(1589 - 1603)

After the Oxford executions of 1589 searches took place all over the Thames Valley area. At Aston Rowant a priest-catcher who had been involved in Thomas Belson's arrest accused a Mr Randall of being a Catholic priest.

Randall was a lawyer of the Middle Temple. He and his mother and sister were Catholics, held under house arrest in the home of his brother-in-law, John English. Mrs English was a Catholic and English himself was probably a church papist. He worked for the Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, a Protestant who allowed the Catholic Mass to be celebrated in his London house.

It seems that Randall mischievously encouraged the priest-catcher's suspicions. Later, when interrogated by Sir Francis Knollys, Randall completely denied any suggestion that he was a priest. He admitted being a Catholic but said he was 'as ready man to fight the Spaniards as my Lord Montague was.' (The Catholic second Lord Montague, nephew of George Browne of Shefford and Francis Browne of Henley Park, had volunteered to fight for the Queen against the Spanish.)

John English's house was searched and a large collection of suspected 'popish' literature was found. English told Knollys that it belonged to the exiled George Chamberlain, whose nephew owned Shirburn Castle, a few miles down the road towards Watlington. Eventually the threat of legal action was dropped for lack of evidence.

The Oxford Catholic martyrdoms seem to have inspired Francis Stonor to become more open in the practice of his Catholicism. No doubt the execution of the brother of a fellow militia commander made a great impact. Two years earlier Francis Stonor had been Member of Parliament for New Woodstock. Yet eight months after the Oxford executions he was examined by the Privy Council and the following year was paying recusancy fines of £30 a year for himself (= £2,750 today), and twice that sum towards £340 (= £31,000 today) owed by his mother, Dame Cecily Stonor. By the end of the year his fine was even higher and he was also expected to provide on demand two light cavalry and two lancers for the Queen.

However, Francis Stonor's recusancy did not prevent him from serving as Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1593 nor from being knighted by the Queen when she visited Basing House, near Basingstoke, in 1601. Francis Stonor's wife Martha was a staunch Catholic. Her father, judge John Southcote, had resigned in open court rather than sentence a priest.

It has already been noted that Catholicism survived strongly among the gentry of the Kennet Valley. At Henwick, between Thatcham and Newbury, lived another Catholic, John Winchcombe. The Winchcombes were descended from John Smallwood of Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, better known as Jack O'Newbury. He was 'the richest clothier England ever beheld', and it seems that the Catholic John Winchcombe was his great grandson.

In 1591 Winchcombe was reported by the spy Robert Weston for being a harbourer of priests. Weston described a hiding place used by fugitive clergy, a great hollow oak in the hedgerow near Winchcombe's house (probably Henwick Manor). According to the spy 'church stuff' was hidden upstairs in the house, in a cupboard by the pickling trough for pigs' offal.

By 1592 the income from fines for recusancy was so great that a special department was established by the Exchequer to handle it. The following year the Five Mile Act was introduced. This compelled recusants to remain within five miles of their homes or else forfeit their goods and the income from their estates. They had to report regularly to the parson and parish constable, and their names had to be recorded in the parish register and notified to the justices of the peace. Failure to pay the fines could result in banishment. Any Catholic even suspected of being a priest, but refusing to admit it, could be imprisoned without trial.

Not long after this new legislation Francis Stonor's sister-in-law, Lady Ann Curson of Waterperry House, was fined £260 for recusancy (= £24,000 today). Her husband Sir Francis was not a recusant but may have been a church papist. As the parish church of St Mary stands next door to Waterperry House the pressure on him to attend Anglican services must have been considerable. (The present Waterperry House is a Georgian replacement for the house in which Sir Francis and Lady Ann lived.)

