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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
Samuel Peploe was vicar of Preston from 1700 to 1726 and bishop of Chester from 1726 to 1752. Today he is best remembered for a story—perhaps apocryphal—concerning his behaviour during the Jacobite rising of 1715. It is said that, when he was conducting a service, a group of rebels entered the church at Preston and threatened to kill him unless he ceased to pray for the ‘Hanoverian usurper’. Peploe supposedly replied ‘Soldier, I am doing my duty; do you do yours’; and continued his prayers. When this was reported to George I, he apparently remarked: ‘Peep-low, Peep-low is he called? But he shall peep high; I will make him a bishop’.
I am most grateful to the Archivist and Librarian of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Rev. Dr. G. Huelin, for granting me permission to publish the document printed above. In my introduction, I have used ‘Catholicism’ and ‘Popery’, ‘Papist’ and ‘Catholic’ as interchangeable; the contemporary terms are not used by the author in any derogatory or offensive sense. In the notes below, the place of publication is London, unless otherwise indicated.
2 Dictionary of National Biography, ‘Peploe, Samuel (1668–1752)’.
3 J[ournal of the] H[ouse of] L[ords] XVIII (1705), 154.
4 Cheshire R[ecord] O[ffice], EDA 6/5 (Returns of Papists, Diocese of Chester, 1717 and 1767), p. 10: Return of Papists, Preston, 1717.
5 The strength of Catholicism in Preston, and the Protestants’ hostility to it, had been an important factor in the town’s politics in the late seventeenth century: Mullett, M., ‘“To Dwell together in Unity”: The Search for Agreement in Preston Politics, 1660–1690’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire CXXV (1975), 61, 78.Google Scholar
6 Cf. J.H.L. XX (1714–18), 6.
7 Lancashire R.O., RC Fe 2 ([H. Tootell/C. Dodd], ‘A Historical Account… of the New Chappel House in Fernyhalgh’), ff. 1–2.
8 Glassey, L. K. J., Politics and the Appointment of Justices of the Peace, 1675–1720 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 291–4.Google Scholar
9 Lancashire R.O., RC Fe 2, f. 2.
10 On The Forfeited Estates Commission, see The Records of the Forfeited Estates Commission (Public Record Office Handbook XII [1968]), 1–17 and Purcell, P., ‘The Jacobite Rising of 1715 and the English Catholics’, English Historical Review XLIV (1929), 418–31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One of Peploe’s letters to the Commission is printed in E. E. Estcourt and J. O. Payne (eds.), The English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715 (1886, repr. Westmead, 1969), pp. 350–1.
11 Haydon, C., ‘The Anti-Catholic Activity of the S.P.C.K., c. 1698–cl740’ Recusant History XVIII (1987), 418–21.Google Scholar
12 On the establishment of the Queen’s Preachers in Lancashire, see Hill, C., Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (1974), pp. 14–16.Google Scholar
13 On the problems associated with large parishes, see Gilbert, A. D., Religion and Society in Industrial England (1976), pp. 98–103 Google Scholar. They were particularly acute in the North West.
14 The Victoria County History of Lancashire VII (1912, repr. 1966), 103.
15 For a discussion of these matters in a broader context, see E. J. Evans, ‘The Anglican Clergy of Northern England’ in Jones, C. (ed.), Britain in the First Age of Party, 1680–1750: Essays Presented to Geoffrey Holmes (1987), pp. 221–40.Google Scholar
16 A[rchives of the] S[ociety for] P[romoting] C[hristian] Knowledge], CRI 18 (Abstract Letter Book, 1734–6), Letter 12,832: S. Peploe to S.P.C.K., 15 Sept., 1734.
17 Newman was the Secretary of the S.P.C.K.: on his life, see Cowie, L. W., Henry Newman: An American in London, 1708–43 (1956).Google Scholar
18 Hugh Tootell alias Charles Dodd, the church historian.
19 Sir Walter Vavasour of Alston, Lancashire, Bart.: Estcourt and Payne, op.cit., p.340.
20 A.S.P.C.K., CPI (Papers and Memorials, 1715–29), ff. 139–42.