(1582 - 1588)

In 1582, the year following Fr Edmund Campion's execution, Dr William Allen's seminary at Rheims published the first official Catholic English translation of the whole New Testament. Much of the initial print run of 5,000 copies was smuggled into England where it was received enthusiastically by the Catholic population.

In the same year Walter Hildesley of East Ilsley and Crowmarsh Gifford, eldest son of Margaret Hildesley and head of the Hildesley dynasty, was among those recorded as being recusants. So too were his wife, manservant and maid. At Reading a Mrs Buckley was jailed for recusancy and the following spring Thomas Edwards, a Reading chandler, was in the Gatehouse prison, Westminster for the same reason.

George Browne, son of the staunchly Catholic first Lord Montague, married Eleanor, daughter of Anthony Bridges of Great Shefford (8 miles NW of Newbury) in 1583. On her marriage her father conveyed to her Great Shefford Manor Farm. It was there that Anthony Bridges sheltered Fr George Snape from about 1584 until 1591. Fr Snape was captured at the farm and abandoned Catholicism, thereby obtaining a pardon. The farm still stands. The Brownes owned Maidencourt Farm, which is less than a mile up the Lambourn Valley from Great Shefford.

There was still much reverence for Catholic vestments, books, furnishings and devotional items, even among ostensibly model Anglicans. There were heavy penalties for being in possession of such things which, according to the law, should have been surrendered or destroyed a quarter of a century earlier.

An Oxfordshire Archdeacon's Court in 1584 tried a number of men for keeping such 'popish trash'. Two had been found in possession of vestments. Another told of numerous items such as crucifixes, bells, vestments and altar cloths kept hidden by local people. Yet another had been given relics by a dying parson, an indication of the mixed feelings of some of the former Catholic priests who conformed to Anglicanism. Four years later the Mayor of Reading found Catholic books and vestments in a house in the town. Oliver Coxhead and a Mr Combes were ordered to be arrested.

In 1585 came further anti-Catholic legislation, prompted by the Throckmorton and Parry plots. Any priest ordained during the Queen Elizabeth's reign was to leave the country within forty days. Any who disobeyed, or who re-entered England, would automatically be guilty of high treason. Any lay person who 'willingly and wittingly' sheltered a priest was liable to the death penalty. Anyone who sent money to English colleges and seminaries abroad could lose their goods and suffer imprisonment. Parents sending their children abroad without a licence could incur heavy fines. Failure to give information on the whereabouts of priests could result in fines and unlimited imprisonment. But, if a missionary priest took the Oath of Supremacy within three days of landing in England, his 'treason' would be pardoned.

Meanwhile some Catholics found 'legitimate' excuses for not taking Communion according to the Anglican rite. For example, Richard East of Swyncombe House (3 miles W. of Stonor) claimed he could not receive Communion because his conscience was troubled by the evil speech of a certain Catherine Ginacre.

Fr Gregory Gunnes was arrested at Henley-on-Thames that summer. He had been ordained towards the end of Queen Mary's reign but for nearly twenty years had been an Anglican parson. In the late 1570s he had abandoned his ministry at Yelford near Witney and had since become a vagrant. At some stage he had been reconciled to the Catholic church.

At the Bell Inn, Henley Fr Gunnes fell into conversation with a member of Sir Francis Knolly's household and betrayed himself by praising Fr Edmund Campion. He was arrested and found to be carrying two consecrated Communion wafers. He was sent to the Marshalsea jail at Southwark.

That autumn the already outlawed Sir Francis Englefield was attainted and convicted of high treason by Parliament. The Privy Council had learned that he had advised Philip II of Spain to invade England. All Englefield's possessions and estates were forfeited to the Crown, which had already sequestrated them. However, having foreseen such problems, the Catholic lawyer Edmund Plowden had arranged the conveyance of the titles in all Sir Francis Englefield's estates and manors to the latter's brother, John. John Englefield had since died, leaving the titles to his young son Francis, who until recently had been Edmund Plowden's ward.

