Rev. Andrew Puggesley

(Vicar of Ringmer 1555 - 1560)

The few facts that can be recovered about the life of Andrew Puggesley, vicar of Ringmer 1555-1560, are quickly reported. Unusually he passed through all the stages of ordination (doorkeeper, reader, exorcist, acolyte, sub-deacon, deacon and priest) in a single day in London on 10 March 1554. Six months later, on 26 September 1554, he was appointed curate of St Michael’s, Lewes. After a further year, on 27 November 1555, Andrew Puggesley was appointed as vicar of Ringmer. He had died in office by 3 April 1560, when his successor as vicar of Ringmer was appointed. What little evidence there is suggests he served his benefices himself. He witnessed the will of a Southover schoolmaster in 1554 and that of a Ringmer man in 1558. He was a participant in a Southover property transaction in 1555 and attended an Archdeacon’s visitation as Ringmer’s incumbent in 1558. 

These bare facts attract interest only when placed in the context of our nation’s history. In July 1553 King Edward VI, the only son of King Henry VIII by Jane Seymour, died young. That same month Queen Mary, only surviving child King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon, saw off the attempted coup in favour of Lady Jane Gray and assumed the throne. She immediately ordered the release of a number of imprisoned Roman Catholic nobles and senior clerics and as soon as she had the country under control set about reversing her father’s Reformation, and restoring England to Roman Catholicism.

Andrew Puggesley’s career has to be seen against this backdrop. Edward Bonner, Bishop of the diocese in which he was ordained, had just been restored to his post after Queen Mary’s accession. George Day, Bishop of Chichester, who appointed him as curate of St Michael’s, was another Roman Catholic who Queen Mary had released from prison and restored to his diocese. His appointment as vicar of Ringmer was made by Queen Mary herself, together with her husband King Philip of Spain. The Archbishop of Canterbury normally made Ringmer appointments but while at this date Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was still alive, he had been convicted of treason at the start of Queen Mary’s reign and was imprisoned in Oxford – he was not burned at the stake until March 1556. During such vacancies the presentations defaulted to the Crown.

It seems safe to conclude that Andrew Puggesley was an adherent to the old Roman Catholic religion, and thus the last Roman Catholic Vicar of Ringmer. He survived just into the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but had died in office by 3 April 1560, when the register of Queen Elizabeth’s new Protestant archbishop, Matthew Parker, notes the appointment of his successor. 

Principal  sources used:                

Clergy of the Church of England online database: http://db.theclergydatabase.org.uk/

E.H.W. Dunkin, ‘Ecclesiastical History of the Deanery of South Malling’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol.26, pp.9-96

Ringmer History Newsletters nos.157 & 285

The will of Gabriel Fowle of Southover (d.1555): https://mprobb.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/the-will-of-gabriel-fowle-died-1555-a-new-transcript-and-new-information/