THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION AT CANTERBURY:
1572-1603
By PETER CLA:rur
IT is now over sixty years since Dr. R. G. Usher published his magisterial
account of The Rise and Fall of High Commission. In that time little
new evidence has come to light to revise or amplify his picture of the
principal commission, that for the Southern Province, at Lambeth.1_
By contrast, historians have discovered rather more data on those
High Commissions outside London, which Usher had been able to
survey only cursorily in his book-mainly using the records of the
commission for Durham diocese. Thus F. D. Price has written lengthy
accounts of the mid-Elizabethan commission for the dioceses of Bristol
and Gloucester-in theory anyway dependent on the Lambeth court;
while P. Tyler has examined the workings of the major commission for
the Northern Province, which sat at York.2
The present paper is primarily concerned with the register or
court book of the ecclesia.stical commission for Canterbury diocese,
which was found among the probate papers deposited at the Kent
Archives Office, Maidstone. The volume is about two hundred pages
long, lacks a cover and has a number of folios missing at the back. It
was discovered in two sections with the acts of the Canterbury court
in the first part (pp. 12-133), and the examinations of witnesses in the
second (pp. 143-202). The overall period covered by the register is
1584-1603. Unfortunately, there is a long gap in the entries between
December 1596 and October 1601, though it is almost certain that the
court continued to function during that period. At the front of the
register are copies of letters to the Canterbury court from the High
1 The Rise amd Fall of High Oommias(on was first published in 1913 at Oxford.
Ueher's text was reprinted in 1968 with a new introduction by P. Tyler; this is the
edition used here and oited as Usher-';['yler, Oomm'UIQion.
1 The Durham records were published as early as 1858: W. H. D. Longstaffe,
(ed.), The Act8 of the High Oommisaion within the, Diocese of Durham, Surtees
Soo., xxxiv (1858), F. D. Price: 'The Commission for Ecclesiastical Causes for the
Dioceses of Bristol and Gloucester, 1674', Trans. Bristol and Glouc. Arch. Soc.,
lix (1937), 61-184 (oited hereafter as Price, Oommia8ion); and The Commission for
.1!Jccleeiaatical Oausee within the Diooeee8 of Bristol and Gloucester, 1514, Bristol and
Glouc. Arch. Soo., Record Section, x (1972); P. Tyler, 'The Significance of the
cclesiastioal Commission at York', Northern, Hiatory, ii (1967), 27-44; see also
Usher-Tyler, Oommisaion, vi et seq. Dr. W. Sheila is a.t present editing the York
act books.
183
PETER CLARK
Commission at Lambeth, among them orders to search out the authors
of the scurrilous Marprelate tracts in 1589.3
As Tyler has shown, the Elizabethan government's use of joint
commissions of laymen and clergy to investigate and try ecclesiastical
offences had a long pedigree, which can be traced as far back as 1388
,vhen Richard II appointed a commission to prosecute Lollard heretics.
So far as Kent wa-s concerned, however, the real forerunners of the
Elizabethan commission at Canterbury were Mary's commissions to
hunt out Protestant unorthodoxy in the 1550s. In April 1556. for
instance, she appointed Henry, Lord Abergavenny, George, Lord
Cobham, and Sir Thomas Cheyney, along with the Suffragan Bishop of
Dover, the Archdeacon of Canterbury, the Commissary for Canterbury,
two more clergy and ten more laity ( almost all with known Catholic
sympathies), to enquire into heresies, seditious books and the like in
Canterbury diocese. The commissioners were empowered to imprison
and fine, with the estreats being certified into Chancery. Our evidence
would suggest that these commissioners were the principal Marian
agents of the restored Catholic order in its struggle to eradicate that
virulent Protestant infection which had gained such a grip on the county
since the Reformation. 4
During the early years of Elizabeth's reign we hear nothing of a new
diocesan commission on the Marian model. The main engines of evangelical
conversion after 1558 were the itinerant royal visitors, led in
Kent by Thomas Becon, the canon of Christchurch, and the ordinary
ecclesiastical courts-archdeaconry and consistory-which survived
from the Medieval Church. It is possible that the Marian heresy commissions
had left such an unpleasant imprint on Protestant minds that
local opinion opposed the appointment of a further Canterbury
commission. It is also possible that Elizabeth's first Archbishop of
Canterbury, Mathew Parker (1559-1575), believed that the ordinary
Church courts-now refurbished under Protestant officials-were
strong and effective enough to cope with the general run of religious
nonconformity, while Kent was near enough to the capital for serious
offenders to be tried by the Lambeth High Commission. Whatever the
reason for the absence of a diocesan commission in early Elizabethan
Kent, there was growing pressure from the late 1560s for Canterbury
to follow other dioceses and have its own set of commissioners. By
1570 the ordinary Church courts were undoubtedly ma.Icing heavy
weather of the restoration of Church order and discipline-so sorely
tested by the religious turmoil of the late 1540s and 1550s. At the ea.me
3 Kont Arohivo.s Office (boroaftor oit.ed as KAO), PRO 44/3. '.J:'ho lottora from
Lo.mbot;h aro on pp, 5-7.
