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 HAMPSHIRE RECUSANTS 
 
 A STORY OF THEIR TROUBLES 
 
 m THE TIME OF 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS AIDAN GASQUET, D.D., O.S.B. 
 
 yiulAcr of "Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries" ; 
 
 "Edward the VI. and the Book of Common Prayer" ; 
 
 " The Last Abbot of Glastonbury," &'c., &^o. 
 
 JOHN HODGES 
 
 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, LONDON 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029383241 
 
The following paper was read, by request of the Com- 
 mittee, before a meeting of the Petersfield Literary and 
 Debating Society. It is merely a sketch of the religious 
 laws passed during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of 
 the consequences they entailed upon those who remained 
 firm in their adherence to the old religion. In illustrating 
 this subject in the county of Hampshire, I have confined 
 myself to the domestic troubles which fell upon so many 
 Recusant families at the time, by reason of the heavy fines 
 levied upon them, and the imprisonment of many for not 
 paying the sums of money demanded of them. 
 
HAMPSHIRE RECUSANTS 
 
 IN THE TIME OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 
 
 -<Ai- 
 
 When Elizabeth succeeded to the crown in 1558, many 
 problems of practical import at once presented themselves 
 for solution. Not the least in importance was the great 
 religious question, which, during the previous five-and- 
 twenty years, had exercised the mind of the nation by 
 the frequent and violent changes of policy of successive 
 sovereigns and their advisers. The queen herself, now in 
 her twenty-fifth year, was in reality the creature of strife, 
 and had been cradled amid the turmoil of the religious 
 dissensions in England, which had their beginning, if not 
 their origin, in the circumstances attending her birth. In 
 her earliest recollection, practically, although not of course 
 theoretically, England had ceased to be one in matters 
 of religion, and the experiences of the quarter of a century 
 during which she had lived before she was herself called 
 upon to grasp the reins of power must have taught her 
 how deep and bitter were the feelings engendered by theo- 
 logical dissensions. Her own personal religious opinions are 
 
somewhat difficult to fathom ; but probably the popular 
 historian of the English People, IMr. J. R. Green, is not 
 far wrong in saying of her : " No woman ever lived who 
 was so totally destitute of the sentiment of religion."' Theo- 
 logy was to her apparently but a branch of statecraft, and 
 differences of creed were to be regarded, at least by the 
 ruler, "in a purely political light." 
 
 It is of course, not my purpose in any way to discuss the 
 Elizabethan policy from a religious point of view. For the 
 purposes of this paper I am quite prepared to assume that 
 in her attempt to coerce the nation into following her lead, 
 she had ample justification in the circumstances of the time, 
 and ample precedents in the example of her immediate 
 predecessors. Circumstances, which are too well known to 
 need mention here, determined her to make choice of the 
 Protestant, or Reforming party, upon which to build up the 
 system which Mr. Gladstone has well called "the Eliza- 
 bethan Settlement of religion." And to do Elizabeth justice, 
 it could hardly have entered her mind to suppose that the 
 English people, or any considerable section of them, would 
 finally question the royal right to settle the legal basis of 
 the national creed. The Tudor principle Cujus regio ejus 
 religio, which may be Englished, " he who rules a nation 
 determines its creed," had practically been acquiesced in, 
 or at least acted upon, in the various religious changes 
 England had seen in the quarter of a century which had 
 intervened between Henry the Eighth's rejection of Roman 
 
 ' Short History, p. 369. 
 
Supremacy and the accession of Elizabeth. We who live 
 in these days of religious liberty, and of a recognised diver- 
 sity of religious opinion, can with difficulty appreciate the 
 attitude of mind in which men in the middle of the six- 
 teenth century must have regarded the possibility of national 
 divisions and differences in matters of religion. Such a 
 state of things must have appeared to them a peril to the 
 ship of State not to be admitted on any principle of govern- 
 ment, and strenuously to be resisted by the strong arm of 
 the law. 
 
 The notion of being able " to agree to differ " in matters 
 which touched the conscience, and yet of being united in 
 other matters of national, foreign and domestic policy, had 
 yet to be born of experience in the course of the coming 
 centuries. Whatever we may think about the measures 
 subsequently adopted by Elizabeth to coerce the consciences 
 of her subjects, or at least to secure the external observance 
 of those who remained attached to the older form.s of religion, 
 we should in fairness recognise this side of the burning 
 question, and understand that the fundamental idea of unity 
 in Religion was still the dominant belief of the nation when 
 Elizabeth came to the throne. The Queen's personal motives, 
 her individual preferences, are of no present concern to us. 
 I have already given Mr. Green's opinion (and I need not say 
 he is not biased in favour of the Catholic side) that with her 
 it was a matter not of religion but of state ; and that is as 
 deep as we need here go into the question. 
 
 I am of course aware that there was an attempt made by 
 the Queen's all-powerful minister, Lord Burghley, to claim 
 
for the recusant laws the higher sanction of duty— a duty 
 ^.vhich made it incumbent on those who held the reins of 
 power to extirpate the erroneous doctrine of the Sacrifice of 
 the Mass from the hearts of the people. "It is not to be 
 doubted," he writes, "but the usage of the present popish 
 mass, wherein the use of the Sacrament is turned into a 
 sacrifice for sins, and intercession is made to saints with other 
 things derogatory to the first institution of Christ, is to be 
 rooted out of the church as a great evil."' 
 
 As far as my present purpose, however, is concerned, 
 any one who pleases may consider that in all Queen Elizabeth 
 did to secure uniformity of religion she was actuated by high 
 and holy motives ; nay more, that the measures she adopted 
 to secure her settlement of the religious difficulties, although 
 perchance to our more humane and tender hearts somewhat 
 harsh and excessive, were justified by the circumstances of 
 the time. I have no wish to disturb any conviction of this 
 nature ; for all I propose to do is to examine historically into 
 the operation of the religious laws passed in the reign of 
 Elizabeth, and to illustrate their action in regard to Hamp- 
 shire in general, and to the neighbourhood of Petersfield in 
 particular. 
 
 I do not think such an examination as I propose to 
 make in any way unnecessary. To many people the very 
 notion of coercion, in matters of religion, by the State is 
 at the present day highly repugnant. What is unpleasant 
 
 ' State Papers Dom. Eliz. (undated) 1590. No. 445 D. The paper was 
 copied before the documents were arranged in volumes, and it is now impos- 
 sible to say where it has been placed. 
 
or distasteful is naturally ignored and passed over, if not 
 designedly hidden away, till we are in danger of forgetting 
 its very existence. I gather from several recent books that 
 this is the case in regard to this portion of our national 
 history ; and more than once lately have I been gravely 
 informed by people, who might have been supposed to know 
 better, that Queen Mary Tudor was the only English 
 sovereign who disgraced the annals of Enghsh history by 
 interference between man and his conscience. Now, while 
 I to a certain degree sympathise with the old lady of the 
 story, who steadily refused to read any history of the past, 
 on the high moral principle " that byegones should be bye- 
 gones," I do not think it possible to form any right estimate 
 of the latter half of the sixteenth century and even of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, without submitting the 
 religious laws in force during that period to some examina- 
 tion. Let me take one example of what I mean. Most 
 people have probably seen, or at any rate heard of, a work 
 on Social England, which is being published by the well known 
 firm of Messrs. Cassell. It purports to be an attempt to do 
 for the general history of England what the introductory 
 chapter of Macaulay's History did for the Stuart period. 
 Such a book could only have been produced by the collabora- 
 tion of many writers, and on the whole the result is excellent. 
 There are, however, to my mind serious defects in the third 
 volume, which deals with what is known as the Reformation 
 period. I do not desire to be too sweeping in my condemna- 
 tion for I was myself a contributor to a small portion of the 
 volume, but the book serves to illustrate the danger of leaving 
 
out unpleasant portions of our history. When I knew that 
 I should have the pleasure of reading this paper I thought I 
 would have a look to see what new lights the writer on the 
 Elizabethan religious history in this volume had to give me 
 a.hout " Recusants." Knowing that the author was a Fellow 
 of one of the Oxford colleges and I believe also an examiner 
 in the modern history schools, I expected to get some infor- 
 mation and perhaps even to be able to ask you to accept 
 his account of the religious legislation and its effects during 
 this period as likely possibly to be more satisfactory to you 
 than any I might give. I am sorry to say that at the outset 
 my hopes were disappointed. The index of the volume does 
 not so much as contain the word recusant or anything of a 
 kindred nature, and the word penal law is equally conspicuous 
 by its absence. I do not profess to have read every word 
 of the book itself; but I have certainly read sufficient to be 
 able to say with confidence that the subject of " recusancy" is 
 not merely inadequately treated, but is barely touched upon 
 at all in the otherwise full account of Elizabeth's reign. How 
 a fair idea of the social condition of England at this time can 
 possibly be obtained wthout a proper treatment of this 
 subject I do not profess to be able to understand, and I hope 
 before I have finished my paper you may be induced to agree 
 with me. 
 
