A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the chantries attached to them. Endowments for lamps and obits, offered in nearly all the churches by those who could not afford the com- plete pay of a chaplain, were swept away at the same time. Some further local details may be gathered from the scanty remains of the inventories taken, at the end of the reign of Edward VI., of the movable goods of the churches. Only fourteen lists relating to Bedford- shire are still preserved. 1 They serve to show that nearly every church was still in possession of some of the vestments, etc., allowed by the first Prayer Book of the reign. But they are so incomplete that they could not have been still in use ; if they were, the services of the church must have presented a curious appearance. Most churches still retained the two prescribed candlesticks ; some had copes, two or three had censers and pyxes for the reservation ; one had a holy water stoup of ' lattyn,' more than one a sanctus bell, another a pax, another a processional cross. Stagsden had a nearly complete set of Eucharistic vestments, but no candlesticks ; Houghton Regis was the richest in plate, having three chalices, two pyxes and a pair of censers still, although it had been lately robbed — a misfortune not peculiar to this church by any means. In the Suffragan Bishops Act of 1534* the town of Bedford was included amongst the proposed sees for suffragans ; and, in accordance with the provisions of the Act, John Hodgkins was consecrated Bishop of Bedford on 19 December 1537. 3 As however he was suffragan to the Bishop of London, he had no jurisdiction in this county, and could have no influence on its history. 4 A greater (though melancholy) interest is attached to the plan, formed a little later, of erecting a new bishopric for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire 5 out of a portion of the spoils of the religious houses ; its see was to be at Dunstable, 6 and its revenues were to be obtained from the property of the dissolved monasteries of Dunstable, Elstow and Newnham. Full details of the proposed cathe- dral establishment are still preserved 7 ; but the plan was never realized. So far as can be discovered, the county of Bedford received no com- 1 Printed in Beds N. and Q. 277-311. These entries give some examples of the way in which smaller men in those days followed the example of their betters. One good lady had helped her- self to a pair of bells which had been left in the churchyard of Sandy at the last inventory — for the payment of her husband's debts. At Meppershall the mutual accusations of present and past church- wardens leave only one thing clear — that some one had been plundering the church. Holcutt was re- duced to one broken chalice ; Husborne Crawley to one of tin. ' Documents Illustrative of English Church History, pp. 2 5 3-6. ' Rymer, Fadera, vi. (3), 12 ; Beds N. and Q. i. 40. ' The only other suffragan Bishop of Bedford was the Rev. W. Walsham How, consecrated 1879 ; he was also suffragan to the Bishop of London. « From the draft in the king's own handwriting, of which a facsimile is printed as frontispiece to Cole's King Henry VllVs Scheme of Bishopries. « In the first draft (from Cott. MS. Cleop. E iv.) ' Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire ' are bracketed opposite the three monasteries mentioned above ; but in the detailed scheme (printed in the same volume, from a MS. in the Record Office) the name of Dunstable appears. 1 Cole, King Henry Fill's Scheme of Bishopricks, pp. 60-6. The scheme for Dunstable is similar to the rest, only it does not begin with ' First a Busshope,' like some of them. It includes a dean, six prebendaries, a reader and four students in divinity, twenty scholars and a schoolmaster, six ' peticanons ' to sing in the choir, with six singing men and eight choristers, a gospeller and a ' pisteler,' besides such minor officials as two porters ■ to keep the gates and shave the company.' There were also sums of money set apart for distribution to the poor. 332