'Usher-Tylor, Oommisoion, xii et 8C(l,,' Oalenda,r of Patent .Roll8, lli51S-67,
24-25; for tho work of tho Marian commission see British Musoum (heroa.ftor oitod
as BM), Harloian MB, 421, fol, 94 et 81l(l,
184
THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION AT CANTERBURY: 1572-1603
time, the rump of committed Catholics in the county, particularly
gentry, obstinately refused to exchange their old conservatism for the
new apparel of Protestant orthodoxy. The latter was especially worrying
both for the Crown and for the county's more radical gentry who
were concerned by the Papal excommunication of the Queen (in 1570)
and the danger of a Catholic coup aimed at putting Mary, Queen of
Scots, on the throne instead. Kent's strategic position near London and
its vulnerability to foreign invasion clearly put it in the Catholic firing.
line, even without the complicity of its leading nobleman, William, Lord
Cobham, in the Duke of Norfolk's abortive plot against the Queen in
1569-70.6
It was hardly surprising then that 1572 saw the creation of an
ecclesiastical commission at Canterbury. The commission was authorized
as part of a general commission for the southern dioceses enrolled on
the patent rolls in June. According to this, Richard Rogers, the former
Marian exile and Bishop of Dover, Thomas Wotton and Edward Isaac
(two leading lay Protestants), the common lawyers Nicholas Barham,
John Boys and Robert Alcock (another radical), and the Archbishop's
Commissary, Thomas Lawse, were all empowered to hear cases in
Canterbury diocese. However, as early as January 1572, there is
evidence that the 'Queen's Majesty's Commissioners in Causes Ecclesiastical
within the county of Kent' were already meeting at Canterbury
and considering charges of sexual assault, adultery and absence from
church. 6 During its first year or so of existence the commission appears
to have worked on a rather ad hoe basis-thus the court 'acta' were
mixed promiscuously with the proceedings of the ordinary Church
courts. But it did not take long for it to establish its own formal
organization. Within a few years we find it writing authoritatively to
the town corporation at Fordwich ordering the abolition of the 'old
custom or fond order continued or maintained under colour of boys'
pastime termed by the names of hoodboys' pastime' (presumably a
reference to the traditional hooden horse); by this custom boys and
servants go into orchards and woods twice a year and 'beat the trees
and sing vain songs or otherwise, believing thereby that those trees the
year following will or shall yield the more plenty of fruit.' The commission
directed that offenders should be punished with imprisonment or a
fine. With its contingent of radical gentry and Puritan clergy the court
was clearly ta.king a leading part in the propagation of that strict ethical
6 For detailed evidence for my general comments on religious developments in
Elfa0,bethan Kent, see P. Clark, The Rise of a Provincial Community: Religion,
Politica and Society in Kent 1600-1640 (fol'thooming); H. Gee, The Elizabethan
Oleroy and the Settlement of Reliown 1568-1564, 1898, 100-1, 273; Hist. Manuscripts
Oomm., Salisbury MSS., i, 542-3.
• Oalendar of Patent Rolls, 1569-72, 440-42; Canterbury Cathedral Library
(hereafter cited as COL), X.8.9, fol. 98 et seq.; for Rogers see DNB, Rogers,
Richard.
185.
PETER CLARK
discipline which was to become one of the pillars of :qi.oderate county
Puritanism. 7
In 1579, the Privy Council in London ordered the Canterbury
commission to investigate allegations against William Darrell, one of
the canons of Canterbury cathedral and an elderly conformist Catholic.
The next year the government-ever more frightened at the Catholic
threat-ordered the local court to take general action against the
Kentish papists. One victim was Sir Alexander Culpeper, ofBedgebury,
who recorded how he was summoned to Canterbury by the 'High
Commissioners of Kent' and was forced to give surety of £1,000 for his
future good behaviour. Subsequently, the commissioners committed
Culpeper to prison at Canterbury from which he was only released on
appeal to the Privy Council. A short time later the commission was
again busy proceeding against two 'disordered persons' from Rye.8
By the early 1580a the commission was obviously hard at work,
already operating on the procedural lines of the late Elizabethan court.
