"How, I wonder, did our 16th century Giggleswick, Settle and Rathmell forebears cope with going from the Latin Mass to the English Prayer Books of 1549-52, returning to the Mass in Mary Tudor's time and then back to the Prayer Book of the Elizabethan Settlement? How did the vicar, John Nowell manage change? As a king's appointment, he must have been Protestant, no doubt sent to convert Giggleswick from its deep Roman Catholic sympathies, yet he survived well into Mary's reign. Recent studies have shown that much of rural England took around a hundred years to be weaned away from the Mass towards acceptance of the Prayer Book. The north particularly, was more conservative than the south. The dissolution of the monasteries must have caused considerable hardship to many ordinary people in Giggleswick. One hopes they quickly found employment with the families who bought the monastic lands from the Crown. Our parish had been a centre for the Pilgrimage of Grace, the ill-fated Roman Catholic rebellion against King Henry VIII. In 1536, Sir Stephen Hammerton of Wigglesworth Hall was one who responded to a notice nailed to the door of Giggleswick Church, calling the men of Craven to arms. He was later hanged as a traitor.
When we think of the Plague we tend to think only of the Black Death of the 14th century and the Great Plague of the 17th, but bubonic plague (carried by fleas on the black rat), was an ever present reality until the 18th century. In 1597, when Christopher Shute was vicar, plague struck our village with savage ferocity. In that year, 127 burials were recorded in the graveyard, but we do not know which of the dead died of plague. The Plague Stone commemorating the outbreak of 1597, can be seen opposite the entrance to Close House, near the Craven Arms hotel.."
an excerpt from a document that has been uploaded here: http://www.settlechurch.org.uk/giggleswick-vicars-and-their-times.php
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