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 A HISTORY OF RUTLAND type or another : only Ryhall, Clipsham, and the chapel of Belton were quite uncared for. Horn and Martinsthorpe were sinecures, without church or congregation ; Pickworth had neither minister nor church ; the chapel of Essendine, which had once been served from Ryhall, had no curate but ' such as they hire.' The commissioners who drew up the report imply that the poorer clergy had suffered a good deal of inconvenience from the necessity of proving their titles to the satisfaction of Parliament ; they had been compelled to travel up to London to obtain licences for gathering in their tithes and rent, ' to the wasting of their small portions and the neglect of their cures ' : this was 'humbly presented as a grievance to be redressed.'^* Such disconnected facts as these are all we have to show the course of events in this county during the period of the Civil War. Some efforts were made here as elsewhere to provide better stipends for the clergy in the poorer parishes. In 1658 the inhabitants of Oakham complained that theirs was the largest congregation in the county, ' a great door of hope,' and yet their spiritual needs were not at all adequately provided for. In answer to their petition ^^90 was set apart for the maintenance of their vicar, from the sequestered estates of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster." Augmentations were also granted to the chaplains of Egleton, Brooke, and Caldecott, and the vicar of Ketton.^* In 1 660 three or four of the ejected clergy petitioned for restoration," but Jeremy Taylor was not among them he does not seem to have returned to Uppingham after 1642. Another celebrated Royalist, Peter Gunning, became rector of Cottesmore, and held it for nine years till he was made Bishop of Chichester : ™ but as he held other benefices at the same time, he probably knew little of this county. Calamy gives the names of four ministers who were unable to accept the discipline of the Church in 1662, and resigned their livings in consequence :*' but of these two were only curates of parochial chapels, and another, Thomas Perkins of Burley, was displaced before 1 1 December 1660, and never had to stand the test.*^ Gabriel Major, rector of Preston, was therefore the only minister who really lost his benefice under the ' Bartholomew Act.' Under the Declaration of Indulgence of 1672 eleven licences were granted in this county for religious meetings not connected with the Estab- lished Church : three of them were Congregational, and the rest Presby- terian.*' The Quakers did not make themselves conspicuous here either by their actions or their sufferings.'* A visitation of 1681 *^ shows that the church fabrics had fared on the whole no better during the Interregnum than in the preceding period. Orders to whitewash, clear away rubbish, repair defects in seats, walls and windows, '« Lamb. Lib. Pari. Surv. vii. " Cal. S.P. Dom. 1658-9, p. 46. " Lamb. Lib. Pari. Augment, vol. 994, fol. 122. " Hilt. MSS. Com. Re/>. vii, App. 101, 107. *" Wood, J then. Oxon. iv, 142. " Calamy, Nonconformists^ Mem. iii, 133-8. Benjamin King of Oakham merely resigned to the lawful incumbent. " His name is found in the Parliamentary Survey of 1650, but it is probable that his title was very doubtful. The Rev. E. A. Irons notes that his successor was instituted 1 1 December 1660 ; and also that the church was in Burley Park. The influence of the Duke of Buckingham was not likely to be used to obtain the institution or confirmation of any Parliamentary nominee. " Cal. S.P. Dom. 1672-3 Pref p. Iv. " Besse's Sufferings have been searched in vain. " This visitation is also described in notes taken by the Rev. E. A. Irons from the Episcopal Registers. 156