Waterperry House
As it appears today

Lady Ann Curson is thought to have entertained the Jesuit Fr John Gerard. He had studied briefly at Oxford before being imprisoned for his faith and subsequently becoming a priest. For seventeen years he travelled England setting up Catholic communities with resident chaplains based in country houses. Waterperry House formed the core of one of Fr Gerard's communities. With his help Lady Ann Curson established a chapel in the house, and another Jesuit, Fr Edward Walpole, became the chaplain. At this time there were still only some eighteen Jesuits working in England. The Waterperry missioner's Rheims Bible has survived and is held by Anthony de Vere.

John Vachell of Burghfield had until this time been a Catholic and was one of those suspected of attending Mass at Ufton Court. However, in 1593, during imprisonment in the Marshalsea, he conformed to Anglicanism. Perhaps he was influenced by what he saw in his own family. His recusant elder brother Thomas was head of the family but had felt compelled to regrant the family seat at Coley Park, Reading to his conformist nephew. While Thomas suffered sequestration, fines and consequent marital discord, his nephew married a daughter of Sir Francis Knollys, was knighted and became Sheriff of Berkshire.

In the spring of 1593 an Act Confirming the Queen's Title to the Lands of Sir Francis Englefield was passed. This was the culmination of eight years of attempts by the Crown to circumvent the cunning conveyances devised by the late Edmund Plowden on behalf of Sir Francis. Now virtually all the manor of Englefield was forfeited to the Queen. According to the Englefields it had been theirs for almost 800 years.

Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State who had moved into Englefield House, had subsequently died. The estate passed to his son-in-law, the Earl of Essex. Although Walsingham is said to have built a gallery especially for a visit by the Queen, much of what approximates to the present mansion seems to have been built during the Earl of Essex's tenancy. The reported discovery in 1838 of a roof timber dated 1558 suggests that at least part of Sir Francis Englefield's manor house was incorporated. However, there was a major fire in 1886, and much of what we see today is a Victorian reconstruction.

Englefield House
Viewed from the surrounding parkland

The Englefields retained a small foothold in the village from which they took their name. Margaret Englefield, mother of the younger Francis, owned Englefield Farm near Cranemoor Lake, a little to the south-east of the manor house. The family also continued to be buried in their former chantry in the parish church.

In 1593 a Recusant Roll was produced. This listed known Catholic non-conformists and the fines imposed on them. Further rolls were produced annually for the following three years. In most cases the authorities had sequestrated some or all of the recusants' estates. Usually two thirds of the estate income was taken by the Exchequer.

The Recusant Roll for 1592-3 reveals that in Oxfordshire Thomas Vachell of Ipsden lost all the income from a farm, and two thirds from the manors of Ipsden, Huntercombe and Basset, and from a parcel of land in Mapledurham called 'Payges'. (Basset Manor stands between Stoke Row and Checkendon and there is still a wood called Page's Shaw at Chazey Heath, Mapledurham.) Vachell's Berkshire estates were also sequestrated. In the area immediately to the south-west of Reading he lost the income from Beansheaves near Calcot and from other properties in Burghfield, Grazeley, Shinfield and North Street, Englefield.

Francis Perkins of Ufton Court was apparently living at Langford, Wiltshire at this time. He owed fines of £80 (= £7,000 today) and lost the income from estates at Buscot and Snowswick near Faringdon. He also lost two thirds of the income from his estates at Bathampton in Wiltshire and Ufton Court. His cousin Richard Perkins and Richard's mother Margaret, widow of Henry Perkins of Ilsley, each owed a massive £260 in fines (= £23,000 today). Richard Perkins, usually referred to as being of Beenham, was described in the Recusant Roll as being of Fieldhouse Farm, Ufton; probably a mistake for what is now Field Barn Farm, Beenham, just over the parish boundary from Ufton.

Walter Hildesley lost two thirds of the income from Ilsley Farm. With his mother he lost two thirds of the income from estates at Howbery and Newnham Murren, both near Crowmarsh Gifford.

