GAWTON. 241 GAWTON.-This zealous puritan was minister of Snoring in Norfolk, and afterwards in the city of Nor- wich. Mr. Strype stigmatizes him with having formerly been a man of trade, and then becoming a curate in the church. This may be true, and yet he might be a learned, faithful, and pious minister of Christ, and not enter the church merely for a piece of bread, as was too much the custom of those times. Upon his entrance into the sacred office, he met with barbarous usage from the hands of Archbishop Parker. Having obtained a pre- sentation to the benefice of Snoring, the archbishop peremp torily required him to sign a bond of a hundred marks; to pay Dr. Willoughby, the former incumbent, fourteenpounds a year ; though Willoughby, through mere carelessness, had lost the living. If he had refused to pay it, he must have gone to prison. Afterwards, the poor man finding so much difficulty inpaying this annuity, was glad to quit theplace, and resign the living into the hands of his patron.. Upon the resignationof his benefice, he became a preacher in the city of Norwich, but, in the year 1576, was cited before Dr. Freke, his diocesan, for nonconformity.+ Ap- pearing before the bishop, he was charged with refusing to wear the surplice, and with declining from the exact order of the Book of Common Prayer. He confessed the former, and acknowledged that he did not keep exactly to the rubric, but said, that, in other things, hewas conformable. Several other charges were alleged against him as will appear from the following examination before the bishop and others, dated August '20, 1576: Bishop. You: have taken uponyou in your pulpit to confute my chaplain's sermon, and have admonished your parishioners to beware of false doctrine. Gawton. Was it not meet for me so to do, seeing, he preached that man has power sufficient to draw himself unto God ? B. You did this the Sunday after he had preached, though he gave you all reasonable satisfaction. G. In attempting to do this, he made his case worse than it was at first. B. Wherein hath he made it worse ? + Parte of a Register, p. 894.-Strype's Parker, p. 873. + Bishop Freke was so outrageously violent in the persecution of the puritans, that, in the year 1584, the ministers of Suffolk and Norfolk unitedly presented their complaints against him to the privy council.--, MS. Chronology, vol. ii. p. 489. (is.) VOL. xi,
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