Unfortunately, we know rather less about its active membership.
Though it seems probable that a new, specifically diocesan patent was
issued sometime in the late 1570s, we have relatively few references to
the work of individual commissioners like Rogers or Nicholas St. Leger.
The best evidence we have concerning the effective personnel of the
Canterbury court, before the start of the court register in 1584, stems
from a dispute within the commission itself in July 1583. Apparently,
Dr. Stephen Lakes, the judge of the archdeaconry court, had been
accused of malpractice by some villagers from the Puritan parish of
Egerton, on the edge of the Weald. One group of commissionersBishop
Rogers, Thomas Wotton and Nicholas St. Leger-decided to
go to Egerton to hear evidence. But this provoked a sharp protest by a
second set of members including Sir Roger Manwood, the Chief Baron
of the Exchequer, Thomas Godwin, the Dean of Canterbury (since
1567), and John Boys. Manwood demanded that the proceedings should
take place before them all at Canterbury and accused his fellow commissioners
of bias against Lakes.9
Unfortunately, we do not know the outcome of this wrangle. But
the dispute does shed considerable light on the workings of the Canterbury
court at this time. Not only was there a sizeable attendance of lay
members, but there was clearly a serious religious split within the
commiaaion between conservatives and radicals. Looking at the radicals
first we need only note that, like Rogers, both Wotton and St, Leger
were committed Puritans: Wotton was a friend of Cartwright; while
7 C
C
L, Fordwioh Corporation, U4/20, fol. 158.
8 Acts of the Priey Oouncil: 1578-80, 315; 1580-81, 59; Bodleion Library,
Tann.er MS. 118, fol. 128v-129; Hist. Manuscripts Oomm,, 13th Report App. IV,
83. . ;
• G. Eland, (od,), Thomas Wotton'" Letter Boole, 1960, 51-52.
186
THE ECCLESIASTICAL CO::MMISSlON AT CANTERBURY: 1672-1603
St. Leger had attacked Mary Stuart in Parliament in 1572 and was
the patron of that leading radical preacher Josias Nicholls of Eastwell.10
On the other side, Dean Godwin had been a. supporter of Archbishop
Parker's views on Church government and was to prove a fairly rightwing
Bishop of Bath and Wells after his appointment there in 1584;
Manwood, though once known for his Puritan sympathies, was from
the 1580s increasingly hostile to the godly cause (subsequently one
irate Puritan declared that 'Christ had but six enemies' of which
Manwood ·was the first); and Boys was to serve as Archbishop
Whitgift's right-hand man in the defence of Church property in
the 1590s. To a considerable extent, the split within the Canterbury
commission exemplified the growing division in the general ranks of
the old Protestant movement.u
1583 was, in fact, a major turning point for the Canterbury commission.
The same month that saw the clash between its radica,1 and
conservative members also witnessed the death of Archbishop Grindal
and the end of that extended period of religious laissez-faire in the Kentish
Church which had followed Grindal's suspension in 1577. His
successor, John Whitgift, at once set out to halt the tide of Puritan
progress. In January 1584, the Archbishop called on the Kentish
ministers (like those in other counties) to subscribe to a new series of
conservative articles of religion. When a sizeable group of Kentish
ministers were suspended for refusing to obey, a posse of county
landowners rode up to Lambeth to confront the Archbishop: among
their leaders were the Canterbury commissioners Thomas Wotton and
Nicholas St. Leger. The meeting ended with Whitgift 9,0cusing some of
his critics of anabaptism and Wotton denouncing the Archbishop as
an enemy of Kent.12
By the time our register for the Canterbury commission begins in
the autumn of 1584 radical gentry like Wotton and St. Leger had
disappeared from its meetings for good. Whether they withdrew in
chagrin after the Lambeth confrontation or were driven off by Whitgift
is unclear, though the latter seems more likely. It is possible there was
a. new commission for Can.terbury diocese reducing the lay membership
as well as consolidating the court organization (hence perhaps the extant
register). Such developments (if they did occur) must have appeared
extremely ominous to the county's many moderate Puritans. Given the
generally conservative accent of Whitgift's policies, the changing format
101• • 40; J.E. Neale, Elizabeth I arulHer Parliaments 1659-1581, 1963, 277;
BM, .Addit. MS. 6090, fol. 160.
11 DNB, Godwin, Thomas; KAO, .PRC 39/16, fol. 3-v; J. E. Neale,
Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments 1584-1601, 1957, 416; BM, .Addit. MS. 19, 398,
fol, 94-96.