 Before passing to speak of matters of special local interest 
 in connection with the subject of the recusant laws, it is 
 necessary that I should recall briefly a few facts as to the 
 general history of our country immediately subsequent to the 
 accession of Elizabeth, and place before you some account of 
 
the laws as to religion by which, as I have said, the Queen 
 sought to vindicate the right, claimed by the later Tudor 
 monarchs, to give the form of religion to the country over 
 which they ruled. It is necessary to describe these laws at 
 some considerable length, since, as I have just pointed out, 
 there is a real danger of their very existence being ignored. 
 
 I am not going to ask you to take my account of this history, 
 or of the measures to secure a uniformity in religion, known 
 as the penal laws; the first we may conveniently take from 
 Green's History of the English People ; the second from 
 Hallam's standard work, The Constitutional History of England. 
 Neither author can be accused of having any bias towards 
 the Catholic side; and for this reason, and because their 
 works are easily within the reach of all, I have selected them. 
 My part will be confined chiefly to an endeavour to illustrate 
 the incidence of the laws against Recusants by reference to 
 persons and places in this neighbourhood of Petersfield. 
 
 I may perhaps premise one word as to the meaning of the 
 word Recusant. It does not mean, as is so often supposed, 
 and not infrequently stated, one who had refused the 
 oath of allegiance to the sovereign ; or even the oath of 
 supremacy. A recusant was simply one who refused to be 
 present at the public services in the parish churches. This is 
 the only meaning which the word has in the official documents 
 of the period. Let us now under the guidance of Mr. J. R. 
 Green, take a glimpse at the general history of the times 
 when Elizabeth came to the throne. 
 
 " The first interest in " Elizabeth's mind, writes this his- 
 torian, " was the interest of public order, and she never could 
 
understand how it could fail to be first in everyone's mind. 
 Her ingenuity set itself to construct a system in which eccle- 
 siastical unity should not jar against the rights of conscience ; 
 a compromise which merely required outer ' conformity ' to 
 the established worship, while, as she was never weary of 
 repeating, it ' left opinion free.' . . . The first work of 
 her Parliament was to undo the work of Mary, to repeal the 
 Statutes of Heresy, to dissolve the refounded monasteries 
 and to restore the Royal Supremacy. . . . Further, she 
 had no personal wish to go. A third of the Council and 
 two thirds of the people were as opposed to any radical 
 changes in religion as the Queen. Among the gentry the 
 older and wealthier were on the conservative side, and only 
 the younger and meaner on the other. But it was soon 
 necessary to go further. If the Protestants were the less 
 numerous, they were the abler and the more vigorous party, 
 and the exiles who returned from Geneva, brought with 
 them a fiercer hatred of Catholicism." 
 
 " The whole machinery of pubhc religion had been thrown 
 out of gear by the rapid and radical changes of the past two 
 reigns. In some dioceses a third of the parishes were with- 
 out clergymen. The churches themselves were falling into 
 ruin. The majority of the parish priests were still Catholic 
 in heart ; in the north, indeed, they made little di.sguise of 
 their reactionary tendencies.' On the other hand, the Protes- 
 
 ' There is a very general idea that, with the exception of a very small 
 number, the entire body of the English clergy took the required oath of 
 supremacy on the accession of Queen Elizabeth. This idea is based upon an 
 entire misconception of the facts. Mr. R. Simpson {Life of Edmund Campion, 
 
tant minority among the clergy were already disgusting the 
 people by their violence and greed. Chapters had begun to 
 plunder their own estates by leases and fines, and by felling 
 timber. The marriages of the clergy were a perpetual 
 scandal, a scandal which was increased when the gorgeous 
 vestments of the old worship were cut up into gowns and 
 bodices for the priests' wives. The new services became 
 scenes of utter disorder, where the clergy wore what dress 
 
 p. 139) has put these most clearly. Before the end of 1559 all the Bishops 
 had been deprived of their Sees. On May 23, 1559, a royal commission, 
 partly lay, partly clerical, was appointed to tender the oath to the clergy 
 generally. They were directed to proceed with caution ; but in October it 
 was found that they had been too zealous, and several laymen were appointed 
 to supersede the clerical members. But even then the inquisition had such 
 serious effects, that in December the queen had to write to the commis- 
 sioners to suspend their proceedings. The general result of the proceedings 
 was, that of the multitudes of clergymen who refused to subscribe only a 
 few were at once deprived, some had three years given for considera- 
 tion, and others seem to have been connived at. The Province of York 
 was visited in August and September, 1559, with the following result : out of 
 90 clergymen summoned, 21 came and took the required oath, 36 came and 
 refused to swear, 17 were absent without proctors, 16 were absent with 
 proctors. In the province of Canterbury, the dean and canons of Winchester 
 Cathedral, the warden and fellows of the college, and the master of St. Cross, 
 all refused the oath. The visitors for the whole province returned 49 recusants 
 and 786 conformists, significantly omitting the absentees. Out of 8,91 1 parishes 
 and 9,400 beneficed clergymen, only 8o5 took the oath, whilst all the bishops 
 and $5 others expressly refused to subscribe, and the rest absented themselves. 
 The assertion of Camden that only 189 clergymen were deprived in this visita- 
 tion proves nothing, even if it were true. At the end of State Papers 
 Domestic Elizabeth, vol. x., is an abstract of the number of rectors, vicars and 
 curates who refused to attend when summoned in the four dioceses of York, 
 Chester, Durham and Carlisle. The total is 314. There is no abstract of the 
 number who attended but refused to take the oath, but the book proves that in 
 this province 370 clergymen refused to swear, or would have refused had they 
 been pressed. Probably the real number, had we the means of knowing 
 would be found to be double that figure. 
 
12 
 
 they pleased, and the communicant stood or sat as he liked ; 
 while the old altars were broken down and the communion 
 table was often a bare board upon trestles. The people, 
 naturally enough, were found to be ' utterly devoid of 
 religion' and came to church ' as to a May game'" (p. 371). 
 " The Marian bishops, with a single exception, discerned the 
 Protestant drift of the Queen's changes, and bore imprison- 
 ment and deprivation rather than accept them " (p. 370). 
 Under Archbishop Parker " The vacant sees were filled for 
 the most part with learned and able men ; the plunder of 
 the Church by the nobles was checked, and England was 
 settling quietly down again in religious peace when a prohibi- 
 tion from Rome forbade the presence of Catholics at the new 
 worship. The order was widely obeyed, and the obedience 
 was accepted by Ehzabeth as a direct act of defiance. 
 Heavy ' fines for recusancy,' levied on all who absented 
 themselves from church became a constant source of supply 
 to the Royal Exchequer." 
 
