(1745 - 1770)

The quarter century that followed the rebellion of 1745 can be viewed as the low ebb of English Catholicism. Any hopes of the reinstatement of the Catholic Stuart monarchy had all but faded; the Jacobites were no longer a real threat to the Hanoverian succession. Yet the Protestant establishment made little effort to reintegrate Catholics into the mainstream of English society.

As with the Fifteen, there is little evidence of active support for the Forty-five Rebellion from Thames Valley Catholics. Most would have preferred the Stuart monarchy, but few were prepared to support armed rebellion. However, in 1746 a priest was arrested at Stokenchurch for trying to enlist support for the Jacobites. Naturally such incidents alarmed the authorities, and orders were given to the clerks of the peace to compile lists of Catholics and their estates.

Two years after the flight of the Young Pretender, Fr Thomas Martin became the first recorded resident priest at the Wollascotts' Woolhampton estate. He was a secular priest, in keeping with the Wollascotts' preference, and had been chaplain to a community of English Benedictine nuns at Brussels. Fr Martin stayed at Woolhampton for thirty years until his death.

Francis Perkins V died in 1751. He was the last of that name to hold Ufton Court. Unmarried and only thirty-four years old, he was succeeded by his brother James. The year before he died Francis Perkins V let Ufton Court for three years to the Protestant Lord Kingston. Both men belonged to the Aldermaston bowling club which met fortnightly during the summer at the Hind's Head Inn. Most of the members were local gentry or clergy, which suggests that there was little religious animosity towards Catholics.

Fish pond at Ufton Court
Part of a system of medieval fish ponds, connected together by sluices

In 1752 Sir Francis Curson of Waterperry died, also childless. The Curson baronetcy passed to his brother Peter, a Jesuit priest. Sir Francis's widow retained the estate until her death in 1764. The baronetcy became extinct the following year when Fr Peter Curson died.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart made a secret trip to London in 1752. It was rumoured that, while there, he renounced Catholicism and joined the Church of England to further his chances of becoming King. The Prince's father, the Old Pretender, did not hear the rumours for some nine years. He was horrified and wrote asking him 'what will avail to you all the kingdoms of the world for all eternity, if you lose your soul...?' The Prince, who had not visited his father for seventeen years, did not reply.

By 1750 Bishop John Talbot Stonor was seventy-two and no longer able to travel. He therefore stayed at Stonor and managed the estate while his nephew Thomas and Thomas's wife spent three years at Cambrai. Their two daughters were at a school run by English Benedictine nuns in the town.

In February 1752, in the chapel at Stonor House, Bishop Stonor consecrated Dr John Hornyold as his auxiliary. Bishop Hornyold went to live at Longbirch in Staffordshire from where he administered the northern part of the Midland District. The consecration was illegal, and the first in England of a Catholic bishop since the time of Mary Tudor. However, Bishop Stonor was so highly regarded by the authorities that he could act with impunity.

Bishop Stonor's opposite number in the London District, Bishop Richard Challoner, visited Fawley, Berkshire in 1752, where he confirmed twenty people. Two years earlier Bishop Challoner had published his revised and annotated edition of the Douai Bible which, until the early 1960s, was the standard Catholic English translation.

Although Marlborough, Wiltshire is outside the main area covered by this book, it is only fourteen miles over the Downs from Fawley. In 1753, the year after Bishop Challoner administered confirmation at Fawley, the Vicar Apostolic of the Western District confirmed seven people at the Marlborough home of John Hyde. His father, also John Hyde, was co-vendor of Hyde Hall, Purley in 1720.

The modern Calendar, devised by Pope Gregory XIII, was finally adopted in England in 1752. The old Julian calendar was ten days behind the Gregorian which had been adopted by most other European countries, including Scotland. The Rector of East Hendred, writing in January 1753, noted newspaper reports that some people had shown great aversion to the new calendar: 'the common people don't like it, because it has something of popery in it they say; I wish we had no other reason but such as this to find fault with the Church of Rome ...' The Rector, however, did not object to the new calendar and wrote: 'it is evident enough, that upon the true principles of astronomy, we have been wrong for some two hundred years ...'

