1565.] THE EMBASSY OF DE SILVA. 259 lay interference with them was limited to remonstrance. The responsibility of punishing them was flung per- sistently on the Archbishop, who at length, after once more ineffectually imploring Cecil ' to pacify the Queen/ opened a commission at Lambeth with the Bishop of London on the 26th of March. A few hours' experience sufficed to justify the worst alarm. More than a hundred of the London clergy appeared. Sixty-one promised conformity ; a few hesitated ; thirty- seven distinctly refused and were sus- pended for three months ' from all manner of ministry.' They were the best preachers in the city ; ( they showed reasonable quietness and modesty other than was looked for/ but submit they would not. 1 As an immediate con- sequence, foreseen by every one but the Queen, the most frequented of the London churches either became the scenes of scandal and riot or were left without service. When the Archbishop sent his chaplains to officiate, the congregation forcibly expelled them. The doors of one church were locked, and six hundred citizens * who came to communion ' were left at the doors unable to find entrance ; at another, an Anglican priest, of high church tendencies, who was sent to take the place of the deposed minister, produced a wafer at the sacrament ; the parishioners, when he was reading the prayer of consecration, removed it from the table ' because it was not common bread/ At a third church the churchwardens refused to provide surplices. The Parker to Cecil, March 26 : Lansdownc MSti. 8.