Francis Plowden, son of the famous lawyer, lost the income from a farm at Wokefield and two thirds of the income from 'Migheals' at nearby Burghfield. This was perhaps what is now called Meales Farm, actually in nearby Sulhamstead. Roger Astell, a yeoman of Basildon, lost two thirds of the income from a farm at Peasemore (6 miles N. of Newbury).

Thomas Hulse lost two thirds of the income from a holding called Le Poole at Sutton Courtenay. (A few years later his widow Mary married Edmund Wollascott, a son of William Wollascott II. The Hulse estates at Sutton Courtenay thereby became Wollascott property.)

Martha Braybrooke was presumably the widow of the expelled Catholic lawyer James Braybrooke of Sutton Courtenay. She was then living at Brightwalton, a village on the Berkshire Downs (5 miles S. of Wantage). Her losses were enormous: two thirds of the income from the manors of Marlston (Bucklebury), Fulscot (between Didcot and South Moreton) and Adresham (South Moreton), eight tenements in Abingdon, another in Sutton Courtenay and land at Sparsholt (3 miles W. of Wantage).

Others listed on the Recusant Roll included men and women from Oxford, Watlington, Waterperry, Aston Rowant, Crowmarsh, Chinnor, Great Haseley, Checkendon, Wolvercote and Garsington. Church papists such as the Wollascotts avoided sequestration. Hence William Wollascott II's son William was able to buy the manor of Brimpton, which adjoined his Shalford estates.

In 1594 Nicholas Owen, the Oxford craftsman and builder of priest-holes, was arrested with Fr John Gerard. Owen was taken to the Counter prison in Poultry in the City of London. Despite being hung by the hands for three hours he revealed nothing to his captors. Fortunately they did not realise who he was and released him on payment of a large bribe.

Late in the summer of 1596 Sir Francis Englefield died. He is buried at Valladolid, Spain where he had retired to the English College. He had been blind for the last twenty-four years of his life.

Ironically the other Sir Francis, his Puritan opponent Knollys, died in the same year. Their lives contained a number of parallels. Both had gone into exile for their religious beliefs and both had suffered great frustration. Neither had enjoyed the support they felt their causes deserved.

But whereas Sir Francis Englefield died far away from his native Berkshire, Sir Francis Knollys died on home ground. His funeral took place across the valley from his home, Greys Court, at Rotherfield Greys parish church. His son William, the first Earl of Banbury, built the north chapel on to the church. Inside he erected a huge, freestanding monument to his father and mother. (Sir Francis is also commemorated by the road in Reading called Great Knollys Street.)

One of those who attended the funeral of Sir Francis Knollys was Sir Richard Blount of Mapledurham. The Blounts were ostensibly conformists in religious matters and were relatively wealthy. Six years before the Armada Sir Richard had bought the adjoining Chazey manor from Anthony Bridges, presumably the man who sheltered Fr George Snape at Great Shefford Manor Farm.

At the time of Sir Francis Knollys' funeral it seems that Sir Richard's father had recently converted to Catholicism. Sir Michael Blount was a former Sheriff of Oxfordshire and Member of Parliament who had become Lieutenant of the Tower of London six years earlier. He was deeply impressed by two of his Catholic prisoners, both of whom were sentenced to death. One was Fr Robert Southwell, the Jesuit priest and poet, who had played a major role in the Harleyford conference. The other was Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel. Fr Southwell was executed early in 1595 and Philip Howard died later that year while awaiting execution. Both were canonised in 1970.

Evidence of Sir Michael's conversion to Catholicism is found in the mansion he was then building at Mapledurham. In the year of the Armada he had raised a loan of £1,500 (= £140,000 today) to build it. The original, relatively humble manor house was then anything up to four hundred years old and did not befit a man of Sir Michael's status. (A corner of the old manor house quadrangle still exists.)

Mapledurham House
Little changed since Sir Michael Blount's time

The new house was not completed until 1612, two years after Sir Michael's death. Yet not long after he ceased to be Lieutenant of the Tower, he had two secret hiding places constructed off a first floor bedroom. Their distinctive features show that they were built by the same craftsman who had earlier constructed hides at Ufton Court, someone involved in the local Catholic underground.

