28 May 1574: William Ireland fails to become Rector of Harthill (South Yorkshire) because of his abysmal ignorance
John Strype. 1821. The History of the Life and Acts of the Most Reverend Father in God, Edmund Grindal, Vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Get it:
.Unedited excerpt
If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.
[Archbishop Grindal] shewed his faithfulness iņ his inspection over his church, by taking what care he could that none but men of some ability and learning might be admitted to the cure of souls. And for this purpose he provided that such as came for institution to any living should be first well examined; and such as were found unlearned he rejected, notwithstanding their presentations. One instance of this happened this year, which I shall mention the rather, to observe what gross ignorance sometimes such as pretended to serve God in his Church were in these times guilty of. One William Ireland was presented to the Rectory of Harthil; who coming to the Archbishop was examined by the Archbishop’s Chaplain. In his presentation were these words, vestri humiles et obedientes; which the Chaplain required him to construe, to understand his ability in Latin. But he expounded them, your humbleness and obedience. The Chaplain asked him again, Who brought up the people of Israel out of Egypt? he answered, King Saul. And being asked, who was first circumcised, he could not answer. Wherefore the Archbishop rejected him. And one Hugh Casson was presented to, and obtained the said benefice of Harthil, and lived to the year 1624. And so was Rector there fifty years.
Comment
Comment
The Latin original provides the date as well as a couple more quiz questions (Purvis 1948). Elizabeth I thought Grindal dangerously keen, and she and clerics like William Irlande are satirised by Edmund Spenser in Mother Hubberds Tale (Spenser 1908/2010):
For, read he could not Evidence, nor Will,
Ne tell a written Word, ne write a Letter,
Ne make one Tittle worse, ne make one better:
Of such deep Learning little had he need,
Ne yet of Latin, ne of Greek, that breed
Doubts mongst Divines, and difference of Texts,
From whence arise diversity of Sects,
And hateful Heresies of God abhor’d:
But this good Sir did follow the plain Word,
Ne medled with their Controversies vain,
All his care was, his Service well to fain,
And to read Homelies on Holy-days,
When that was done, he might attend his Plays;
And:
‘To feede mens soules,’ quoth he, ‘is not in man:
For they must feed themselves, doo what we can.
We are but charg’d to lay the meate before:
Eate they that list, we need to doo no more.
But God it is that feedes them with his grace,
The bread of life powr’d downe from heavenly place.
Therefore said he, that with the budding rod
Did rule the Jewes, All shalbe taught of God.
That same hath Jesus Christ now to him raught,
By whom the flock is rightly fed and taught:
He is the shepheard, and the priest is hee;
We but his shepheard swaines ordain’d to bee.
"The Diocese of Dork" is my all-time no. 1 Google Books metadata fail pic.twitter.com/luekAEfdlm
— SingingOrganGrinder (@elorganillero) July 12, 2021
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Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.
- All Hallows’ Church, Harthill (1) W/G ·
- Archbishop of York (18) W/G ·
- Biblical canon (2) W/G ·
- Calvinism (8) W/G ·
- Church of England (94) W/G ·
- Elizabeth I (1533-1603) (15), ruled 1558-1603, established an English Protestant church W/G ·
- Grindal, Edmund (ca. 1519-1583) (5), Calvinist Puritan, refugee from Mary, then under Elizabeth I successively Bishop of London, Archbishop of York, Archbishop of Canterbury W/G ·
- Harthill, South Yorkshire (1) W/G ·
- Mother Hubberd’s Tale (1) W/G ·
- Poetry (75) W/G ·
- Purvis, John Stanley (1890-1968) (3), Bridlington-born Church of England cleric and historian, editor of a modern English version of the York Cycle of mystery plays W/G ·
- Rotherham (21) W/G ·
- South Yorkshire (10) W/G ·
- Spenser, Edmund (1552/1553-1599) (2), poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I W/G ·
- William Ponsonby (publisher) (1) W/G ·
Comment
Comment
The Latin original provides the date as well as a couple more quiz questions (Purvis 1948). Elizabeth I thought Grindal dangerously keen, and she and clerics like William Irlande are satirised by Edmund Spenser in Mother Hubberds Tale (Spenser 1908/2010):
For, read he could not Evidence, nor Will,
Ne tell a written Word, ne write a Letter,
Ne make one Tittle worse, ne make one better:
Of such deep Learning little had he need,
Ne yet of Latin, ne of Greek, that breed
Doubts mongst Divines, and difference of Texts,
From whence arise diversity of Sects,
And hateful Heresies of God abhor’d:
But this good Sir did follow the plain Word,
Ne medled with their Controversies vain,
All his care was, his Service well to fain,
And to read Homelies on Holy-days,
When that was done, he might attend his Plays;
And:
‘To feede mens soules,’ quoth he, ‘is not in man:
For they must feed themselves, doo what we can.
