ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY conformed sufficiently to avoid ejection were only allowed to keep one benefice ; so the archdeacon of Bedford, John Hacket, 1 remained rector of Cheame in Surrey until the Restoration ; losing St. Andrew's, Holborn, which he had held with his archdeaconry before. The other was the attempt they made to increase the revenues of some of the poorer livings out of others which were better endowed. Thus the vicarage of Leigh- ton Buzzard 2 was increased by £55 from the funds of the impropriated rectory, which had belonged to Sir Thomas Leigh, whose estates were now confiscated by Parliament. From the same source the chapelries of Stanbridge, Billington, Eggington, and Heath and Reach 3 were freshly endowed, as well as the vicarages of Biddenham and Houghton Regis. 4 The stipends of the ministers of Southill, Cople, Goldington, Dunton, Biggleswade, Potton, Sundon and Flitton-cum-Silsoe 5 were in- creased at the same time ; the last four from the rectorial tithes of Luton. But nowhere are there signs of any fresh energy of devotion, any new outburst of spiritual life within the established church, to justify the great changes that had taken place. The most severe criti- cism of the Church of the Commonwealth is found indeed in the lives of men like Bunyan and George Fox. Bunyan was never persecuted by the Presbyterians ; once indeed he speaks of hearing a sermon in his parish church that helped him ; but it remains a fact that at the time when he was first trying to lead a better life and was a regular church- goer, and again afterwards in his deeper need, when the agony of spirit- ual conflict for two long years had well-nigh driven him to madness, no hand was ever held out from his own church to help him. He had to turn aside to an obscure sect to find what he wanted — the assurance of pardon, the promise of a new life, and a work to do for God. So also George Fox in his Journal describes the ' steeple houses ' and the ' hire- ling priests' of 1655 ° as a hindrance to the working of the ' free spirit' quite as great as the Church of the Restoration proved to be in later days. It appears to have been under the Commonwealth in 1655 that John Crook of Luton lost his magistracy because of his connection 7 with the Quakers ; while other persecutions of that sect are alleged to have taken place in this county. They nevertheless increased rapidly ; Fox speaks of 'many hundreds ' of them in his account of his third visit to Bedfordshire in 165 5." There are only a few records of any active discontent in Bedford- shire at the sequestrations and the abolition of the liturgy. Five ' of 1 Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 44.
- S. P. Dom., Interregnum, F 2, f. 223, 10 May 1644.
3 Ibid. F I ; Stanbridge in July 1646, Billington in March, Eggington in June, Heath and Reach in August. The existence of the chapel in Stanbridge in the fourteenth century has been already noticed ; the other three chapels appear here for the first time.
- Ibid. F 2, f. 520 ; F I, f. 337.
B Ibid. F 2, f. 655 ; F 1, ff. 247, 338, 142, 143, 144, 147. 8 Fox, Journal (ed. 1694-8), i. 149. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. i. 170. 8 The incumbents of Cockayne Hatley, Tempsford, Marston, Potton and St. Cuthbert's, Bedford (Add. MSS. 15670, 15671 ; from 1645-7 ; and Hist. MSS. Com. iv. 100 ; 1643). 341
