Thrale history

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predecessors in providing a calyver for the home guard. Early in 1629 the churchwardens reported the vicar for immoral conduct. "We present Mr. Richard Westerman, minister of our parish, and Mary Roberts, his late servant, for committing incontinency together, as the common fame goeth.¹² It look a year and a quarter to gain a conviction; the sentence of the Church Commissioners ran: "We, after invoking, the name of Christ, and having God alone before our eyes, and having fully deliberated with learned counsel on both aides, do find that the aforesaid Richard Westerman, clerk-in-holy-orders, the present vicar of the perpetual vicarage of the parish church of Sandridge in the county of Hertford, casting aside the fear of God has committed and perpetrated the abominable crime of adultery with a certain Mary Roberts formerly of his household … Therefore we pronounce determine and declare that the aforenamed Richard Westerman by reason of the adultery by him committed is notorious and exceedingly defamed amongst good and honest persons, and is to be deprived of the orders of a clerk and a priest, and deprived of the care of souls, divine celebration and the administration of the sacraments to faithful Christians, the parishioners of the church of Sandridge. And we deprive and remove him from the vicarage of Sandridge aforesaid, and we declare and pronounce the said personage to be void by this our definite sentence which we make or promulgate in these writings."¹³

It was during the lime of John Harper in 1645 that King Charles was decisively defeated at the battle of Naseby, the Archbishop of Canterbury beheaded, and that Parliament took over absolute control of all church affairs. The victors forbade him the use of the Book of Common Prayer and put in its place the Directory, which gave the outlines upon which Puritan meetings were to be conducted in all churches. A fine of £5 and £10 for the second offence was imposed on all who were found using the Prayer Book, whether in church or in the home. In Hertfordshire forty-seven priests were ejected from their posts, but Harper resigned of his own accord. For a time in 1646 Lawrence Claxton was a Baptist minister in Sandridge. This man is noteworthy for having possessed at least six different religions during his life. Brought up as a member of the Church, he became in turn a Presbyterian, an Independent, an Antimonian, and an Anabaptist. Later he became a professor of astronomy and physics and dabbled in the art of magic. Finally, he joined the Muggletonians,¹⁴ a small sect founded by a mad London tailor in 1652.

Joseph Draper was ordained priest in 1628. Before coming to Sandridge and at the outbreak of the Civil War he was charged with drunkenness and swearing and with supporting the King against Parliament by saying that all who died in the service of Parliament at the Battle of Edgehill would go to the devil. This last charge may have been due to the misrepresentations of his words to a soldier wounded at Edgehill and who died in hospital. As it happens, Joseph went to jail for six months.¹⁵ He then seems to nave reconciled himself to the new order, for by 1650 he was vicar of Sandridge, with a salary of £35 a year. Here he remained until the restoration of the crown and church in 1660, when he found a post in Bedfordshire. His successor Owen signed a petition to Parliament in 1646 saying: "We have already received many happy fruits of your unwearied endeavours for the Reformation of the Church" and he prayed that the Puritan religion might be upheld, but this did not prevent him from being vicar of Sandridge for nearly twenty years when the religion of the Church was restored.

Charles Horne, vicar of Sandridge from 1681 to 1685, seems to have been the ideal parish priest. At Easter in 1683 the churchwardens reported that there had been a great reformation in the parish, the inhabitants went to church daily, the children were instructed, and all parishioners old enough had received Holy Communion. The next year they reported "our minister is in all things comfortable, and all parishioners come duly to church" there were only two or three ignorant people who had not received Holy Communion at Easter, and the wardens were hopeful that they too would soon be ready to do so. It was during the time of the next vicar, Edmund Wood, that the tower of the church fell. At the time of his death, which coincided with that of Queen Anne in 1714, his salary was £90 a year free of land tax and poor rates. In 1729 the salary of the Sandridge vicars was increased to £200 a year by Queen Anne’s Bounty.

Thomas Evans was vicar from 1744 to 1774, and of these thirty years he was resident for the first twenty-three. Then the period of pluralities set in, lasting for a century, during which time Sandridge only had a resident vicar for thirty years.

William Langford, besides being vicar of Sandridge was at the same time Rector of Whiston in Northants, Canon of Windsor and assistant master at Eton, where he lived. His eldest son Edward became a priest,¹⁶ the other three children all died young. Frederick, a scholar of King’s College Cambridge, was carried off at the age of nineteen by a pulmonary consumption,¹⁷ Henry, a midshipman of H.M.S. Phaeton. when eighteen years old died of fever at Sheerness,¹⁸ and the daughter Decima was buried at Sandridge in 1786. The vicar, who by 1778 had become a Doctor of

Footnotes

12. Act Book of the Archdeaconry of St Albans, Somerset House.↩︎
13. State Papers, Charles I, Vol. 166, No.16, at the Public Record Office.↩︎
14. Dictionary of National Biography, Vol.II p.6A.↩︎
15. John Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy (1714). Revised by A.G.Matthews (1948).↩︎
16. The Gentlemans’ Magazine, Vol. 63, p.1214.↩︎
17. The Gentlemans’ Magazine, Vol.63, p.578.↩︎
18. The Gentlemans’ Magazine, Vol.65, p.174.↩︎