As secret Catholics the Blounts had a useful facility within the parish church at Mapledurham which stands immediately behind the manor house. They owned the Bardolf Aisle and it was therefore possible for them to pray privately in the family aisle during Anglican services. As far as the Church of England authorities were concerned, this would constitute attendance at an Anglican service. But as far as the family were concerned they could merely be making proper use of their aisle for private prayer. Thus the Blounts had an unusual opportunity to avoid the labels 'recusant' and 'church papist', if they so wished. The Bardolf Aisle remains, to this day, a private aisle owned by Catholics within an Anglican church.

Many people in the Reading area know the attractive road from Caversham to Mapledurham called The Warren. At the Caversham end it is a pleasant residential road, whereas towards Mapledurham it becomes a farm track and bridleway. It came into existence about the year 1600 as a result of a land deal by which Sir Richard Blount acquired a parcel of land below Chazey Wood. This allowed him to complete a relatively level route from his home to Caversham. The parcel in question had formed part of the estate of Caversham rectory.

At this time the rectory was leased to a Catholic family called the Alexanders. The house was later renamed Caversham Court and survived until 1933. Its site is now a public garden. Evidence of the Alexanders' tenure is provided by a surviving photograph of the Old Rectory's ornate staircase. It shows a ceiling plaque with the initials WIA, said to stand for William Alexander.

The Alexanders were succeeded by another Catholic family, the Brownes. It appears that the Browne in question was George of Shefford, who was knighted three years after the Armada.

In 1597 Nicholas Williamson, an Oxfordshire Catholic, wrote to Lord Burghley from Liège. He urged that the Queen grant religious freedom so that people with differing religious viewpoints could more readily unite to defend England.

Williamson cited France, Germany and Poland as places where relative freedom of conscience had been granted. He argued that:

'If a man does a lawful act, yet against his conscience (as thousands in England do to avoid the penalty of the law) he damneth his own soul. Therefore men that have a care for their souls will rather suffer their country to be a spoil to the enemy and themselves brought into bondage, than their souls to be led daily to damnation ...'

The plea was ignored. The following year a Levy of Horses was introduced to fund cavalry to combat the threat of a Spanish invasion of Ireland. In 1601 fourteen Berkshire Catholics were compelled to contribute to this fund.

In 1599 Ufton Court was raided again. This time the informer was a man called Gayler, whose brother had worked for the Perkins family. Gayler persuaded the Lord Chamberlain to draw up three warrants. Two were for the apprehension of the Jesuit Fr John Gerard and his superior Fr Henry Garnet. A third authorised seizure of 'a great store of treasure and money deposed at Ufton Court by persons of ill repute for the relief of ill-disposed persons'.

Ufton Court
The brick-faced back of the house

On a summer night the officers brought the warrants from London to the Member of Parliament for Reading, Sir Francis Knollys. He was a son of the recently deceased Puritan leader and lived in the small royal palace that had been created out of what remained of Reading Abbey. The officers refused to tell him the name of the house to be raided and did not mention the treasure. Nonetheless, they insisted that a raid be carried out without delay. Although it was already dark Knollys agreed and set off from Reading with the two officers and about forty men.

On arrival at Ufton Court early next morning it took nearly an hour to get a reply from the occupants. Francis Perkins was not living there at the time, but his cousin Thomas Perkins was acting as housekeeper and eventually opened the door to the search party.

Knollys' men broke into a secret chapel in the attic of the south-west wing. There they found 'divers relics and popish trash, as namely, holy water with a sprinkler therein and a cross at the end of the sprinkler, besides which, there was a little box with divers small white wafer cakes like Agnus Dei fit for the saying or singing of Mass, and candles half burnt out such as usually Mass is said withall, and divers pictures and such other things whereby it seemed unto them that some Mass had been said or sung not long before.'

