Peter Smart

He was present when James I communicated at Durham on Easter Day (20 April 1617), and noted the ceremonial details: by royal order there was no chanting or organ-playing; two plain copes were worn.

The renovation of the cathedral and enrichment of the service had drawn from Smart on Sunday morning, 27 July 1628, a sermon (on Psalms xxxi.

It was published 1628, and reprinted at Edinburgh the same year, as The Vanitie and Downefall of Superstitious Popish Ceremonies, and again in 1640 with an appended Narrative of the Acts and Speeches ... of Mr. John Cosins.

John Cosin, a particular target in the sermon and a leader in the group of Neile's chaplains and prebendaries pushing for more "high church" ceremonial, was one of his judges.

On 29 January 1629 the case was transmitted to the high commission of the province of Canterbury, sitting at Lambeth, Smart was held in custody, and his sermon (now in print) was burned.

He had influential friends: Sir Henry Yelverton admired his sermon, and Archbishop George Abbot is said to have agreed on the ceremonies.

Christopher Hunter heard that he died at Baxterwood, an outlying hamlet in the parish of St. Oswald, Durham, but failed find a record of his death, which probably took place in 1652.