ABSTRACT
The Church suffered severely during centuries of border warfare and insec urity. After 1603, there were signs of recovery, although reports of ruined churches and poverty-stricken parishes continued. The 1604 Hampton Court Conference on religious affairs considered the northern Church, and a begin ning was made in restoration. Much needed to be done. Many years after 1603 an old man at Cartmel Fell told a visiting puritan minister that he regularly attended his local church and that he had
heard of that man you speak of (Jesus Christ) once at a play at Kendal, called Corpus Christi play, where there was a man on a tree, and blood ran down . . . he could not remember having heard of salvation by Jesus Christ, but in that play.