Ufton Court
The south end of the front courtyard. The chapel was in the south wing on the left of the picture.

Thomas Perkins denied all knowledge of the chapel. Then one of the officers from London produced the third warrant, declaring that he had found the hidden treasure. He revealed two locked chests in a hide under the passage floor in the attic. They were found to contain gold and silver plate worth some £1,850 (= £145,000 today). The treasure was confiscated and the male servants put in Reading Gaol.

The Perkins family subsequently used a man called Peter Beaconsawe in an effort to recover the treasure. He claimed, falsely, that it represented his proceeds from cattle dealings, and had been hidden at Ufton Court for safekeeping. The Perkins's also implied that Sir Francis Knollys, or one or more of his men, had stolen a further £751 15s. 7d. (= £58,000 today) in silver that had gone missing from the secret hiding place. Beaconsawe brought a successful legal action against Knollys but was later jailed for contempt of court.

The legal wrangling lasted for ten years and ended with Sir Francis Knollys being exonerated. The disappearance of the silver was never properly explained but it is thought that two of the Ufton servants may have taken it, perhaps in collusion with Richard Perkins who had been given custody of the treasure by its real owner.

That owner was Thomas Vachell of Ipsden. His formerly Catholic brother John was called as a witness for the defence of Sir Francis Knollys. John Vachell revealed that he and Thomas had put the treasure in the hide at Ufton Court when Thomas was facing sequestration of his estates and seizure of his goods. The seized treasure was eventually put in the custody of Thomas Vachell's nephew and heir, Sir Thomas Vachell of Coley, who was also Knollys' brother-in-law. This was done 'out of pity for the distressed state' of the elder Thomas, who was by then senile.

Francis Perkins was fortunate in living away from Ufton Court at the time of the raid. Two years after, he was listed as a justice of the peace, despite being a known Catholic.

The year following the Ufton raid an old priest called Fr Moore died at Water Eaton, a hamlet on the River Cherwell near Kidlington. He is mentioned in the parish register and may have been sheltered by the Anglican owner of the local manor, which had been built only fourteen years previously, and which still stands.

By the late 1590s the deaths of many of the Queen's long-serving advisers left a power vacuum. This aided the rapid rise of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex who held Englefield House by virtue of his marriage to Lord Walsingham's daughter Frances. In 1597 he disposed of Englefield to Lord Norris. Two years later he attempted what was virtually a coup d'état. He failed but survived to make a second attempt early in 1601.

Two of his fellow plotters were Catholics. One was Sir Christopher Blount, Essex's stepfather and a distant relative of the Blounts of Mapledurham. The other was Sir John Davis.

Davis was an eminent mathematician who had studied at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, where Catholic influence remained strong. He had been knighted by Essex at Cadiz, southern Spain, after taking part in the English raid on the city in 1596. Two years later he was appointed Surveyor of Ordnance, hence his importance in the Essex plot. Davis saved himself from the death sentance by abandoning his friends and his faith. He became a witness against his co-conspirators, blaming Sir Christopher Blount for his conversion to Catholicism. Twelve years later Davis bought Bere Court, adding to the unhappy associations that house has for Catholics. There is a monument to him in Pangbourne parish church.

Another Thames Valley Catholic who took part in the Cadiz raid was the great poet John Donne, then about twenty-four years old. He had studied at Hart Hall, Oxford and his uncle Fr Jasper Heywood was a Jesuit working on the English mission. Donne later conformed to Anglicanism and eventually became Dean of St Paul's, London. His Catholic past greatly influenced his poetry and his Anglicanism.

During the late Elizabethan era it was still possible for discreet Catholics to benefit from an Oxford University education, especially if sympathetic tutors could be found. But conscientious Catholics could not receive their degrees because to do so would require taking the Oath of Supremacy.

