JD
It had been John Wyclif and his like who had begun the
process which lead to the Reformation. The traditional date for this in
The next year in June 1539 Parliament passed the Act
of Six Articles. This set out six points of doctrine as a statement of
traditional beliefs. The King saw it as a reaffirmation that it was only
political control of the church which had changed, but many of the clergy saw
it as a step backwards. Purley promptly lost its Bishop as Nicholas Shaxton,
Bishop of Salisbury, interpreted it as a major set back for the protestant
cause and resigned his see in protest, to be replaced soon afterwards by John
Capon. It was a requirement of the Act that each parish priest read it publicly
and periodically in their churches. The set-back was however only temporary and
from Whitsun 1549 the first English Prayer Book was established as the only
legal form of worship. The following year all the old service books were called
in to be destroyed.
Also in 1549 an Act was passed to take away all
positive laws against the marriage of priests. During the four years that
followed many priests took advantage of the opportunity and married. It seems
likely that Purley’s John Leke followed the fashion and converted his concubine
into a wife.
As of All Saints day 1552 (1st November) all and every
persons in the King’s realms were ordered to attend church every Sunday and
Holy day unless they had a very good reason not to. The penalty was very
severe, for a first offence six months in prison, for a second conviction one
year and for a third it was life.
When Queen Mary came to the throne in 1553 she tried
to reverse many of the trends which had started during the reign of Henry VIII
and accelerated during that of Edward VI. Her first Act was to deprive all
married clergy of their livings. This she did by Royal Proclamation in December
1553 and over the next two years officials toured the country carrying out the
Queen’s wishes. In the diocese of
Richard had been noted as John Leke’s curate in 1553
so he was probably asked to keep the parish going after John’s ejection and was
soon after confirmed as rector.
On Queen Mary’s death in 1558, her sister Elizabeth
began the work that culminated in what has become to be known as the
‘Elizabethan Settlement of Religion’. She restored the Acts of Supremacy and
Uniformity and sent her Commissioners to obtain the assent of the clergy in
writing. The best known of the Commissioners who visited the Diocese of
Salisbury in 1561 was John Jewel, who had spent most of Mary’s reign as an
exile in
Five of the clergy in
Thomas Handcock had signed the assent in the diocese
of
Apparently Thomas Handcock did not fully satisfy his
bishop as he too was deprived and replaced by Thomas Mountayne who was
instituted on
Richard Boston was instituted on
In 1572 he wrote the will of Thomas Holloway of Purley
which is still preserved.
It was during his rectorship that the papal
excommunication came in 1570 and thereafter Roman Catholics were regarded as
potential traitors. Previously they had continued to practice their own forms
of worship at home and put in sufficient token attendances at the parish church
to satisfy the authorities, but now this token attendance was forbidden by the
Pope.
On
An Act of 1581 had tightened the persecution of
catholic recusants who were to be fined £20 for each month of absence from
church as well as having to put up a bond of £200 for good behaviour. Also
during this period the great debate within the Church of England was being
conducted. This revolved around two issues, first the form of government, ie
whether episcopal or presbyterian, and second the role of preaching. The
Presbyterian party were pressing strongly for each local church to be governed
by a council of elders who could appoint or dismiss ministers without
interference from bishops or the holders of endowments. They were also intent on
reducing worship to little more than a prolonged sermon. In the outcome the
power of the established church prevailed and preachers were obliged to recite
the complete service from the Prayer Book before they were allowed to indulge
their preaching. The bishops were generally appalled by the low standards of
education of the clergy, most of whom were quite incapable of preaching anyway.
A number of set sermons or homilies were prepared which most clergy merely read
week after week until they attained a sufficient standard of education to be
able to obtain a preaching licence. Thomas himself was noted as not having such
a licence.
Thomas Stoning died on
He left three children under age, William, Anne and
The inventory taken after his death throws
considerable light onto the lifestyle of a typical Elizabethan cleric. His
furniture consisted of a table and frame, a form, a square table and a cupboard
worth £1-6s. A chair and two stools were valued at 2s. In the cupboard were
three candlesticks, a basin and a ewer, two salts, a platter, six saucers, four
pewter dishes, three pottengers and a dozen spoons valued at 16s. There was a
heavy table cloth for a round table, a cupboard cloth and a painted cloth to
hang on the wall together valued at 6s 8d. The fireplace had a broche, a fire
shovel, two pothangers with a pair of pothooks, a pair of tongs and a gridiron
at 8s. To prepare food there was a cleaver and a chopping knife and for cooking
a chaffing dish at 1s 4d, a brass pot, three old kettles and two sellers worth
12s. The inventory went on to list the contents of the bedrooms, the food
stores and barns and finally noted that he had a horse and a little cart, a cow
valued at œ1 4s, eleven sheep, six pigs plus a goose a gander and assorted
poultry.
After Thomas Stoning died, Randall Wright became
rector on
Presumably at first he did not live in Purley as the
Stoning’s had rented out the parsonage house which was said in 1595 to be
occupied by a number of poor men who paid their rent to the parson. Randal
Wright was obviously attempting to regain possession of the parsonage and an
enquiry was held into the matter. Presumably he succeeded in regaining
possession.
The earliest entries in the Bishop’s Transcripts for
Purley are dated 1607 when it was reported that there had been four christenings,
five weddings and three burials during the year. The curate was James Clarke
and Matthew Justice was churchwarden.
On
John North, a yeoman of Purley, died in 1608 leaving
2s to the parish church and a cow for the use of the poor in the parish. When
it died a sum of £6 was obtained as compensation and held by the overseers, who
distributed interest of 6s each year to poor widows. This charity was reported
on in 1786, 1837 and 1905 in Parliamentary enquiries.
