(1660 - 1685)

By June 1660 the Commonwealth had collapsed. Shortly afterwards the monarchy was restored and Charles II, son of the executed king, acceded to the throne.

For some Catholics there was an immediate improvement in their situation. Within a few weeks of the King's accession a writ was issued stating that there would be no further levy for recusancy on the manor of Whiteknights and lands nearby owned by Anthony Englefield. By the end of the year the Stonors had regained full possession of Stonor and Blount's Court. Thomas Stonor seems to have marked the Restoration by presenting a bell to Watlington parish church.

In the Restoration year Francis Perkins II revised his will, his son and heir Francis having died. He cut out his relative John Perkins of Beenham, who had recently conformed to Anglicanism.

Francis Perkins II died the following year and, in accordance with family tradition, was buried in Ufton Nervet parish church. A marble slab on his tombstone was later placed under the altar. There was already a monument in the church to his parents, Francis Perkins I and Anna, daughter of the Elizabethan lawyer Edmund Plowden. This still exists, although it is in bad condition.

One of Francis Perkins II's daughters married John Hyde of Hyde End on the River Enborne near Brimpton (5 miles WSW of Ufton Court). Even today Hyde End is a quiet backwater. The former Hyde mansion, subsequently restyled in the Georgian manner but now derelict, stands a few hundred yards from the Enborne, which there forms the boundary between Hampshire and Berkshire. A small detached building at the back of the house is said to have been the Catholic chapel.

Hyde Hall
The derelict manor at Brimpton

In the year Francis Perkins II died, 1661, Fr Richard Hyde, a Berkshire Jesuit, abandoned Catholicism. He may have been the brother of Perkins's son-in-law, John Hyde.

Like Francis Perkins, William Wollascott IV's son, heir and namesake predeceased him. He was therefore succeeded by his daughter Catherine. She married Thomas Wollascott of the Sutton Courtenay branch of the family. Thomas and Catherine had a common great grandfather in William Wollascott II. Their son and heir Martin was born shortly after the Restoration.

A month or two after the Restoration the Royalist administration proposed to compensate John Paulet, Marquis of Winchester, for losses resulting from the siege and fall of Basing House. At first the sum suggested was £19,000 (= £890,000 today) but in the end he received nothing.

However, his lands were restored and he retired to Englefield House, which he had acquired through his second wife, Honora de Burgh. Her mother was Frances Walsingham. Hence a Catholic known as the Great Loyalist inherited the former house of a Catholic attainted as a traitor, via the granddaughter of the head of Elizabeth I's secret service.

The Marquis greatly enlarged Englefield House where he lived a life of privacy, concentrating on literature and agriculture. But he continued to be dogged by sadness. In his first three years at Englefield he lost his wife, a son and a daughter. He also fell out with his eldest son Charles, later Duke of Bolton, who had been forcibly converted to Protestantism. Their differences were settled only by the passing of a parliamentary bill in 1663.

John Paulet married again, his third wife being Isabella Howard, daughter of the first Viscount Stafford. He fathered no more children and died in 1675, first marquis of England. His sepulchral slab lies in the floor before the altar of Englefield parish church. On the north wall of the nave is a monument erected to him by his widow. It bears an inscription by the poet Dryden, who later became a Catholic. The Great Loyalist was laid to rest a few yards from the private chapel of the Englefields, where the father and nephew of the attainted Sir Francis lie.

Paulet Monument
On the north wall of Englefield parish church

The new King, Charles II, wanted to improve the position of all nonconformists, whether Catholic or Protestant. He had declared at Breda in Holland that he proposed 'liberty to tender consciences' for 'differences of opinion in matters of religion which do not disturb the peace of the Kingdom'.

In 1662, two years after the Restoration, the King married a Portuguese Catholic princess, Catherine of Braganza. Fr Richard Russell, born at Buckland in 1629, had a major role in negotiating the marriage treaty. He also escorted Catherine to England and officiated at the wedding. (He later became Bishop of Vizeu, Portugal.) Catholics now expected a real improvement in their position. They were to be disappointed.

The Corporation Act of 1661 had already been passed, compelling holders of town office to take Communion in the Church of England at least once a year. Mayors, aldermen, recorders, bailiffs, town clerks, councillors and magistrates could therefore no longer in good conscience be non-Anglicans.

