ROBERT CHALNER (Doctor of Laws) was instituted March 29, 1526, by Archbishop Warham (390b). He held the Prebendal Stall of Pedding at Wingham; and died in 1541.

JOHN BLAND, a Protestant martyr, succeeded Chalner. He held the Retling Canonry at Wingham from March 14, 1542-3; for which at the dissolution a pension of £6 13s. 4d. was awarded to him. Upon the accession of Queen Mary he was undisturbed here until the 3rd of September 1553, when John Austen took the top of the Communion Table off its tressels, and laid it aside on a chest, setting the tressels together. On the 26th of November Richard and Thomas Austen came to him after the Communion Service was ended, and charging him with having pulled down the altar of the church (in former years), and the tabernacle in which hung the rood, declared they would have Mass there next Sunday. Nothing of the kind, however, was done, until the 28th of December, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, and of the dedication of Adisham Church, when the Priest of Stodmarsh was intruded, to say Mass. The Rector, Bland, addressed the congregation at Sermon-time, standing in the chancel door (i.e. the door of the rood screen). After a considerable time, he was interrupted by the churchwarden and the constable, who shut him up in a side chapel until Mass was ended. Ultimately, sureties

for Bland's abstinence from preaching and duty were taken; but at the end of February 1553-4, he was sent to Canterbury gaol, whence he was not permitted to be bailed until the 5th of May 1554. He was examined in the Chapter House of the Cathedral, as to his belief, (respecting the mode of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper,) before Archdeacon Harpsfield and Commissary Collins, on the 18th and on the 21st of May; a multitude of people being present on the second day. At the Sessions, held in Cranbrook in July, Sir Thomas Moyle ordered him to be put in the stocks, and confined in Maidstone gaol. There he was imprisoned until February 1555, when he appeared in irons, at the Greenwich Assizes, before Sir John Baker, Mr. Petit, and Mr. Webb, who ordered him to be delivered to the Ordinary. He was therefore sent to Canterbury Castle until the 2nd of March 1554-5, when, in the Cathedral Chapter House, Justices Oxenden, Petit, Webb, and Hardres, presented him to the Bishop of Dover, Commissary Collins, and Mr. Mills, as one strongly suspected of heresy. Remitted to Westgate prison, he was again brought before the Ecclesiastical tribunal, in the Chapter House, in March and in June, until he and four others were finally condemned on the 25th of June 1555, and delivered to the secular arm for punishment as heretics. Accordingly, at Canterbury, on the 12th of July 1555, the Rector of Adisham was