La violación de una obligación internacional

THE WORLD OF MINISTRY I: PARISH LIFE IN ASHBY

Neere to this place lies interred the bodie of Arthur Hildersam ... more honoured for his sweet and ingenuous disposition, his singular wisdome in settling peace, advising in secular affaires, and satisfying doubts, his abundant charitie, and especially for his extraordinary knowledge and judgment in the holy scriptures, his painfull and zealous preaching, together with his firme and lasting constancie in the truth he professed, he lived in this place for the most part of 43 yeares and 6 moneths, with great successe in his ministery, love and reverence of all sorts, and died with much honour and lamentation March the 4th1631.

Memorial to Arthur Hildersham in St Helen’s Church, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, erected by his son, Samuel.

In this town of Ashby de la Zouch, for many years together, Mr Arthur Hildersham exercised his ministry at my being there; and all the while I continued at Ashby, he was silenced ... most of the people in the town were directed by his judgment, and so continued, and yet do continue presbyterianly affected ...

William Lilly,Mr William Lilly’s History of His Life and Times:

from the year 1602, to 1681(London, 1715, 2ndedn.), p. 6.

Hildersham’s epitaph on the memorial raised to him in Ashby parish church by his

son Samuel declared that ‘he lived in this place for the most part of 43 yeares and 6

moneths, with great successe in his ministery’. Though this may have been strictly

true, in that Hildersham arrived in the town as lecturer in September 1587, and died

there in March 1632, it is too easy to gain a false picture from these bare statistics.

For during this time, Hildersham was in fact the vicar of Ashby for a mere twelve

years, from 1593 to 1605. After his suspension for nonsubscription and

nonconformity by the Bishop of Lincoln in 1605, he was never again to be

reinstated to the vicarage, and for the rest of the period officially served as lecturer

only. Even in the periods before and after his incumbency, he suffered frequent

suspensions and silencings. No fewer than six other vicars served in Ashby

alongside Hildersham, thus creating the inbuilt potential for conflict and

factionalism.

1

How Hildersham viewed, and indeed exercised and negotiated, his

ministry under these circumstances, how that ministry changed over the years and

in response to differing situations, will form the focus of this chapter. It contends

that Samuel’s emphasis on his father’s residence in Ashby is crucial – and that

although Hildersham’s early ministry as lecturer and then vicar owed much to his

preaching and the patronage of his powerful relative, the third Earl of Huntingdon,

the maintenance of his status at the heart of Ashby’s community (and not just the

godly part of it) was achieved by his becoming firmly embedded within that local

society. His large and prominently-situated house in Ashby symbolised his

position, and his informal, private, and secular dealings with the town’s inhabitants

meant that his influence was increasingly secure, even when he was barred from

the pulpit. William Lilly’s record of his schooldays, between 1613 and 1620, ‘that

all the while I continued at Ashby, he [Hildersham] was silenced’ and yet ‘most of

the people in the town were directed by his judgment’, provides striking testimony

to this paradox.

2

Under normal circumstances, a grammar school boy in Ashby

might well have heard Hildersham preach, but because he was either silent or

absent in these years, Lilly was denied the opportunity. Nevertheless, he was very

aware of the latter’s powerful and continuing influence in the local community.

1_{Paul Seaver,The Puritan Lectureships: The Politics of Religious Dissent 1560-1662(Stanford,}

1970) describes a number of such conflicts between lecturers and incumbents, for example that which arose between the lecturer, Thomas Warren, and the curate, James Wittaker, in Rye in 1623, see p. 98.

2_{William Lilly (1602-1680), the famous astrologer, was at school in Ashby, between the ages of}

eleven and eighteen. Not only was Hildersham ‘silenced’ during these years, but latterly was also absent from the town, concealing himself for ‘a long time, sometimes in the City, sometimes in the Countrey’ subsequent to his sentencing by the High Commission on 28 November 1616, see Clarke, ‘Life of Hildersam’, p. 153. For Lilly, seeODNB(ref: odnb/16661).

1. Introduction: the World of Ashby

Ashby-de-la-Zouch was a small Leicestershire market town, with a population of

about 800 in 1570, growing to between 1,000 and 1,400 in the first forty years of

the seventeenth century, and then suffering a sharp decline during the 1640s.

3

Physically, economically and socially, the town was dominated by the Earls of

Huntingdon, whose main family seat was at Ashby Castle.

4

The Hastings family’s

authority and economic influence in the town were maintained by their control of

its government through the manorial courts and patronage, while their presence

meant that Ashby possessed a significance disproportionate to its size.

