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SANDYS. PIERS.— HUTTON. 365
the assembling of the clergy of a neighbourhood at
each other's houses, for devotional exercises and the
discussion of difficult or controverted passages of
Scripture. Something of this sort seems to have
been in use at the archidiaconal visitations in the
York diocese, with the sanction of the Archbishop.
Archbishop Sandys died at Southwell on the loth
July, 1588. He left behind him the reputation of
great learning and piety. " He was," says Fuller,
" an excellent and painful preacher, of a pious and
godly life, which increased in his old age ; so that
by a great and good stride, whilst he had one foot in
the grave he had the other in heaven. He was buried
in Southwell. It is hard to say whether he was more
eminent in his own virtues, or more happy in his
flourishing posterity."
Piers, bishop of Salisbury, was his
successor, who
was enthroned in February, 1588-9, and occupied the
episcopal chair until his death in 1594. He is said to
have been a master of all kinds of learning, primitive
and austere in his personal habits, and so liberal in
his charities that he left scarcely enough behind him
to pay for the erection of a monument to his memory.
In one respect he formed an honourable exception to
many of the prelates, not only of his own time, but
of other periods also,—for it is recorded of him that
he leased nothing from the church, nor hurt its
revenues.
Matthew Hutton, who, as Dean of York, was such
a thorn in the side of Archbishop Sandys, became
Bishop of Durham, at the particular request of Lord
Burleigh, in 1 589. On the death of Archbishop Piers,