 So much for Green's account of the general history. I 
 pass on now to give from Hallam's Constitutional History of 
 England some account of the laws by which Elizabeth and 
 her advisers hoped to secure general adherence to her 
 " settlement of religion '■ in England. The Parhament which 
 met about two months after Elizabeth's succession re-estab- 
 lished the AngUcan liturgy and restored the royal supremacy 
 as we have seen. " These two statutes, commonly denomi- 
 nated the acts of Supremacy and Uniformity," writes the 
 historian, "form the basis of that restrictive code of laws, 
 deemed by some one of the fundamental bulwarks, by others 
 
13 
 
 the reproach of our constitution, which pressed so heavily 
 for more than two centuries upon the adherents to the 
 Romish church. By the former all beneficed ecclesiastics, 
 and all laymen holding office under the crown, were obliged 
 to take the oath of supremacy, renouncing the spiritual 
 as well as temporal jurisdiction of every foreign prince or 
 prelate, on pain of forfeiting their office or benefice ; and it 
 was rendered highly penal, and for the third offence treason- 
 able, to maintain such supremacy by writing or advised 
 speaking. The latter statute trenched more on the natural 
 rights of conscience ; prohibiting, under pain of forfeiting 
 goods and chattels for the first offence, of a year's imprison- 
 ment for the second, and of imprisonment during life for the 
 third, the use by a minister, whether beneficed or not, of any 
 but the established liturgy ; and imposed a fine of one 
 shilling on all who should absent themselves from church on 
 Sundays and holidays." 
 
 " This act," continues Hallam, "operated as an absolute 
 interdiction of the Catholic rites, however privately celebrated. 
 It has frequently been asserted, that the Government connived 
 at the domestic exercise of that religion during these first 
 years of EHzabeth's reign. This may possibly have been the 
 case with respect to some persons of very high rank, whom 
 it was inexpedient to irritate. But we find instances of 
 severity towards Catholics, even in that early period ; and it 
 is evident that their solemn rites were only performed by 
 stealth and at much hazard. Thus Sir Edward Waldegrave 
 and his lady were sent to the Tower in 1561, for hearing 
 mass and having a priest in their house. Many others about 
 
1+ 
 
 the same time were punished for the like ofifence. Two 
 bishops, one of whom, I regret to say, was Grindal, write to 
 the Council in 1562, concerning a priest apprehended in a 
 lady's house, that neither he nor the servants would be sworn 
 to answer to articles, saying they would not accuse them- 
 selves; and after a wise remark on this, that 'papistry is 
 like to end in anabaptistry,' proceed to hint that ' some think 
 that if this priest mij^ht be put to some kind of torment and 
 so driven to confess what he knoweth, he might gain the 
 Queen's Majesty a good mass of money by the masses that 
 he hath said ; but we refer to your lordships' wisdom.' This 
 commencement of persecution induced many Catholics to 
 fly beyond the sea, and gave rise to those re-unions of dis- 
 affected exiles, which never ceased to endanger the throne of 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 " It cannot, as far as appears, be truly alleged that any 
 greater provocation had as yet been given by the Catholics 
 than that of pertinaciously continuing to believe and worship 
 as their fathers had done before. I request [adds Hallam] 
 those who may hesitate about this, to pay some attention to 
 the order of time before they form their opinions." 
 
 I here interrupt Hallam's account of the penal laws to 
 briefly corroborate what he tells us as to the early date at 
 which the celebration of Catholic rites was prevented by the 
 strong measure of imprisonment. The Sir Edward Walde- 
 grave he mentions as having been sent to the Tower in 1561 
 had been previously confined in the same prison during the 
 reign of Edward VL for refusing to force the Protestant 
 service upon Queen :Mary. The notice given of this imprison- 
 
15 
 
 ment in the valuable contemporary diary of a resident in 
 London, known as Machyn's Diary (p. 256), is " The xxii. day 
 of Aprell was had to the Towre ser Edward Walgraflf and 
 my lade his wyff, as good almes-foke as be in thes day, and 
 odur caried thethur." The cause of this imprisonment is 
 given in many state papers, and also by Machyn when, on 
 September i of the same year, 1561, he records the death 
 of "the good and gentle knight whyle in the Towre, the 
 whyche he was put for berrying of masse and kepyng a prest 
 in ys howse that dyd say masse." In this and the following 
 year, 1562, according to an official paper now preserved 
 among the Harleian MSS. at the British Museum,^ there 
 were some sixteen or seventeen ladies and gentlemen prisoners 
 in the Fleet prison for "matters of religion," and in almost 
 every case it is stated that the offence was " for hearing 
 mass." In the Marshalsea there was a gentleman and a 
 priest, in the King's Bench a gentleman and two priests,^ 
 whilst in the Tower, besides Sir Edward and Lady Walde- 
 grave, there was a goodly company, including Sir Thomas 
 and Lady Wharton, and their priest William Joly. " Their 
 faults be well in remembrance " is noted against them as 
 bracketted together with the Waldegraves and others ; and 
 • what those faults wfere we are not left in any doubt, as 
 they all appear in another paper, dated June 3, 1561, and 
 endorsed " prisoners for mass." This last paper, annotated 
 in the writing of Cecil himself, contains some forty names 
 of persons, gentry and priests, who were indicted at the 
 
 'Harl. MSS., 360 f. 34. 
 ' State Papers, Dom. Eliz., vol. xvi., No. 65, No. 35 ; vol. xvii.. No. 13. 
 
 2 
 
i6 
 
 general assizes at Brentwood, in Essex, for offences against 
 the religious laws.^ But all this, as Mr. Rudyard Kipling 
 is so fond of saying, "is another story," and I return to the 
 guidance of Mr. Hallam. 
 
 " I have not found," he writes, " that Pius IV., more 
 moderate than most other Pontiffs of the sixteenth century, 
 took any measures hostile to the temporal government of this 
 realm ; but the deprived ecclesiastics were not unfairly anxious 
 to keep alive the faith of their former hearers ; and to prevent 
 them from shding into conformity through indifference and 
 disuse of their ancient rites (p. 115), questions of conscience 
 were circulated, with answers all tending to show the un- 
 lawfulness of conformity. There was nothing more in this 
 than the Catholic clergy were bound in consistency with 
 their principle to do, though it seemed very atrocious to 
 bigots. . . . Partly through political circumstances, but 
 far more from the hard usage they experienced for profes- 
 sing their rehgion, there seems to have been an increased 
 restlessness among the Catholics about 1562, which was 
 met with new rigour by the parliament of that year." 
 
 " The Act entitled ' for the assurance of the Queen's royal 
 power over all estates and subjects within her dominions' 
 enacts with an iniquitous and sanguinary retrospect, that all 
 persons who had ever taken holy orders, or any degree in 
 the universities, or had been admitted to the practice of the 
 laws, or held any office in their execution, should be bound 
 to take the oath of supremacy, when tendered to them by a 
 
 ' Ibid., vol. xvii.. No. 18. 
 
17 
 
 bishop, or by commissioners appointed under the great seal. 
 The penalty for tiie first refusal of this oath was that of a 
 prsemunire, but any person who, after the space of three 
 months from the first tender, should again refuse it when 
 in like manner tendered, incurred the pains of high treason. 
 The oath of supremacy was imposed by statute on every 
 member of the House of Commons, but could no: be ten- 
 dered to a peer, the queen declaring her full confidence in 
 those hereditary councillors. Several peers of great weight • 
 and dignity were still Catholics " (p. ii6). 
 
 " I am never very willing," continues our authority " to 
 admit as an apology for unjust or cruel enactments, that 
 they are not designed to be generally executed ; a pretext 
 often insidious, always insecure, and tending to mask the 
 approaches of arbitrary government. But it is certain that 
 Elizabeth did not wish this act to be enforced in its full 
 severity" (p. 117.) 
 