11 P. Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 1967, 262 et seq.; Dl',
Williama' Library, London, Morrfoe MS, L(v), 8-11.
187
PETER CLARK
of the Canterbury commission clearly suggested that it was being transformed
into an instrument of orthodox reaction. How far, in fact, were
these fears justified? The remainder of this paper will be concerned with
trying to ans,ver this question, using the court register 1584-1603
examine both the organization and operation of the late Elizabethan
commission.is
Looking at attendance figures first, these certainly confirm that the
late Elizabethan court was dominated by ecclesiastical personnel.
Only two lay members were active in this period-the common lawyers
Roger Manwood and John Boys-and they attended no more than
twelve of the sixty recorded sessions between 1584 and 1603. By
comparison the most active clerical member, Bishop Rogers (after
1584 also Dean of Canterbury), appeared on forty-seven occasions and
was probably the usual chairman. Rogers was followed by William
Redman, the Archdeacon of Canterbury and a, former client of Archbishop
Grindal, and Dr. Thomas Lawse, the long-service Commissary
for Canterbury diocese; both men attended forty-four sessions. In fact,
for most of the period from 1584 to the mid-1590s attendance was
limited to these three men (apparently the quorum for ordinary
business was three). During this time at least, while the clerical voice
was clearly dominant, the court retained a significant Puritan bias
through Rogers and Redman.14
However, by the late 1590s both Rogers a,nd Lawse were dead,
while Redman had left Canterbury for the see of Norwich. Their places
on the commission were taken by Thomas Neville, the new Dean and
one of Whitgift's Cambridge proteges; Charles Fotherby, a blatant
anti-Puritan whose conservatism had won him the vacant archdeaconry;
and George Newman, the repla.oement Commissary and a,
comparative modera. As we shall see, this change of personnel had a,
considerable impact on the working of the commission.16
As far as the organization of the court was concerned, genera.I
sessions were held, in theory anyway, once a month during term. In
the 1580s, the usual sessions day was the first Thursday in the month.
Often, however, there were long adjournments between general sessions.
To complicate matters there were also numerous, irregular special
13 For a, parallel disa.ppea.ra.nce of la.y commieaioners a,t York see Tyler, op.
cit., 42. Apparently none of the speoifioo.lly Kent commissions survive, either on
the pa.tent rolls or elsewhere; for the general failure to enroll the eooleaia.atioal
commissions on the patent rolls see Usher-Tyler, Oommia8ion, 362n.
u For Redman: DNB, Redman, William; B.M., Lansdowne MS. 23, fol.
2-v; for La.wee, see J. and J. A. Venn, AlumniOantal)rigi.enseB: eo 17al, 1922-27,
ill, 52; J. I. Daeley, 'The Episoopa.l Administration of Mathew Parker, Archbishop
of Canterbury 1659-1575', unpublished Ph.D. thesis, London University (1067),
368-60.
u DNB, Neville, Thomas; Venn a,nd Venn, op. cit., ii, 165; B. P. Levack,
TheOwil LawyersinIJJngland 1603-1641, 1073, 258.
188
THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION AT CANTERBURY: 1572-1603
sessions, when two or three commissioners took subsidiary action in
cases needing prompt attention. Most of the general sessions were held
in Canterbury cathedral itself, probably at the west end where the
consistory court usually sat, while the deanery (in the precincts) served
as an alternative venue, particularly for special sessions. From the
register, it would seem that 1591 had the highest number of court days
in this period with eleven sessions during the year.16
As in other dioceses, the procedure of the commission at Canterbury
was a hotchpotch of ancient and modern. Following the practice of the
ordinary diocesan courts, the Courts Christian, cases before the
commission were said to be brought by the 'office' of the judges-that
is either by their 'mere office' in cases instituted on their own initiative,
or by their office 'promoted' in actions sponsored by a third party.