In 1602 the oldest and youngest sons of the late John Eyston of East Hendred were admitted to Magdalen College, Oxford. William was eighteen, his brother Thomas fifteen. Both were described as being of Catmore, one of the manors long held by their family. The parish of Catmore, high on the Berkshire Downs, is one of the least populated in England. It includes the hamlet of Lilley where most of the fifty or so inhabitants live. Catmore itself is nearly 600 feet above sea level. Today it consists of little more than a farmstead and an ancient Norman church, illuminated by candlelight. Catmore was not always so small; in Saxon times it was a market town.

Catmore's remote location (5 miles S. of East Hendred) made it a good refuge for the Catholic Eystons. In the 1970s evidence of a hiding place and pre-Reformation chapel was found in the farmhouse, which still belongs to the family. An early fifteenth century statue was discovered hidden under the floor, the head missing but the body carefully wrapped in silk. According to family tradition there was a second hiding place at Catmore and an escape tunnel.

William Eyston, the older of the two Magdalen students, married in 1610 and continued to live at Catmore. Centuries later a small silver ring was dug up in Catmore churchyard. It was inscribed 'William Eyston, Esquire, of Catmore near Wantage, in Berkshire'.

By the end of Elizabeth's reign some 800 seminary priests had been smuggled into England of whom about 300 were still at large and exercising their ministry. Yet there had been no proper leadership of the Catholic church in England for forty years. By the late 1590s it was becoming increasingly necessary to establish some sort of formal organisation. Fr George Blackwell, a former scholar of Trinity College, Oxford, was therefore appointed to the new post of Archpriest of England. He was to report to the papal nuncio in Brussels and to consult the Jesuit superior on all matters of importance. There were many objections from English Catholics to this appointment and an appeal was made to Rome to appoint a bishop instead, who would be free of Jesuit influence.

This first appeal failed but a second attempt was aided by the government which saw an opportunity to divide Catholic opinion and curb Jesuit influence. The Pope subsequently agreed that the Archpriest need not consult the Jesuit superior.

Those who presented the appeal also tried to negotiate a measure of religious freedom, but this was rejected by both Queen and Pope. The Queen said that it would 'disturb the peace of the Church' and 'bring this our State into confusion', whereas the Pope felt that 'persecution was profitable to the church'.

One of the leading supporters of the appeal was Fr Thomas Bluet. He had been ordained at Dr Allen's seminary in 1578 and later that year was arrested in Berkshire. Fr Bluet spent most of the rest of his life in internment, campaigning against the Jesuits. He complained that the mission of Fr Campion and Fr Persons had been 'like a tempest, with sundry great brags and challenges', the main effect of which was harsher anti-Catholic legislation. Fr Bluet was regarded as something of a crank. He left the priesthood in 1602 and died two years later.

Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, nearly seventy years after her father's break with Rome. At the beginning of her reign England was a nominally Catholic country with a minority of committed Protestants; at her death, forty-five years later, the country was nominally Anglican with Puritan and Catholic minorities.

Elizabeth had executed 123 priest and more than sixty lay Catholics. She had made it socially disadvantageous and potentially financially ruinous to be a Catholic. And she had tried hard to avoid accusations of religious persecution by equating Catholicism with treason.

Estimates of how many English people remained Catholic at the end of Elizabeth's reign vary from 1½ per cent to 25 per cent. There may well be an element of truth in both figures. It is probable that only 1½ per cent were Catholics who would make no concessions whatsoever to state-enforced religious conformity. It is equally likely that 25 per cent would have been prepared to describe themselves as Catholic, given the freedom to do so.

In the Thames Valley area Catholicism survived strongly among the gentry, particularly in southern Oxfordshire and western Berkshire. The Catholic occupants of manor houses along the river valleys and ancient downland pathways were rarely more than a few miles from a recusant or church papist neighbour of similar social standing. And they had many good Anglican relatives and neighbours who would rather turn a blind eye than report them to the authorities.