 In reply to the application of the Emperor Ferdinand 
 that Catholics might be reasonably allowed the use of one 
 church in each city, the queen declared that she could " not 
 grant churches to those who disagree from her religion, 
 being against the laws of her parliament, and highly dan- 
 gerous to the state of her kingdom, as it would sow various 
 opinions in the nation to distract the minds of honest men, 
 and would cherish parties and factions that might disturb 
 the present tranquiUity of the commonwealth" (p. 120). 
 
 " Camden and many others have asserted that by systematic 
 connivance the Roman Catholics enjoyed a pretty free use of 
 their rehgion for the first fourteen years of Ehzabeth's reign. 
 
i8 
 
 We find abundance of persons harassed for recusancy, that is, 
 for not attending the Protestant church, and driven to insin- 
 cere promises of conformity. Others were dragged before 
 ecclesiastical commissioners for harbouring priests, or for 
 sending money to those who had fled beyond sea. Students of 
 the inns of court, where popery had a stronghold at this time, 
 were examined in the star-chamber as to their religion, and 
 on not giving satisfactory answers were committed to the 
 Fleet. The Catholic party were not always scrupulous about 
 the usual artifices of an oppressed people, meeting force by 
 fraud and concealing their heart-felt wishes under the mask of 
 ready submission, or even of zealous attachment. A great 
 majority both of clergy and laity yielded to the times ; and of 
 these temporising conformists it cannot be doubted that many 
 lost by degrees aU thought of returning to their ancient fold. 
 But others, while they complied with exterior ceremonies, 
 retained in their private devotions their accustomed mode of 
 worship. It is an admitted fact that the Catholics generally 
 attended the church, till it came to be reckoned a distinctive 
 sign of their having renounced their own religion. They 
 persuaded themselves (and the English priests, uninstructed 
 and accustomed to a temporising conduct, did not discourage 
 the notion) that the private observance of their own rites 
 would excuse a formal obedience to the civil power" (p. 120). 
 " There is nothing . . . which serves to countenance the 
 very unfair misrepresentations lately [i.e., 1845) given, as if 
 the Roman Catholics generally had acquiesced in the 
 Anglican worship, believing it to be substantially the same as 
 their own. They frequented our churches, because the law 
 
19 
 
 compelled them by penalties so to do, not out of a notion that 
 very little change had been made by the Reformation. It is 
 true of course that many became real Protestants, by habitual 
 attendance on our rites and by disuse of their own. But 
 these were not the recusants of a later period " (p. 121, note). 
 
 " The Romish scheme of worship, though it attaches more 
 importance to ceremonial rites, has one remarkable difference 
 from the Protestant, that it is far less social ; and consequently 
 the prevention of its open exercise has far less tendency to 
 weaken men's religious associations so long as their individual 
 intercourse with a priest, its essential requisite, can be pre- 
 served. Priests therefore travelled the country in various 
 disguises, to keep alive a flame which the practice of outward 
 conformity was calculated to extinguish. There was not a 
 county throughout England, says a Catholic historian, where 
 several of Mary's clergy did not reside, commonly called the 
 old priests. They served as chaplains in private families. 
 By stealth, at the dead of night, in private chambers, in the 
 secret lurking-places of an ill-peopled country, with all the 
 mystery that subdues the imagination, with all the mutual 
 trust that invigorates constancy, these proscribed eccle- 
 siastics celebrated their solemn rites, more impressive in 
 such concealment than if surrounded by all their former 
 splendour. ... 
 
 " It is my thorough conviction that the persecution, for it 
 can obtain no better name, carried on against the English 
 Catholics, however it might serve to delude the Government 
 by producing an apparent conformity, could not but excite a 
 spirit of disloyalty in many adherents of that faith " (p. 122). 
 
20 
 
 As a consequence of the northern insurrection of 1570, and 
 the celebrated Bull of Pope Pius V., new and more stringent 
 laws were passed against the Catholics by the Parliament in 
 1571 (13 Eliz. c. 2). This enacted " that all persons publish- 
 ing any bull from Rome, or absolving and reconciling any one 
 to the Romish Church, or being so reconciled, should incur 
 the penalties of high treason ; and such as brought into the 
 realm any crosses, pictures, or superstitious things con- 
 secrated by the pope or under his authority, should be liable 
 to praemunire. Those who should conceal or connive at the 
 offenders were to be held guilty of misprison of treason. This 
 statute exposed the Catholic priesthood, and in great measure 
 the laity, to the continual risk of martyrdom ; for so many 
 had fallen away from their faith through a pliant spirit of 
 conformity with the times, that the regular discipline would 
 exact their absolution and reconciliation before they could be 
 reinstated in the Church's communion" (p. 138). . . "We 
 cannot wonder to read that these new statutes increased 
 the dissatisfaction of the Roman Catholics, who perceived a 
 systematic determination to extirpate their religion. . . . 
 Many retired to foreign countries, and, receiving for their 
 maintenance pensions from the court of Spain, became 
 unhappy instruments of its ambitious enterprises. Those 
 who remained at home could hardly think their oppression 
 much mitigated by the precarious indulgences which Eliza- 
 beth's caprice, or rather the fluctuation of different parties in 
 her councils, sometimes extended to them " (p. 140). 
 
 " This indulgence, however, shown by Elizabeth, the topic 
 of reproach in those tiroes, and sometimes of boast in our own, 
 
21 
 
 never extended to any positive toleration, nor even to any 
 general connivance at the Romish worship in its most private 
 exercise. She published a declaration in 1570, that she did 
 not intend to sift men's consciences, provided they observed 
 her laws by coming to church, which, as she well knew, the 
 strict Catholics deemed inconsistent with their integrity. 
 Nor did the Government always abstain from an inquisition 
 into men's private thoughts. The inns of court were more 
 than once purified of popery by examining their members on 
 articles of faith. Gentlemen of good families in the country 
 were harassed in the same manner " (p. 140). 
 
 " It will not surprise those who have observed the effect of 
 all persecution for matters of opinion upon the human mind, 
 that during this period the Romish party continued such 
 in numbers and in zeal as to give the most lively alarm to 
 Elizabeth's administration. One cause of this was, beyond 
 doubt, the connivance of justices of the peace, a great many 
 of whom were secretly attached to the same interest, though 
 it was not easy to exclude them from the commission, on 
 account of their wealth and respectability. The facility with 
 which Catholic rites can be performed in secret, as before 
 observed, was a still more important circumstance." 
 
 In this way another ten years of Elizabeth's reign passed 
 away. The Parliament which met in 1581 was "discon- 
 tented with the severities used against the Puritans, but ready 
 to go beyond any measures that the court might propose 
 to subdue and extirpate popery. Here an Act was passed, 
 which, after repeating the former provision that had made 
 it high treason to reconcile any of her Majesty's subjects, or 
 
22 
 
 to be reconciled, to the Church of Rome, imposes a penalty 
 of ^"20 a month on all persons absenting themselves from 
 church, unless they shall hear the English service at home. 
 Such as could not pay the same within three months after 
 judgment were to be imprisoned until they should conform. 
 The queen, by a subsequent act, had the power of seizing 
 two-thirds of the party's land and all his goods for default 
 of payment. These grievous penalties on recusancy, as the 
 wilful absence of Catholics from church came now to be 
 denominated, were doubtless founded on the extreme diffi- 
 culty of proving an actual celebration of their own rites. 
 But they established a persecution which fell not at all short 
 in principle of that for which the inquisition had become so 
 odious. Nor were the statutes merely designed for terror's 
 sake — to keep a check over the disaffected, as some would 
 pretend. They were executed in the most sweeping and 
 indiscriminating manner, unless perhaps a few families of 
 high rank might enjoy a connivance " (p. 145). 
 
