3 proved conclusively that this was far from the case,

and suggests that it was a direct descendant of the Plummers Hall gathering; Crane, having been prohibited by Grindal from preaching in London, crossed the river

1) Basent VIII p. 93. .

2) Parker Soc. Zurich Letters I p. 313 note 4.

3) Scott-Pearson, T.Cartwright and Eliz.Puritanism pp.76-8, 80.

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to Wandsworth and being followed by many of his friends who wished to hear him preach, aontinued to use the Genevan Order Book. That means, therefore, that this movement contained both Congregationalists and Presbyt­ erians. Crane’s history alone proves this, for a little later he is concerned with Cartwright’s presbyterian

schemes, and later still he was arrested in Henry Martin’s house in October 1587 at a Brownist meetijog. Now just in the same way as it was possible for the Wandsworth congregation to contain a medley of opinions, and for Crane to change from Congregationalism to presbyterian- ism and back again, so was it possible for others who were connected with the Admonition controversy to be in

similar positions.^ Cartwright’s tragedy lies in the fact that he attracted to himself such violent men as Field, Wilcox and Crane, whom he was forced to defend from authority, and who, in return, alienated old leaders of revolt like Sampsonaand Humphrey, and divided the

older, less uncompromising nonconformists from the mili­ tant side of Protestantism altogether. Even John Knox

1) Thus Sampson lived peacefully at a Hospital in

Leicester still, Lever at one in Durham. Several years after, Burghley says he is sure Sampson will conform, when recommending him to the Mastership of the Temple.

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wrote to the prisoners taken in Plummers Hall, in

answer to a petition which they had sent into Scotland saying:

”Our brethren do give hearty thanks for

your gentle letter written unto them; but to ^

be plain with you, it.is not in all points liked”. This, no doubt, because a discipline in Scotland

had been found as necessary as it was in England, although that of Geneva, however popular it might be in certain quarters North of the Border, was not something which the Elizabethan settlement could permit. Thus, in 1562, when an attempt had been made to use the Geneva service Book at Bethersden in Kent, the incumbent, John Robson, protested that;

"Yt was not lawfull for us to use the servyce used at Geneva. Further he sayd; We ought noo more to followj^'yn Geneva churche

than the Rorayshe churche and^tbe Quene raaye brings in the Geremonys used in Moys (i.e. Moses) Lawe and maye abolyshe them at her pleasure”.2

This contained the apotheosis of the religious settlement at that time, for the Elizabethan church was never interided to be a blend of Rome and Geneva. It

1) Quoted by D. E. Nelson, Ph.D. Thesis 1939, New College, Edinburgh, Life and Works of Henry Smith, p. 47 and

reference.

2) Cath* Lib. Cant. ms. X.1.2. f. 34, Archdeacon’s

Visitation, deaneries of Vfestbury, Charing and Canterbury, comporta, 1560-81.

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was an attempt to conserve individual liberty from the oligarchy at Rome and yet at the çame time it was en- deavoured to preserve the corporal life of the church from the individualism of Protestant and Sectary alike, A few years later Richard Hooker took up his pen for that very purpose and shewed how the Supremacy in Eng­

land was 'justifiable by proving the identity of church and state.

But the extremists either could not, or would not see this, so that between 1570 and 1590 the records in the Archbishop’s diocese are full of those ministers

who will not use the cross in baptism, wear the surplice^

from the

(j

brief entries in the ecclesiastical court books extant it seems that the penalties exacted were very slight

indeed, whilst few were despatched by the Archdeacon up­ on his Visitation to the High Commissioners for sentence. Thus, in 1565, Anthony Cariar, a Marian exile at Geneva, was presented because "he hath sayed servyce wthout sur- plesse, and that he hath mynistred the coion (i.e. Com?^- munion) in loofe breads", whereupon he was ordered to

1

appear before the court again at Bekesbourne, What

1) Cath, Lib. Cant. ms. x.1.6. Archdeacon’s court comporta, folios unnumbered. May 23rd 1565.

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happened to him there, if anything, is not known, but in April 1569 he was still, in the same living and on this occasion was presented for refusing to bury the dead, and for performing the marriage service without his surplice. He Refused to answer the charges at that time, and no effort appears to have been made to force him to do soy so that on December 1st 1569 his case was referred to the Bishop Suffragan of Dover,

where again the result of the proceedings has been lost It is likely, however, that his sentence would have been light, since the bishop was Richard Rogers, once an

exile in Frankfurt, It is difficult to understand why an incumbent in a parish near Maidstone should be des-

i ' patched for satisfaction to the Bishop of Dover, unless | ^

it was that the authorities hoped that Rogers might

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