The main difference here was that the commission limited itself to
criminal business and did not try 'instance' cases, that is civil suits
often involving tithe disputes; these were the staple of diocesan court
business. Another difference from diocesan court practice was that the
commission did not go on visitation and receive presentments from
churchwardens; most cases came to it via the diocesan courts.17
In its actual trial procedure the Canterbury commission generally
followed diocesan court routine. Thus articles or charges were ministered
to the defendants .on which they were examined, usually after
they had taken the ex officio oath. In a similar fashion, when defendants
denied their guilt they were often allowed recourse to the ancient system
of oompurgation, by which honest neighbours had to swear that the
defendants' oaths were true. For instance, in a promiscuity case in
1585 the two defendants, Richard Goddard and Mary Silkworth, were
directed to find six compurgators each from the Bishopsbourne area to
appear for them. Finally, the penalties inflicted by the court likewise
had a strong traditional flavolll'. Public penance, involving a public
confession and the wearing of penitents' clothes in church, was frequently
imposed by the Canterbury court, particularly on sexual
miscreants. This in fact was the penalty inflicted on the Bishopsbourne
couple mentioned above when they failed to produce sufficient compurgators,
18
Truth to say, the Oanterbury commission's procedural debt to the
traditional Church courts was hardly surprising. For many of the
commission's personnel also served in the Courts Christian. Not only
was one of the regular members of the commission at the end of the
11 KAO, PRO 44/3, p. 15 et pa.ssim,
17 For similn.r procedure of the Gloucester commission: Price, Oommisswn,
103 et passim: the ordinary Canterbm-y courts are discussed in J.M. Potter, 'The
Eoclesia.stioal Courts in the Diocese of Canterbury 1603-1665', unpublished M.A.
thesis, London Univel'Bity (1972), 19 et passim,.
11 KAO, PRO 44/3, pp. 20, 22,
189
PETER CLARK
period the principal judge of the consistory court, but the commission's
registrar, proctors and messengers all spent the rest of their time as
officials of the diocesan courts: .Alexander Norwood, for instance, the
commission registrar about 1600, was a leading proctor in the archdeaconry
court.19
Nonetheless, the Canterbury commission was by no means just
a poor relation of the traditional tribunals. In addition to the powers
already described, it also wielded a greater, more flexible civil authority.
The commissioners had power to 'attach' (arrest) a suspected person,
to take bonds to ensure his a,ppearance before them and, if he refused,
t,o send him t,o gaol-usually the city gaol in Canterbury. During the
subsequent hea.ring the commission had broad powers of summary
action and could appoint a sub-commission to act in cases where further
flexibility was required. Once the case was concluded, they were able to
punish the offender with a wide range of penalties including imprisonment,
carting, the pillory, the stocks and fines. These extra powers with
their obvious civil overtones clearly made the commission a much more
powerful force in the local community than the traditional courts.
Cases before the Canterbury commission rarely lasted more than two or
three sessions and appeals by offending parties were probably difficult
and expensive t,o obtain.20
What about the commission's jurisdiction1 Unfortunately, the
absence of an extant patent for the late-Elizabethan period prevents us
giving a complete answer here. But it seems likely that while the
commissioners frequently styled themselves 'High Commissioners
resident within the county of Kent' their authority was in reality
confined to Canterbury diocese alone. West Kent was presumably left
t,o the control of the Lambeth High Commission; certainly there is no
evidence of a separate body operating from Rochester. Like the
Gloucester court the Canterbury commission was probably entrusted
with wide-ranging powers over most offences dealt with by the normal
diocesan administration (with the exception of the power to excommunicate).
On the other hand, the Canterbury body almost certainly
lacked those additional responsibilities of repressing civil
disorder granted t,o the Gloucester commission because of the strife-torn
condition of the Marches.21
This brings us to the question of the Canterbury court's relations
with other governmental agencies. What, for instance, was its relation-
10 Potter, op, cit,, 151 et aeq.; for other commission officials in their diocesan
hats see Daeley, op. cit., 65, 69.
ao E.g., for imprisonment: KAO, PRO 44/3, p. 18; carting: p. 92; fines:
p,80.
11 The only defendant not a.n inhabitant of Canterbury diocese was the
recusant Joan Knight, of Lon.don, but she was staying at Faversham at the time
(ibid., 31, 35).
190
THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION AT CANTERBURY: 1572-1603
ship with the Lambeth commission? In Usher's view the diocesan
commissions were primarily local branches of the Lambeth court with
only limited initiative or independence of their own. And certainly
there was some overlap of personnel between the Canterbury and
London courts-indeed, as we have seen, the 1572 Canterbury commission
was originally issued as part of a general commission for the Southern
Province.22 However, both Price and Tyler have suggested that the
local commissions generally enjoyed considerable freedom from Lambeth
supervision and, up to a point, the register of the Canter bury
court tends to corroborate their view. Having said this, it also seems
clear that the proximity of Canterbury diocese to London and the fact
that its diocesan was also head of the Lambeth court promoted rather
closer ties with the central commission than we find elsewhere. One of
the major investigations recorded in the Canterbury register, involving
a group of city sectaries in 1603, took place on the specific orders ?f
the London commission and the latter also appointed the sentence to
be imposed on the offenders. In addition, there were quite a few
instances where the Canterbury court transferred defendants to London
for further action-presumably on the initiative of the Lambeth
commission. Nor did the central court confine its activities in Kent to
this indirect interference. From other sources, it is evident that the
Lambeth body was active throughout the 1580s and 1590s intervening
directly in the diocese, apparently without reference to the Canterbury
commission. One Kentiah figure hauled summarily before the Lambeth
court was William Claybrooke, of Nash Court, in Thanet, a friend of
the Presbyterian leader, Thomas Cartwright, and a vehement critic of
the episcopal bench (on one occasion he had called Whitgift the 'Pope of
Lambeth' and a tyrant 'in persecuting the children of God') .2s
As we know, relations with the diocesan Church courts were close.