He noted that some of his parishioners had given their servants and cattle a holiday on the old Christmas Day. He also reported that gullible country folk had been tricked by a man at nearby Milton. The legendary Glastonbury Thorn was supposed to bloom only on Christmas Day. The trickster claimed to have a plant 'of the same nature' and charged people a penny each to see it open early on the morning of the old Christmas Day, thus confirming their prejudiced view that the old calendar was correct. In reality he had controlled the growth by raising the plant under a beehive!

In 1753 a papal ruling known as 'Apostolicum Ministerium' clearly established the jurisdiction of the Vicars Apostolic. This ended the longstanding bickering between regular clergy (members of religious orders) and secular priests. Bishops Challoner and Stonor played a major role in obtaining this clarification. It was followed in 1754 by the Bull 'Regula Missionis', which gave the Vicars Apostolic greater control over private chaplains.

The Hardwick Marriage Act of 1753 made it compulsory to perform all marriages, other than those of Jews or Quakers, in an Anglican church. Any non-Anglican clergy officiating at a wedding service could be transported for fourteen years. In response the Vicars Apostolic decided that, as long as Catholic couples did not actively take part in the Anglican service by kneeling or joining in the prayers, they could go through both Anglican and Catholic ceremonies.

A hundred years earlier, in 1653, the Commonwealth had introduced a system of civil marriage and registration. The Catholic Chapter of Clergy had accepted this procedure provided that the couple consulted their priest first and received his blessing afterwards. The civil system had been abolished after the Restoration and, from then until the Hardwick Act, Catholics had effectively been free to marry according to their own rite.

In October 1753 Winefred Eyston, eighty-one year old widow of the Antiquary, died at Hendred House of 'chronical distemper'. The Rector was away visiting the Bishop of Salisbury but had written to Winefred's son Thomas that he would be willing to return to bury her. Accordingly Thomas sent a message to the Rector, who cut short his visit and returned to East Hendred to conduct the funeral. For this he was paid a guinea (= £50 today).

The Rector wrote that, as soon as old Mrs Eyston was dead, all the Catholics of the village were summoned together and went to the chapel at Hendred House to celebrate Mass for her soul. The funeral at the Anglican church was very private. The coffin was carried by six of her tenants, followed by her eldest son and daughter, then the servants and remaining tenants.

There was evidently frequent friendly contact between the Eystons and the Rector's household, and they sometimes dined at each others' residences.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart made another clandestine visit to England in 1754. On such visits he used a number of pseudonyms, including 'Mr Stonor'. According to two sources quoted in 1892 by Mary Sharp, the Prince visited Ufton Court. She wrote:

'The Prince while travelling about the country would naturally stay at the houses of such Roman Catholic gentlemen as he thought might be favourable to his cause, and that Ufton Court contained hiding places and secret ways of escape in case of surprise might also be in its favour as a temporary halting-place.'

One wonders what the Perkins family would have made of this visit, if indeed it took place.

In 1755 Sir John Moore sold Maidencourt in the Lambourn Valley, which had long been Catholic property. Sir John was the second of three sons of Sir Richard Moore who succeeded in turn to the Moore estates. The same year as the Maidencourt sale his Benedictine brother, Fr James Augustine Moore, became prior of St Gregory's, Douai. He held the position for twenty years, a record at the time.

The Franciscan Fr Edward Madew became chaplain to the Blounts of Mapledurham in 1756. He had previously been chaplain to the Perkins of Beenham. (In 1748 he baptised baby Philip White of Beenham who became a priest and died aged 30 at the English College, Lisbon.) After two years with the Blounts Fr Madew spent three years with the Dormers at Grove Park, Warwickshire before returning to the Thames Valley.

Bishop John Talbot Stonor died in the spring of 1756. Among his last visitors was his nephew William Plowden, who brought his two sons. William's father was the Jacobite soldier from Shiplake who fought at the Boyne and married Bishop Stonor's sister. About that time William's son Edmund came to live on the edge of the Stonor estate at Ibstone, Buckinghamshire.

