Mont Orgueil. After settling matters in Jersey he passed over to the diocese of Exeter, where he continued some time, and then probably proceeded to Oxford, where in 1581 he graduated B.A. from St. Edmund Hall, and proceeded M.A. from Merton College on 10 July 1584. He was also incorporated M.A. at Cambridge in 1586. Then, returning to St. Peter's, Northampton, he in the same year joined his brethren in the county in their acceptance of the Book of Discipline, although he did not actually subscribe it himself. He also took part in organising presbyteries to carry out its regulations. In 1588 he persuaded Sir Richard Knightley [q. v.] of Fawsley to give shelter to Robert Waldegrave, a printer, and to the printing press, from which John Penry [q. v.] and others issued the pamphlets of Martin Mar-Prelate (Bridges, Northamptonshire, i. 66). In 1590 the attention of government was called to the assemblies and practices of the puritans, who, in fact, were attempting to introduce the discipline and usages of the Scottish and continental presbyterian churches. Snape was summoned, together with Cartwright and other ministers, before the high commissioners. Among the articles against him was one accusing him of refusing baptism to a child because its parents had not given it a scriptural name. Other articles charged him with being a constant attendant on puritan synods, with omitting in his public ministry to read the confession, absolution, psalms, lessons, litany, and some other parts of the Book of Common Prayer, and with renouncing his calling to the ministry by bishops' ordination (Strype, Whitgift, iii. 242). When requested to take an oath ex officio to answer all interrogatories that might be put to him, he and his fellow prisoners refused on the ground that they must first see the questions. After seeing them, they still declined the oath, and were sent back to prison. Certain letters which he wrote to warn his friends were intercepted, and he appears finally to have admitted the substance of the accusations against him. After being eleven months in prison he and his fellow prisoners petitioned to be admitted to bail, but on their refusing a form of submission offered them they were refused their liberty. He appears, however, to have been liberated on bail in December 1591.
In 1595 he was again in the Channel Islands, and in 1597 he attended a synod in Guernsey. In 1603 he had left Jersey, and had taken legal proceedings against the States, who had chosen him to teach theological students in their projected college. The differences were settled by an arbitration of four persons, with the governor as umpire. The date of Snape's death is unknown.
[Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. ii. 285, 551; Baker MSS. xv. 72–6; Bancroft's Dangerous Positions, pp. 77, 79–83, 85, 89, 91, 92, 101, 113–15, 120, 139, 152; Brook's Cartwright, pp. 218, 337–85; Lansdowne MSS. vol. lxviii. art. 62; Brook's Puritans, i. 409–14; Heylyn's Ærius Redivivus, 2nd edit. pp. 236, 240, 251, 284, 304, 305, 311; Mather's Magnalia, bk. iii. p. 10; Strype's Annals, ed. 1824, iv. 101–3; Strype's Aylmer, ed. 1821, pp. 204–14; Sutcliffe's Answer to Throckmorton, ff. 45b–46b, 49 a; Waddington's Penry, pp. 241–247; Hackman's Cat. of Tanner MSS. p. 1150; Le Quesne's Const. Hist. of Jersey, pp. 157, 158; Falle's Account of Jersey, pp. 197, 476; Foster's Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714; see art. Cartwright, Thomas, the elder.]
SNATT, WILLIAM (1645–1721), nonjuring divine, born at Lewes in 1645, was the son of Edward Snatt, minister and usher of the Southover free school, Lewes. There in 1629 the elder Snatt had John Evelyn, the diarist, as a pupil. William matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford, on 14 Dec. 1660, and graduated B.A. in 1664. He was collated to the rectory of Benton, Sussex, in 1672, obtained a prebend in Chichester Cathedral in 1675, and the rectory of Cliffe St. Thomas, Sussex, in the same year. He subsequently became vicar of Seaford in 1679, and of Cuckfield and Bishopstone in 1681. A devout and consistent high churchman, he resigned all his preferments rather than take the oaths to William and Mary. He came to London, where he found friends in Hilkiah Bedford [q. v.] and Jeremy Collier, and, like other nonjurors, incurred the suspicion of ‘popery.’ This hostile feeling was confirmed in April 1696, when, in company with Collier and Cook, Snatt attended Sir William Parkyns [q. v.] and Sir John Friend [q. v.] on the scaffold. These men had been found guilty of high treason in conspiring to assassinate William III. Snatt and Collier, however, joined in pronouncing absolution, performing the ceremony with the imposition of hands. The nonjurors subsequently printed the confession of the criminals, in which the title ‘Church of England’ was appropriated to themselves. This provoked a remonstrance from the two archbishops and ten bishops, and on 7 April the grand jury of Middlesex presented Snatt, Collier, and Cook for perpetrating a great affront to the government and a scandal to the church of England. Collier absconded, and issued pamphlets in his defence; but Snatt and Cook were committed to Newgate. They were tried before the king's bench, and, though ably defended by Sir Bartholomew