 " The public executions, numerous as they were, scarcely 
 form the most odious part of this persecution. The common 
 law of England has always abhorred the accursed mysteries 
 of a prison house, and neither admits of torture to extort 
 confession, nor of any penal infliction not warranted by a 
 judicial sentence. But this law, though still sacred in the 
 courts of justice, was set aside by the Privy Council under 
 the Tudor line. The rack seldom stood idle in the Tower, 
 for all the latter part of Ehzabeth's reign " (p. 148). " Such 
 excessive severities under the pretext of treason, but sus- 
 tained by very httle evidence of any other offence than 
 
23 
 
 the exercise of the Catholic ministry, excited indignation 
 throughout a great part of Europe " (Ibid.). 
 
 " In 1584 a law was enacted, enjoining all Jesuits, seminary 
 priests and other priests, whether ordained within or without 
 the kingdom, to depart from it within forty days, on pain of 
 being adjudged traitors. The penalty of fine and imprison- 
 ment at the queen's pleasure was inflicted on such as knowing 
 any priest to be within the realm, should not discover it to a 
 magistrate. This seemed to fill up the measure of persecu- 
 tion, and to render the longer preservation of this obnoxious 
 religion absolutely impracticable " (p. 153). 
 
 After testifying to the loyalty with which Catholics in 
 every part of England united with their fellow countrymen 
 in preparing to resist the Spanish Armada (p. 62), the his- 
 torian HaUam continues: "It would have been a sign of 
 gratitude if the laws depriving them of the free exercise of 
 their religion had been, if not repealed, yet suffered to sleep, 
 after these proofs of loyalty. But the execution of priests 
 and of other Catholics became on the contrary more frequent, 
 and the fines for recusancy were exacted as rigorously as 
 before. A statute was enacted, restraining Popish recusants 
 — a distinctive name now first imposed by law — to particular 
 places of residence, and subjecting them to other vexatious 
 provisions. AU persons were forbidden by proclamation to 
 harbour any of whose conformity they were not assured " 
 (p. 163). 
 
 With this I will finish my quotations from the pages of 
 Hallam's History, only remarking, as an apology for their 
 length, that there are many other passages which deserve to 
 
24 
 
 be cited, which I hope you may be induced to read for your- 
 selves. I now pass on to illustrate the incidence of the 
 recusant laws in Hampshire, and especially in this neigh- 
 bourhood of Petersfield. 
 
 The most important sources of information upon this sub- 
 ject (and sources which have hitherto been little regarded), 
 are the Recusant Rolls in the Public Record OfBce. Unfortu- 
 nately these systematic accounts of fines levied upon those 
 who refused to attend the service in their parish churches, 
 and of the rents received from property belonging to such 
 recusants which, as the record says, " by reason of 
 recusancy" was held altogether or in part by the crown, 
 are very far from being complete ; that is to say, they do 
 not begin until late in Elizabeth's reign, although from that 
 time the series runs without a break for sixty-three years. 
 There is, of course, a record of the fines paid under the 
 recusant laws in the years previous to the thirty-third of 
 Elizabeth, a.d. 1590; but this is to be found on the general 
 receipt rolls of the Exchequer, known as Pipe Rolls. It 
 would take a very long time to thoroughly examine these 
 rolls, and pick out from the mass of payments of every kind 
 the special sums received by the royal officials in the way of 
 recusant fines. The special recusant rolls are sufficiently 
 difficult to deal with, and we must be content to confine 
 our attention chiefly to this source of information. For the 
 benefit of those who have no acquaintance with the original 
 records of our country, I may perhaps say one word in 
 description of the recusant rolls. When rolled up these 
 records look more like a good size drain pipe than anything 
 
25 
 
 else ; they are about two feet in height and eighteen inches or 
 two feet in diameter. The roll consists of a number of skins 
 of parchment, each from six to eight feet long, and two feet 
 or so, broad, stitched together at one end; at the extreme 
 end of each skin is written the name of the county to which 
 it refers ; for the receipts on these rolls, like the general Pipe 
 Rolls, are divided out into their special counties. For our 
 present purposes we have only to turn to the skins labelled 
 Southampton, or Hampshire, to see what special information 
 they can give us. 
 
 The first year, as I have said, is 1590 a.d., after Elizabeth 
 had been on the throne some two-and-thirty years. The 
 Hampshire record for this year is contained on one skin of 
 parchment, such as I have described, written on both sides. 
 The usual method followed is first to account for the estates 
 wholly or partially in the hands of the queen, " by reason of the 
 recusancy " of their owners, and then to record the names of 
 those who during the year in question had been fined for not 
 going to service in their parish church. Thus we find recorded 
 under the first heading that the tenants of various properties 
 belonging to the gentry of the county had paid two-thirds of 
 the value of their holdings to the royal officials because their 
 owners were recusants, and their properties — or rather the 
 rents — had been seized in payment of fines. In one or two 
 cases the property itself had already been granted for a term of 
 years to a tenant to farm for the queen's benefit. One gentle- 
 man, Richard Warnford, is entered upon the roll as being 
 behindhand in his fines to the amount of ;^i,54o, and so his 
 property was taken over under the Act of Parliament, about 
 
26 
 
 which Hallam has told us, which enabled the crown to take 
 possession of two-thirds of the possessions of all who would 
 not, or more probably could not, pay their fines for not going 
 to the service in their parish churches. The present record 
 shows that many of the gentry had already been reduced 
 to this strait ; amongst them we iind the names of 
 Gilbert Wells of Brambridge, near Twyford, whose property 
 had been granted out to a farmer by the crown in the 
 thirtieth year of the queen's reign ; of Thomas Powndes 
 of Beamond, or Beaumont, in the parish of Farling- 
 ton — a very noted recusant about whom I shall speak 
 presently ; of Anthony Udall, or Uvedale, of Woodcote, near 
 Alresford, who had other property at Hambledon. To come 
 nearer to this neighbourhood of Petersfield, we find the 
 receipt of the sum of £'j'z 4s. 4d. for two-thirds of the 
 manor of Westbury, described as " situate on the road from 
 Eastmeon," the property of " WiUiam Fawkenor, recusant." 
 On the other side of the hills we have Humfrey Milles, or 
 Clarke, paying over two-thirds of the value of the manors 
 of Idsworth and Bannisters Court, the property of Edward 
 Bannyster, "recusant;" and to take one more example, 
 the same fine of two-thirds is exacted on the property of 
 one Stephen Vachell, " gentleman and recusant," who is 
 described as of " Heath House, in Borryton, near Peters- 
 field." 
 
 With these few examples I pass on to the second division 
 of the record, which gives the names of those fined at the 
 rate of £■20 a month, and thirteen months in the year, 
 "for not going to church, chapel or other place of common 
 
27 
 
 prayer." First comes the name of George Cotton, of 
 Warblington, near Havant, who pays £2^0 on this score. 
 Then there is given a long list of all sorts and condi- 
 tions of men and women called on to pay at the same 
 rate for the same legal offence. Husbands are requested 
 to pay for their wives — for the women clearly make what 
 I may perhaps call a "manful" stand for the rights of 
 conscience. To take a few examples in the Petersfield 
 neighbourhood ; amongst those who have been found absent 
 from their churches for seven months, and who are conse- 
 quently requested to pay down ;^i4o, are Elizabeth, wife 
 of Giles Turner, gentleman, of Steep ; Richard Strange or 
 Barnes, of Buriton, gentleman ; William Edmonds or Hollo- 
 way, of Eastmeon, yeoman ; Margery Vachell, of Cather- 
 ington, spinster; Humfrey Milles or Clarke, of Idsworth, 
 yeoman (you remember he was the tenant of Edward 
 Bannister, the owner of Idsworth) ; and not to mention 
 others, Thomas Neave, of Petersfield, yeoman. Amongst 
 those who had been convicted of having absented themselves 
 from the common place of worship for four months, and were 
 consequently asked only for ;^8o, there is the following list 
 of Buriton people ; Thomas Kent, yeoman ; Thomas Crowcher, 
 yeoman ; Arthur Richman, yeoman ; Mary Blackman, wife 
 of Henry Blackman ; Emma Okelie, widow ; Elizabeth 
 Geale, widow; Ralph Geale (her son, probably), yeoman. 
 