A new Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, re-established the Church of England. It also led to the parting of the ways between Anglicanism and the descendants of what had hitherto been known as Puritanism. Some 2,000 ministers, mainly Presbyterians, were expelled by the Church of England. In Reading, for example, the Puritan vicar of St Mary's, Christopher Fowler, was ejected in 1662. The Independents who met in his house formed the basis of Reading's first Congregational church, the Broad Street chapel.

The Conventicle Act of 1664 prohibited more than four persons assembling for non-Anglican worship. The following year a new Five Mile Act restricted the movement of non-Anglican clergy and imposed strict licensing on schoolteachers.

Despite this, three years after the Restoration a priest was able openly to visit Oxford, stay at the Mitre Inn and administer the laying on of hands to the sick. And even after the passing of the Five Mile Act there were said to be many priests in the city, keeping company with scholars.

Charles II's religious legislation was known as the 'Clarendon Code' after Edward Hyde, Lord Chancellor Clarendon. Although a Wiltshire man, he was descended from a Cheshire family, not closely related to the Catholic Hydes of Berkshire. Yet, by a strange coincidence, in 1632 his first wife Anne had died at Purley, the village in which the Catholic Francis Hyde lived. There is a memorial to her in the parish church.

Anne, Lord Clarendon's daughter by his second wife, was born at Windsor and married Charles II's brother, the Duke of York, later James II. She converted to Catholicism and is said, somewhat improbably, to have visited the Catholic Hydes at Hyde End, Brimpton. A pane of glass there is alleged to have her name and a date scratched on it.

In 1664, four years after the Restoration, John Eyston of Leigh Farm near Lambourn died. He had also held property at Hanney and Streatley. He was a brother of William Eyston of Catmore and had at least five children. He was succeeded at Leigh Farm by his eldest son John, who married Honor, daughter of Francis Hyde of Hyde Hall, Purley. (This would appear to be Francis Hyde II, grandson of the first Francis Hyde.)

The elder John Eyston's youngest daughter, Anne, married Richard Perkins of Beenham, who became a Justice of the Peace under James II. Her sister Margaret married George Phillipson of Streatley. Two of the Phillipsons' sons became Benedictines. John was twice prior of the English Benedictines at Douai, his younger brother William was their second president.

George Napper of Holywell Manor, Oxford was the great nephew of his martyred namesake. He was summonsed with his wife to appear before the Bishop's Court on a charge of recusancy in 1664. On being instructed to conform to Anglicanism, he diplomatically asked for time to consider his position, 'having been trained up in the opinion of the Roman Church'. His implied willingness to consider the matter seems to have satisfied the authorities. Two of George's brothers were Franciscans and a sister may have been a nun. (In the 1680s the Napper family left Oxford and moved to York.)

About 1665 Thomas Stonor established a grammar school for boys at Watlington. The school building doubled as a covered market and later served as a town hall and fire station. It stands to this day, a steeply gabled, brick building on an 'island' site, with traffic flowing around it.

Sir John Browne, son of the second George Browne and of Elizabeth, née Blount, became a baronet in May 1665. This seems to have been his cue to dispose of Caversham Court. He died fifteen years later, his Great Shefford estate passing to his three sons in turn. He was a great grandson of the first Viscount Montague.

Charles I had made Edmund Plowden II (now Sir Edmund) Governor of New Albion in North America. Charles II, however, ignored his father's charter and gave the colony to his brother James, making him Duke of Albany. Sir Edmund's nephew, Edmund Plowden III of Shiplake died in 1666. Two of Edmund III's sons became priests in the mid 1670s. His daughter Elizabeth married Walter Blount of Mapledurham.

In his will Edmund III left property to Anthony Englefield of Whiteknights, thus maintaining the links established in Shropshire well over a century earlier. Sir Thomas Englefield of Whiteknights also maintained links with another old Catholic family. In 1666 Sir Thomas assigned to Francis Hildesley of Littlestoke and another man £50 a year (= £2400 today) from the rents of land at Wootton Bassett in settlement of various debts to third parties.

