ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY ments were incomplete or out of order at Shangton and Congerstone. The parishioners of Swepstone refused to pay their tithes ; at Wymondham they played games in the cemetery with so much clamour that they disturbed divine service, and some of them had a bad habit of going out of church before the end of mattins. The fact that different churches were reported at different visitations implies that they were effective and served their purpose. A fragment of another visitation in 1544 shows that this important work was carried on steadily till the end of the reign of Henry VIII. There is little trace of the popular feeling amongst clergy and laity in Leicestershire during the period of the Supremacy Act and the dissolution of monasteries. John Beaumont, who was one of the commissioners for the survey of religious houses in the county, and who afterwards earned notoriety as Master of the Rolls, 114 was apparently always on the outlook for suspicious cases, but in this respect he had little reward for his labours. He had the satisfaction, however, of reporting early in 1534 that William Peyrson, clerk, in Kibworth Church, ' most devilishly spake these words, " If the king had died seven years agone it had been no hurt." This unloving subject was consigned to prison, and his subsequent fate is unknown ; but such speeches brought men in those days into peril of their lives. 115 The Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1534 shows very few changes in the number or value of benefices since 1291. There were still as many as ninety-four churches nearly half the archdeaconry which yielded to their incumbents a stipend of less than 10 a year. Nor did the events of the next twenty years tend to improve the value of church property. The dissolution of monasteries brought the vicars under patrons not more generous than the religious had been, and all churches alike suffered from the suppression of chantries and obits, and the confiscation of church goods in the next reign. There is a single case on record of the execution of a heretic under Bishop Longlands : Lawrence Dawson, a serving-man, was burned 2 1 November, 1536. So far as can be ascertained Longlands only took extreme measures with those who were proved to have relapsed after abjuration. 116 At the suppression of chantries in i 547, twelve parish churches lost an assistant priest, and four parochial chapels were altogether abandoned. The chantry of Castle Donington was specially noticed as a useful one, being intended to support a grammar school, and having a schoolhouse built for the purpose. The colleges of St. Mary of the Castle, of Newark, and of Noseley, were all reported as useful, and the last as very well served. 117 Of these only Newark survived not as a college, but merely as a hospital. Wigston's Hospital also was allowed to stand. In the troubles which arose in connexion with the new service book of 1549, Leicestershire was reported to be quiet and peaceable, thanks to the efforts of the marquis of Dorset. 118 The influence of the Grey family, so far as it went, would doubtless be in favour of the new doctrines, and Aylmer (afterwards bishop of London), while tutor to the children of the marquis at U4 Strype, Eccl. Mem. ii. m i. and P. Hen. PHI, xiii (i), 74. 116 Line. Epis. Reg. Memo. Longlands, 201. Dawson had abjured under Bishop Smith. I17 P.R.O. Chant. Cert. 31, 32. 118 Cal. S.P. Dam. 1547-80, p. 21. i 3 6 9 47