William Wollascott V died in 1757 and was buried in the family vault in Woolhampton churchyard. He was the last male Wollascott of the Woolhampton line. Two years earlier his daughter Henrietta Maria had married Arthur James Plunkett, the seventh Earl of Fingall. This Irish nobleman was of the same family as Archbishop Oliver Plunkett of Armagh, who was martyred in the aftermath of the Titus Oates Plot, beatified in 1920 and subsequently canonised. On the death of William Wollascott the Woolhampton estate became the Earl of Fingall's.

In 1757 Sir Robert Throckmorton transferred his attentions from his Buckinghamshire residence Weston Underwood to his Berkshire estate at Buckland. He decided to build a new mansion, Buckland House, and had it designed and built by John Wood the younger of Bath.

Buckland House
The grand new mansion by John Wood

The classical new house consisted of a large stone-faced rectangular block, three storeys high, with lower wings, each terminating in an octagonal room. The west wing was a Catholic chapel. No expense was spared and the house was filled with art treasures and fine furniture. Pevsner considered that the house as originally built 'was the most splendid of smaller Georgian houses' in Berkshire.

Sir Robert proudly erected his coat of arms on the front of the house and on the gateway. He also carried out alterations to the old Buckland Manor House, the former Yate residence. A row of stables with a Gothick facade being formed at the rear. The parish church was altered to match by adding battlements to the roof and tower. The land in front of the new mansion was landscaped: a lake was formed and various follys were built, including grottoes and temples.

Buckland House was intended as a residence for Sir Robert and his eldest son George, who married in the year construction started. However, the project took ten years, and George Throckmorton died before its completion.

The year work started on Buckland House the Rector of Newbury dutifully submitted his list of parish papists. In 1757 there were fifteen. In every case the breadwinners were self-employed craftsmen. Thomas Walsh, his son John and John Wells were wigmakers, while William Casemore and his two sons were blacksmiths.

The first known resident priest at Ufton Court was the Franciscan Fr Price who was there in 1758. That year Fr Joseph Strickland, a secular priest and relative of the Stonors, became chaplain at Stonor House, a post he was to hold for thirty-two years. Also in 1758 the Stonors sold Watlington Park for £1,500 (= £69,000 today) to John Tilson, son of the Under Secretary of State, to raise funds to repair Stonor House.

Little is known of how, if at all, the Catholics of Reading town were served by their clergy during the first half of the eighteenth century. A Franciscan, Fr Grimstone, hired a room in Reading for use as a chapel about 1690, but it is not known for how long it was used.

About 1760 Anna Maria Smart rented a room in Minster Street for the same purpose. It had a side door opening discreetly onto a yard. About two years later Mrs Smart became proprietor of the only Berkshire county newspaper, the Reading Mercury. It had been founded thirty-nine years earlier and her father had once owned it.

Mrs Smart (née Carnan) was the wife of the poet Christopher Smart, whom she had secretly married in 1752. When it became known that he had married a Catholic he was forced to resign from the Fellowship of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Thereafter he scraped a living in London as a contributor to literary and satirical magazines. In this he was helped by Dr Samuel Johnson and the actor David Garrick. Smart became increasingly subject to bouts of insanity, and consequently was separated from his wife and daughters. He spent most of his later years in an asylum and died before reaching the age of fifty.

The last Powells of Sandford-on-Thames were two heiresses, one of whom, Winifred, married Sir Francis Curson of Waterperry. By 1760 Sir Francis was dead and Lady Curson sold the Manor. Another Catholic male line had failed and another old mission base had been sold.

Sandford Manor

In September the following year the Franciscan Fr Edward Madew returned to Berkshire to become resident chaplain at Ufton Court. No doubt he already knew the place from his time as a chaplain to the Perkins of Beenham. Fr Madew was a keen diarist and kept good records. Hence we know that it cost him £1 7s. 6d. (= £67 today) to move himself and his goods to Ufton. We also know that in February 1762 he paid a Mr Ingram £1 0s. 7d. (= £49 today) for candles and breads, presumably communion wafers.

Fr Madew compiled some historical information on Ufton, including a list of the whole Catholic congregation as it had been in 1749, when it totalled ninety-eight. He also noted that Bishop Challoner twice administered confirmation at Ufton Court. Fr Madew remained at Ufton Court for twenty-one years until his death.

