which were to be used on all Sundays and holidays. The prebendaries were solemnly bound by oath to make a reverence before the altar when entering or leaving the choir. The bishop did not confine his attention to the cathedral, but throughout the diocese similar customs were most rigorously enforced. In 1636 the archbishop, in his annual report on the state of the southern province, represents the diocese of Winchester as ‘all peace and order,’ so zealously had Curll worked. Events soon showed, however, that beneath this outward uniformity there was a vast amount of smouldering discontent. In July 1642 civil war broke out. Farnham Castle, which had been placed by the bishop at the king's disposal, was captured on 3 Dec.; on the 13th Winchester fell, and the cathedral was plundered. But towards the close of 1643 Winchester was once more in the hands of the royalists, and the bishop was living there in state. With him were Dr. Heylyn and Chillingworth, author of ‘The Religion of the Protestants.’ In March of the following year the city again fell into the hands of the parliamentarians, and the bishop escaped, probably to his palace at Waltham; but this also fell into the hands of his enemies after a gallant resistance (9 April). According to local tradition, the bishop escaped in a dung-cart, hidden under a layer of manure. The palace was burnt and has never been rebuilt. The bishop is next heard of at Winchester, which had once more been deserted by the parliamentary party. On 29 Sept. 1645 Cromwell appeared before the city and demanded the surrender of the castle, which was held by Lord Ogle for the king, at the same time offering a safe-conduct to the bishop if he chose to leave the city before the siege began. Curll refused the offer, and took his place with the defenders in the castle. After the bombardment had commenced, however, he repented, and sent to say that he would accept Cromwell's offer. But it was now too late, and the bishop had to take his chance with the rest. On 5 Oct. the garrison surrendered, and were allowed their liberty. The bishop was deprived not only of his episcopal income but even of his private property. He retired to his sister's house in the village of Soberton, Hampshire, and took no further part in public life. In 1647 he journeyed to London to seek advice concerning his health, and died there the same year in his seventy-third year. His body was taken back to Soberton to be buried. He left a widow and several children. There is an entry of the baptism of one of them in the parish register of Bromley in Kent (26 Dec. 1629): ‘William, son of Walter Curll, Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells.’ Edmund Curll, writing in 1712, states that the tombstone remains over the bishop's grave, but that the pieces of brass containing the inscription have been broken off and stolen by sacrilegious hands. There is still a monument there to his grandson Sir Walter Curll, on which are the arms vert, a chevron ingrailed or, with the arms of Ulster impaling or, a fess between three wolves' heads couped sable. Walker, in his ‘Sufferings of the Clergy,’ says that this prelate ‘was a man of very great charity to the poor, and expended large sums in the repairs of churches.’ He contributed largely to the building of a new chapel for his college at Cambridge; promoted the costly work of producing the Polyglot Bible; and out of his very slender means at the last helped many a starving royalist. As an author he is known only by one sermon preached by him when dean of Lichfield, before James I, and published in 1622 by special command of his majesty.
[Cassan's Lives of the Bishops of Winchester, vol. ii.; Milner's Hist. of Winchester; and a short Life of the bishop, written by Edmund Curll, 1712.]
CURRAN, JOHN PHILPOT (1750–1817), Irish judge, belonged to a family said to have originally come from Cumberland, where it bore the name of Curwen. Under the protection of the Aldworth family, on whom was bestowed the forfeited estate in county Cork of thirty-two thousand acres formerly belonging to the Irish McAuliffes, the Currans removed to the south of Ireland, and of this estate James Curran was seneschal of the manor court at Newmarket, co. Cork, about 1750. Here on 24 July 1750 John Philpot Curran was born. The father, James, was a man of some scholarship and a student of Locke, but it was from his mother, a Miss Sarah Philpot, a woman of strong character and very ready wit, that the boy inherited most of his mental characteristics. To his father he was indebted chiefly for his very ugly features. His early training, as he was the eldest of a family of five, was somewhat rough, but his wit soon attracted the attention of the Rev. Nathaniel Boyse of Newmarket, who gave him his first education. His parents at this time desired him to enter the church, and throughout her life, especially after Curran had written in 1775 a most successful assize sermon at Cork for his friend the Rev. Richard Stack, his mother could never be consoled for her son's missing the bench of bishops. From Newmarket he was sent to Mr. Cary's free school at Middleton, partly by the aid of Mr. Boyse, who gave up one of his own ecclesias-
