Bernard Gilpin

Bernard Gilpin (1517 – 4 March 1583), was an Oxford theologian and then an influential clergyman in the emerging Church of England spanning the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Jane, Mary and Elizabeth I.

On Mary's accession in 1553 he went abroad to pursue his theological investigations at Leuven, Antwerp and Paris; and from a letter dated 1554, we get a glimpse of the quiet student rejoicing in an "excellent library belonging to a monastery of Minorites."

[7] Enraged at this defeat, Gilpin's enemies laid their complaint before Edmund Bonner, bishop of London, who secured a royal warrant for his apprehension.

Strangers and travellers found a ready reception; and even their horses were treated with so much care that it was humorously said that, if one were turned loose in any part of the country, it would immediately make its way to the rector of Houghton.

For the reception of his parishioners he had three tables well covered, one for gentlemen, the second for husbandmen, the third for day-laborers; and this piece of hospitality he never omitted, even when losses or scarcity made its continuance difficult.

He built and endowed a grammar-school at a cost of upwards of £500, educated and maintained a large number of poor children at his own charge, and provided the more promising pupils with means of studying at the universities.

[13] Grieved at the ignorance and superstition which the remissness of the clergy permitted to flourish in the neighbouring parishes, he used every year to visit the most neglected parts of Northumberland, Yorkshire, Cheshire, Westmorland and Cumberland; and that his own flock might not suffer, he was at the expense of a constant assistant.

Bernard Gilpin, the apostle of the north, the first who undertook to preach the Protestant doctrines to the Border dalesmen, was surprised, on entering one of their churches, to see a gauntlet or mail-glove hanging above the altar.

Upon enquiring the meaning of a symbol so indecorous being displayed in that sacred place, he was informed by the clerk that the glove was that of a famous swordsman, who hung it there as an emblem of a general challenge and gage of battle, to any who should dare to take the fatal token down.

The clerk and sexton equally declined the perilous office, and the good Bernard Gilpin was obliged to remove the glove with his own hands, desiring those who were present to inform the champion that he, and no other, had possessed himself of the gage of defiance.

Although this hardly involves continuity in the sense in which the question was asked, the conjunction of these two names strikes me as particularly happy : for, while both of them were Catholic priests by ordination, neither of them could he described as Roman in their sympathies; indeed, it would be truer to say of both that their tone of mind, as ecclesiastics and as educationists, was more what would now he reckoned as Anglican.

But a study of his life would tell a very different tale, and show a man of deep Christian convictions and unimpeachable honesty, deservedly held in honour, not only by the conforming priests of whom he was one, and who formed of course the great majority of the clergy of the Church of England during the early years of Elizabeth's reign, but also by the new men, ordained under the new regime.

An historical romance, based on the life of Bernard Gilpin, concerning whom a good deal is known, and illustrated, by a competent historical scholar, with accurately stated incidents, in which the religious life of the Reformation period should be depicted, as graphically as Newman in Callista, or Pater in Marius the Epicurean, deincted the growth of Christian ideas in the early centuries of our era – such a book would certainly go far to fill the vacant place to which at the outset I referred; and might, in the guise of fiction, obtain a wide circulation and popular acceptance, doing thus a great service to the cause of historical truth.He was not satisfied with the Elizabethan settlement, had great respect for the Church fathers, and was with difficulty induced to subscribe.

The views of Archbishop Sandys on the Eucharist horrified him; but on the other hand he maintained friendly relations with Bishop Pilkington and Thomas Lever, and the Puritans had some hope of his support.