Meanwhile another descendant of the Elizabethan Edmund Plowden was causing a stir. His daughter Mary, sister-in-law of Francis Perkins I of Ufton Court, married Richard White of Essex. Their son Thomas was a priest educated at St Omer, Valladolid, Douai and Paris. Fr Thomas White wrote numerous books and was commonly known by his literary name, Blacklo. His friends included the scientist Galileo, the philosopher Hobbes and Kenelm Digby, son of an executed Gunpowder Plotter. Digby, though a Catholic, had served Cromwell as a diplomat and Blacklo had himself urged the Catholic clergy to come to terms with the Commonwealth.

Blacklo spent some years after the Restoration in colleges on the Continent but returned to England in 1667. He supported the reintroduction of a proper Catholic hierarchy and dominated the chapter of English Catholic clergy. Because he tried to integrate Catholicism with the current intellectual climate, many Catholics regarded him as an unorthodox sceptic.

Blacklo died in 1676. So too did Fr Benedict Brychan, the first Benedictine chaplain of Fawley Manor. He served the Moores of Fawley for about six years. Fawley is noteworthy as the only Benedictine chaplaincy in Berkshire to survive for any appreciable time between the Reformation and the Catholic Emancipation Act.

Ten years after the Restoration a secret treaty was signed at Dover between Charles II and the French king, Louis XIV. It included a provision for Charles II publicly to adopt Catholicism. Being 'convinced of the truth of the Roman Catholic religion' he was 'to reconcile himself with the Church of Rome as soon as his country's affairs permit.' Timing was left to Charles's discretion and Louis was to pay £150,000 (= £7.7m today) and provide 6,000 troops to suppress any resulting civil disturbance. However, it was not until Charles was on his deathbed that he formally became a Catholic.

In 1672 Charles issued a Declaration of Indulgence. This suspended 'all penal laws in matters ecclesiastical, against whatsoever sort of non-conformists, or, recusants ...' At long last it looked as if England had been granted something resembling religious liberty. However, in the following year Parliament countered the Declaration by passing the Test Act. This prevented the suspension of anti-Catholic laws and actually worsened the position of Catholics. Now all holders of public office had to take Communion according to the Anglican rite, swear the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and formally deny the Catholic doctrine concerning the nature of Holy Communion.

That year a Catholic master at Magdalen College school, Oxford was forced to flee. He was said to have made sixty converts to Catholicism. In the same city it was noted that Thomas Napper had two grandsons in the French army. Two others were priests, one a Benedictine, the other a Jesuit.

Three years later Lady Mary Yate endowed the Catholic chaplaincy at Buckland, where she had lived until the death of her husband, Sir John Yate. It seems that the endowment started as a £25 a year rent charge (= £1,300 today) on an estate on the Isle of Dogs, in what is now the East End of London.

The Stonors had leased Watlington Park to a tenant but by the mid 1670s the lease had expired. Thomas Stonor built a mansion there and moved into it in 1676. He left Blount's Court to his eldest son John, who married Lady Mary Talbot, only child of the eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury.

The new mansion at Watlington Park was at the top of the steep Chiltern escarpment more than 700 feet above sea-level. It therefore afforded extensive views westwards towards Watlington and Britwell. Although much altered, the present house incorporates parts of Thomas Stonor's mansion.

In the same year that he built the house, Thomas Stonor had Widmere Pond near Blount's Court cleaned out. About two years later an intriguing account of what was found was published in 'The Natural History of Oxfordshire' by Dr R Plot, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University and Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He was fascinated by 'many whole Oaks' found in the pond (now known as Widmore Pond and part of Sonning Common, rather than Rotherfield Peppard). It seems that the trees were each fifty to sixty feet high and upside down in the water. All were 'dyed through of a black hue like Ebony, yet much of the Timber sound enough, and fit for many uses ... and all receiving a very good polish'. This, and the discovery of two Roman urns, seems to have sparked off an improbable rumour that the pond covered the entrance to an ancient silver mine.

Despite the persistence of anti-Catholic legislation some pockets of Catholicism in the Thames Valley remained large enough to be regarded as communities rather than merely extended households. The 1676 Recusant Lists show there were almost 200 Catholics within an eight mile radius of Woolhampton. This included 28 at Ufton where Perkins influence was strong, and 21 at Hampstead Norreys which was Dancastle territory. Binfield near Bracknell, also a Dancastle area, had 24 Catholics. Buckland, the chaplaincy of which had recently been endowed by Lady Mary Yate, had 32 Catholics, the most in any single parish in Berkshire. Cookham and Englefield each had 16. Shirburn near Watlington, Oxfordshire had 24.