In 1761, the year Fr Madew moved to Ufton, confirmation was administered at another Franciscan mission, Whiteknights, by Bishop Talbot. He was Bishop Challoner's auxiliary and a kinsman of the Stonors. Five people were confirmed, their ages ranging from nine to eighty.

In view of the reduction during this period in the number of Catholic manor houses, it is interesting to note an addition. Milton Manor was bought by the Catholic convert Bryant Barrett in 1764. This was the house in an isolated hamlet near Abingdon where William of Orange heard of James II's flight to France. Completed in 1663, it is thought to have been designed by Inigo Jones or Thomas Archer. Barrett paid £10,600 for it (= £455,000 today).

Milton Manor
The home of Bryant Barrett and a base for Bishop Challoner

Bryant Barrett was a lace-maker and embroiderer who lived in London's Strand. Three years earlier he had been given the Royal Warrant and hence was 'lace-man' to George III. The royal lace-maker was a convert to Catholicism through the influence of his friend Bishop Richard Challoner. He may also have been influenced by his French mother who may well have been a Catholic. Despite being the King's lace-maker, Barrett was a Jacobite and at one time a secret financial supporter of the Young Pretender.

Barrett's first wife was Mary Belson, who died after eighteen childless years of marriage. His second wife Winefred Eyston bore him six sons and two daughters. Winefred was born at Marcham (2½ miles WSW of Abingdon). Her father was the Thomas Eyston whose cordial relations with the Rector of East Hendred were noted above.

Shortly after moving into Milton Manor, Bryant Barrett began repairing and rebuilding the badly neglected house. He started a fortnight before Christmas 1764. Apart from the refurbishment, two wings housing a bakery and a brewery were added to the house. The project took seven years during which 700,000 bricks were used. Barrett employed many highly skilled craftsmen from London and used the services of the architect Stephen Wright.

Barrett was also keenly interested in the grounds and kept detailed records of the trees and bushes he planted. Thus he created a Georgian gem which has been used in recent times by film makers as the Scarlet Pimpernel's house and as a setting for television commercials.

Milton Manor contains a first floor chapel in Gothick style. The London carver Richard Lawrence was involved in its design. Two fine medieval stained-glass windows for the chapel's altar were bought from nearby Steventon parish church for £7 (= £300 today). Some later Flemish stained-glass was incorporated into the side windows.

The chapel furnishings are not conspicuously Catholic and the panelling to the upper part of the rear of the chapel folds away, so that the second floor bedroom behind can become a gallery. If a raid were suspected the congregation could gather for Mass in the bedroom gallery. Should a raid take place the celebrant could slip away through an exit near the altar and the gallery's folding panels could be closed. The search party would find an empty, ostensibly Anglican, chapel.

Barrett's friend Bishop Challoner often celebrated Mass in the chapel and, indeed, was the first to do so. His vestments, chalice and missal are still there. The chapel was always private and was never a mission centre. To this day only direct descendants of Bryant Barrett may marry there.

At Britwell House in 1764 Sir Edward Simeon built a monument to his parents. In front of the mansion he erected a remarkable column topped with an urn in the shape of a pineapple. The memorial offsets the pastoral view towards the Icknield Way, the Ridgeway and the Chiltern Hills beyond.

Simeon memorial
The obelisk at Britwell dedicated to the parents of Sir Edward Simeon

'James III', the Old Pretender, died the following year, 1765. The Pope withdrew his support for the Stuart claim to the throne and prayers for George II were immediately incorporated into the Mass. Paradoxically, that same year a press campaign attempted to revive the prosecution of Catholics by publicising the rewards available to informers and bounty hunters. The 1699 legislation still offered £100 (= £4,200) for the conviction of a Catholic priest. This was probably the reason why in 1767 the Archbishops of Canterbury and York ordered their Bishops to hold a census of Catholics, properly referred to as the Returns of Papists, 1767.

Berkshire was covered by the returns from the Diocese of Salisbury or, in the case of a few parishes such as Hurst and Sonning, the Peculiars of the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury. Oxfordshire was covered by the returns of the Diocese of Oxford. These did not list names but gave sex, age, occupation, family relationship and number of years resident in the parish. The census is considered to be reasonably accurate, although it almost certainly under-represents the Catholic presence in major urban areas, where anonymity and concealment were easier. It nonetheless highlights the parishes where there was a significant Catholic presence.