 I give this as merely a sample of the information which 
 may be obtained by an examination of the Recusant Rolls. 
 Year after year the same story is disclosed; not that the 
 fines in money are levied constantly or regularly ; at times 
 
28 
 
 there are long lists ; at times the names are fewer, but the 
 first part of the record — that which gives the rental of lands 
 seized by the crown in payment of the recusant fines — prac- 
 tically changes only in two ways ; fresh names are added 
 from time to time, and here and there we have noted the 
 sales of timber, &c., upon the various estates, and the leases 
 and other grants made by the crown from the lands of 
 " obstinate recusants." Thus, for example at Hinton, on two 
 farms called Wetham's and Cook's, the property of Thomas 
 and Benjamin Stockwith, " by reason of their recusancy " 
 the goods and chattels were seized and sold to meet the 
 deficiency of rent to pay their fines. At Newlands, in the 
 parish of Southwick, the property of Anthony Uvedale, of 
 Woodcote, near Alresford, the oak and beech woods were cut 
 down, as well as his beech woods at Hambledon, to pay 
 fines due to the crown. As time goes on, more property 
 is discovered and noted as having to pay two-thirds of the 
 rental to the royal receiver. Thus in the fortieth year of 
 Elizabeth's reign a considerable addition appears to the rents 
 received from the property of Stephen Vachell, of Heath 
 House ; thirteen acres of land, for example, at Charlton, 
 lands in Catherington, Havant and Hayling, and Weston 
 farm near Buriton, with house, garden, orchard, and some 
 200 acres of land are made chargeable at two-thirds of 
 their value. This same farm, on the 30th of September, 
 1600, was granted for twenty-one years to one Arthur West, 
 by Sir Thomas West, and other royal commissioners. The 
 tenants of two brothers, Robert and Anthony Joy of Rother- 
 combe, in the parish of Eastmeon, are ordered to pay their 
 
29 
 
 rents to the crown for various meadows named " long croft, 
 cops close, square meadow, great combfield of 20 acres, 
 green close, &c.," in the parish of Eastmeon. And to take 
 but one more example, Henry Knight, the tenant of Anthony 
 Norton of Blendworth, has to pay to the crown the rent of a 
 house and 60 acres of land at Punsall (or Punsholt) in the 
 parish of Eastmeon. 
 
 As to the money fines, the obvious question at once arises, 
 how could they have been paid ? We must bear in mind 
 that money in the days of Elizabeth was at least 10 or 12 
 times the value of money at the present time. Probably we 
 shall be under the mark if we take a penny at the end of the 
 sixteenth century to be equal to our shilling, and at that rate 
 ;^2o a month would be the same as ;^24o of our coinage. It 
 is obviously impossible that such a sum, or anything like it, 
 could have been found by the class of people who were con- 
 demned to pay these fines for not going to church. For 
 example, the Recusant Roll for the second year of James I. 
 contains extraordinary lists of men and women of every kind 
 
 and degree, each fined £"120 for not appearing at church for 
 
 J- 
 
 six months. The Hampshire portion of the Roll alone gives 
 the names of some five hundred people thus fined, and the 
 list includes the names of millers, tailors, milliners, husband- 
 men, yeomen, shoemakers, labourers, blacksmiths, fishermen, 
 &c., not to name numerous widows, spinsters, and other lone 
 women who had no husbands to pay for them. For example, 
 at Petersfield we have Stephen Neve, tailor, and his wife, 
 together with Thomas Neve, each fined ;^i4o for not going to 
 church for the previous six months ; also John Harris and his 
 
30 
 
 wife ; Richard Dyling and his wife, and Richard Allen and 
 his wife, all of Petersfield, for the same. At Hambledon 
 there are given the names of some twenty, and at Warb- 
 lington some six and twenty, men and women, all of the 
 labouring classes, who were thus fined. At Buriton we have 
 the names of Agnes Crowcher, and her husband Thomas 
 Crowcher, labourer ; of Arthur Rudesbye, haulier, and Eliza- 
 beth his wife; of Elizabeth Okelie, widow; of Mary Black- 
 man, wife of Henry Blackman; of Joan Crowcher, widow, 
 and of Ann Crowcher, wife of Ralph Crowcher, labourer. 
 Do\vn by the coast recusancy is evidently rife. At Wy- 
 mering the list is a long one, and at Westburant, near 
 Havant, occurs the name of " Elizabeth Bulbeck, spinster" 
 — a Catholic name still known in the same place. It is of 
 course obvious that these people, and hundreds like them in 
 the country, could never have found the money to pay. Still 
 the mere fact of their being, as they were called, " convicted 
 recusants," placed them within the power of the law, and the 
 next step taken with them was to value, and, in the crown's 
 behalf, lay claim to the goods and chattels of all indebted for 
 the amount of their fines. There are records of cows and 
 cattle of all sorts, furniture — poor sticks of furniture enough, 
 for the most part they seem to be — farming implements, hay- 
 ricks, &c., &c., being declared of such and such a value, and 
 the property of the crown. In some instances this embargo 
 appears to have been bought oflf at the royal official valuation ; 
 but almost always these poor unfortunate creatures had to 
 remain under the crushing sense that all their worldly goods 
 were known to be the property of the crown, and held solely 
 
31 
 
 at the mercy of some official in the district. Instances are 
 not wanting of the actual sales of every bit of furniture, and 
 even of the home itself, over the heads of a family noted 
 for its recusancy. 
 
 A series of rolls little consulted for any purpose affords us 
 some particulars about these debts owed by various recusants. 
 They are called Exannual Rolls, and upon them are entered 
 such debts to the crown as are never likely to be paid — debts 
 for which it would be hopeless to prosecute. From the 
 twenty-fifth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign these rolls 
 contain long lists of bad debts owing by recusants who have 
 nothing wherewith to pay. In some instances, at a later 
 period, there is a record that payment, or part payment, of 
 this or that debt has been obtained ; as for example, when 
 the lands of Stephen Vachell, of Heath House and Buriton, 
 and Anthony Uvedale of Hambledon, are taken possession of; 
 but generally the debt is entered as hopeless. 
 
 There are some instances, however, on the Recusant Rolls 
 in which, year after year, a recusant, somehow or other, 
 managed to scrape together sufficient to pay the full penalty 
 for refusing to attend his parish church. Thus, Mr. George 
 Cotton, of Warblington, actually paid ;^26o each year for 
 many years. I have followed the receipts for twenty years, 
 from 1587 to 1607. Imagine what such payments mean ; 
 actually in hard cash this gentleman — a man of considerable 
 property about Havant — in these twenty years paid in fines 
 some ;^5,200 in money of those days, or something over 
 /■6o,ooo of our money. I did not myself for some time 
 believe that this could have been the case, and supposed that 
 3 
 
32 
 
 although he was nominally fined that amount, the money 
 was not actually paid. I have, however, satisfied myself 
 that the cash was in fact handed into the royal treasury. 
 There exist at the Record Office what are called the Pells 
 Receipt Books, and day by day in these were entered the sums 
 of money which were paid into the exchequer, and the source 
 whence they came. I have followed out in these Pells receipts 
 the sums of money obtained from Hampshire as noted on the 
 Recusant Rolls. There, for example, duly noted as received 
 will be found the rents of Stephen \'acheirs property in 
 Petersfield and Buriton, the rents of Heath House and 
 Weston Farm ; there are the payments of two-thirds of the 
 rents of the Idsworth and of the Westbury property, and the 
 rest ; and there each six months is recorded the receipt of 
 a moiety of the ^"260 which Mr. George Cotton is stated on 
 the Recusant Roll to have paid for not attending the church 
 service. He begins in 1586 by a small payment of £15 6s. 8d. 
 In 1587, on May 29th, he pays /140, and the other moiety 
 of the ^260, namely £120, on November 24th ; on this day 
 he also pays ;^i99 6s. 8d., said to be " in part payment of the 
 sum of /i 199 6s. 8d.," arrears of fines for not going to ^is 
 parish church. From 1587 till his name disappears from 
 the treasury account books in 1607, Mr. George Cotton 
 pays his ;£'26o a year regularly. More than this ; by degrees 
 he is forced to pay ofiF the arrears of which I have just 
 spoken. Thus on November 28th, 1588, besides his usual 
 six-monthly moiety of the ;^26o, he pays into the queen's 
 purse ;^433 6s. 8d.' and a like sum at two subsequent dates. 
 
