Hugh Bellot, D.D., second son of Thomas Bellot, Esq., of Moreton Hall, in the county of Chester. Le Neve says he was brought up in Queen’s College, Cambridge, though Leycester gives him to St. John’s. He was Proctor in 1570, and afterwards Rector of Tydd, near Wisbeach, and Vicar of Gresford, both in episcopal patronage. He was consecrated Bishop of Bangor in the year 1585, and translated to Chester June 25th, 1595. He was Bishop of Chester about seven months, and was buried at Wrexham, in Denbighshire, in 1596, aged 54, where a monument was erected to his memory by his brother, Cuthbert Bellot, Prebendary of Chester.
Richard Vaughan, D.D., a native of Caernarvonshire, educated at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and one of the queen’s chaplains. He was B.D. in Oct., 1588, when he was collated by Bishop Aylmer to the Archdeaconry of Middlesex. He was also a Canon of Wells. He succeeded Bellot in the see of Bangor, and was also his successor at Chester, being translated thither, according to Lee, May 16th, 1596, which is probably the correct date, although the generality of his biographers state that he did not become Bishop of Chester until 1597, which might be the date of his consecration. He was translated to London in 1604, and, dying of apoplexy on the 30th March, 1607, was buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Wood says he was accounted an excellent preacher and pious liver. It appears from the Bishop’s registers that, like some of his predecessors, he was much concerned to repress the spirit of insubordination and impatience of episcopal restraint which he found existing among his clergy. Failing in his attempts to act as the spiritual adviser and comforter of his clerical brethren, and to uproot their antipathy to certain ancient and decent ecclesiastical forms, he frequently cited them to appear before him in the parish church of Aldford, in which village he then resided, and publicly vindicated in their presence the polity of the church. The bishop did not succeed, however, in removing the scruples of these good men, who regarded their superior as one who sought to fetter their independence and destroy their liberty. On the 3rd of Oct. 1604, a large body of Lancashire dissentients appeared before the bishop at Aldford. They appear to have been men of holy character, laborious in the discharge of their ministerial functions in populous parishes, and apparently received kind and impartial treatment. They were all publicly admonished by the bishop, and required to conform to the liturgy and ceremonies of the church, and also to subscribe, _ex animo_, to the three articles in the 36th canon. They were cited to appear again at the same place on the 28th of November following, but only one complied with the order. In those days, when roads were proverbially bad, and public conveyances unknown, a journey to Aldford must have been attended with serious inconveniences, especially on a gloomy and boisterous November day. Burnet says, in reference to these dissentients, that “they were very factious and insolent.” During the Episcopate of Bishop Vaughan, the cathedral was much repaired; he caused the bells to be re-cast and hung in the great tower; the west roof he had new leaded, and the timber work repaired. On his translation to London—