Page:VCH London 1.djvu/392

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A HISTORY OF LONDON price of taking the oath of Supremacy. ^^^ He was buried three days later at midnight in St. George's churchyard, Southwark."" The new service was used in St. Paul's on and after St. Barnabas' Day (ii June 1559), when Dr. May, the new dean, took possession. ^'^ Bishop Bonner was succeeded on 23 June by Grindal, and on 26 June, White, Bishop of Winchester, was deprived and sent to the Tower."^^ In July the religious houses erected by Queen Mary, e.g. Westminster, Syon, and the Black Friars in Smithfield, were all suppressed."" Bishop Grindal found his diocese lamentably short of ' good ministers,' and endeavoured to supply the lack by employing in the ministry of the Church young men of his own way of thinking, who nevertheless, as he himself confessed, were much more fitted to be clerks or secretaries."*^ On 2 5 January 155 9—60 he admitted over sixty persons to holy orders in St. Paul's.** Later in the year the Archbishop of Canterbury told him that the admission of artificers and illiterate men to the ministry had not answered, and ordered him for the future to ordain only such as were of honest conversation and had some learning."" Subsequently (in 1559 and 1562) arrangements were made for the appointment of ' readers ' to read divine service, bury the dead, and church women ; they were forbidden to administer the sacraments.^*' On or about 24 June 1559 the queen issued letters patent for a royal visitation of the Church.^** The proceedings, so far as the diocese of London was concerned, began in the chapter-house at St. Paul's, 1 1 August."" Many of the cathedral clergy absented themselves, and of those who were present several refused to subscribe."" The visitors proceeded to sit at other churches in London, ending at St. Michael Cornhill on St. Bartholomew's Eve, when they received the inventory of the Church goods of St. Paul's."^ It is esti- mated that there were about 800 clergy in the whole diocese, of whom about 400 subscribed."'* There are in existence the signatures of over sixty parochial clergy of the City of London,"" but it must be remembered that a large number absented themselves altogether."* Only a few of the more pro- minent clergy seem to have been imprisoned in 1559—61 for opposing the settlement of religion."* On 12 August the high altar, rood, and rood-loft in St. Paul's were taken down, and the cathedral clergy were commanded by the commissioners ' to leave off the grey amices of fur and to use only a surplice in the service time.' "^ At the same time bonfires were made of roods, images, vestments, books, and ornaments taken from various parish churches."' The parish records show that during 1559 and the two following years all trace '"' Gee, op. cit. 195. Bonner is stated to have been in the Tower in June 1560 ; Zurich Letters, i, 82. If this were so, it seems possible that he may have been removed once more to the Marshalsea in 1563, when the other bishops in the Tower were released on account of the plague. "' Diet. Nat. Biog. •^' Machyn, Diary, 200. '^' Ibid. 200-1 ; Cal. Venetian S.P. 1558-80, pp. 104-5. '^ Machyn, Diary, 204 ; Wriothesley, Chron. ii, 145-6. '" 7.urich Letters, ii, no. x. '" Machyn, Diary, 224. '" Lond. Epis. Reg. Grindal, fol. 7. '«« Christie, Par. Clerks, 167 ; Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xi, App. vii, 258. "° Gee, op. cit. 94 ; Wriothesley, Chron. ii, 145. "" Machyn, Diary, 206. '" Gee, op. cit. 95. '" Machyn, Diary, 207 ; Gee, op. cit. 96. '" Gee, loc. cit. ; Birt, Eli-z.. Relig. Settlement, 174. "' Gee, op. cit. 102. '" Birt, loc. cit. '" Gee, op. cit. 146. '" Wriothesley, Chron. ii, 146. '" Machyn, Diary, 207-9 ; Wriothesley, Chron. ii, 146 ; Annals of Queen Eli%. (Camd. Soc), 28-9. See Sharpe, Lond. and the Kingdom, i, 487. 306