ABSTRACT
The battle for the souls of the moderate puritan ministry had begun. The beneficed clergy were for the most part concerned to come to some sort of agreement with the bishops which would enable them to continue in their livings, unmolested and without injury to conscience· If they, like the Sussex ministers, were permitted to subscribe while noting their objections to details of the liturgy, nothing would please them better. While Field drew up a list of specific erron in the Prayer Book, he based his case not so much on these as on ‘the inconveniences which the use of it in general doth necessarily import’, which he found ‘intolerable’. The ministers of Norfolk and Suffolk conferred separately and each sent to Bishop Freke their own schedules of those doubtful points which restrained them from subscribing. The human tendency was to conform, and one gathers that many who subscribed had been expected to offer some resistance.