5

On the poor

acid soil, the agricultural economy of the area was basically pastoral, with cattle-

rearing and perhaps horse-breeding the most significant features, and leather-

working trades developing in consequence.

6

Oats and barley appear to have been

the main crops. Although coal mines existed on the 300-acre barren heathland to

3_{Much of the detail on the economic and demographic background of Ashby in the early modern}

period is taken from the very useful study by C. J. M. Moxon, ‘Ashby-de-la-Zouch – a social and economic survey of a market town – 1570-1720’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1971). Other helpful secondary sources include John Nichols,The History and Antiquities of Leicestershire,Vol. III, Part II (London, 1804); W. G. Hoskins (ed.),The Victoria County History of the County of Leicester, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1969); W. and J. Hextall,The History and Description of Ashby-de-la- Zouch with Excursions in the Neighbourhood(London, 1852); W. Scott,The Story of Ashby-de-la- Zouch(Ashby-de-la-Zouch, 1907); and Kenneth Hillier,The Book of Ashby-De-La-Zouch

(Buckingham, 1984).

4_{The manor of Ashby had been granted to the Hastings family by Edward IV in 1462, and in 1472}

permission was given to erect a fortified manor house. Almost all of the townspeople were Hastings’ tenants, see Moxon, ‘Ashby’, p. 78. The manorial court seems to have been the sole means of town government, alongside the quarter sessions operating at county level. For a biographical account of the third Earl, see Claire Cross,The Puritan Earl: the Life of Henry Hastings, Third Earl of Huntingdon(London, 1966).

5_{The manorial court records for Ashby are now held as part of the Hastings collection at the Henry}

H. Huntington Library, San Marino, California. These holdings include the town rules book from 1627 (on microfilm at LRO), court rolls after 1660, parts of the churchwardens’ and overseers of the poor’ accounts 1623-34 (on microfilm at LRO), correspondence between the Earl and his agents concerning the town, family accounts and rent rolls, petitions from various townspeople, a large number of land deeds, miscellaneous memoranda, accounts of local coalmines, and papers concerning the business of the Earls of Huntingdon as Lords Lieutenant of Leicestershire. I am indebted to Moxon for this summary of holdings.

the west of Ashby known as the Woulds, and at nearby Coleorton owned by the

rival Beaumont family, the area’s mineral reserves were not fully exploited until

after the industrial revolution. Most of the town’s inhabitants were occupied in a

mixture of various trading and subsidiary agricultural activities. As well as the

twice-weekly markets, annual fairs for cattle, sheep and horses were held in the

town.

7

These trading activities were no doubt promoted by Ashby’s location at the

centre of a network of road systems, which facilitated travel and communications.

8

Some 120 miles from London, it lay on the main roads between Leicester and

Burton on Trent, Nottingham and Tamworth, and Derby and Coventry. As we shall

see in other chapters, this relative ease of mobility was significant for the extension

of a godly ministry like Hildersham’s over a considerable area, and facilitated

interaction between various groups within the wider locality. Of perhaps even

greater import in this regard was Ashby’s position as a border town, in terms of

both ecclesiastical and secular administration. Situated on the most north-westerly

boundary of Leicestershire, bordering on Staffordshire and Derbyshire and close

also to Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire, it meant that legal ambiguities over

jurisdiction could easily arise or be exploited. Ecclesiastically, Ashby was part of

the archdeaconry of Leicester, within the vast diocese of Lincoln, but it was only

necessary to travel a few miles from the town to enter the diocesan realm of the

Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, or that of the archdeaconry of Nottingham

7_{For more information on the markets and fairs in Ashby, see Moxon, ‘Ashby’, pp. 27-34.} 8_{This is perhaps reflected in the existence of more than forty alehouses in the town in 1627, see}

LRO DE/432 Box 37, Churchwardens Account Book 1765-1847, which contains at the back an ‘Order of Assizes for Suppression of some of the Alehouses in Ashby 1627’. This document (which complains about the number of alehouses being too great for such a small town, lists only twenty- seven as being fit to continue, and refers to the disorders arising from them) entreats the assistance of the earl in their suppression. There is no indication in the document whether Hildersham himself was involved in this campaign, but he certainly preached against the evils of frequenting the ale house in his sermons, see, for example,Lectures upon Psalme LI, pp. 231, 710.

which was part of the northern province of York. For Hildersham, this was to prove

of enormous significance when he found himself silenced by his own bishop, for it

enabled him to continue preaching at places like Burton and Repton, under a more

sympathetic administration.

