Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

There was in Bridestowe another family ancient and well estated, the Ebsworthys, of Ebsworthy, and the Bidlakes and Ebsworthys were too near neighbours to be good friends. In fact, there was an hereditary feud between them. One of the Ebsworthys had married a daughter of Gilbert Germyn, the rector. This was quite enough for the Bidlakes to look with an evil eye on the parson. William Bidlake and Agnes his wife drew up charges against the parson in 1613.

But before coming to the complaints of 1613, we must see what sort of man this Gilbert Germyn was. The convulsions and changes in religion that had succeeded each other in waves since the year 1531 had unsettled men’s minds; with the exception of fanatics on one side or the other—the staunch adherents to the Papacy, and the thorough-going Puritans—dead apathy had settled down on the majority with regard to religion: they knew not what to believe and how worship was to be conducted, and they did not much care. Having been taught to abhor the distinctive errors of the Church of Rome, they had not been instructed in the distinctive errors of the Church of England that they were required to embrace. The clergy to fill the vacant benefices were ignorant and brutish. They had no religious convictions and no culture. So long as they had pliant consciences, Elizabeth was content. In many dioceses in England, a third of the parishes were left without a pastor, resident or non-resident. In 1561 there were in the Archdeaconry of Norfolk a hundred and eighty parishes, in the Archdeaconry of Suffolk a hundred and thirty parishes in this condition. Cobblers and tailors occupied the pulpits, where there were no incumbents. “The Bishops,” said Cecil, “had no credit either for learning, good living or hospitality. The Bishops ... were generally covetous, and were rather despised than reverenced or beloved.” The Archbishop of York was convicted of adultery with the wife of an innkeeper at Doncaster. Other prelates bestowed ordination “on men of lewd life and corrupt behaviour.” And a good many of them sold the livings in their gift to the highest bidder.

Gilbert Germyn was the son of an apothecary in Exeter. At the time, Bridestowe cum Sourton, one of the best livings in the gift of the Bishop, was held by Chancellor Marston. The apothecary, it is stated, bribed the Chancellor to resign, with a present of £100, and then negotiated with the Bishop—at what price is not known—to present his son to the united benefices.

When so many livings were without incumbents, all sorts of unscrupulous men, of a low class, rushed into Orders, without university education, indeed without any education at all, so as to secure a living in which they could draw the tithe and farm the glebe, without a thought as to their religious responsibilities.

Such a man Gilbert Germyn seems to have been. In 1582 articles of misdemeanours were drawn up against him by Henry Bidlake and some of the parishioners, but as far as can be learnt without effect. The Bishop had presented him, for reasons best known to himself, and was indisposed to take cognizance of his conduct.

It is worth while looking at some of the charges brought against a man whom the Bishop, John Woolton, delighted to honour.

He was complained of for his grasping character. Although the glebe comprised a manor of eight or nine tenements, yet he did not rest till he got into his own hands “by dyvers meannes three of the best and most fruitfull tenements in the two parishes.”

That, in addition to being rector of Bridestowe and Sourton, he was vicar of another parish in Cornwall.

That he was litigious, citing his tenants and the tithe payers even for a halfpenny.

That he refused at Easter to give the Holy Communion to a bedridden woman, eighty years old, named Jane Adams, till she paid him a penny for his trouble.