Book Description

Excerpt from The Elizabethan Clergy and the Settlement of Religion: 1558 1564 One of the most useful services that can be rendered at the present time to English Ecclesiastical History is to turn the microscope on disputed points in the light of our constantly increasing means of information. We now possess in the British Museum, the Public Record Office, the Bishops' Registries, and elsewhere, an easily accessible store of contemporary documents for medieval and modern history; so that it should not be difficult to settle finally many still doubtful questions, and to test traditions hitherto accepted on insufficient evidence. The primary object of the present work is to investigate the treatment of the clergy at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, and to estimate the number deprived for refusing, by reason of their papal sympathies, to conform to the settlement of religion then made. I began by trying to discover the actual numbers of those deprived. The figures accepted by English Church writers vary between one hundred and eighty-nine and four hundred. Roman Catholic authorities, on the other hand, have asserted with Rishton that 'the better part of the clergy followed in the footsteps of their prelates: very many of them, high dignitaries in the Church, were either thrown into prison or banished the realm.' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.