9

The progress of the Reformation in Ashby has been the subject of some

attention from religious historians over many years, and, indeed, its importance as a

centre of puritanism was also recognised by contemporaries.

10

In 1595, the

separatist Francis Johnson, rejecting the notion of a parochial system that was

subject to the authority of bishops, nevertheless singled out as examples of ‘the

best of them’, ‘Blackfryers or Mary Overyes in London, or Ashby de la zouch in

Leycestershire, or Maldon in Essex, or Coventry in Warwickshire’.

11

Hildersham

9

For a more detailed exploration of the differences that existed between diocesan administrations, and the effect that this had on the implementation of a national ecclesiastical policy, see Kenneth Fincham,Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I(Oxford, 1990).

10

In particular, see Cross,Puritan Earl; Patrick Collinson (ed.),Letters of Thomas Wood, Puritan, 1566-1577(London, 1960); C. D. Chalmers, ‘Puritanism in Leicestershire,1558-1633’ (MA thesis, University of Leeds, 1962); and Moxon, ‘Ashby’, pp. 283-340. More recently, see Christopher Haigh, ‘The Troubles of Thomas Pestell: Parish Squabbles and Ecclesiastical Politics in Caroline England’,Journal of British Studies, 41:4 (Oct 2002), pp. 403-428.

11

Johnson,Treatise, p. 59. Of course, the fact that Johnson is engaged in refuting an (unpublished) letter of Hildersham’s in this treatise may help to account for the presence of Ashby in his select list of parishes. For further discussion of this treatise, see below, Chapter 5, pp. 204-209, and Chapter 6, pp. 246-252. The parish of St Anne’s, Blackfriars, was served by Stephen Egerton, one of the most popular preachers of the age and one of the co-organisers of the Millenary petition with Hildersham. He was maintained by a ‘great congregation’, ‘mostly of merchants’ wives and drawn from all parts of the city’, see Patrick Collinson,The Elizabethan Puritan Movement(Oxford, 1967), pp. 320-321, 341. On Hildersham’s recommendation, William Gouge was later recommended to a vacancy there. Mary Overyes (or the parish of St Saviour, Southwark), was one of the London parishes that established an early ‘reputation for religious radicalism’ and ‘that attracted a continuous stream’ of puritan lecturers from the 1570s until 1625, including Robert Crowley, James Stile, Hugh Smith, Francis Marbury, Edmund Snape, William Symonds and John Trundle, see Seaver, Puritan Lectureships, pp. 106, 124, 145, 150, 199, 214, 224, quote at p. 199. The parish of Maldon, the Essex port and market town, is most associated with the prominent puritan minister George Gifford, the author ofThe Country Divinity(1581), and one of the leaders of the Essex presbyterian

movement of the 1580s. After suspension for nonsubscription in 1584, he was not reinstated as curate, but remained as lecturer in the town for the next thirty-five years, see Collinson,Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 265-267, 279, and William Hunt,The Puritan Moment(Cambridge, Mass., 1983), pp. 93, 94, 96, 99-100, 132, 135, 141, 153-155. Hunt paints a picture of conflict in the town between Gifford and his supporters, and conformist factions opposed to his reformation of manners. The parish of Holy Trinity, Coventry, was served for many years by Humphrey Fenn, a close associate of Cartwright and Hildersham, see below, Chapter 4, p. 176.

himself frequently reminded his hearers that the town, as well as the country, had

been privileged to have unbroken gospel preaching for many decades; in August

1631 he declared that this had continued ‘above 70. yeares without interruption’.

12

The role of the godly third Earl of Huntingdon, the patron of the living, in

establishing Ashby as a model of reformed ministry, has, of course, been generally

acknowledged, and traced in detail by Claire Cross in her biographical study. It was

the earl who had been responsible for bringing Anthony Gilby, the outspoken and

influential Marian exile and translator, to Ashby as lecturer in the early 1560s, from

where his critics claimed he ruled like a bishop.

13

As part of a wider scheme for the

godly education of the young, it was the earl, too, who took the lead in the re-

endowment of the town’s Grammar School in 1567.

14

2. Hildersham as Lecturer: the Early Years 1587-93

15

Hildersham entered the world of Ashby as a young man of twenty-four, when he

was presented to the lectureship by his patron, the third Earl of Huntingdon, on 14

September 1587, following the death of Gilby.