 ' Pells Receipt Books, No. 51. 
 
33 
 
 I may add that the Pells Receipt Book, besides being a day 
 
 book, gives what may be called a ledger account at the end of 
 
 each volume. Here the various sums paid into the royal 
 
 treasury are gathered together under their various headings. 
 
 Thus there are the custom dues on wine, &c., the fines 
 
 inflicted in the Star chamber, the payment for renewal of 
 
 crown leases, &c. One of the headings given is " Fines de 
 
 recusantibus accedere ad Ecclesiam uhi communis oratio utituv," that 
 
 is, " Fines from those refusing to come to church where 
 
 the Common Prayer is used," and the totals show, when 
 
 compared with other receipts, that the recusant fines were 
 
 a very considerable source of revenue. There are indeed 
 
 only one or two other sources that furnish more money to 
 
 the exchequer of the country than what was obtained from 
 
 Catholics refusing to be present at service in their several 
 
 parishes. One example of the amount actually received under 
 
 this head may be of interest. In the first half of the year 
 
 1601 the treasury acknowledges the receipt of £"4,856 15s. g|d. 
 
 from recusancy fines; in the second half £^,'^'jo 3s. 6|d., 
 
 making a grand total of £(^,2,26 igs. 4d. for the year ; or, 
 
 to put it into modern figures for comparison, some £iio,'jjg 8s. 
 
 of our money. 
 
 I will here give a balance sheet showing the actual sums 
 of money received by the exchequer each six months during 
 the last twenty years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, from 
 Catholics who refused to come to their parish churches for 
 service. It must be borne in mind, however, that the 
 receipts of the exchequer were but a trifle compared to the 
 losses sustained by the Catholics by the methods employed 
 
34 
 
 to collect the fines, and the consequent waste and wanton 
 destruction of their goods, and, as has been pointed out, " of 
 the vast sums which found their way into the hands of 
 courtiers, parasites, and favourites to whom recusants were 
 gfiven to farm, and pursuivants and informers who made 
 Catholics pay for their forbearance." Even so the total 
 sum of money extracted from the recusants in the course of 
 the last twenty years of the sixteenth century is sufficiently 
 appalling, and as the details are taken from the Royal receipt 
 books, there can be no question about the money not having 
 been really paid. The average yearly payment, it will be 
 seen, was in round numbers £"6,000, whilst in each of the 
 last three years it exceeded £"8,000. In 1601, when the 
 receipts from recusant fines amounted, as we have said, to 
 £9,226 19s. 4d., the total revenue of the crown averaged 
 £"400,000,' so that these fines were about a fiftieth part of 
 the total exchequer receipts. 
 
 Cash received by the Exchequer for the Fines of Catholics 
 refusing to be present at protestant service. 
 
 C I. d. 
 
 1583 Easter term 
 Michaelmas 
 
 1584 Easter term 
 Michaelmas 
 
 1585 Easter term 
 Michaelmas 
 
 1586 Easter term 
 Michaelmas 
 
 C '. d. 
 285 o o 
 
 2077 2 8 
 
 1005 19 
 
 440 4 
 
 11 
 
 2 
 
 1476 
 1046 13 
 
 4 
 4 
 
 S35 19 
 982 4 
 
 4 
 5 
 
 2362 2 8 
 
 1446 4 I 
 
 2522 13 8 
 
 1518 3 9 
 
 ' J. C. Vincent, Lancashire Lay Subsidies, Introduction, p. xxix. 
 
35 
 
 .,.«- T? 1 . ;^ J. (/. £ S. d. 
 
 1587 Easter term 23251611 
 
 Michaelmas 
 
 1588 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas . . . 
 
 1589 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas ... 
 
 1590 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas ... 
 
 1591 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas . . . 
 
 JS92 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas . . . 
 
 1593 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas ... 
 
 1594 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas . . . 
 
 1595 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas ... 
 
 1596 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas ... 
 
 1597 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas . . . 
 
 '1598 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas . . . 
 
 1599 Easter term ... 
 Michaelmas ... 
 
 3419 S 3 
 
 2698 
 5645 
 
 19 
 IS 
 
 6 
 
 9i 
 
 1908 
 
 5433 
 
 6 
 15 
 
 6i 
 4 
 
 3112 
 3500 
 
 10 
 
 10 
 
 2 
 
 7J 
 
 Z9S4 
 295s 
 
 16 
 
 
 4 
 
 3546 
 3000 
 
 6 
 
 
 4i 
 
 
 3422 
 2587 
 
 9 
 10 
 
 3i 
 8 
 
 3134 
 3425 
 
 8 
 I 
 
 3 
 10 
 
 3326 
 2987 
 
 4 
 12 
 
 I 
 2 
 
 318s 
 3458 
 
 15 
 
 13 
 
 4i 
 8 
 
 3189 
 
 3449 I 
 
 9 
 
 [7 
 
 8 
 2 
 
 3148 
 3535 
 
 8 
 5 
 
 oh 
 8i 
 
 3505 
 3998 I 
 
 3 
 
 A 
 
 6 
 
 5745 2 2 
 8344 15 3i 
 7342 I loj 
 6613 o 9j 
 5909 17 2i 
 6546 6 4^ 
 6009 19 II J 
 6559 10 I 
 6313 16 3 
 6644 9 o^ 
 6639 6 10 
 6687 13 9 
 7502 17 7 J 
 
 1 From Lansd. MS., f. igo. 
 
36 
 
 1600 Easter term 
 Michaelmas 
 
 1601 Easter term 
 Michaelmas 
 
 1602 Easter term 
 Michaelmas 
 
 £ s. d. £ s. d. 
 3689 IS oi 
 4788 4 I J 
 
 8477 19 2 
 
 8832 19 o^ 
 
 8287 o o 
 
 4289 
 
 
 
 2* 
 
 4443 
 
 18 
 
 10 
 
 4110 
 
 6 
 
 54 
 
 4176 
 
 '3 
 
 6i 
 
 Grand Total ;^I20,30S 19 ^\ 
 
 I must not, however, delay longer over these accounts, for 
 we have many other sources of information. My note-books of 
 collections from the State papers of this period contain many 
 notes and copies of documents relating to Hampshire and 
 Hampshire recusants. For the purpose of this paper I have 
 turned over the pages and marked several which were copied 
 out years ago. There is, of course, not the least possibility of 
 giving in a mere paper any adequate notion of the story as it 
 comes out from these records of the past. All I can do is to- 
 note some one or two points, which are, I fancy, most likely 
 to be of interest. I begin with a list to be found in the 
 Domestic State Papers of Elizabeth's reign.' It is headed : 
 " The names of the recusants within the county of South- 
 ampton who refuse to come unto their several parish 
 churches unto the divine service there said, whereof many 
 of them were presented in the inquisition made through that 
 shire in (April), 1583, and many of them hath been both then 
 and in former inquisitions presented." The list contains the 
 names of some 240 of the Hampshire gentry and their wives. 
 
 ' Vol. clx. ; No. 26. 
 
