A HISTORY OF LONDON many of them would conform later. He reported that ' they showed reason- able quietness and modesty, otherwise than I looked for.' '^ Great disorder ensued in the London churches in consequence of these proceedings. ' In some places the ministers themselves did service in their gowns or cloaks with turning collars and hats as they were wont to do, and preached stoutly against the order taken by the queen and Council, and the bishops for consenting thereunto.' '^ The vicar of St. Giles without Cripplegate refused to admit into the church six clerks who came to a funeral attired in surplices, and at St. Mary Magdalen Milk Street, when the minister appointed by the bishop to celebrate the Holy Communion on Palm Sunday came down in his surplice into ' the mean space ' to read the Epistle and Gospel, one of the parishioners directed his servant to remove the Communion cups and the bread from the holy table, so that the service could not take place." Similar scenes occurred in other London churches on Palm Sunday, Easter Day, and the following Sundays and holy days, some ministers utterly disregarding the order, whilst those who obeyed it were with difficulty saved from personal violence. Indeed they were not always rescued ; the preacher in St. Margaret Pattens on Whitsun Monday being stoned, dragged from the pulpit, and scratched in the face by ' certain wives ' in the congregation.^" Pamphlets for and against the order appeared,^^ and the whole Church was in a ferment." After much quarrelsome discussion the controversy cooled down a little, but broke out again in the winter of 1567—8." In June 1568 Bishop Grindal wrote to BuUinger that some London citizens of the lowest order, together with four or five ministers remarkable neither for judgement nor learning, had openly separated from the Church, and held meetings, at which the sacraments were administered, in houses, fields, and sometimes even in ships. They numbered about 200, of whom the greater part were women ; and the Privy Council had recently imprisoned their leaders, thinking this the best way to crush the movement. '^ From the tone of his letter it seems probable that Grindal did not in the least realize the significance of his news, nor perceive that the whole importance of what is now known as ' the Surplice Controversy ' lay m the fact that from it dated the first formal separation of a number of English Churchmen from the main body.^" In June 1567 seven Londoners were brought before the bishop and the lord mayor to answer for having held meetings for worship in private houses.^^ They urged in excuse that their preachers havmg been displaced for refusing to wear the surplice, &c., they ' could hear none of them in any church by the space of seven or eight weeks ' ; and that they would as soon go to mass as to their parish churches, " B.M. Lansd. MS. 9, fol. 153. Those ministers who were deprived were released from payment of first-fruits ; S.P. Dom. Eliz. xli, 66 " Stow, Mem. 135. " Ibid. " Ibid. 138, 139 ; S.P. Dom Eliz xl, I. >« Stow, Mem. 139. " Zurich Letters, , passim. " Ibid, i, no. Ixxxii. Various London ministers were from time to time warned to wear the surplice, and it appears that as late as 1581 complete conformity in this respect had not been obtained ; Churchwardens' Accts. St. Alphage London Wall, 1573-4 ; St. Martin Orgar, 1574, 1581 ; Strype, Aylmer, cap. v ; see also Visitation Articles of Archd of London, 1584, B.M. Pressmarit, 5155, c, i. " Zurich Letters, i, no. Ixxxii.
- • See Neal, Puritans, i, i8i. Bishop Sandys also at one time thought lightly of the importance of the
rise of Puritanism ; see Zurich Letters, i, no cxxiv. " GrindaFs Rem. (Parker Soc), 199 ; an ex parte statement reprinted from ji Part of a ^<gjV/^r, published about 1593 and suppressed. 310
