business before the four lords appointed by the King, had embezzled or stolen from the tower [of London] a charter or record belonging to the town of Wigan and brought it to the bishop (his accusers having boasted before the trial commenced that if they could not prove anything against the bishop himself they should be able to reach him through the faults of his servants). Other charges against him w^ere, that when he suspected men to come to their places simoniacally he gave them the oath against simony and so made them forswear themselves; that he made many illiterate ministers; that he bestowed rural deaneries upon lay persons; that he was a disposer of popish books; a favourer of schismatical ministers; a briber; a gamester, and one who hath sports and shews in his own house and allows dancing, masks, and disguises there, in corroboration of which they asserted that he played at cards and tables[1] in his house, especially at Christmas time; and that it was reported that on one occasion, he "the lord bishop being absent from home, there came some wives of Wigan to visit Mrs. Bridgeman, which wives made breeches of their coates, soe seeming to dance like men in a private chamber."[2] The originator of this story, as to which John Lewes was the informer, seems to have been one Edward Johnson, a gentleman-usher lately discharged from the bishop's service.[3]
The bishop conferred with his friends of the privy council touching the conduct of Sir Henry Martin and Sir Thomas Canon, which last he accused of many undue and unlawful actions done in the country before the matter came into the high commission, against the King's letter to the bishop and the laws and statutes of the realm; and it was doubtless by their advice that he presented a petition to the council table.
- ↑ Backgammon ; see note to p. 176.
- ↑ The national sentiment must have greatly changed since the plays of Shakespeare were acted at Court but a few years previously, if it was thought that the innocent gaieties of "the merry wives of Wigan" in a private apartment of the bishop's palace were likely to damage his reputation in the eyes of the King.
- ↑ Family Evidences.
