,WIGGINTON. '410 Hebrew languages. He continued some years longer at Cambridge, and, when he quitted the university, was possessed of great learning and many excellent endowments. Mr. Wigginton having completed his studies at the university, was presented to the vicarage of Sedburgh, in the North Riding of Yorkshire; but being a zealous non- conformist, he became a great sufferer in the . common cause. In the year 1581, Archbishop Sandys, writing to the Bishop of Chester, in whose diocese our divine lived, thus reproaches his nonconformity :--4, Your lordship," says, he, shall do well to better Mr. Wigginton, a young man very far out of frame; who, in my opinion, will not accept of you as his ordinary or bishop ; neither would I accept of him being in your place, as a preacher of my diocese. He labourethnot to build, but to pull down, and, by what means he can, to overthrow the state ecclesi- astical. "* He probably thought the ecclesiastical state so far corrupted and decayed, that it was incapable of the amendment that was desired ; and, therefore, lie might wish and endeavour by all peaceable means, to have it pulled down, and a more pure discipline and government erected. Being afterwards in London, he was appointed in the year 1584, to preach before the judges, in St. Dunstan's church. Information of this coming to the ears of Whitgift, then Archbishop of Canterbury, he sent a pursuivant to Mr. Wigginton's lodgings in the dead of the night ; and, finding him in bed, forbade him preaching, and required him to give bond for his appearance the next day, at. Lambeth. All this he did withoutany written warrant. Upon. his appearance at Lambeth, and refusing the oath ex officio, to answer certain articles altogether unknown to him, the archbishop, after using much reviling and reproachful language, committed him to the Gatehouse, where he remained nine weeks within one day. At the expiration of this period, the merciful archbishop released him, and gave him canonical admonition, charging him not to preach in his province without further license.+ In the year 1585, upon the information of one Edward Middleton, a man of profane character, and a suspected papist, Whitgift gave orders to his brother Sandys of York, to proceed against Mr. Wigginton, even to deprivation. He was therefore cited before Chadderton, bishop of Baker's MS. Collec. vol. xxviii. p. 366. + MS. Register, p. 759.
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