In southern Oxfordshire these included Pyrton (including Stonor) with 82, Waterperry with 32, Mapledurham 29, Oxford (six parishes) 23, Dorchester 19, Watlington 18 and Haseley 11.

Old Catholic centres based around a Catholic gentry family that had died out generally had few, if any, papists. At Sandford, for example, the only Catholics were the old wife of a labourer and her two daughters, while at Shirburn there were just a middle-aged farmer, his four offspring and an elderly widow. No Catholics at all were reported in Checkendon or Swyncombe parishes, now that the recusant branches of the Hildesleys and Fettiplaces had died out.

In Berkshire Woolhampton had 84 Catholics, Ufton 43, Buckland 42, East Hendred 32, Bucklebury 30, Brimpton 29, Reading (two parishes) 28, Binfield 25, Sonning (which included Whiteknights) 21 and Padworth 20. In all 587 Catholics were listed for Berkshire and 317 for the area of southern Oxfordshire covered by this book.

The census noted that there were a dozen Catholics in the parish of Fawley, Berkshire. A neighbouring rector stated that his colleague at Fawley did not keep a proper baptismal register because 'during the residence of Sir John Moore and his Ancestors time immemorial, a Popish Priest had been maintained and connived at'. But two years before the census, in 1765, Sir John Moore had sold Fawley to Arthur Vansittart of Shottesbrooke. Sir John died childless and was succeeded as baronet by his brother Thomas. Sir Thomas died in Hampshire in 1807, also without issue. Thus the male line of another old Catholic family came to an end.

In 1765 Charles Stonor married a Blount of Mapledurham. Although the Blounts and Stonors lived less than nine miles apart, this was the only marriage. Charles Stonor had by then been running the Stonor estate for four years, although his father was still alive. His bride Mary Eugenia Blount was twenty years old. Her mother Mary was the daughter of Mannock Strickland, a solicitor. Her father Michael was the first Blount to marry into the professional classes and it appears that he also practised as a solicitor, despite the legal impediments.

According to local tradition, recusancy existed at Thame Park in the early seventeenth century when the then Lady Wenman was a Catholic. In 1766 a marriage took place which brought the return of Catholicism to Thame Park. Philip Wenman, seventh Viscount, married Eleanor Bertie, one of the Catholic daughters of Willoughby Bertie, third Earl of Abingdon. Lord Wenman allowed his wife to maintain a Catholic chaplaincy at Thame Park for the thirty-eight years of their married life.

The 1767 census of Catholics shows that the Catholic population of Thame consisted of Lady Wenman, her sisters, her two servants and a hatter's widow. The Jesuit Fr Bernard Cassidy (alias Stafford), Superior of the Oxford District, later lived at Thame Park and was buried in the small medieval chapel in 1788. The chapel was demolished in the nineteenth century and only a few traces remain.

The parish of Hampstead Norreys on the Berkshire Downs had contained a residence of the Catholic Dancastle family in the seventeenth century. In 1676 there had been twenty-one Catholics in the parish but the 1767 Returns of Papists list none. However, by that time a marriage had taken place that was to lead to a modest return of Catholicism to the area.

Giovanni Andrea Battista Gallini was born in Florence in 1728, five months after the third Earl of Abingdon married there. Twenty-five years later he arrived destitute in England and became the Earl's dancing master. Quite possibly the Gallini family had been servants to the Earl and maintained a correspondence with him. By 1766 Giovanni Gallini had married one of the Earl's Catholic daughters, Lady Elizabeth Bertie, a sister of Lady Eleanor Wenman of Thame.

The Italian made his name and a considerable fortune, not only as a fashionable dancing master, but also at the London Opera House where he rose to become stage manager. He even danced before the Pope who made him a Knight of the Golden Spurs. Thereafter he was usually referred to as Sir John.

His fortune enabled him to buy the manors of Hampstead Norreys and nearby Yattendon from his father-in-law. In 1789 the London Opera House burned down and Gallini thereby lost £400,000 (= £14m today). Yet he was still able to put up £300,000 (= £10.5m today) towards the rebuilding costs.

