would seem to have been meant for Peter Peto, who had been named
after Campeggio’s death. When he did not take it Mary named Francis
Mallet, but owing to the dispute of Mary and cardinal Pole with pope
Paul IV, the vacancy was never filled, and thus was a prize awaiting
someone upon Elizabeth’s accession.
Although Salisbury Diocese contained some Lollards, and while the
evidence of a declining medieval piety exists,^8 there is no reason to think
that it was a haven of Protestantism at any time before Jewel arrived.
Lollardy flourished along the trade routes from London through
Oxfordshire and into the West Country, and there were 16 heresy trials
in the diocese throughout the fifteenth century. In 1431 Lollards posted
a number of handbills and broadsheets during Jack Sharp’s rising, and a
priest from Westbury was condemned and burned for heresy.^9 Evidence
abounds more for the preservation of traditional religion than not, and
Andrew Brown points out that ‘ultimately, the acceptance of reform may
tell us more about the strength of royal power than the popularity of
either faith’.^10 While uprisings did not occur against either Henry’s or
Edward’s reforms, there is the clear evidence that people were more than
slow in implementing them.^11 Beyond the confrontations between
Shaxton and the town listed above, which were clearly not sparked
merely by Shaxton’s appeal to the bishop’s liberties and privileges, the
town council of Salisbury, upon the death of Edward, quickly returned
to the observing of obits and the establishment of chantries. The
cathedral chapter also had elements that resisted Jewel. As already
noted, among the canons of the cathedral was Thomas Harding.
Harding has competition among the Salisbury canons for being the most
noted for his conservatism. Edmund Powell, a resident canon, lived in
Hemingsby house within the Close of the Cathedral. A fellow of Oriel
College, Oxford, the university commended him to Henry VIII as a
glory to the university when in 1523 he took up the pen against Luther
in his Propugnaculum summi sacerdotij euangelici, ac septenarij
sacramentorum, editum per uirum eruditum, sacrarumq[ue] literaru[m]
professorem Edoardu[m] Pouelum, aduersus Martinu[m] Lutherum
fratrem famosum et VViclesistam insignem.^12 His fall from grace began
in 1525 when he became one of the councillors for Catherine of Aragon
in her divorce proceedings, coming out with his Tractatus de non
LIFE AS A BISHOP IN SALISBURY 207
(^8) Andrew Brown, Popular Piety in Late Medieval England. The Diocese of Salisbury,
1250–1550(Oxford, 1995), Chapter 10, ‘The Reformation’, pp. 223–49.
(^9) Richard Rex, The Lollards(New York, 2002), p. 92.
(^10) Brown,Popular Piety, p. 247.
(^11) Barrett L. Beer, Rebellion and Riot: Popular Disorder in England during the reign of
Edward VI(Kent, OH, 1982), p. 152.
(^12) London, 1523.