16

As lay rector of the benefice, the

earl settled upon Hildersham the impropriated (that is, the great) tithes for life, an

arrangement continued by his two successors. This was to give Hildersham

considerable financial security and also very likely as lecturer a higher income than

12_{Hildersham,Lectures upon Psalme LI, p. 778.} 13

See Cross,Puritan Earl, p. 131. The manorial system of government in Ashby meant, of course, that it was far easier for the Reformation to be imposed from above, than in a place like Dorchester, for example, which as a borough was ruled by fifteen ‘Capital Burgesses’, see David Underdown,

Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century(London, 1992), p. 7.

14

For a history of the school, see Levi Fox,A Country Grammar School:A History of Ashby-de-la- Zouch Grammar School through four centuries 1567 to 1967(Oxford, 1967).

15_{For the biographical details relating to this period, see above, Chapter 1, pp. 15-22.}

16_{Anthony Gilby was buried at Ashby on 31 December 1584, the parish register recording that he}

was ‘a detestor of popery from his youth and a preacher of the gospel’, LRO DE1013/1, parish register for St Helen’s Church, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Vol. 1, 1561-1671.

the vicar, who presumably received only the small tithes or an annual cash payment

from the earl.

17

In addition, his relationship to the Hastings family established him

as a person of high standing in local society.

The problem with any attempt to reconstruct these early years of

Hildersham’s ministry in Ashby is the paucity of direct source materials. Diocesan

and archidiaconal court records do exist for this period, and the parish registers

survive from 1561, but none supply any direct evidence of Hildersham as

lecturer.

18

Those churchwardens’ and overseers of the poor accounts that are extant

relate to a later period, for which, generally, all categories of records are much

richer.

19

Some personal records, such as wills, do survive in small numbers for the

Elizabethan years, but Hildersham does not feature in any of them as either a

witness or recipient.

20

However, his catechism on the Lord’s Supper, we are told,

was written ‘for the direction of his owne people ... at what time hee was first

17

Clarke, ‘Life of Hildersam’, p. 146. The glebe terrier of 1704 for Ashby is the earliest one that specifically lists the vicarage dues, including tithe of hay, wood and lamb, geese and pigs, but by this stage the lectureship had ceased to function as an independent entity, see LAO Ashby terrier bundle. I am grateful to Dr Heather Falvey for a discussion on the matter of tithes, and her suggestions for further reading, including R. J. P. Kain and H. C. Prince,Tithe Surveys for Historians(Chichester, 2000), pp. 2-4; D. Hey,The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History(Oxford, 1996), pp. 440-441; E. J. Evans and A. G. Crosby,Tithes: Maps, Apportionments and the 1836 Act: a guide for local historians(British Association for Local History, 3rdedition, Salisbury, 1997), pp. 1-3. For the views of one particular vicar, Thomas Heton of Layston, on tithes, see H. Falvey and S. Hindle (eds.),“This little commonwealth”: Layston parish memorandum book 1607-c. 1650, and 1704-c. 1747(Hertfordshire Record Society, Vol. 19, 2003). Thomas Pestell, one of Hildersham’s successors as vicar of Ashby, was later to get embroiled in tithe suits relating to his time as vicar of Packington, see Haigh, ‘Troubles of Thomas Pestell’, pp. 405-407. For further discussion of the issues relating to tithes, see Christopher Hill,Economic Problems of the Church

(Oxford, 1956), pp. 77-167.

18_{See for example, LRO ID41/4 series, which contains only one case for Ashby during these years,}

a testamentary case at ID41/4/459. ID41/11 series contains the Archdeaconry Instance Books, and ID41/13 series the Act Books.

19_{Churchwardens’ accounts, mainly overseers, survive from 1623 to 1638, see LRO MF/5.} 20_{For the period 1587-1593, eighteen wills survive for Ashby, see LRO Leicestershire Wills.}

Hildersham acts as a witness to wills during his time as vicar (1593-1605), though in a surprisingly small number of cases: William Atkins (1601, no.1), signed twice by Hildersham, and possibly William Sharpe (1599, no. 38). Neither is distinguished by particularly godly preambles.

Hildersham later witnesses the will of Margaret Jarram (1627, no. 43), which contains a lengthy and obviously godly preamble in a document itself only just over a page long, including a codicil. He also witnesses the will of William Rise (1612, no. 82), see below,p. 61.

called unto them’, thus providing evidence of the sort of instructive personal work

in which he was engaged at this early stage.

21

As lecturer in Ashby, Hildersham succeeded Anthony Gilby, but the

quieter, less spectacular Thomas Widdowes, who remained as vicar of the town,

perhaps in some ways supplied a more direct role model.

22

After Widdowes’ death

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