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oblique tribute to the dead Protector's desire for a wellpaid ministry; and just when expropriated bishops and deans were crowding the portals of Whitehall, Charles was giving orders which heralded a golden age for vicars and curates. By October the situation was much clearer for King and clergy: the Act of Indemnity (rather than Oblivion) had been passed in August; an Act to restore to their livings hundreds of ejected Anglicans became law in September; preparations were well afoot to try the more intransigent regicides. On 7 October Charles felt bold enough to issue a commission to search into all those 'pretended' sales and purchases of church lands in the late times (similar to that purchase of the manor of Gogarth, parcel of the possessions of the Bishop of Bangor, by Col. John Jones'); all records of such transactions had to be brought in; and until the rights and wrongs of these arrangements were unravelled, Churchmen were not to grant any new or concurrent leases, 'whereby the purchasers' present interest or possession may be hurt or disturbed', of lands which in the old days were theirs as of right. No doubt the manor of Meliden would fall to be discussed by this commission: Col. Twisleton would be asked to explain his part in purchasing the manor in 1650, and to explain also on what ground he avoided the lease of it granted to William Mostyn in 1639 (granted two years before the avoiding limit of 1 December, 1641, set up by the Puritan committees). Whatever he had to say must have been of little avail; soon afterwards the manor was once more in the hands of its ancient possessors. About the same time the King sent a letter to the Arch

1 Rawlinson MS. B. 239, p. 50, No. 546. The price paid was £322. 2 Cardwell: Docty. Annals, ii, Doct. CXLVIII, pp. 225-233. Something of the kind must have been in the minds of the Convention about two months before (Eng. Hist. Rev., xxii, 59, nn. 39, 40),

bishop of Canterbury in which he spoke up for the old tenants of expiring leases (as luck would have it, scores of Anglican year-leases made before the wars were now falling in), and hoped they would have the first option for renewal (as it happened, these old tenants were invariably strong Anglicans). Further, until new bishops were definitely consecrated and new chapters constituted, their ancient lands and revenues for the nonce fell into the King's hands, more especially when the owners or lessors had died during the interregnum: so numerous were these interests that a special Committee of the Commons was appointed to advise on their disposal. Evan Edwards of Rhual hurried up to London to plead the King's letter on options before this Committee and get a further lease of the prebendal lands of Llannefydd.'

Busy the days and many the problems of this feverish time. Let us add yet another. The Act for restoring ejected Anglicans (12 Chas. II, c. 17) was also an Act for confirming on certain conditions Puritan ministers in their present places. Clause xiii stated that leases made by such confirmed ministers, if made before 25 December 1659, were to stand good. Supposing one of these ministers, though confirmed by the Act of 1660, refused to conform to the Act of Uniformity in 1662, would the leases made before the end of 1659 still have remained good? Legally, yes. But I have not hitherto come across a case bearing on the point.❜

1 Exch. Bills. & Ans., Denbigh, No. 1, Mich., 13 Chas. II. Evan Edwards v. William Williams and others. The depositions of the plaintiff and defendants in this case are of real historical importance. It is not always remembered that Evan Edwards was for years Baron of the Exchequer at Chester.

2 Statutes at Large (1734), ii, 507.

3 In the term of Hilary, 16 & 17 Chas. II, a case under this Act of 1660 came up for decision at the King's Bench (1 Levinz, 156-157; 1

Stabilisation came with 1661, the year which saw the crushing of Venner's outbreak, the failure of the Savoy Conference, the elections to the Cavalier Parliament. The time had passed for nicely-balanced sentences and counsels of restraint. The Anglican order was reinvested with its full panoply of privileges. Leases and renewals of leases became common. As already mentioned, the Mostyns at once sought the corroboration of their old lease from the new prebendary of Meliden (made necessary by the Twisleton intermission). Evan Edwards of Rhual was too precipitate, stooped to something like sharp practice, and saw the Llannefydd interest conferred on the son of an Anglican minister who had sufferred badly in the late times. The new Bishop of St. Asaph, the Dr. George Griffith who was consecrated in October 1660, had so little respect for the Act of Oblivion and so great a desire to recover every penny of the Llanasa profits' since the feast of the Annunciation in that year that he is found tilting in the Exchequer lists against Edward Mostyn of Talacre, who had been leased or assigned these profits in the latter years of the Puritan dispensation. It is down south, however, over the prebend of Llanfynydd (in the collegiate church of Brecon) that we get one of the liveliest pictures of Restoration materialism. In 1660 the prebend was conferred upon the Dr. William Creed who shortly afterwards became Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. On 22 May, 1663, he leased for 21 years the profits of the prebend to two learned friends of his in trust to the use Keble, 844). But that case only concerned the matters of presentment, induction, etc., and not leases at all. Levinz has reported the terms of the Act in a very slovenly manner. He might well have admitted (as Justice Twysden actually did) that he had never read it.

