ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY queen, his famous free schools at Oakham and Uppingham.*" It seems that in earher days he had had Puritan leanings, for in 1580 he was rebuked by Lord Burghley for holding unauthorized fasts at Lincoln without licence from the bishop." A much more celebrated Puritan was his neighbour of South Luffenham, Robert Cawdray. The latter had held his benefice for sixteen years before he came into actual collision with the ecclesiastical courts for nonconformity. He had never used the surplice, never married with the ring, or baptized with the cross since his institution ; but he was called to account for all these things when in December 1586 he called the Prayer Book a ' vile book,' and cried ' Fie upon it ! ' from the pulpit. On his trial before Bishop Aylmer and the other commissioners he pleaded that he con- formed to the rubrics as much as many others whose doings were not so closely looked into, which was probably quite true ; but his aggressive and uncompromising temper made it impossible for his judges to come to any settlement with him. He was deprived in 1587, and on his persistent refusal to accept the sentence or allow his successor to take possession was finally degraded from the priesthood in May 1590. These two sentences were carried out in the face of repeated appeals and protests from Cawdray ; on the ground that the ecclesiastical law under which he was punished was anterior to the statute law to which he appealed. It was this decision that gave importance to the whole case.*^ The recusants of Rutland were few and insignificant. The only person whose name was returned to the Council by Bishop Scambler in i 577 was one John Chambers, clerk.*^ It is probable that Everard Digby, the fellow of St. John's Cambridge who was expelled in 1587, was connected with the Digbys of Stoke Dry : but he was certainly not the father of the conspirator of 1605. It is also quite improbable that his expulsion was due, as alleged by Strype, to his popish inclinations. If he dared to say in the Cambridge of 1586 that Calvinists were schismatics, and that voluntary poverty was a virtue, this was quite enough to fasten on him the accusation of popery : and if he was related to a family which was notably inclined to the Roman interest, the charge was all the more likely to gain credence. But the Mas- ter of St. John's declared that the true cause of his expulsion was his heavy indebtedness to the college steward.** No doubt there were many among the county gentry who heard mass in secret and had a good deal of sympathy with the ' old religion,' though they were not openly recusant. One Jesuit Father, Thomas Hunt, who lived a pious and uneventful life, and died from the effects of cold and exposure in one of the night searches common at this time, was a native of Lyndon, Rutland.*^ The county was in the same missionary district as Derbyshire and Leicestershire, and was probably visited by the same priests who ministered there. In 1582 active search was made, on information given by the rector of Edith Weston, for a certain Edmund Chambers, said to be harboured chiefly " Wright, Hist, of Rut. 103, 132. *' Strype, Annals, ii, 2. " For the whole story see Strype, Life of Aylmer, 84.-97, and Hist, of the Engl. Ch. (ed. Stephens), V, 281-2. " S.P. Dom. Eliz. cxviii, 29. " Strype, Annals, iii, 1 08-13. I' ^^^ httn pointed out that he held his fellowship, and therefore could not have been married in 1578, the year of the birth of Sir Everard the younger. See Diet. Nat. Biog.
- ' Foley, Hist, of the Engl. Province, ii, 294.-5.
149