The percentage of the population that was known to be Catholic varied enormously. In Reading it was 0.1 per cent whereas at Ufton Nervet it was 22 per cent.

The numbers convicted of recusancy reflected the fact that it was not worth the authorities prosecuting those who could not afford the fines, and who might even become a burden on the parish if further impoverished. In the reign of Charles II Cookham near Maidenhead was the Berkshire parish with the most convictions (10), followed by Binfield (8), Englefield and Buckland (7 each), and Wasing and Padworth (5 each). Twenty-four other Berkshire parishes had from one to four convictions.

In 1678 a second Test Act was passed. This removed Catholics from the House of Lords. They had been expelled from the Commons 115 years earlier. Parliament now became increasingly anti-Catholic. So too did public opinion, spurred on by the efforts of the poet Andrew Marvell, who at one time was John Milton's assistant. Marvell's 'Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government' blamed Catholics for all kinds of horrors, including the 1666 Great Fire of London.

Matters went from bad to worse with the revelation in 1678 by Titus Oates of an alleged Popish Plot. Oates was a former Anglican minister who had converted to Catholicism and studied for the priesthood at English College, Valladolid. He brought with him a long tradition of being expelled from places of learning and consolidated this by being ordered to leave the college. His reaction was to return to the Church of England and become an informer against Catholics.

Marvell's book had begun with the statement:'There has now for divers years a design been carried on to change the lawful government of England into an absolute tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant religion into downright Popery.' The allegations of Oates and his co-conspirator Israel Tonge seemed to bear this out and something approaching a national anti-Catholic hysteria erupted.

Titus Oates, who died a Baptist, was later convicted of perjury. However, at the time of the allegations Parliament and the Protestant public were prepared to believe almost anything, and Catholics suffered badly as a result. More than a quarter of the Catholic peers were imprisoned for alleged treason. One was executed and another died in the Tower of London. About a sixth of the Catholic clergy were arrested. Seventeen were executed and twenty-three died in prison.

The Newbury Chamberlain's accounts for this period include payment of £1 (= £50 today) to the Mayor and Justices 'for conveying up a Jesuit to the King and Council'. Francis Hildesley of Littlestoke, a Jesuit lay brother in his mid twenties and later a priest, returned from the Continent to be a defence witness for five Jesuits subsequently executed.

In 1678 Catholic houses were searched for arms. Scholars burned an effigy of the Pope and there were anti-Catholic demonstrations at St Clement's in east Oxford. The Popish Plot hysteria caused the poet William Joyner to flee from his home at Horspath near Cowley. He was captured on suspicion of being a priest but released when it became clear he was not. William Joyner had previously been a fellow of Magdalen College but had renounced his fellowship on becoming a Catholic.

Titus Oates was made a freeman of the City of Oxford in 1679 and at the Oxford Quarter Sessions fifty-one people were indicted for recusancy.

Elizabeth, Lady Abergavenny of Shirburn Castle, widow of the tenth Lord Abergavenny, was accused of recusancy in 1678, along with her servants. She was arrested the following year on information received from Francesco de Feria (was presumably a relative of her kinswoman, the late Lady Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria). It was alleged that Lady Abergavenny had sent money to a religious establishment overseas and that she had corresponded with a Jesuit called Harcourt. She was acquitted for lack of evidence.

Lady Abergavenny's sister Mary was the wife of Sir Thomas Gage of Firle, Sussex. Lady Mary Gage's relative Frances Gage had married Sir Charles Yate of Buckland, who died in 1680 during the Oates hysteria. Their son and heir John was in Rome at the time of his father's death but wisely postponed his return for four years. When he finally came home he travelled with Fr Thomas Codrington who became chaplain to James II.

The Oates affair forced the sixty year old Franciscan Fr Bernard Francis, alias John Eyston of Finchampstead, to leave England after only a year on the mission. He returned to his former academic career on the Continent and died at Douai more than twenty years later.

Fr Richard Prince was sent to Flanders to escape the persecution following the Oates Plot. He returned after only five months - too soon - and was arrested at Dover. Oxford born, he was in his late twenties and a member of the Catholic yeoman family of the Clifton Hampden district.

