[189] Hale, Crim.  Prec., 205 (1591).  In Warrington deanery, at the bishop’s visitation in 1592, one Grimsford is cited for not living with his wife.  On a later occasion he appeared and affirmed that his wife had run away with another man, “whereupon the Judge, having regard to the poverty of the man,” absolved him. Warrington Deanery Visit., 190.  An ecclesiastical judge in Durham city made this decree in 1580:  “Dominus ... decrevit scribendum fore Aldermanno ... to whip and cart the said Rowle and Tuggell in all open places within the city of Durham, for that they faled in their purgacion, and therefore convicted of the crime detected.” Barnes’ Eccles.  Proc., 126.

[190] A most important piece of evidence—­because coming from such a source—­is Whitgift’s circular and (later) his address to his bishops, already alluded to (note 185) given in Strype’s life of him.  Whitgift mentions the frequent keeping of officials’ or commissaries’ courts and the multitude of apparitors serving under them, so that “the subject was almost vexed weekly with attendance on their several courts.”  He adds that “what with Churchwardens’ continual attendance in these courts, which in many places came to more than was by a whole parish for any one cessment made to her Majesty, the poor men who were chosen Church wardens ... were in their estates hindered greatly in leaving their day labor for attendance there.”  These and like complaints, the metropolitan continued, were daily brought to him “with a general exclamation against Commissaries’ and Officials’ courts.”  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 “On Peculiars with special reference to the Peculiar of Hawarden,” in Archit.  Arch. and Hist.  Soc. for Chester and N. Wales, n.s. xi (1905), 66 ff. and records there given.  See also Eccles.  Courts Com.  Rep., 1830-2, printed as appendix to Vol. i of Eccles.  Courts Com.  Rep. of 1883, p. 198.  Lists of peculiars will be found in the above authorities.