prisoner, and often reviling him, giving taunts and odious names of
heretic, &c., he caused him to be brought forth into a chapel in the
cathedral church, called Our Lady Chapel, before him the said bishop,
at two o’clock in the afternoon; when were also present the mayor of
the city, Dr. Wall and other priests assisting him, George Wensloe,
chancellor, and one John Chetham, registrar. Then they caused George
Marsh to take an oath to answer truly unto such articles as should be
objected against him. Upon which oath taken, the chancellor laid
unto his charge, that he had preached and openly published most
heretically and blasphemously, within the parishes of Dean, Eccles,
Bolton, Bury, and many other parishes within the bishop’s diocese, in
the months of January and February last preceding, directly against
the pope’s authority, and catholic church of Rome, the blessed mass,
the sacrament of the altar, and many other articles. Unto all which
in sum he answered, that he neither heretically nor blasphemously
preached or spake against any of the said articles; but simply and
truly, as occasion served, and as it were thereunto forced in
conscience, maintained the truth respecting the same articles, as he
said all now present did likewise acknowledge in the time of King
Edward VI.
Then they examined him severally of every article, and bade him
answer Yes, or No, without equivocation; for they were come to
examine, and not to dispute at that present. He accordingly answered
them every article very modestly, agreeably to the doctrine by public
authority received and taught in this realm at the death of King
Edward; which answers were every one written by the registrar, to the
uttermost that could make against him. This ended, he was returned
to his prison again.
Within three weeks after this, in the said chapel, and in like sort
as before, the bishop and others before named, there being assembled,
he was again brought before them. Then the chancellor, by way of an
oration, declared unto the people present, that the bishop had done
what he could in showing his charitable disposition towards Marsh,
but that all that he could do would not help; so that he was now
determined, if Marsh would not relent and abjure, to pronounce
sentence definitive against him. Wherefore he bade George Marsh to
be now well advised what he would do, for it stood upon his life; and
if he would not at that present forsake his heretical opinions, it
would, (after the sentence given) be too late, though he might never
so gladly desire it.
Then the chancellor read all his answers that he made at his former
examination; and at every one he asked, whether he would stick to the
same, or no? To which he answered again, “Yea, yea.” Here also
others took occasion to ask him (for that he denied the bishop of
Rome’s authority in England) whether Linus, Anacletus, and Clement,
that were bishops of Rome, were not good men, and he answered, “Yes,
and divers others. But,” said he, “they claimed no more authority in
England than the bishop of Canterbury doth at Rome; and I strive not
with the place, neither speak I against the person or the bishop, but
against his doctrine; which in most points is repugnant to the
doctrine of Christ.” “Thou art an arrogant fellow indeed, then,”
said the bishop. “In what article is the doctrine of the church of
Rome repugnant to the doctrine of Christ?”
To whom George Marsh said, “O my lord, I pray you judge not so of me;
I stand now upon the point of life and death: and a man in my case
hath no cause to be arrogant, neither am I, God is my record. And as
concerning the disagreement of the doctrine, among many other things,
the church of Rome erreth in the sacrament. For Christ, in the
institution thereof, did as well deliver the cup as the bread,
saying, ‘Drink ye all of this,’ and St. Mark reporteth that they
_did_ drink of it. In like manner St. Paul delivered it unto the
Corinthians. In the same sort also it was used in the primitive
church for the space of many hundred years. Now the church of Rome
doth take away one part of the sacrament from the laity. Wherefore
if I could be persuaded in my conscience by God’s word that it were
well done, I could gladly yield in this point.” “Then,” said the
bishop, “there is no disputing with a heretic.” Therefore, when all
his answers were ready, he asked him whether he would stand to the
same, or else forsake them, and come unto the catholic church? to
which Mr. Marsh answered, that “he held no heretical opinion, but
utterly abhorred all kinds of heresy, although they did so slander
him. And he desired all to bear him witness, that in all articles of
religion he held no other opinion than was by law established, and
publicly taught in England at the death of Edward VI.; and in the
same pure religion and doctrine he would, by God’s grace, stand,
live, and die.”
