Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Lichfield: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Espicopal SeeClifton, A. B.
History
Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Lichfield: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Espicopal See
Clifton, A. B.
Lichfield Cathedral
=Robert Wright= (1632-1644) was a supporter of Laud; under him the
cathedral service became again something like that of the time of Bishop
Patteshull. He was one of the twelve bishops who were impeached by the
Long Parliament in 1641, and, though an old man, pleaded his cause at
the bar of the House of Commons. He was still bishop when the Civil War
broke out; and during the famous siege of Lichfield he was shut up in his
castle at Eccleshall, where he died while it was being defended against
the Parliamentarians. His successor, =Accepted Frewen=, president of
Magdalen College, Oxford, was appointed by the king, and consecrated in
the chapel of his college; but, having neither cathedral, revenues, nor
power, he retired into Kent, until in 1660 he became Archbishop of York.
=John Hacket= (1661-1671) was appointed to the see by Charles II., and
decided that its title should be altered from "Coventry and Lichfield"
to "Lichfield and Coventry"; partly, no doubt, because the cathedral was
here, and partly because in the late troubles Lichfield had been loyal
to the Crown, and Coventry had not. His great work was the restoration of
the cathedral from its ruins, and the re-organisation of the diocese. He
had had a distinguished record, and was one of the sub-committee in 1640
appointed to try and settle the vexed questions in the Church, and as such
he made an eloquent speech at the bar of the House of Commons. Later
he continued the use of the liturgy in his church of St. Andrew,
Holborn, after it had been forbidden, and when the officer and soldiers
were sent to arrest him and ordered him to desist on pain of instant
death, he answered: "Soldier, I am doing my duty, do you do yours," and
continued the service. Surely a man pre-eminently fitted for the work of
re-organisation he was to do at Lichfield; and the king got the credit
from the clergy of having the old "apostolic spirit of discerning,"
so greatly was he to their minds. He must have been a wit too, for, when
the bishopric was offered to him, he remarked that he would rather that in
future times people should ask why Dr Hacket was not a bishop, than why
he was. He is also said to have entreated the gentleman who had declared
that hell was paved with bishops' skulls to tread lightly over his.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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