The estates and manors in question included Englefield, Tidmarsh, Tilehurst, Sindlesham, Brimpton, Speenhamland, Hartridge, Ilsley and South Moreton in Berkshire, and Lashbrook, Dunsden, Exlade and Shiplake in Oxfordshire. The conveyance of Sir Francis Englefield's estates drafted by Edmund Plowden included a provision whereby Sir Francis could reclaim the estates if he delivered a gold ring to their holder. This was now the Crown and it was quite unacceptable to the Queen that the seized lands of an attainted traitor could be reclaimed. But Edmund Plowden had done his work well and it was to take eight years of legal wrangling to resolve the situation.

Edmund Plowden died eight months before Sir Francis Englefield's attainder. He was buried in the Temple Church, London, where there is a memorial to him. There is also a bust of him in the Middle Temple Hall.

It was probably Plowden's guardianship of the younger Francis Englefield that enabled the lawyer to lease Shiplake Court from the Crown following its sequestration. After his death there seems to have been no difficulty in renewing the royal lease. Shiplake Court was subsequently occupied by Plowden's Catholic nephew Andrew Blunden, who held a joint interest in the property with Plowden's two sons. There is a bust of Blunden in Shiplake parish church.

Blunden Monument
The bust of Andrew Blunden in Shiplake parish church

Andrew Blunden regarded Sir Francis Englefield's seditious exploits as 'folly' and soon became involved in an acrimonious dispute with Sir Francis's nephew. The young Francis Englefield, backed by members of his family, claimed that Edmund Plowden had acted discreditably in handling Sir Francis's affairs. In contesting this view Andrew Blunden was supported by Plowden's aged brother-in-law Richard Sandford, and Sandford's son Humphrey, the lawyer who had acted as a courier between Edmund Plowden and Sir Francis Englefield. Two other Thames Valley Catholics, Thomas Vachell and Walter Hildesley, were brought into the argument.

During the feud the young Francis Englefield broke a promise he had made to Edmund Plowden. In exchange for Plowden relinquishing Englefield's wardship, Englefield had undertaken to look after Richard Sandford and his family, who lived in a house on the Englefield estate near Shrewsbury. But Englefield had Sandford evicted. The old man was greatly upset and sought refuge with Plowden's son at Plowden Hall, Shropshire where he died a fortnight later.

In July 1586 a remarkable event took place in Buckinghamshire at Harleyford Manor, two miles up the Thames from Marlow. This was the home of Richard Bold, a Catholic former Sheriff of Lancashire and harbourer of Fr Robert Dibdale. Harleyford is opposite Hurley Priory, the name being a corruption of Hurley Ford. It is only four and a half miles over the hills from Stonor and adjoins Danesfield, home of the nineteenth century Catholic convert Charles Scott-Murray.

Despite the fears of Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council there had rarely, if ever, been more than one Jesuit operating in England during the five years following the raid on Lyford Grange. But now three Jesuits came to Harleyford Manor: Fr William Weston, superior of the order in England; Fr Henry Garnet, mathematician, musician and former printer; and Fr Robert Southwell, gifted poet and former head of studies at the English College in Rome.

Others who now gathered at Harleyford included Catholic members of the nobility, and William Byrd, the Court musician. Byrd was the greatest English composer of the time and a staunch Catholic. He shared duties as organist of the Chapel Royal with Thomas Tallis. Because of his outstanding talent he was protected from persecution for his religious beliefs. He therefore wrote musical settings both for the Catholic liturgy and the new Anglican rite. The Harleyford conference gave Byrd a rare opportunity to supervise the performance of his settings for the Latin liturgy.

During the eight days of the conference the mornings were devoted to worship and spiritual improvement, the afternoons to planning the missionary campaign. The conference was safely concluded but three months later Fr Robert Dibdale, Richard Bold's chaplain, was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn.

By this time more than half the 300 seminary priests smuggled into England had been arrested and banished, executed or imprisoned. The Privy Council's intelligence network was becoming increasingly effective. It now intercepted secret letters smuggled to and from Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who had been a prisoner of her cousin Elizabeth for eighteen years. Mary Stuart's secret correspondents included Sir Francis Englefield, Fr Robert Persons and a young Catholic courtier, Anthony Babington. He was a distant cousin of Lady Babington of Twyford near Buckingham.