He spent most of his time away from his Berkshire estates and died at his residence in Hanover Square, London in 1805, aged seventy-seven. He and his wife had separated, but only after she had borne him at least six children. There is a mural tablet to Sir John and his wife in Yattendon parish church.

The Hampstead Norreys and Yattendon estates passed to Sir John's eldest son, John Andrea Gallini. He died relatively young but Yattendon was still held by the Gallinis well into the nineteenth century. Hampstead Norreys passed to the Eystons in 1834.

In the first half of the eighteenth century John Wolfe, a Catholic, married Elizabeth Boulter of Haseley and thereby acquired Haseley Court which, throughout the previous century, had been a Catholic house.

The Wolfes were an Essex Catholic family and were related to the famous General James Wolfe who died capturing Quebec. John Wolfe of Haseley Court was the grandson of Thomas Wolfe, an eminent physician, who had left £10,000 (= £500,000 today) to Catholic charities. John's brother was a popular lawyer whose Protestant clients had been most supportive when he was barred from practising by William III's anti-Catholic legislation.

John Wolfe became head of the family in 1739. His three sons all died unmarried. The last to die was young Charles Wolfe, who passed away at Brussels in 1768 in the company of his tutor, Fr Joseph Strickland. Charles Wolfe's guardian and executor was Thomas Stonor. Wolfe was a close friend of Michael Blount of Mapledurham, to whom he left his belongings and some land at Chalgrove.

The remaining Catholics of Haseley then seem to have turned to Britwell as their Mass centre. Shortly before the death of Charles Wolfe there were eleven Catholics in the parish of Haseley, including a sixty-five year old priest who had been there about twenty years.

Two days before Christmas 1768 Sir Edward Simeon died after a nine day illness. He was eighty-six and with him the Simeon baronetcy expired. Sir Edward was buried in a specially built mausoleum near his other residence at Aston-by-Stone, Staffordshire.

At the end of March the previous year he had started building a new chapel at Britwell House. This was not yet complete and the 1767 Returns of Papists indicate that he and his retinue had removed to nearby Newington, presumably so that the builders could get on with the job unimpeded.

Sir Edward Simeon was succeeded at Britwell by his nephew Thomas Weld, a member of the notable recusant family of Lulworth Castle, Dorset. To perpetuate the Simeon link with Britwell, the new owner styled himself Thomas Simeon Weld. Thomas Weld's wife had died the previous year and he followed her soon after inheriting the Britwell estate. He was succeeded by his nephew, also known as Thomas Simeon Weld, who was said to be the second largest Catholic landowner in England.

In 1769 the new chapel at Britwell House was completed at a total cost of at least £1,000 (= £39,000 today). Sir Edward Simeon is said to have designed it himself, but he may have been assisted by his architect Edward Trubshawe. It is an unusual design, being of oval plan, and is attached to the rear of the south wing of the house.

The ceiling was finished in ornamental plasterwork of the highest quality by Italian craftsmen. It incorporated depictions of the Host (the consecrated Communion wafer), the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Greek-derived abbreviation of the name Jesus, IHS. After Britwell House passed out of Catholic hands the chapel was used as a dining and billiard room. The altar was replaced with a fireplace and the IHS motif removed from the ceiling.

Britwell House
The former Catholic chapel

Fr George Bruning, the Jesuit chaplain who had been at Britwell since the summer of 1765 stayed on after Sir Edward Simeon's death. He compiled a register of the Britwell mission, including retrospective notes. From these we learn that, in the year the chapel opened, Fr Bruning had a congregation of sixty-four living within six miles of Britwell. His parishioners lived at Chinnor, Shirburn, Watlington, Ewelme, Ipsden, Wallingford, Burcot, Overy, Dorchester and Britwell itself. The largest group comprised the parishioners from the Dorchester area, and included the old Catholic yeoman families of Day and Davey.