Not only were most of the cases handled by the Canterbury commissioners
referred to them by the ordinary courts, but offenders were
often returned to the diocesan authorities for final action after the
commission had brought them to see (official) reason. In general, the
liaison worked well, though on one occasion the commission peremptorily
ordered the Archdeacon's Official (or judge) to suspend hearings in
his court and leave a case to them. On the other hand, there is no
evidence, such as we find in Gloucestershire, that the Canterbury
commission actually took over the general functions of the diocesan
courts. By contrast with Gloucester diocese where the ordinary
courts had almost totally collapsed by the 1570s due to official incompetence
and concerted local opposition, the Canterbury diocesan courts
u Usher-Tyler, Oommission, 284 et aeq.
13 Ibid., viii et seq.; Price, Oommiseion, 143; KAO, PRC 44/3, pp. 7, 126
et seq.; pp. 89, 96; CCL, Z.3.15, fol. 304 et aeq.
191
PETEROLARK
were both active and generally efficient for much of the late sixteenth
century, coping more or less well with a, vast influx of new business,
particularly probate. It was only in the 1590s that there was any
significant decline in court standards with charges of corruption and
other abuse. The ma.jor problem then was the courts' inability to
handle a fairly small number of difficult ea.sea involving religious nonconformity,
sexual misconduct and the like. Here offenders might
exploit the slow, customary process of the courts and the inadequacy
of their penal sanctions to postpone effective judgement almost
indefinitely. Some of the most serious cases were called before the
Lambeth court, but the remainder formed the staple business of the
Canterbury commission.
The evidence for the Canterbury court's relations with the secular
authorities is less complete. Earlier we saw the Privy Council directing
the local commission to act in 1579 and 1580, but there is only one further
case of conciHar interference recorded in the period covered by the
court register. In 1588 and 1593, we find instances where both the commission
and groups of local JPs were dealing with the same case, but
there are no signs of friction.26 A more important source of potential
conflict between the commission and the lay authorities stemmed from
the implementation of commission orders. The commissioners were
empowered to call on the aid of local lay officials for this purpose and
when (as frequently happened) the latter were negligent the commissioners
summoned them into court. In 1586, the court reprimanded two
parish officials from the Ickham area for failing to serve a mandate on
an offender, while six years later the Mayor of Dover was summoned to
Canterbury for a similar offence (in this case the town clerk appeared on
his behalf). A rather more serious case occurred in the mid-1580s when
the commissioners called before them John Gold well, a JP from the
vicinity of Ashford, to answer the charge that he had failed to implement
a court order; Goldwell apparently ignored the summons.26
So much then for the membership and organization of the Canterbury
commission. What about the business coming before the court?
As we know, the number of oases handled was fairly small. By comparison
with a hundred or more actions being dealt with by the ordinary
diocesan courts at any one time, those cases pending before the
ac KAO, PRO 44/3, pp. 17, 70, 115; p. 66; Price, Oommissi<>n, 91 et seq.;
the diocesan situation at Exeter was also evidently desperate-hence Bishop
Cotton's plea in 1600: 'many abuses cannot be redreased by due course of Jaw and
therefore I crave the help of an eoolesiastica.l commission' (Hist. Manuscripts
Oomm., Salisbury MSS., x, 451; also 378); for the state of the Canterbury diocesan
courts at the turn of the century see Potter, op. cit., 20 et passim, and Public
Record Office, St Oh 8/252/26.
1 KAO, PRC 44/3, p. 12; PP· 120, 121, 162.
18 Ibid,., 27; 112, 116; 28.
192
THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION AT CANTERBURY: 1572-1603
Canterbury commission rarely numbered more than seven or eight.27 In
all, the register records only about eighty-one separate cases between 1584
and 1603 (albeit there is an extended gap in the register for the late
1590s). As we have said, the majority of the actions appear to have
involved offences which were too serious for the Courts Christian to
handle and yet not serious enough to warrant reference to the Lambeth
High Commission.