While the Harleyford conference was taking place, in the third week of July 1586, Mary Stuart wrote to Babington making it clear that she fully supported a plot to depose Elizabeth. Early that autumn Babington and thirteen other plotters were executed, and within six months Mary Stuart was beheaded.

George Brome, a Catholic of Boarstall (9 miles NE of Oxford) had little regard for the competence of Babington and his associates. He boasted that he would handle things better if he ever got involved in a plot. His words were reported to the authorities by George Davies, the local parson, whom George Brome, his friend Robert Atkins and Brome's servant Henry Ferris had often tried to convert to Catholicism.

Brome probably thought he was safe talking to Davies. They had been fellow students at Oxford, and Davies wanted the living of Holton parish (3 mile S. of Boarstall) which Brome's family controlled. Nine years earlier George Brome had been imprisoned with his mother in the Gatehouse prison, Westminster for his religious beliefs. Now he was in trouble again.

Parson Davies's report was relayed by a magistrate to the Privy Council. This led to an early morning raid on the Brome's house by the magistrate's men. The family were held captive until the evening while a thorough search was made. The searchers found an Agnus Dei and religious statues which they destroyed. They confiscated 'corrupt and superstitious' books, including works by Thomas More, Edmund Campion and Robert Persons. Similar evidence of Catholicism was found at Robert Atkins's house.

The following month the Reverend Davies complained to the magistrate that Brome and Atkins had threatened him with violence. The case was dropped only after George Brome's father, a former justice of the peace, put pressure on the Secretary of State.

The execution of the Babington plotters in the autumn of 1586 was celebrated with public bonfires. Scornful remarks by a Berkshire Catholic about the festivities at Reading were reported to the authorities. The man in question was Francis Perkins of Ufton Court, which stands halfway between Padworth and Ufton Nervet (7 miles SW of Reading).

The Perkins family were relative newcomers to the Kennet Valley, having lived in the area for little more than a century. Francis Perkins's father, William Perkins of Brimpton, was gentleman usher to the executed Lady Margaret Pole and later to her son, Cardinal Pole. After the Chantries Act caused the suppression of St Leonard's Chapel at Brimpton, William Perkins occupied Brimpton manor as tenant-at-will of Sir Francis Englefield. This close connection with Queen Mary's regime must have reinforced the family's loyalty to Catholicism. The link was maintained by Francis Perkins who married Anna, the eldest daughter of Edmund Plowden.

Brimpton Manor
On the right is the former chapel of St Leonard

Ufton Court was completed in 1576 and included large portions of the original medieval manor house of Ufton Pole. It is a large, timber-framed house with many gables. Woods to the north and west screen the house which stands in a gully and is therefore well hidden. In the year Fr Edmund Campion was executed Francis Perkins's aunt, Lady Marvyn, died. Perkins, who already owned the nearby manor of Ufton Robert, thereby inherited Ufton Court and the family estates in Wiltshire.

Thus Ufton Court became one of a chain of safe houses for missionary priests moving inland from south coast harbours, such as Chichester. One of the volunteers who guided priests between these safe houses was Francis Perkins's uncle, a Wiltshire schoolmaster called Swithun Wells. Shortly after Francis Perkins inherited Ufton Court, Swithun Wells was arrested and the Perkins family put up a surety for him. The underground courier spent the winter of 1586-7 at Ufton Court. Not long afterwards he moved to London where, in 1591, he was hanged for harbouring priests. His wife died in prison more than ten years later. Swithun Wells was canonised in 1970.

Ufton Court
The front of the house, little changed since Elizabethan times

The man who accused Francis Perkins of making scornful remarks about Reading's celebration of the Babington Plot executions was Roger Plumpton. He was a tailor from Sulhamstead Abbots (1½ miles E. of Ufton Court). One evening late in the summer of 1586 Plumpton reported Francis Perkins to three local magistrates, one of whom was Humphrey Forster of Aldermaston Court, the former Sheriff of Berkshire who had taken custody of Fr Edmund Campion after his arrest at Lyford Grange. The magistrates somewhat reluctantly sent a report to the Secretary of State, the strongly anti-Catholic Sir Francis Walsingham, who had recently taken possession of Englefield House (3 miles N. of Ufton Court).