1 It should be stated that they had been for a long time part and parcel of the temporalities of the Bishopric.

2 Exch, Bills & Ans., Flint, No. 2, Trinity, 15 Chas. II.

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of the wife and children of Dr. Creed', a transaction not altogether dissimilar to that which had once brought down the wrath of Charles I upon the head of a Bishop of St. David's. The financial arrangements which followed the Doctor's death in the same year, the selling of the remainder interest to William Gwynn of Taliaris for £800, the two stipulated payments of £400, the £20 abatement allowed him for the expense of bringing the money to Oxford, the payment of the first £20 and the refusal of the secondthese bred such an evil temper that a quarrel over Church lands among loyal and learned Churchmen had to be settled by the Court of Exchequer.'

Whether in June 1660 the King was really serious in outlining his policy of augmenting by lease the salaries of the lower clergy at the expense of the higher is a question particularly difficult to answer. The clergy themselves. evidently thought no: for only a faint response was made to the King's declaration. Seventeen years were to pass before the declaration of 1660 was given statutory force by 29 Chas. II, c. 8,2 and even that statute did nothing more than confirm and perpetuate the arrangements that had been made voluntarily by the parties concerned. Of Archbishop Sancroft's feelings on the point there can be no doubt-in 1680 he was addressing an encyclical to his clergy expressing his grief and fear that so pious a duty had been so perfunctorily carried out. The loaves and fishes of the Restoration were far too acceptable for

3

1 Exch. Bills & Ans., Carmarthen, No. 14, Mich., 19 Chas. II; also No. 3, Mich., 20 Chas. II. It was to be regretted that Gwynn of Taliaris had lost his copy of the bargain about abatement.

2 Statutes at Large (pub. 1734), ii, 793-794.

3 Cardwell: Docty. Annals, ii, Doct. CLVIII, 294-295. What in this respect had been done in Wales can to some extent be deduced from returns made by the Bishops in 1670 (Tanner MS, 146, ff. 2, 3, 126, 127, 133-133', 159),

the well-placed clergy to remember the lot of their poorer brethren. The golden age for curates had not dawned yet. By Bishop Lloyd's time (he came to St. Asaph in 1680) the then curate of Meliden had come down to the proverbial rate of £10 a year.'

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Early in July 1668, almost half-way between the letter of 1660 and the Act of 1677, at a time when men's consciences were particularly easy throughout the land, Sir Roger Mostyn approached the sinecure rector of Whitford to grant him a lease of the rectorial profits for three lives at a reserved rent of £40 per annum de claro'. It was readily granted, and as readily confirmed by Dr. Henry Glemham, by Divine Providence Lord Bishop of St. Asaph. There was not the faintest suggestion that any of them saw well to remember the vicar and raise his endowment of £40 to £100 or even to £80. Nor was there the slightest effort to raise the reserved rent from the sum at which it stood in a previous lease. Statutes of Elizabeth and injunctions of Charles II were equally disregarded.

Would the Dean and Chapter not lift their voices. against such proceedings ?

(ii) DRAMATIS PERSONE.

Let it be said quite boldly that Sir Roger Mostyn of Mostyn had deserved well of Church and King. In character he was a gentleman of good parts and mettle', a daring swashbuckler much of a kin to Sir John Owen of Clenennau; in proportion to his wealth, he spent almost as much money in the service of Charles I as the Catholic lords of Raglan in the south. He proved a true friend of

1 Archden. D. R. Thomas: Hist. Dioc. St. Asaph, new ed., i, 406. 2 For copies of his portrait at Gloddaeth and of his dashing autograph signature, and for an account of the moneys spent by him in the wars, see Journal of the Flintshire Hist, Soc. (1916-1917), pp. 84, 88, 89.

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