Randall Wright died in 1623.
The seventeenth century Church in
James I was a firm believer in the episcopacy and was prepared
to tolerate the Recusants provided they kept a low profile. The Low Anglicans
were in firm control although the strength of the Arminians was growing. The
Puritans (Presbyterians and Independents) complained bitterly, not because they
were persecuted as they often claimed but because they were not allowed to
impose their views on the rest of the population. It was in this period in 1620
that the Pilgrim Fathers sailed to
Charles I came to the throne in 1625 and with his
accession came the ascendancy of the Arminian Party and the eventual promotion
of William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury. Laud had been born in 1573 in
After Randall Wright’s death Richard Watts was
appointed to Purley. He became rector on
He is recorded as witnessing two wills, those of John
Goodboy in 1628 and Joan Justice in 1658.
He seems to have had two daughters, Alice who married
Henry Peacock of Keysho in Bedfordshire on
For many years the Arminian party lead by William Laud
had been advocating more spiritual forms of worship and had been campaigning
against the way in which holders of ecclesiastical endowments had grown rich on
the tithes and other benefits of livings while appointing clergy at pitifully
low stipends. They had been buying up endowments and shaming the holders and
other Lords of Manors into doing something more to support their local
churches. In particular they were advocating the removal of the Holy table from
the nave, where it had been moved in most churches during the early years of
The Norman church probably had a simple apse leading
from the chancel arch and this was replaced by a new squarechancel with two new
large windows in the east and south walls. The east window depicted
The present tower bears the crest of Viscount
Grandison, uncle of the then Lord of the Manor of Purley Magna and bears the
date 1626. The oldest bell in the tower is dated 1627 and adds further credence
to the date 1626 being the actual date of rebuilding.
In 1627 Charles I seized the lands of Francis Hyde
who, as a Roman Catholic, was accused of having persistently refused to attend the
services of the
In 1641 it was required that everyone should subscribe
to the protestant cause, as a consequence of the Protestation Act of May 3rd
approved by a reluctant Charles I. This required that every man had to declare
on oath that he supported the maintenance of the ‘True reformed Protestant
Religion expressed in the doctrine of the Church of England against all popery
and popish innovations within the realm contrary to the same doctrine’ On
21st February 1642 Richard Watts certified that all men of Purley had taken the
oath except for Edward Bagley who was scarce compos mentis. Edward’s
father of the same name was churchwarden at the time.
Richard died in 1659 aged 78.
When Civil War broke out in 1642 it was essentially
between the King and the Arminians supported by the Recusants against
Parliament which was dominated by the Presbyterians and supported by the
Independents. The Low Anglicans by and large remained neutral or got swept up
into the camp of whichever group happened to control their area.
In 1643 the Solemn League and Covenant was formally
accepted by the Church of England and the following year saw the Directory of
Public Worship introduced. This was a distinctly Calvinistic Book which was
never popularly accepted although it was ordered to replace the Book of Common
Prayer in 1645.
Following the Puritan victory, the Arminians fled
abroad or laid very low. The Presbyterians who controlled parliament set about
imposing their views on the rest of the population. One of their first Acts was
to dissolve the Cathedral Corporations and freed most of their assets to
augment the livings of parish clergy. The living of Purley had been reported as
worth £12/3/7 in 1534 and by 1707 its value had risen to £100 so presumably the
clergy of Purley benefited from these measures. In 1646 Parliament established
Presbyterianism as the only authorised religion in
These measures succeeded in alienating the Anglicans,
who had largely supported the Puritan cause by the end of the war, but more
importantly Parliament tried to make the Independents conform. This resulted in
the second Civil War which erupted briefly in 1648 and the Independents who
formed the bulk of the army under Cromwell triumphed.
When the new victors executed the King in 1649 any
support from the Anglicans vanished and
The former bishops who had been deprived by the
Exclusion Act of 1642 continued to live quietly and ordain Anglican priests
occasionally. In most of the churches the former incumbents carried on but
bowing to the various official winds and pressures. In about a third of the
parishes in
Following the death of Richard Watts, Daniel Reynor
became the Minister of Purley in 1659. He studied at Queen’s College Cambridge
from 1647 and became a scholar at New College Oxford in 1649 taking his BA in
1650 when he was also made a Fellow of his College.
He was rector of Buttermere from 1656 to 1657 and
vicar of Clyffe Pypard in Wiltshire from 1657 to 1658. This latter benefice was
in the patronage of the Goddard family who were near neighbours of the
A Commission had been established in March 1654 to
examine all appointments to benefices and to prevent men ordained by bishops
from being installed. They asked many searching and irrelevant questions which
were almost impossible to answer. Daniel Reynor was almost certainly a
Congregationalist and had not been ordained in Anglican Orders. However in the
climate of the times the St John’s, who were well known as Royalists, would
have seen him as the candidate acceptable to them who would most likely be able
to pass the tests of the Commission and gain the approval of Oliver Cromwell
who had now assumed the patronage from the Crown, although generally he seems
to have left what would formerly have been Crown appointments to the Commission
of State.
After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 Daniel was
formally inducted as rector in 1661, but when he was asked to assent to the
Acts of Uniformity in 1662 he refused and was ejected in August. The Act of
Uniformity was one of the measures of the Clarendon Code whose main architect
was the former Edward Hyde whose first wife Ann was buried at Purley in 1632.
Daniel’s father William Reynor was similarly ejected
from Egham in
JDD
28/3/2008