Plumpton accused Perkins of harbouring a seminary priest 'in a cock loft or some other secret corner of the house'. The magistrates' report stated that Plumpton 'On various Wednesdays, Fridays and other festival days ... hath seen most of the family, one after another, slipping up in a secret manner to a high chamber in the top of the house, and there continue the space of an hour or more.' and that Plumpton 'hearkening as near as he might to the place, hath often heard a little bell rung, which he imagineth to be a sacring bell, whereby he conjectureth that they resort to hear Mass.'

The informer stated that neither Francis Perkins nor his wife attended Anglican services. Neither did they have a high regard for members of their staff who conformed. Plumpton alleged that various people suspected of being Catholics regularly visited the house, sometimes by day, sometimes by night.

Later he claimed that a priest called George Lingham was likely to be hiding at Ufton Court. Plumpton said that Lingham travelled from one Catholic house to another, 'under cover of teaching in the virginals' (an early keyboard instrument). Apparently he sometimes stayed with William Wollascott II at Tidmarsh and also somewhere at Englefield. Lingham was probably Fr George Lingen, a relative of the Englefields, who had been a priest during the reign of Queen Mary.

Priest-hole at Ufton
A secret panel swings out to reveal one of Ufton's priest-holes

Secretary Walsingham instructed the three magistrates to visit Ufton Court and interrogate Francis Perkins. When they arrived he was visiting relatives ten miles away at Ilsley on the Berkshire Downs. A messenger was sent to bring him back. In the meantime the house was searched but nothing incriminating was found.

That evening Francis Perkins arrived home and was questioned by the magistrates. They also interrogated all his servants, a tenant and the parsons of the nearby villages of Padworth and Sulhamstead. The clergymen suspected Perkins of harbouring Catholic priests, but could not prove it.

The immediate result of the investigation was that three of Francis Perkins's servants were jailed and a bond of £500 (= £100,000 today) was taken from Perkins to ensure that he appeared before Walsingham the following Saturday. But Francis Perkins was discharged and it seems that his servants were soon released.

On another occasion the informer Plumpton listed nearly two dozen suspected Catholics who frequented Ufton Court. They included Francis Perkins's mother Mrs Tattersall, his sister-in-law Mary Plowden, his cousins Francis and Richard Perkins of Padworth, Thomas Meysey who had married a daughter of Henry Perkins of Ilsley, Thomas Purcell who many years later bought nearby Wokefield from Edmund Plowden's son Francis, and 'one Taylor, an alehouse-keeper in Englefield, that of long time hath been a courier of letters between Sir Francis Englefield and other papists in Berkshire.' Also named was John Vachell of Burghfield. He and his Catholic older brother Thomas were sons of Cromwell's commissioner for the suppression of Reading Abbey.

Someone else who had to appear before Secretary Walsingham was Richard Higges, a Berkshire labourer. He was accused of having a child christened 'by a priest at his own house in the Latin service.' Higges said he had met the priest on the Berkshire Downs near Wantage. The priest had been wearing a white sleeveless jacket and white stockings, and had been carrying a pen, ink-horn and a book. Higges refused to name the priest and was imprisoned in the Marshalsea jail.

Stained glass at Ufton Court
The Virgin and Child featured in surviving stained glass

By the mid 1580s even the richer Catholics were finding it increasingly difficult to pay the fines for non-attendance at Anglican services. The leading Berkshire Catholics pleaded that 'following the private zeal of our consciences we are deprivable of our liberties, and subject to the continual payments of greater sums of money than either our goods or the yearly profits of our lands and livings can discharge or satisfy ...' The practice grew up therefore of making offers of lump sums to clear the backlog of unpaid fines.

