(1646 -1660)

Charles I surrendered in the spring of 1646. He was executed in 1649, the monarchy being replaced with a republican Commonwealth.

During the following year Parliament repealed the act requiring compulsory attendance at Anglican services. This was intended to undermine the Church of England, rather than help the Catholics. The Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy were abandoned in favour of an Oath of Abjuration, even more offensive to Catholics.

After the fall of Oxford the Plowdens returned to Shiplake, much impoverished. Their property, like other Royalist estates, had been sequestrated by Parliament and rented out to neighbours. Fortunately the Plowdens' neighbours returned the property voluntarily. Francis Plowden responded by helping them with their legal problems, while his wife Mary provided medical aid.

In 1649 Richard Godric Blount became a Benedictine monk of St Gregory's, Douai. He had been born at Fawley, Berkshire and was presumably a son of Sir Richard Blount by his second wife, Elizabeth, née Moore.

Fawley Court
Pediment over doorway

Sir Richard's grandson Michael Blount, nineteen year old heir to Mapledurham, was murdered by a footman at Charing Cross, also in 1649. He was succeeded by his brother Walter who, two years after Michael's murder, had the Mapledurham estates released from sequestration. Walter later married Philippa Benlowes, an Essex Catholic. Her uncle, the poet Edward Benlowes, had abandoned Catholicism a quarter of a century earlier and was now bitterly opposed to it. Despite this he mortgaged his estates to raise her a huge dowry of £6,000 (= £280,000 today). Not surprisingly he was destitute within a few years. The Blounts therefore provided accommodation for him at Mapledurham until the poet could arrange lodgings with more convenient access to the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

Another poet, William D'Avenant, was born at 3 Cornmarket, Oxford, once the Crown Inn. Sixteenth century murals have been found there, including a large IHS, the monogram of Jesus. Officially D'Avenant was the son of the innkeeper, but William Shakespeare admitted to being his godfather and may have been his natural father. D'Avenant was a Catholic, Royalist and sometime Poet Laureate.

As a Royalist William D'Avenant had been imprisoned at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. In 1650 he sailed for Virginia on behalf of the Queen, who had returned to her native France during the Civil War. He was captured by the Parliamentarians and it is said that his fellow poet John Milton intervened and saved him from execution. At the Restoration D'Avenant was to return the favour for Milton.

By 1650 all Stonor estates outside Oxfordshire, except Didcot in Berkshire and Penton Mewsey, Hampshire, had been sold. The remainder were worth about £1,600 a year (= £75,000 today), of which £300 went to pay recusancy fines (= £14,000 today). Most of this residue consisted of woodland. Fortunately for the Stonors, the county commissioners were unable to find a tenant whom they could trust not to strip the timber for a quick profit. The family were therefore allowed to retain these estates.

Nonetheless, William Stonor had to borrow considerable sums from, among others, his cousin Sir John Curson of Waterperry. Sir John had been involved in the defence of Oxford and had been captured when Ascott House, near Stadhampton, fell to John Hampden's Parliamentary troops. Despite his mother Lady Ann's strong Catholicism, Sir John was not ostensibly a Catholic. He had, however, married a daughter of the Catholic Sir Robert Dormer, sometime Sheriff of Buckinghamshire.

William Stonor died in 1652. That Christmas Eve (the year in which Christmas was 'abolished') Sir John Curson was one of three men who petitioned Parliament on behalf of themselves and other creditors of William's surviving sons, Francis and Thomas. (Another son, William, had been killed defending Basing House.)

Sir John and his colleagues asked for the release for eight years of the rents of the sequestrated manors of Stonor, Bix, Pishill, Shiplake, Dunsden and Blount's Court. Parliament had leased these estates to three men, one of whom was Sir George Simeon, then in his seventies. Sir George was a member of the Catholic Brightwell branch of the Simeons. His grandmother was a Stonor, and he had married three times, on each occasion to a bride from a Catholic family.

Sir John Curson and Sir George Simeon seem to have been able skilfully to interpose themselves, with the assistance of Protestant colleagues, to protect the interests of the Stonors.

Francis Stonor died in 1653, only a year after his father. Thomas Stonor, then twenty-eight years old, succeeded his brother as head of the family. In the same year he was appointed proof-master of all saltpetre in the country. Apart from being a food preservative, saltpetre was an important constituent of gunpowder. The appointment of a Catholic Royalist was therefore somewhat surprising. It reflected the high regard in which the Stonors were held, even by their religious and political opponents.

