r purgacion, and therefore
convicted of the crime detected." _Barnes' Eccles. Proc_., 126.

[190] A most important piece of evidence--because coming from such a
source--is Whitgift's circular and (later) his address to his bishops,
already alluded to (note 185) given in Strype's life of him. Whitgift
mentions the frequent keeping of officials' or commissaries' courts
and the multitude of apparitors serving under them, so that "the
subject was almost vexed weekly with attendance on their several
courts." He adds that "what with Churchwardens' continual attendance
in these courts, which in many places came to more than was by a whole
parish for any one cessment made to her Majesty, the poor men who were
chosen Church wardens ... were in their estates hindered greatly in
leaving their day labor for attendance there." These and like
complaints, the metropolitan continued, were daily brought to him
"with a general exclamation against Commissaries' and Officials'
courts." In prophetic language he warned his suffragans that if they
were not more zealous for reform all their courts might be swept away.
We have further the unceasing complaints and the numberless petitions
that were presented in every Elizabethan parliament from 1572 onwards.
Some of these are given in Strype, _Annals_, etc., some in his
_Whitgift_. Mr. Prothero has conveniently gathered some, with
references to others, in his _Statutes and Constitutional Documents_
(1st ed.), pp. 209, 210, 215 and 221. See also Heywood Townshend, 110,
_et passim_; D'Ewes, 302, _et passim_, and the canons and injunctions
of the time. Peculiars were doubtless most subject to abuses, as being
often exempt from the oversight and corrective discipline of the
diocesan. Offenders sometimes fled to these for protection. See
Strype, _Ann_., iii, Pt. ii, 211-12 (Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield
complaining in 1582 of peculiars, some of which belonged to laymen, as
holders of abbey lands, in the matter of recusants). Cf. Blomefield,
_Hist. of Norfolk_, iii, 557. _Camden Miscellany_, ix (1895), 41
(Letters from bishops to Privy Council in 1564. Recusants flying to
exempt places). On the scandalous neglect of duty of some holders of
peculiars see _Dean of York's Visit_., 199, 201 ff., 324, _et passim_.
See also Mr. W.E.B. Whittaker's article "_On Peculiars with special
reference to the Peculiar of Hawarden_," in _Archit. Arch. and Hist.
Soc. for Chester and N. Wales_, n.s. xi (1905), 66 ff.