The bishop of Chester then took a writing out of his bosom, and began
to read the sentence of condemnation; but when he had proceeded half
through it, the chancellor called him, and said, “Good my lord, stay,
stay! for if you read any further, it will be too late to call it
again.” The bishop accordingly stopped, when several priests, and
many of the ignorant people, called upon Mr. Marsh, with many earnest
words, to recant. They bade him kneel down and pray, and they would
pray for him: so they kneeled down, and he desired them to pray for
him, and he would pray for them. When this was over, the bishop
again asked him, whether he would not have the queen’s mercy in time?
he answered, “he gladly desired the same, and loved her grace as
faithfully as any of them: but yet he durst not deny his Saviour
Christ, lest he lose his mercy everlasting, and so win everlasting
death.”
The bishop then proceeded with the sentence for about five or six
lines, when again the chancellor, with flattering words and smiling
countenance, stopped him, and said, “Yet good my lord, once again
stay, for if that word be spoken, all is past, no relenting will then
serve.” Then turning to Mr. Marsh, he asked, “How sayest thou? wilt
thou recant?” Many of the priests and people again exhorted him to
recant, and save his life. To whom he answered, “I would as fain
live as you, if in so doing I should not deny my master Christ; but
then he would deny me before his Father in heaven.”
The bishop then read his sentence unto the end, and afterwards said
unto him, “Now, I will no more pray for thee than I will for a dog.”
Mr. Marsh answered, that notwithstanding, he would pray for his
lordship. He was then delivered to the sheriffs of the city; when
his late keeper, finding he should lose him, said with tears,
“Farewell, good George;” which caused the officers to carry him to a
prison at the north gate, where he was very strictly kept until he
went to his death, during which time he had little comfort or relief
of any creature. For being in the dungeon, or dark prison, none that
would do him good could speak with him, or at least durst attempt it,
for fear of accusation; and some of the citizens who loved him for
the gospel’s sake, although they were never acquainted with him,
would sometimes in the evening call to him, and ask him how he did.
He would answer them most cheerfully, that he did well, and thanked
God highly that he would vouchsafe of his mercy to appoint him to be
a witness of his truth, and to suffer for the same, wherein he did
most rejoice; beseeching that he would give him grace not to faint
under the cross, but patiently bear the same to his glory, and to the
comfort of his church.
The day of his martyrdom being come, the sheriffs of the city, with
their officers, went to the Northgate, and thence brought him forth,
with a lock upon his feet. As he came on the way towards the place
of execution, some proffered him money, and looked that he should
have gone with a little purse in his hand, in order to gather money
to give unto a priest to say masses for him after his death; but Mr.
Marsh said, he would not be troubled to receive money, but desired
some good man to take it if the people were disposed to give any, and
give it to the prisoners or the poor. He went all the way reading
intently, and many said, “This man goeth not unto his death as a
thief, or as one that deserveth to die.” On coming to the place of
execution without the city, a deputy chamberlain of Chester showed
Mr. Marsh a writing under a great seal, saying, that it was a pardon
for him if he would recant. He answered, forasmuch as it tended to
pluck him from God, he would not receive it upon that condition.
He now began to address the people, showing the cause of his death,
and would have exhorted them to be faithful unto Christ, but one of
the sheriffs told him there must be no sermoning now. He then
kneeling down, prayed earnestly, and was then chained to the post,
having a number of fagots under him, and a barrel with pitch and tar
in it over his head. The fire being unskilfully made, and the wind
driving it to and fro, he suffered great extremity in his death,
which notwithstanding he bore very patiently. When the spectators
supposed he had been dead, suddenly he spread abroad his arms,
saying, “Father of heaven, have mercy upon me,” and so yielded his
spirit into the hands of the Lord. Upon this, many of the people
said he was a martyr, and died marvellously patient; which caused the
bishop shortly after to make a sermon in the cathedral church, and
therein to affirm, that the said Marsh was a heretic, burnt as such,
and was then a fire-brand in hell.
