L.
(Page 176.)
ASSIGNMENT OF GOODS AND
CHATTELS AT APLEY.
The following is a copy of the assignment of the goods and chattels of Apley, by the Parliamentary Sequestrators, to Roger Rowley, Esq., of Rowley, in the Parish of Worfield. The original document is in the possession of T. C. Whitmore, Esq., of Apley, who kindly furnished me with this transcript.
“Wee, John Broome, Solicitor for Sequestrators in the County of Salop, John Llewellyn, Richard Hawkshead, and Thomas Achelley, Agents for Sequestʳˢ, in the said County, According to an order of the Committee of Parliamt. for the said County, requireing us, amongst others, to sell and dispose of the personall estate of Sʳ William Whitmore of Apley, in the said County, Knight, for and to the use of the state, Have and in consyderacion of the some of five hundred eighty three pounds 3ˢ & 2ᵈ, payed and secured to be payed unto us for the use of the state, by Roger Rowley, of Rowley, in the said County, Esquire, sould and
And by these presents doe sell and deliver unto the said Roger Rowley, all the goods, chattels and personal estate of the said Sʳ Willᵐ Whitmore in the severall Inventoryes hereunto annexed,—attested under our hand To have and to hould to him the said Roger Rowley, his executors, administrators & assigns for ever. In witnes whereof wee have hereunto putt our hands and seales the XXIII day of February, Anno Dmⁿⁱ 1647.
JOHN BROME,
JOHN LLEWELLEN,
RICH. HAWKSHED,
THO: ACHELLEY.
Sealed & delivered in the presence of
Walt: Acton,
George Stringer,
Richard Evans,
Jeffry Blackshaw.”
M.
(Page 178.)
THE SUFFERINGS OF THE CLERGY
DURING THE COMMONWEALTH.
It is very important that the members of the Church of England, and others, should receive some correct information on the subject of religious persecution, or persecution for conscience sake; for a very great mistake on the subject very commonly prevails—namely, that the Dissenters have always been the suffering party, and the Church the offending party, in this matter. At a time, indeed, when the duty of toleration was little understood, some of the rulers of the Church of England, as well as of the government of the day, did exercise the most unjustifiable severity against those who ventured to separate from the established religion. But the instances of this have been so much insisted on, and have been so frequently made the subject of popular declamation, that many have been led to imagine that the Church of England has, again and again, been chargeable with the guilt of cruelly persecuting her opponents, while the opponents have been guiltless of any such wrong against her. But the impression is a most erroneous one; for it may be asserted, without the fear of contradiction, that the sufferings which the clergy endured in the short space of three years during the Commonwealth, at the hands of those who had separated from her, were in severity and extent greater than the whole amount of suffering which she may have been the instrument of inflicting on separatists for the hundred years previous.[84]