We are but charg’d to lay the meate before:
Eate they that list, we need to doo no more.
But God it is that feedes them with his grace,
The bread of life powr’d downe from heavenly place.
Therefore said he, that with the budding rod
Did rule the Jewes, All shalbe taught of God.
That same hath Jesus Christ now to him raught,
By whom the flock is rightly fed and taught:
He is the shepheard, and the priest is hee;
We but his shepheard swaines ordain’d to bee.
"The Diocese of Dork" is my all-time no. 1 Google Books metadata fail pic.twitter.com/luekAEfdlm
— SingingOrganGrinder (@elorganillero) July 12, 2021
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Similar
29 August 1570: On arriving in Yorkshire, Archbishop Grindal declares war on bloody-minded folk-Catholicism
26 December 1570: Edmund Grindal, Puritan archbishop of York, orders the removal of rood-lofts (and their superstitious images), and the erection of pulpits
15 March 1586: Offered a jury acquittal, Margaret Clitherow of York, concealer of priests, chooses martyrdom and is crushed under her own front door
Comment
Comment
The first murder was on 23 April 1605. The execution date was 5 August (Lake 1975). It sounds like the author attended the village school at Calverley, like the civil engineer Thomas Rhodes, also from Apperley Bridge, rather than Woodhouse Grove School, also about a mile from Apperley Bridge. I take the apparition to have been the perhaps prematurely aged Rev. Samuel Redhead, born 1778, appointed to Calverley in 1822, renovated its church in 1844, died 1845 (Favell 1846).
Here’s part of A Yorkshire Tragedy, a dramatisation by Thomas Middleton previously attributed to Shakespeare:
HUSBAND.
Oh thou confused man! thy pleasant sins have undone thee, thy damnation has beggerd thee! That heaven should say we must not sin, and yet made women! gives our senses way to find pleasure, which being found confounds us. Why should we know those things so much misuse us?—oh, would virtue had been forbidden! we should then have proved all virtuous, for tis our blood to love that were forbidden. Had not drunkenness been forbidden, what man would have been fool to a beast, and Zany to a swine, to show tricks in the mire? what is there in three dice to make a man draw thrice three thousand acres into the compass of a round little table, and with the gentleman’s palsy in the hand shake out his posterity thieves or beggars? Tis done! I ha dont, yfaith: terrible, horrible misery.— How well was I left! very well, very well. My lands shewed like a full moon about me, but now the moon’s ith last quarter, waning, waning: And I am mad to think that moon was mine; Mine and my fathers, and my forefathers—generations, generations: down goes the house of us, down, down it sinks. Now is the name a beggar, begs in me! that name, which hundreds of years has made this shire famous, in me, and my posterity, runs out. In my seed five are made miserable besides my self: my riot is now my brother’s jailer, my wife’s sighing, my three boys’ penury, and mine own confusion.
[Tears his hair.]
Why sit my hairs upon my cursed head?
Will not this poison scatter them? oh my brother’s
In execution among devils that
Stretch him and make him give. And I in want,
Not able for to live, nor to redeem him.
Divines and dying men may talk of hell,
But in my heart her several torments dwell.
Slavery and misery! Who in this case
Would not take up money upon his soul,
Pawn his salvation, live at interest?
I, that did ever in abundance dwell,
For me to want, exceeds the throws of hell.
[Enter his little son with a top and a scourge.]
SON. What ails you father? are you not well? I cannot scourge my top as long as you stand so: you take up all the room with your wide legs. Puh, you cannot make me afeared with this; I fear no vizards, nor bugbears.
[Husband takes up the child by the skirts of his long coat in one hand and draws his dagger with the other.]
HUSBAND.
Up, sir, for here thou hast no inheritance left.
SON.
Oh, what will you do, father? I am your white boy.
HUSBAND.
Thou shalt be my red boy: take that.
[Strikes him.]
SON.
Oh, you hurt me, father.
HUSBAND.
My eldest beggar! thou shalt not live to ask an usurer bread, to cry at a great man’s gate, or follow, good your honour, by a couch; no, nor your brother; tis charity to brain you.
SON.
How shall I learn now my head’s broke?
HUSBAND.
Bleed, bleed rather than beg, beg!
[Stabs him.]
Be not thy name’s disgrace:
Spurn thou thy fortunes first if they be base:
Come view thy second brother.—Fates,
My children’s blood
Shall spin into your faces, you shall see
How confidently we scorn beggary!
[Exit with his son.]
(Middleton 1608)
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