ABSTRACT
In Lincolnshire there were two landed families which were particularly renowned for their patronage of godly ministers, the Wrays of Glentworth and the Armynes of Osgodby. Although Sir Walter’s main estates were in Dorset he also had property in Devon and he held the patronage rights in one of the most Puritan parishes in the county. With Sir Robert’s active encouragement Pierson turned Brampton Bryan into a thoroughgoing Puritan parish with two sermons every Sunday, weekday lectures and a regular programme of spiritual exercises. According to one of his fellow gentry Sir Thomas Trenchard, who was the patron of several livings, was ‘a very honest well natured worthy man, a favourer of the Puritans’. In March 1634 Sir Robert secured the institution of William Brice, an ‘eminently godly and very learned Man’, who had been serving as minister at Henley in Oxfordshire.