Fr Gilbert Wells, a Jesuit, had lived with the Daveys from 1752 to 1758. Fr Bruning wrote in his register: 'The Catholics in and about Dorchester had formerly a Missioner residing among 'em; but as they have no longer that help, and would otherwise be destitute, Charity can't consider'em but as part of this Congregation.' He noted that at Overy they had all the necessary 'Altar-Furniture' which had 'been made use of regularly seven times throughout the year; i.e. some week day during each Indulgence Term, or thereabouts'.

In 1770 confirmation was administered at Britwell House and also at Stonor, where thirty-two candidates were confirmed.

A strange feature of Britwell House is an underground circular vault situated among trees to the right of the front of the house. It is linked by a tunnel to the wine cellar. The tunnel is small but could have been used by someone crouching. It has been blocked by subsidence for at least sixty years. In 1930 the then owner of the house opened the vault from above and allegedly found a round room with a stone bench around the walls. Local historian Biddy O'Sullivan was shown the room nearly forty years later and saw no sign of the bench. She concluded that the entrance from the collapsed tunnel had been sealed up.

There are many fanciful stories about secret escape routes from old Catholic houses. It is just possible that this might have formed a very late example. It could even have been retained from the earlier Britwell House. However, Biddy O'Sullivan suggested that the underground chamber was an ice house and this is almost certainly the case.

In 1769 John Perkins, youngest son of Bell and Francis Perkins V, died. He had inherited the Ufton estates nine years earlier. His brothers Francis, James and Charles had each held Ufton Court before him, and all had died childless. James had sold the family's Buscot property. Their Great Bathampton, Langford and Wylie estates were sold after Charles' death to pay his debts.

John Perkins was a childless widower, but had two step-daughters to whom he left £1,000 (= £39,000 today) each when they achieved their majority. He left £20 (= £780 today) to his housekeeper. The rest of his personal effects went to his land agent Henry Deane of Reading and Francis Prior, a Catholic neighbour who held a life interest in Pam Hall, Padworth. (This was a large house belonging to the Perkins family which was demolished in the nineteenth century.)

When Charles Perkins left Ufton Court to his brother John, he provided for the eventuality of John having no heirs. If this happened the estate would go to their cousin Katherine Jones or her heirs. If she had none it would pass to Sir Henry Englefield of Whiteknights. So, even as the Perkins's male line died out, they maintained the link with the Englefields that had been forged in the time of Mary Tudor.

In reality Ufton passed to Katherine Jones's son, John Jones of Llanarth, Monmouthshire. Jones preferred to stay in Wales and never lived at Ufton Court, which consequently became increasingly ruinous. But Fr Madew stayed on. He had persuaded the dying John Perkins to leave the 'church stuff' in trust for the benefit of the congregation. The ailing Perkins repeated over again 'I think it is the best way.'

Fr Madew stayed at Ufton Court until his death in the spring of 1782. He had been a priest for more than fifty years. His successor was Fr George Baynham, another Franciscan, who was also the chaplain to Whiteknights. Fr Baynham continued to minister to the Ufton Catholics from the increasingly ramshackle former Perkins residence.

When Bryant Barrett moved to Milton Manor, the Rector of the parish church (which is just outside the manor house gates) did not relish the presence of papists on his doorstep. Although Barrett played down the outward signs of Catholicism at his house and stressed its links with William of Orange, the Rector probably knew the true identity of Barrett's friend and frequent visitor Richard Challoner.

Bryant Barrett wanted to build a family vault onto the Anglican church, but the Rector refused to allow it. Barrett therefore threatened to charge the rector and his congregation for use of the road to the church. This piece of polite blackmail did the trick and in 1769 Barrett got his way.

By this time enforcement of the penal laws against Catholics had almost ceased. A quarter of a century had passed since the Forty-five Rebellion, and there were now signs of hope for the Catholics of the Thames Valley. Yet during those twenty-five years many of the old gentry families that had kept an ember of Catholicism glowing in Berkshire and southern Oxfordshire had died out or left the area. The Perkins, Wolfes, Simeons, Cursons, Moores, Powells and Wollascotts had all gone. As for the homes of those who remained, John Henry Newman wrote of the typical 'old-fashioned house of gloomy appearance, closed in with high walls, with an iron gate and yews, and the report attaching to it that "Roman Catholics" lived there.'