).
49 Grieve, ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 143, 148, 150–1, 153, 156, 160–1, 163–5, 166–7. These men recovered twenty-seven livings between them.
50 James Bilney (Chigwell), Edmund Beane (Stanway), William Smyth (Wanstead) and Christopher Eton (Wickford): TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 35r, 41r, 68r, 144v.
51 John Thomas (Prittlewell) and Roger Cotton (Wakering Magna): Field, Province of Canterbury, 197, 199; confirmed by Richard Newcourt, Repertorium ecclesiasticum parochiale Londinense: An Ecclesiastical Parochial History of the Diocese of London, 2 vols (London, 1708–10), 2: 474, 574.
52 Baskerville, ‘Married Clergy’. The list of beneficed clergy contains 243 entries. Six pluralists appear twice in the ‘Deprivation Book’, and one man was twice recorded at the same benefice under different archdeaconries. For Baskerville's additions, see ibid. 45 (nn. 1, 3), 47.
53 John Bemonde, who recovered Oxwick (Norfolk) only after the death of his ‘supplanter’ in 1563, has not been included: ibid. 51.
54 Including John Hede of Houghton (Norfolk). Baskerville notes that he ‘Resigned 1559’; should this have read ‘Restored’? See ibid. 55.
55 This was Jeffrey Emerson, the married incumbent of Haddiscoe (Norfolk): Francis Blomefield and Charles Parkin, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk, 11 vols (London, 1805–10), 8: 16; Corpus Christi College, MS 97, fol. 226r.
56 Field nonetheless assumed that Richard Russell, instituted to Litcham (Norfolk) in 1554, had been ejected: Province of Canterbury, 215.
57 Baskerville, ‘Married Clergy’, 46, n. 7; TNA, PROB 34/1, fol. 94r; Norfolk RO, DN/REG 12, book 18, fols 219v, 221v; DN/REG 13, book 19, fols 50v, 53v, 61r.
58 Heal, ‘Parish Clergy’, 154.
59 The benefices concerned were a prebend and nine parochial livings: see n. 62 below.
60 Robert Best (St Martin in the Fields) and Thomas Banester (Broxbourne, Hertfordshire): Newcourt, Repertorium, 1: 692; Field, Province of Canterbury, 192.
61 TNA, PROB 34/1, fol. 95v; Corpus Christi College, MS 97, fols 202r, 204r.
62 TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 63r, 64v; Corpus Christi College, MS 97, fol. 248r.
63 Grieve, ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 167–8.
64 Marshall and Morgan, ‘Clerical Conformity’, 10 (incumbents identified as clear conformists by Field already subtracted); Field, Province of Canterbury, 191–200; Grieve, ‘Deprived Married Clergy’, 148, 156, 165–6, 168. Although Field distinguished in individual parish entries between the ‘deprived’ and the ‘ejected’, he did not do so in the summary lists of deprived incumbents at the end of each diocesan section.
65 Correctly identified: Caldecote, Gamlingay, Little Eversden; no evidence of Elizabethan ejection: Boxworth, Swaffham Prior (where Field confused two separate benefices), Westley Waterless; incorrect identification of the ‘ejected’ incumbent: Bottisham, Coveney, Hardwick, Linton. He did not find evidence of the restoration by the visitors of the incumbents of Dullingham and Over. The succession at Cherry Hinton probably indicates Marian deprivation and Elizabethan restoration there too. See Field, Province of Canterbury, 96–9; TNA, PROB 34/1, fols 112r, 114r–v, 115r–v, 116r, 149v; CCEd, Ely diocese, location IDs 861, 888, 962, 1002–3, 1015.
66 Of those ejected by the visitors and listed by Field in Province of Canterbury, 220–1, John Cotton (Richard in Field), Robert Dixon, Hugh Evans, Richard Gatefould (‘Patefield’ in Field), Robert Pierson, John Simpson, Henry Symonds, John Toller, Robert Walton or Waltham, Anthony Wilkinson and Edward Williamson all appear in Corpus Christi College, MS 97, fols 199r, 204r, 205r, 208r, 211r, 230r, 234r, 236r, 248r. Field noted, however, that an Anthony Wilkinson had fled overseas by 1577.
67 Marshall and Morgan, ‘Clerical Conformity’, 10.