In 1653, the year of this appointment, Thomas married Lady Elizabeth Neville, daughter of the ninth Lord Abergavenny. She had been living at Shirburn Castle, the former home of the Catholic Chamberlain family, which had been sequestrated. The Chamberlain male line had failed and the castle had recently been inherited by two daughters of John Chamberlain, Elizabeth who married the tenth Lord Abergavenny, and Mary who married Sir Thomas Gage of Firle, Sussex.

Despite his new appointment Thomas Stonor had to lease the manors of Didcot, North Stoke, Stoke Mules and one of the Ipsden manors. Three-quarters of the income from these had already been seized by the authorities. He also sold Penton Mewsey in Hampshire and leased out Watlington Park and Newnham Murren. Even these measures were not enough to resolve his financial situation and a few years later he sold the Stonor lands at Shiplake.

The Hildesleys were also in financial difficulties at this time. In 1650 the mortgagees of Ilsley Farm applied to the county commissioners to compound (pay a lump sum) for the estate. However, the following year William Young, a member of a Catholic family living at Whatcombe, near Fawley, Berkshire petitioned the Commissioners that the mortgage had been assigned to him and that the interest had been paid. This seems to have saved Ilsley Farm for the Hildesleys, who continued to hold it until the following century.

The Ufton estates of Francis Perkins II did not escape sequestration. As Mary Sharp, the historian of Ufton Court, put it 'the unfortunate lords of Ufton, after having so long suffered as traitors at the hands of the King, were severely taxed with the rest of their Royalist neighbours as malignants for their loyalty.'

Consequently the parishioners of Ufton and Padworth almost lost the benefit of the 'Ufton Dole'. This annual charity had been instigated by Lady Marvyn, aunt of Francis Perkins I. It consisted of gifts of bread, calico and flannel. The overseers of the two parishes successfully petitioned the Commissioners to allow the charity to continue so that the poor families for whom it was intended 'may not starve and perish for want thereof.' Consequently the Ufton Dole is still distributed today.

Augustine Belson of Brill and Aston Rowant, great nephew of the martyr Thomas Belson, was among those whose estates were seized. So too was Benedict Hall of Noke, whose estates included West Ginge Manor near Wantage and property at Chalgrove.

Humphrey Hyde had acquired part of Marlston Manor (2 miles N. of Bucklebury) through his marriage to Margaret Braybrooke. She had inherited it from her father Richard, presumably a descendant of the Elizabethan recusant lawyer James Braybrooke. The estate had been sequestrated and, as was usually the case, two thirds of its income had been seized by Parliament.

In 1652 Humphrey Hyde, probably the head of the Kingston Lisle branch of the family, successfully petitioned for the return of Marlston Manor, presumably by taking the Oath of Abjuration. However, he died shortly afterwards and the property was again sequestrated, because his widow refused to take the oath.

Lowbrook Manor at Bray was sequestrated from William Englefield, a son of the younger Sir Francis. Another son, Henry, had inherited the family's property at Englefield and complained when it, too, was seized. He protested that 'though a papist' he was 'not a papist delinquent', that is, an active supporter of the Royalist cause. In fact, no Berkshire Catholics were convicted of 'delinquency' by the Parliamentary courts, an indication of their lukewarm support for the King.

Amidst this gloomy economic situation the Catholic families of the Thames Valley continued to provide vocations to the religious life. While the Nappers of Oxford suffered the sequestration of their property, Edmund Napper joined the English College at Rome. He had been educated by the English Jesuits at St Omer in the Pas de Calais, and had subsequently taken the Jesuit novitiate at Tournai in Flanders. Edmund Napper was ordained in 1653 but lameness is said to have impeded his ministry. He left Rome for England a few years later and was never seen again.

John Eyston, son of Thomas Eyston of Finchampstead, became a Franciscan friar in 1653. He took the name Fr Bernard Francis and had a distinguished career, mostly on the Continent, as Professor of Philosophy and Theology, and Doctor of Divinity.

Elizabeth Plowden, daughter of Francis Plowden of Shiplake, became a nun at Louvain in 1656. She eventually became Mother Superior. In Victorian times parts of the dress she wore when she became a 'bride of Christ' were kept at the Augustinian Convent at Newton Abbot, Devon (now closed). The dress was made of silver cloth decorated with the Plowden family arms.

In 1658, the year of Oliver Cromwell's death, some London men were bound over for distributing Catholic books in Oxford. At the time there were forty known recusants in the city.

That year Sir John Yate of Buckland died. His estates had been sequestrated and his widow Mary retired to Harvington Hall near Kidderminster. She raised a monument to Sir John in Buckland parish church. It bears a remarkable Latin description which translates as:

'The said Mary, widowed and most tearful, erected this monument as a memorial to her most famous husband who died piously with the sacrament of the Holy Roman Church.'