In 1586 Berkshire and Oxfordshire were among only ten counties in England where the offers exceeded £100. Berkshire's totalled £138 6s. 8d. (= £14,000 today) while Oxfordshire's came to £202 5s. 0d. (= £20,000 today). That year Berkshire reported 53 recusants and Oxfordshire 79. The Berkshire list included 1 esquire and 3 gentlemen. Oxfordshire listed 3 esquires and 17 gentlemen. An esquire was someone eligible for knighthood because the income from his land was in the order of £200 to £300 a year (= £20,000 to £30,000 today). Gentlemen were lower in status and not necessarily particularly rich.

Among the recusants listed in Oxfordshire were Edmund and Francis Plowden, sons of the famous lawyer. They offered joint composition of £20 (= £2,000 today). Dame Cecily Stonor offered £15 (= £1,500 today). The previous year she, like her brother-in-law Richard Owen of Godstow, had been compelled to pay £25 (= £2,500 today) to provide a light cavalryman for the Queen. Now her income at £100 a year (= £10,000 today) was much reduced, a fifth of what it had been before the Lyford incident. She had probably been carefully assigning her estates to others to reduce her liability.

Harcourt Taverner was the youngest son of Richard Taverner, a former Sheriff of Oxfordshire and of his wife Mary (née Harcourt) whose family was partly Catholic. The Taverners lived at Woodeaton, a hamlet on the edge of Ot Moor (3½ miles NNE of Oxford). Rather than follow in his father's respectable footsteps, Harcourt Taverner became a highwayman.

In the autumn of 1587, while in Oxford Castle awaiting execution, he was converted to Catholicism by fellow prisoners. They succeeded in getting a message to Fr George Nichols who got into the prison by mingling with the crowd that had come to see the execution. Taverner managed to make his confession to Fr Nichols and was hanged in the Castle Yard shortly afterwards.

The same year the system of fines for non-attendance at Anglican services was tightened up. The new procedures were designed to hit the persistent offender particularly hard. Once a person had been convicted there was no longer any need to bring charges for subsequent offences. Fines were simply to be paid twice a year direct to the Exchequer. Failure to do so could result in the loss of all goods and confiscation of two thirds of the income from estates. Failure to attend the court proceedings meant automatic conviction.

Thomas Vachell was just the sort of person the new procedures were aimed at. In March 1588 he was convicted of not having attended Church of England services for a year. The following month he was ordered to pay £50 (= £5,000 today) to provide two light cavalry. About that time he and his brother John hid a large horde of treasure at Ufton Court.

The Vachells and Perkins were related. In his will, written in the last year of Mary Tudor's reign, Richard Perkins (Francis's uncle) named his 'cousin Thomas Vachell' and Sir Francis Englefield as executors. He left his crossbow to Thomas Vachell as a reward for performing this duty. (Sir Francis Englefield was also named as executor by the secretly Catholic William Wollascott I of Tidmarsh.)

Thomas Vachell had inherited Coley Park, the family seat a mile from the centre of Reading. But, presumably to avoid its loss through his recusancy, the estate was regranted to his Protestant nephew, another Thomas Vachell, who later became Sheriff of Berkshire.

About the time of the Papal Bull of 1570 against Elizabeth I, Thomas Vachell went to live permanently at Ipsden House, Oxfordshire (3 miles SSE of Wallingford). About a quarter of a century earlier he had married Catherine Reade, daughter of Thomas Reade of Barton Manor, Abingdon. (This is in Barton Lane off Radley Road and stands next to a ruined barn that belonged to Abingdon Abbey.) Thomas Reade is said to have built Ipsden House which was to remain in the family for centuries, being altered and extended from time to time. The Victorian novelist and journalist Charles Reade was born there and described it as 'the coldest house in Europe'.

Ipsden House
It had a reputation for being cold

Thomas Vachell was a noted builder of dovecotes, which in those days were useful food sources. That at Coley Park may have been built by him. It survives as part of a housing development based around the old farm buildings. Built into the brickwork is a small stone tablet on which is carved a cross. Perhaps this was saved from Reading Abbey, which Thomas Vachell's father despoiled. (See pictures in the chapter entitled The Early Catholic Martyrs. ) There is also a dovecote at Ipsden House. This is ascribed to Vachell and is more elaborate than that at Coley. Built of brick and flint, it has a conical roof topped by a glazed 'lantern'.

