INTRODUCTION. 25 were immediately suspended, and told, that if they did not conformwithin three months, they should be deprived of all their spiritual promotions.. Among those who received the ecclesiastical censure, was Mr. Crowley, who was afterwards deprived and imprisoned. Mr. Brokelsby was sequestered, and afterwards deprived, being the first who was thus censured for refusing to wear the surplice. Dr. Turner, dean of Wells, was sequestered and deprived for refusing to wear the surplice, and to use the Book of Common Prayer. The venerable Miles Coverdale was driven fromhis flock, and obliged to relinquishhis benefice. In consequence of these proceedings, many of the churches in London were shut up, for want of ministers. 4, This," says the archbishop, ,, wasno more than he foresaw before lie began ; and that when the queen put him upon doing what he had done, he told her, that these precise folks," as in contempt he calls them, would offer their goods and bodies to prison, rather than they would relent."+ Notwithstanding these proceedings, the nonconformists greatly multiplied, and they were much esteemed and countenanced by persons of quality and influence. God raised them up many friends in both houses of parliament, and in her majesty's privy council : as, the Earls of Bed- ford, Warwick, and Leicester, Sir Francis Knollys, Sir William Cecil, and many others. All these were the constant friends of the puritans, and used their power and influence to obtain a further reforxnation4 Though in the latter they utterly failed of success, they often protected the persecuted ministers, or procured their release from. suspension, deprivation, and imprisonment. The principal persons for learning and piety, in the - university of Cambridge, not only opposed the above severities, but refused conformity.' The fellows and scholars of St. John's college, to the number of nearly three hundred, threw away their surplices with one consent ; and many in other colleges followed their example.§ This, indeed, presently roused the zeal of the jealous archbishop. He looked upon Cambridge as becoming the very nursery of puritanism ; and, therefore, to crush the evil in the bud, he warmly recommended the chancellor to enforce an exact conformity throughout that fountain of learning. In the mean time, the heads of colleges being dissatisfied with these proceedings, wrote a pressing letter to the chancellor, Strype's Parker, p.211, 215. + Ibid. p. 225. MS. Remarks, p. 111, 193. § Strype's Annals, vol. i. p. 441.
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