Only three cases before the Canterbury commission 1584-1603
involved clerical defendants. One case concerned Nicholas Pettifer, the
vicar of St. Peter's, Canterbury; though the details of the charges are
not given, it seems likely that Pettifer's main offence was his lax,
unenthusiastic ministry in a parish dominated by an increasingly
vociferous Puritan congregation. Another case had as its defendant
Robert Graves, an itinerant preacher, who confessed to having forged
his licence to preach (for which he was degraded and disqualified by the
court). The third clergyman to appear, Robert Jenkinson, of St. John's,
Thanet, was promptly summoned to Lambeth before we can discover
his offence.28 Needless to say, the paucity of clerical offenders is
particularly striking given both the large numbers of Puritan ministers
in the county in the 1580s and the refusal of many of them to bow
down to the new Wbitgiftian regime. The explanation seems to be that
the Church authorities preferred to take action against the Puritan
activists through the Courts Christian rather than the local commission.
One factor was that Whitgift's bark was worse than his bite. Once he
had isolated and suppressed the hard core of extremist clergy in the
immediate period following 1584, the Archbishop's main aim was to
press the remaining Puritan clergy into occasional, quasi-conformity.
The best weapon here was the ordinary diocesa,n court whose procedure
permitted a long drawn-out campaign of judicial harassment without
the risk of another Puritan cause celebre. Thus, two of the county's
leading Puritan ministers, Josias Nicholls, of Eastwell, and John Elvin,
of W estwell, were summoned constantly before the diocesan courts
during the late 1580s in cases lasting several years; as a result both men
withdrew into exhausted semi-retirement during the 1590s.29 A second
factor behind the apparent absence of cases against Puritan divines
before the Canterbury commission may have stemmed from the fact
that while 1584 saw the end of radical lay membership, the commission
continued to be dominated into the mid-1590s by those two leading
17 Potter, op. cit., 20, et passim.
u For the different situation at Gloucester: Price, Oommission, 160; KAO,
PRC 44/3, pp. 19, 24; for more on Pettifer see BM, Addit. MS. 6090, fol. 165v;
CCL, X.2.8, fol. 127, 152v; PRO 44/3, pp. 19, 21, 25; pp. 95, 96.
ao CCL: X.2.4, part ii, fol. 152; X.3.8, fol. 43v; Lambeth Palace Library, MS.
2014, fol. 81-82.
193
13
PETER CLARK
Puritan clerics, Rogers and Redman. Both were probably reluctant to
prosecute radical ministers.
The Puritan bias of Redman and Rogers may also explain the
apparent scarcity of cases involving lay Puritans in the Canterbury
court 1584-1603. In fact, almost all the prosecutions ofradicals recorded
in the court register occurred after these two men had disappeared
from the commission in 1594-95. In 1596, for example, Paul Eaton, of
Kennington, was charged with 'divers vile speeches against my Lord
of Canterbury his grace and against the present state and government
of the Church of England.' A committed radical, Eaton, probably a
kinsman of the Antinomian prophet John Eaton, had already come
before the commission for absence from church in 1572. Now, twentyfour
years later, he used his appearance in court to shout that Charles
Fotherby, the Archdeacon, was 'a thief, a traitor, an Anti-Christ, and
worse than the devil and an ass, and that the commissioners were AntiChristian
magistrates . . . ' Eaton was subsequently despatched to
Whitgift for further examination.30 The only other major anti-radical
case recorded in the register concerned a group of Canterbury apprentices
who had stuck separatist libels on church doors in autumn 1603. The
chief offender was Robert Cushman, a grocer's boy, who later joined the
separatist community at Leyden and organized the settlement of the
'Pilgrim Fathers' in New England (1620). Most of the offenders were
sentenced to perform canonical penance at Canterbury, though Cushman
was sent to gao1.s1
If the Canterbury commission appears to have played a negligible
role in the late-Elizabethan campaign against the godly cause, it was
much more active in the persecution of Kentish Catholics. By the
1580s, the Papist party in the county had dwindled to no more than a
dozen pockets of stubborn recusancy. However, the growing threat of
foreign invasion gave them an importance out of all proportion to their
numbers. Though the Crown appointed special commissions to deal
with the Catholic problem in the county, the ecclesiastical commission
at Canterbury continued (as in the 1570s) to be at the forefront of the
anti-Catholic campaign. In all, there were twenty-two oases involving
prominent Romanists before the court, mainly in the late 1580s and
early 11590s. To take a few examples: Margery Pettit, of Ohilliam, wa,s
charged with concealing superstitious objects, copes and beads; Piers
Thomas and his wife, of Tunstall, were accused ofrecusancy and abusing
their parish minister; and George Cundall, also of Chilham, answered
charges that he had provided medical treatment for a. number of
Catholic gentry (though unlicensed) and that he was a recusant himself.
io KAO , l'RC 44/3, p. 123; D. Neal,History of the Puritans, 1732-38, i, 735.