After his arrest he was put in Newgate prison, where the Central Criminal Court now stands. His cell was filthy and very narrow. Not surprisingly during five months in prison without medical attention he contracted jail fever. Having been condemned to death, he was allowed a visit on the eve of his execution from Fr Edward Petre. Fr Prince died in Fr Petre's arms and thus escaped the gallows.

The young Oxfordshire priest, Fr Richard Prince, was one of the last Catholic clergy to die for their faith in England. Fr Edward Petre, a member of the famous Essex Catholic family, was later a strong influence on James II and became a member of his Privy Council.

Another Thames Valley Catholic imprisoned during the hysteria generated by the Oates Plot was George Eyston of East Hendred. His lands were sequestrated and the fine for Catmore alone was £80 a year (= £4,000 today). He was listed as owing £233 6s. 8d. in fines (= £12,000 today). His brother John was also imprisoned.

In 1680 the Inns of Court certified that they had no papist members except a Mr Stonor Crouch of Wallingford and Francis Hyde of Hyde End. It was stated that both had absented themselves since a proclamation banishing Catholics. This was Francis Hyde II, then about sixty years old.

Three years later an Oxford Jesuit, Fr Lovell, died. Shortly after the Restoration Fr Lovell had been accused of embezzling £40,000 worth of the King's jewels (= £1.9m today) by a Mrs Curson, then in Newgate jail. However, there is no record of him being tried, nor of exactly who Mrs Curson was.

It has been suggested that, because of the anti-Catholic feeling prevailing at the time of his death, Fr Lovell's body was taken to the Curson home, Waterperry House, for secret burial. By this time the Catholic Sir John Curson had succeeded his openly Protestant father Sir Thomas.

Thirty years later, during the rebuilding of Waterperry House, several coffins were discovered under the house. One at least seems to have been that of a Jesuit chaplain. It was covered in black velvet and contained a silver crucifix and candlesticks.

Although the Jesuits lost one of their number through the death of Fr Lovell, they gained three more through the Plowdens of Shiplake. Edmund Plowden IV, the great great grandson of the Elizabethan lawyer, now held Shiplake Court. Three of his sons were ordained about this time.

The harsher enforcement of anti-Catholic legislation after the Titus Oates affair hit the Stonors hard. Thomas Stonor had to relet all the northern part of his estates, including Watlington Park. By 1684 he was dead and the lease of the manor of Blount's Court (the village of Rotherfield Peppard) was assigned to Martin Hildesley of the Inner Temple, London for £2,766 12s. 0d. (= £144,000 today). Martin Hildesley was the third son of Francis Hildesley of East Ilsley and Littlestoke. Although not listed as a Papist by the Inns of Court, Martin appears to have maintained the family's religious tradition.

Barn at Littlestoke
Above, the newly built barn, and below, the initials on it

The Hildesleys of Littlestoke had been enjoying a resurgence of prosperity at this time, as is evidenced by foundation stones at Littlestoke Manor. A brick and flint barn bears the date 1681 and the initials of Francis Hildesley, whose wife was Mary Winchcombe of Bucklebury. Another stone, dated a year later and built into the garden wall facing the road, has the inititials of their son William and his wife Mary.

Littlestoke
Difficult to read but this stone bears the date 1682 and the initials of William and Mary Hildesley

In 1685 the dying King was finally received into the Catholic Church by Fr John Huddleston. A branch of his Cumberland-based family held Haseley Court in the remote village of Little Haseley (3½ miles SSE of Waterperry). Haseley Court is a medieval house subsequently altered and extended, with gardens noted for their topiary since Tudor times. The Haseley Brook runs nearby on its way to join the River Thame.

During the Civil War the Huddlestons of Haseley Court mortgaged the estate to help provide a troop of Royalist cavalry. The family never recovered financially from this display of loyalty to the Crown. Their chapel was subsequently used as a stable.

After the Parliamentary victory at Worcester, Fr Huddleston had hidden with the future King at Moseley Old Hall in Staffordshire. Mr Anthony Mockler of Milton Manor, near Abingdon, is a descendant of the Whitgreave family who lived at the Old Hall. A missal of Henry VIII's time, used by Fr Huddleston, can be seen at Milton Manor.

The Huddlestons of Sawston Hall, Cambridgeshire have loaned their authentic portrait of Fr John Huddleston, together with a companion portrait of Charles II, to Stonor House where both are on display to visitors.