He was succeeded by Cuthbert Scott, S.T.P. He was educated at Christ’s
College, Cambridge, and was appointed Master of the College in 1553;
became Vice-Chancellor of the University in 1555, and had the
temporalities of the see of Chester delivered to him in 1556. He was an
active and zealous Romanist, and was implicated in the burning of Bucer’s
bones at Cambridge. He was concerned in most of the political movements
of his day, and being disaffected towards Queen Elizabeth, and opposed to
the reformed religion, was imprisoned in the Fleet in London, from which
he escaped, and died at Louvain about the year 1560.
William Downham, D.D., was born in Norfolk, elected Fellow of Magdalene
College, Oxford, in 1544, and appointed chaplain to the Lady Elizabeth,
who, when queen, nominated him to a Canonry in Westminster in 1560; and
on the 4th May, 1561, he was consecrated Bishop of Chester. He died in
November, 1577, aged 72, and was buried in the Cathedral of Chester, with
a monumental inscription, preserved by Webb, but the monument itself has
long since perished.
His sons were eminent theologians, and had the merit suitably rewarded.
George Downham became Bishop of Derry, and John Downham, B.D., a learned
writer, had various preferments.
William Chadderton, D.D., was born at Nuthurst, near Manchester. He was
educated at the Grammar School of Manchester, and afterwards became
Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge. In 1567 he was appointed Regius
and Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity, and the following year
President of Queen’s College. Shortly afterwards he became a Canon of
Westminster, and was fortunate in being appointed chaplain to the royal
favourite, Dudley, Earl of Leicester, to whom he was chiefly indebted for
his subsequent promotion. In 1568 he became Archdeacon of York, and held
the dignity for ten years. In 1579 he was nominated to the see of
Chester, which had been for some time vacant, and in the same year he
accepted the Wardenship of Manchester, where he chiefly resided. He was
a member of the Ecclesiastical Commission for the North; and it must be
admitted that he used considerable severity towards the Papists, fines
and imprisonments being amongst the strongest arguments he employed to
induce that body to acknowledge the queen’s supremacy. One of the
priests executed at Lancaster, in 1584, as a traitor and rebel,
complained of Chadderton as “a Calvinist, and a false and cruel Bishop,”
charges which lose much of their severity when proceeding from the friend
of Campian and Parsons. Antony á Wood says, that “the Bishop showed more
respect to a cloak than a cassock,” and there is no doubt that he was a
successful preacher, and a zealous puritan; although by a reference to
the Act Books of the Bishop of Chester it will be found that he was
strict in enforcing the use of clerical vestments, and both suspended and
deprived some of his clergy for their disregard of the Rubric. On the
5th April, 1595, he was translated to Lincoln, when he resigned the
Wardenship of Manchester. He died at Southoe, in Huntingdonshire, April
11th, 1608.
Hugh Bellot, D.D., second son of Thomas Bellot, Esq., of Moreton Hall, in
the county of Chester. Le Neve says he was brought up in Queen’s
College, Cambridge, though Leycester gives him to St. John’s. He was
Proctor in 1570, and afterwards Rector of Tydd, near Wisbeach, and Vicar
of Gresford, both in episcopal patronage. He was consecrated Bishop of
Bangor in the year 1585, and translated to Chester June 25th, 1595. He
was Bishop of Chester about seven months, and was buried at Wrexham, in
Denbighshire, in 1596, aged 54, where a monument was erected to his
memory by his brother, Cuthbert Bellot, Prebendary of Chester.
Richard Vaughan, D.D., a native of Caernarvonshire, educated at St.