Ipsden House
Ipsden House in the snow, with dovecote beyond

Through his marriage to Catherine Reade, Thomas Vachell acquired the manors of Ipsden, Huntercombe (3 miles ENE of Ipsden) and Ipsden Basset (near Stoke Row). But much of what he gained he lost for refusing to conform to Anglicanism.

In the summer of 1588 Michael Blount of Mapledurham was ordered to arrest Vachell, who also held land at Mapledurham. By the following year Thomas Vachell was having to pay the government £24 15s. 3d. from his Berkshire lands and £13 18s. 4d. from his Oxfordshire estates (together = £3,850 today). His goods had also been seized. The Receiver for the sequestration of his property was none other than his brother-in-law Thomas Reade. This led to a separation from his wife after more than forty years of marriage.

The year of Thomas Vachell's conviction was also the year of the Spanish Armada. Sir Francis Englefield, Fr Robert Persons and William Allen, now a Cardinal, were convinced that English Catholics would support an invasion if it was likely to re-establish Catholicism. In reality most preferred the Queen to a foreign monarch, however much they would have liked a ruler of their own religious outlook. Indeed, some leading Catholics petitioned Queen Elizabeth to be allowed to fight for her against Spain.

The Privy Council was not prepared to take the risk. Prominent Catholics were stripped of their weapons and interned or held under house arrest. They were made to contribute to the Subscription Against the Armada, a sort of enforced loan to the Crown. Most paid £25 to £50. Francis Perkins of Ufton Court, being then relatively wealthy, paid the higher sum (= £5,000 today).

One of the Catholics taken into custody was Dame Cecily Stonor's brother-in-law, Richard Owen of Godstow, who had married her sister, Mary Chamberlain of Shirburn. He occupied the former property of the dissolved Godstow Abbey near Oxford and, like many other Catholic gentry, had benefited financially from the suppression of the religious houses. But he was staunchly Catholic and paid one of the highest fines in the country, £159 2s. 2d. (= £16,000 today). Richard Owen was first imprisoned at Ely and later held under house arrest in London. He was subsequently bound over by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Three years after the Armada he was noted as one of the 'great adversaries of the Spanish practices'.

The reaction of the English Catholics to the Armada finally drove the message home to Sir Francis Englefield. He abandoned any hope of reconverting England by force because 'the Catholics are resolved to resist Spain'. In the last few years of his life he was to advise Philip II against repeating the attempt.

The building of secret hiding places for Catholic priests started in earnest in the year of the Armada. At the Harleyford conference two years earlier Fr William Weston, the Jesuit superior, had presented a list of houses all over England that would shelter priests. He was arrested shortly after the conference and spent the next seventeen years in jail. His strategy of basing missionary priests in the country houses of the Catholic gentry was put into practice by Fr Henry Garnet, who succeeded him as Jesuit superior.

Like Robert Persons before him, Fr Garnet wanted to set up a secret printing press. He still had contacts from his time in the printing trade. Perhaps he met the printer Henry Owen, one of four Catholic sons of Oxford carpenter Walter Owen. If so, it may have been by this means that Henry's brother Nicholas Owen was introduced to Fr Garnet. Nicholas was an extremely skilful mason and carpenter who was to spend the next twenty years working with Fr Garnet as his specialist builder of priest-holes.

All four Owen brothers demonstrated their attachment to Catholicism in practical ways. Henry operated a secret printing press. Walter spent much of his life in seminaries overseas. John served as a missionary priest in England. Nicholas was one of Fr Edmund Campion's young guides, and had been arrested for stating that the Jesuit was executed for his religion.

Now Nicholas Owen was to serve another remarkable Jesuit, becoming known to the authorities simply as 'Garnet's man'. The Catholics he served preferred the more affectionate nickname 'Little John'. The network of safe houses that Fr Garnet and 'Little John' established was to make a major contribution to the survival and character of English Catholicism.