• 31 KAO, PRC 44/3, pp. 125 et seq., 202 et seg.; E. Arber, The Story of the
Pilgrim Fatliers, 1897, 165 et paasim.
194
THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION AT CANTERBURY: 1572-1603
Recusancy, in fact, was the most frequent type of offence entered in the
court register 1584-1603. 32
The second largest group of cases before the Canterbury commission
in this period concerned what we might loosely call sexual offences.
Most were basically matrimonial in character, involving sexual intercourse
after betrothal, clandestine marriage, desertion, separation,
bigamy and common law marriage. In one case, Thomas Hunte, of
Canterbury, was alleged to have carried Jane Jetter, aged 15, 'about the
country' and gone through a marriage ceremony with her at 2 a.m. at
Boughton-under-Bleau, having duped the vicar with a forged licence;
subsequently, they had lived together as man and wife. Another case
involved one John Jordan who had become betrothed to two separate
women and in both cases had used the betrothal to get them to go to
bed with him.ss That the commission was extremely concerned with
these marital cases can be judged from the fact that its sentences on the
offenders were particularly harsh, far exceeding the usual penalties
imposed by the Church courts. For example, Thomas Fansome, who
was arrested in 1590 for tramping the county selling charms and
confessed to having lived for many years with one Alice Smith pretending
to be married, was ordered to be put in the pillory at Canterbury,
Faversham and Milton and then imprisoned at length in the Canterbury
House of Correction. This determination to inflict exemplary punishment
clearly reflected the acute concern not merely of the commissioners
but of many respectable folk in late-Elizabethan Kent with the growing
tide of lower-class vagrancy, immorality and irreligion, which seemed
by the 1580s and 1590s to threaten many of the conventions of established
society, above all the custom of marriage.34
The remaining cases heard by the Canterbury commissioners 1584-
1603 were rather more miscellaneous, though almost all were of a
serious nature. There were five actions involving violent attacks on
clergy; two slander cases; and one concerning a land-owner's refusal to
pay a church sess. In addition, there was a clutch of charges arising from
the court's own proceedings: in five or so instances defendants were said
to have committed contempt of court.
This finally raises the question of opposition to the Canterbury
commission. We know from Usher that the Lambeth court suffered
increasing criticism during and after the 1590s from committed
Puritans and common lawyers, both groups attacking the arbitrary
process and uncertain authority of the High Commission. As far as the
Canterbury court was concerned the contours of opposition were rather
31 For the proceedingij of the recusancy commissions see Stafford Record
Office, D.593/S/4/6/18; KAO, PRC 44/3, 150, 185-6, 184-5.
33 Ibid., 59-60; 88-89, 169.
34 Ibid., 85-86, 166-69; see Clark, op. cit., oh. v.
195
PETER CLARK
different. Most of the resistance to the court's procedure came from
Catholic recusants, several of whom vehemently refused to take the
ex officio oath. By comparison, left-wing attacks were only sporadic.
We have already cited Paul Eaton's eloquent abuse of the conu:nissioners
in 1596, while in 1589 Henry Hall, of Wye (later of Maidstone),
declared on the arrest of one of his servants that 'he doubted whether
the commissioners for causes ecclesiastical had any authority to call any
layman or temporal man before them, for he did know the statutes ...
as well as they'. Hall was both a rabid Puritan and a rising county
lawyer who subsequently became a Bencher and Treasurer of the
Middle Temple. Indeed, in many ways, he personified that powerful
coalition of Puritan and legal interests which, a.a we have said, helped
to sweep the Lambeth High Comfnission from the national stage.
However, in Kent at least his denunciation of the Canterbury court
seems to have evoked little general support.36
This lack of a concerted county opposition to the Canterbury
commission-except from the discredited Romanist minority-would
seem to confirm what has already become fairly evident from our
analysis of the court's organization and functioning. That despite its
domination by clerical members after 1584 the court's subsequent
activities never justified earlier fears that it might become the principal
instrument of the Whitgiftian reaction in Kent. In fact, the court's
determined pursuit of Papist recusants and sexual miscreants may on
occasion have won it the grudging support of some of the county's
moderate Puritans. Yet, this is not to say the court ha
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