John’s College, Cambridge, and one of the queen’s chaplains. He was B.D.
in Oct., 1588, when he was collated by Bishop Aylmer to the Archdeaconry
of Middlesex. He was also a Canon of Wells. He succeeded Bellot in the
see of Bangor, and was also his successor at Chester, being translated
thither, according to Lee, May 16th, 1596, which is probably the correct
date, although the generality of his biographers state that he did not
become Bishop of Chester until 1597, which might be the date of his
consecration. He was translated to London in 1604, and, dying of
apoplexy on the 30th March, 1607, was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Wood says he was accounted an excellent preacher and pious liver. It
appears from the Bishop’s registers that, like some of his predecessors,
he was much concerned to repress the spirit of insubordination and
impatience of episcopal restraint which he found existing among his
clergy. Failing in his attempts to act as the spiritual adviser and
comforter of his clerical brethren, and to uproot their antipathy to
certain ancient and decent ecclesiastical forms, he frequently cited them
to appear before him in the parish church of Aldford, in which village he
then resided, and publicly vindicated in their presence the polity of the
church. The bishop did not succeed, however, in removing the scruples of
these good men, who regarded their superior as one who sought to fetter
their independence and destroy their liberty. On the 3rd of Oct. 1604, a
large body of Lancashire dissentients appeared before the bishop at
Aldford. They appear to have been men of holy character, laborious in
the discharge of their ministerial functions in populous parishes, and
apparently received kind and impartial treatment. They were all publicly
admonished by the bishop, and required to conform to the liturgy and
ceremonies of the church, and also to subscribe, _ex animo_, to the three
articles in the 36th canon. They were cited to appear again at the same
place on the 28th of November following, but only one complied with the
order. In those days, when roads were proverbially bad, and public
conveyances unknown, a journey to Aldford must have been attended with
serious inconveniences, especially on a gloomy and boisterous November
day. Burnet says, in reference to these dissentients, that “they were
very factious and insolent.” During the Episcopate of Bishop Vaughan,
the cathedral was much repaired; he caused the bells to be re-cast and
hung in the great tower; the west roof he had new leaded, and the timber
work repaired. On his translation to London—
George Lloyd, D.D., rector of Halsall, near Ormskirk, and bishop of Sodor
and Man in 1509, was translated to Chester January 14th, 1604–5. He died
at Thornton-in-the-Moors, near Chester, of which parish he was Rector, on
the 1st of August, 1615, aged 55 years, and was privately buried in the
choir of the Cathedral of Chester.
Gerard Massie, B.D., was nominated to the bishopric on the death of
Lloyd; but died before consecration.
Thomas Moreton, S.T.P., son of Richard Moreton, of York, Mercer, born in
that city, March 20th, 1564, and educated there and at Halifax. He
distinguished himself by his extensive classical and theological
attainments at Cambridge, and was elected a Fellow of St. John’s College.
He became B.D. in 1598, and was presented to the rectory of Long Marston,
near Tadcaster. In 1602 he rendered himself conspicuous by his fearless
attendance on the sick during the prevalence of the plague in York; and
becoming chaplain to Lord Evers, accompanied that nobleman, in 1603, in
his embassy to the Emperor of Germany. On his return he was appointed
domestic chaplain to the Earl of Rutland, and wrote the first part of the
_Apologia Catholica_, in consequence of the merit of which Archbishop
Matthews collated him to a prependal stall at York. In 1608 he graduated
D.D., and was appointed chaplain to James I., from whom he received the
deanery of Gloucester; and in the following year succeeded to the deanery
of Winchester. He was a great benefactor to Winchester Cathedral. He
was elected Bishop of Chester May 22nd, 1616, and was consecrated at
Lambeth July 7th. With this see he held the rectory of Stockport, and
diligently applied himself to reconcile popish recusants and scrupulous
non-conformists to the church; and his success was noticed in the royal
declaration in 1618. He was translated to Lichfield and Coventry March
6th, 1618, and advanced to Durham June 29th, 1632. He died at the house
of Sir Henry Yelverton, Bart., at Easton Mauduit, Northamptonshire,
September 23rd, 1659, aged 95 years, unmarried, and was buried in the
parish church there, with a long epitaph recounting his preferments and
sufferings. He endured, with much resignation, hardships, confiscation,
and imprisonment. Clarendon mentions Bishop Moreton as being one of the
“less formal and more popular prelates.”
