SUPPLEMENT.

ARTICLES to be inquired of in the visitation of the diocese of London by the Reverend Father in God Nicholas, Bishop of London, in the fourth year of our sovereign Lord King Edward the Sixth, by the grace of God, King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, and in earth of the Church of England, and also of Ireland, the supreme head, next and immediately under our Saviour Christ1.

Reprinted from SPARROW's Collections.

I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and dead at his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. St Paul 2 Tim. iv. 1, 2.

WHETHER your curates and ministers be of that conversation of living, that worthily they can be reprehended of no

man.

[There was nothing else of moment done this year (1550) in relation to the church, save the visitation made of the diocese of London by Ridley, their new bishop. But the exact time of it is not set down in the register. It was, according to King Edward's journal, some time before the 28th of June; for he writes that on that day Sir John Yates, the high sheriff of Essex, was sent down with letters to see the bishop of London's injunctions performed, which touched the plucking down of superaltaries, altars, and such like ceremonies and abuses; so that the visitation must have been about the beginning of June. Burnet, Hist. Reform. Vol. 11. p. 325, part 2, p. 24. See also Strype Memor. Vol. II. part 1, p. 355; also Collier, Eccles. Hist. Vol. 11. p. 304, and Cardwell's Documentary Annals, Vol. I. p. 77. ED.]

34

[RIDLEY.]

[SUPPLEMENT.]

"a hinderer.

Whether your curates and ministers do haunt and resort to taverns or alehouses, otherwise than for their honest necessity, there to drink and riot, or to play at unlawful games.

Whether your ministers be common brawlers, sowers of discord rather than charity among their parishioners, hawkers, hunters, or spending their time idly, or coming to their benefice by simony.

Whether your ministers or any other persons have committed adultery, fornication, incest, bawdry, or to be vehemently suspected of the same, common drunkards, scolds, or be common swearers and blasphemers of God's holy name.

Whether your parsons and vicars do maintain their houses and chancels in sufficient reparation: or if their houses be in decay, whether they bestow yearly the fifth part of the fruits of the benefice, until the same be repaired.

Whether your parsons and vicars, absent from their benefice, do leave their cure to an able minister. And if he may dispend yearly £xx., or above, in this deanery or elsewhere, whether he doth distribute every year among his poor parishioners there, at the least, the fortieth part of the fruits of the same. And likewise spending yearly £c., whether he doth find one scholar at either of the Universities, or some grammar school, and so for every other hundred pound one scholar.

Whether every dean, archdeacon, and prebendary, being priest, doth personally, by himself, preach twice every year at the least, either where he is entitled, or where he hath jurisdiction, or in some place united or appropriate to the same.

Whether your minister, having licence thereunto, doth use to preach; or, not licensed, doth diligently procure other to preach that are licensed: or whether he refuseth those offering themselves that are licensed; or absenteth himself, or causeth other to be away from the sermon, or else admitteth any to preach that are not licensed.

Whether any, by preaching, writing, word or deed, hath or doth maintain the usurped power of the bishop of Rome. Whether any be a letter of the word of God to be preached or read in the English tongue.

Whether any do preach, declare, or speak anything in derogation of the book of Common Prayer, or anything therein contained, or any part thereof.

Whether any do preach and defend, that private persons may make insurrection, stir sedition, or compel men to give them their goods.

Whether the curate doth admit any to the communion before he be confirmed, or any that ken not the Pater Noster, the Articles of the Faith, and Ten Commandments in English.

Whether curates do minister the communion for money, or use to have trentals of communions.

Whether any of the Anabaptists' sect, or other, use notoriously any unlawful or private conventicles, wherein they do use doctrines or administration of sacraments, separating themselves from the rest of the parish.

Whether there be any that privately, in their private house, have their masses contrary to the form and order of the book of communion.

Whether any minister doth refuse to use the common prayers, or minister sacraments in that order and form as is set forth in the book of common prayer.

Whether baptism be ministered (out of necessity) in any other time than on the Sunday or holy-day, or in another tongue than English.

Whether any speaketh against baptism of infants.

Whether any be married within degrees prohibited by God's law, or separate without cause lawful, or is married without banns thrice first asked three several holy-days or Sundays openly in the church at service time.

Whether any curate doth marry them of other parishes, without their curate's license, and certificate from him of the banns thrice solemnly asked.

Whether any saith, that the wickedness of the minister taketh away the effect of Christ's sacraments.

Whether any saith, that Christian men cannot be allowed to repentance if they sin voluntarily after baptism.

Whether your curates be ready to minister the sacraments, visit the sick, and bury the dead being brought to the church.

Whether any minister useth wilfully and obstinately any other rite, ceremony, order, form, or manner of communion,

abrogated.

matins, or even-song, ministration of sacraments, or open prayers, than is set forth in the book of common prayer.

Whether your curate, once in six weeks at the least, upon some Sunday or holy-day, before even-song, do openly in the church instruct and examine children, not confirmed, in some part of the catechism; and whether parents and masters do send them thither upon warning given by the minister.

Whether any useth to keep abrogate holy-days or private holy-days, as bakers, shoemakers, brewers, smiths, and such other.

Whether any useth to hallow water, bread, salt, bells, or candles upon Candlemas day, ashes on Ash Wednesday, palms on Palm Sunday, the font on Easter-even, fire on Paschal, or whether there was any sepulchre on Good Friday.

Whether the water in the font be changed every month once, and then any other prayers said than is in the book of common prayer appointed.

Whether there be any images in your church, tabernacles, shrines, or coverings of shrines, candles, or trindles of wax, or feigned miracles in your churches or private houses.

Whether your church be kept in due and lawful reparation, and whether there be a comely pulpit set up in the same, and likewise a coffer for alms for the poor, called the poor man's box or chest.

Whether any legacies given to the poor, amending highways, or marrying poor maids, be undistributed, and by whom.

Letter from Bishop RIDLEY to Sir WILLIAM CECIL.

State Paper Office-Domestic.

Printed in Tytler's Letters illustrative of the Reigns of Edward VI and
Mary, Vol. 11. in fine.

16th Sept. 1551.

GRACE and health.-Your preface so prettily mingled with sorrow and gladness, and the sorrowful sight that you had of the bottom of your purse, and your poor lame house, hath so affected and filled me with pity and compassion, that al