human
absolved him. _Warrington Deanery Visit_., 190. An ecclesiastical judge in Durham city made this decree in 1580:
gpt
He adds that
human
These and like complaints, the metropolitan continued, were daily brought to him
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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