John Bridgeman, D.D., the successor of Moreton, was educated at
Cambridge, and elected Fellow of Magdalen College, of which he was
afterwards chosen master, and appointed chaplain to James I. He was also
prebendary of Lichfield and Peterborough. He was consecrated Bishop of
Chester 9th May, 1619, at Lambeth, the revenues of the sees amounting at
that time to £420 per annum. In 1621 he became rector of Bangor-Iscoed,
in Flintshire. He held his see until episcopacy was suspended under the
commonwealth; and on the 15th December, 1650, his palace, with all the
furniture, was sold by the republicans for £1059. He died at his son’s
house at Moreton, and was buried at Kinnersley church, in Shropshire,
about the year 1658. Bishop Bridgeman maintained annually at his own
expense, hopeful young men at the University, and preferred some to
ecclesiastical honours, who afterwards assisted to deprive him of his
mitre. He was father of Sir Orlando Bridgeman, created Baronet June 7th,
1660, who was successively Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Lord Chief
Justice of the Common Pleas, and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. He was
also the direct ancestor of the present Earl of Bradford.
Brian Walton, D.D., a native of Cleveland, in the north riding of
Yorkshire, born in the year 1600, admitted of Magdalen College,
Cambridge, as a sizer, and removed thence to St. Peter’s College in 1616.
He graduated M.A. in 1623, and D.D. in 1639, being then a prebendary of
St. Paul’s, and chaplain to Charles I. His persecutions and losses
during the great rebellion having driven him into retirement, he
projected his great work, the Polyglot Bible, an imperishable monument of
his learning and industry, which was first printed at London in six folio
volumes in 1657. On presenting this work to Charles II. at the
restoration, he was made chaplain to the king, and consecrated Bishop of
Chester in Westminster Abbey, on the 2nd December, 1660. A. á Wood gives
a minute and graphic description of the enthusiastic reception which the
bishop met with when he went to take possession of this long desecrated
see. The joy of the people on the national resuscitation of episcopacy
was unbounded, and evinced itself by the most public and decided
manifestations.—_Wood’s Athenæ_, _Vol._ 2, _p._ 731. He enjoyed his
dignity for a short time only, and dying at his house in
Aldersgate-street, London, on the 29th November, 1661, aged 62, was
buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Henry Ferne, D.D. was born at York, in 1642, he was chaplain to Charles
I.; he was one of the king’s commissioners, along with Sheldon, Hammond,
and others, to treat at Uxbridge, in matters relating to the Church. He
was a personal favourite of the king, and suffered much for the royal
cause; but at the Restoration, a succession of dignities and rewards were
conferred upon him. He was consecrated Bishop of Chester, February 9th,
1661–2, and died five weeks afterwards, on March 16th, and was buried
with great honour March 25th, 1662, aged 59 years, having never been at
Chester. In 1642, he published his “Case of Conscience touching
Rebellion,” being the first printed vindication of the royal cause.
George Hall, D.D. son of the pious and learned Joseph Hall, Bishop of
Norwich, was entered of Exeter College, Oxford, in 1628, being then aged
16 years, elected Fellow of his college in 1632, collated to a Prebend in
Exeter Cathedral, in 1639, and installed Archdeacon of Cornwall, October
8th, 1641. He was presented by his college to the vicarage of
Menherriot, near Liskeard, but was deprived of his benefice, and
prevented keeping a school for his subsistence, during the usurpation.
At the Restoration, he became chaplain to the king, was appointed Canon
of Windsor, and collated by Archbishop Juxon to the Archdeaconry of
Canterbury in 1660, which latter dignity he held _in commendam_ with the
see of Chester, of which he was consecrated bishop May 11th, 1662. About
the same time he was presented to the rectory of Wigan, by Sir Orlando
Bridgeman, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. His death was occasioned
by a wound he received from a knife which happened to be in his pocket,
as he accidentally fell from a terrace in the rectory gardens at Wigan,
on the 23rd August, 1668, aged 55 years. He was buried in the rector’s
chancel, within Wigan church, where a marble monument was erected to his
memory, on which he is styled “Ecclesiæ Dei servus inutilis, sed
cordatus.” He published several sermons, and a treatise against popery,
with the singular title of “The Triumphs of Romans over Despised
Protestancy. London, 1655.”