37 
 
 It is impossible, of course, to give the details, and I only 
 take as a sample the names entered as at Buriton : Henry 
 Shelley, Marie his wife, Marie his daughter, Lawrence Young 
 and two others, servants to Mr. Shelley : Stephen Vachell, 
 gent, Marie his wife, Margery Vachell his sister, and a 
 servant named William. To this list is appended another 
 of names left out either by accident or design, and at the 
 end are noted " those recusants who are committed and do 
 remain in prison." In the gaol at Winchester there are some 
 eight and twenty, including two priests and two nuns. In 
 this company are Nicholas Tichborne, Gilbert Wells, of Twy- 
 ford, William Beconshaw, Simon Cuffold of Basing, Edward 
 Bannister of Idsworth, John Ludlowe of Fareham, and, to 
 name but one more, our old friend of Heath House and 
 Weston Farm, Stephen Vachell. At the same time four 
 Hampshire gentlemen are in prison for recusancy in London, 
 namely : John Beconshaw, Peter Tichborne, George Cotton 
 of Warblington, about whom we have already heard so much, 
 and Henry Shelley, of Buriton.' In the " house of correc- 
 tion " at Winchester there is Mrs. Edborow Bullacre, widow, 
 of Warblington, Mr. Thomas Goter, of Timsbury, Mr. Robert 
 Joy of Eastmeon, and Nicholas Collyns of Meonstoke. 
 
 The circumstances which led to Mrs. Bullacre finding 
 
 ' Mr. Henry Shelley, of Mapledurham House, was descended from the 
 Shelleys of Michelgrove, Sussex. The last Abbess of St. Mary's, Winchester, 
 was born at Mapledurham, and the family furnished many priests and religious 
 in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The house of Mapledurham was a 
 large gabled building approached by an avenue of elms. Like Michelgrove, 
 the family mansion of the Shelleys in Sussex, and one of the finest houses in 
 the county, Mapledurham was destroyed only in this century, when the present 
 farmhouse was built on the site. 
 
38 
 
 herself in the House of Correction are the following. In 
 August, 1582, John Chapman, formerly rector of Langton 
 Herring, in Dorsetshire, and now " a seminary and massing 
 priest," as he is ofi&cially described, was discovered in the 
 house of Mrs. Bullacre in Warblington, where he had been 
 residing for some time. He was carried off to Winchester 
 together with the lady for harbouring him. After he had 
 been examined before the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. John 
 Watson), and two magistrates, the Bishop wrote to the Privy 
 Council for further instructions, whether he should be sent 
 up to London, or left to be dealt with by the judges at the 
 forthcoming assizes. " He is in the meantime," writes the 
 Bishop, " committed to a safe place in the correction house. 
 The gaol hath so many backward people, that we thought 
 not good to commit neither the priest nor the widow, Mrs. 
 Bullacre, thither." 
 
 The four Hampshire gentlemen in the prison in London 
 had probably been there for more than a couple of years, as 
 their names appear in a list of recusant prisoners in the White 
 Lion prison, Southwark, in December, 1581,' and two of 
 them, John Beconshaw and Peter Tichborne in another 
 "catalogue of papists imprisoned in 1579";" whilst in the 
 same list are given the names of four widows in prison at 
 Winchester, and against them is noted : " their husbands 
 have died in prison." 
 
 I should be glad, had it been possible within the limits of 
 this paper, to have followed the fortunes of a few more 
 
 ' State Papers Dom. Eliz., 1581, No. 240 A. 
 ' Lansd. MS., 28 fol. 96. 
 
39 
 
 Hampshire recusants in the prison Hsts of which I have a 
 great number. I must content myself with merely noting 
 the name of " Benjamin Stockwith, gent." We have already 
 referred to him as joint owner with his brother of some 
 property at Hinton. In 1586 he is certified as being in the 
 Clink prison, and the entry states that he was " sometime 
 student in ye Inns of Court, imprisoned on March 24th : since 
 arraigned at Newgate for hearing Mass, and then committed 
 prisoner hither again." ■ 
 
 In turning over the parchment records of the Recusant 
 Rolls the searcher is struck with the way in which the name 
 of the husband of any female recusant is set down. It was 
 done, of course, with the distinct policy of bringing the pres- 
 sure of the husband's authority to put an end to the wife's 
 recusancy, as the following paper, addressed by the Bishop 
 of Winchester in 1580 to the Privy Council, shows : — 
 " Touching the last letter we received from your honours 
 containing an order how such women are to be dealt with as 
 are relapsed in this diocese, whose husbands come to church 
 and hear sermons and do according to her Majesty's laws in 
 these points : we have called before us many of the husbands 
 and mean to deal with the rest towards the latter end of this 
 week, and hope we shall do some good therein. But at the 
 beginning they thought it something strange that they shall 
 be punished for their wives' faults. But ... we have 
 taken bonds ... of them to keep their wives from con- 
 ferrence, all manner of ways, with such as are backward in 
 
 ' State Papers Dom. Eliz., vol. 190, No. 26 (June 12). 
 
4° 
 
 matters of religion, and also have imposed a mulct upon every 
 of them weekly, till their wives shall come to church.'" 
 
 In the year 1586 the CathoUcs were evidently given some 
 hope that they might perhaps purchase toleration by the 
 payment of a yearly sum to the Queen. Indeed, a com- 
 mission was appointed on April 13th of that year to examine 
 the recusants of Hampshire as to their ability to pay, and a 
 list was sent for the use of the officials. The Lord la Warre 
 and his fellow commissioners certified after examination that 
 they find only few who are able to pay anything. Many of 
 the Catholic gentry are noted as being then in Wisbeach 
 Castle for matters of religion, or otherwise confined to prison 
 in Winchester. They forward certain letters, however, in 
 which some of the Catholics state what they can pay, and 
 were wUling to pay if they were only left to follow their con- 
 sciences. Thus Stephen Vachell, of Heath House, promises 
 to pay £5 a year for the Queen's permission to follow his 
 religion. Nicholas Tichborne declares that he only has left 
 out of his property an annuity of £2, which the Queen may 
 take. George Cotton, in his letter, says that he had received 
 intimation from his brother Sir Richard Cotton, " of her 
 Majesty's most gracious favour, bent to the ease and relief of 
 her subjects, recusants.'' He will pay to the utmost of his 
 power, which, however, is " but weak of itself, and hath been 
 of late not a little diminished as well by ordinary charges of 
 children and servants necessarily depending on (him), as by 
 manifold losses sustained, partly by long imprisonment, partly 
 
 ' State Papers Dom. Eliz., voL 144, No. 36. 
 
41 
 
 by the evicting of a great part of (his) Hving." He adds that 
 he has lately married three daughters, and has seven children 
 more depending on him. Still he concludes, " besides the 
 great sums which I have paid for the statute of Recusancy " 
 I offer £^0 a year. This sum is changed into £^o by his son, 
 Richard Cotton, with his authority. 
 
 One or two of the other answers are pathetically interest- 
 ing. For example: Mrs. Katherine Henslow "protests 
 before God" that she has only ;^2o to support herself and 
 her servant, and offers the Queen 20 shillings " as a poor 
 widow's mite," to be allowed to practise her religion. A 
 friend, one Anthony Fortescue, subsequently promises to 
 make this up to 40s. for her. Edward Bannister, of Idsworth, 
 says he has already been called upon to pay in Surrey where 
 he is residing, for " I am," he writes, " still bound to remain 
 with my cousin Bellingham of Putney, and I may not go any 
 farther than I am licensed, or first have leave of the Council 
 upon payment of my bond." Lastly, Mrs. Elizabeth 
 Tichborne, of West Tisted, says upon being called upon to 
 make a " personal appearance " before the Commissioners, 
 " I hope you will by reason of my long infirmity hold me 
 excused, the state of my body being such, I thank God for 
 it, that this many year I have not been out of my chamber — 
 nay, not in many months together out of my bed." She 
 would willingly pay the Queen what she is able, but has 
 twelve children " left in trust by my husband," and to them 
 by his will " all my goods and stocks belong when it shall 
 please God to call me." Still, with the aid of friends there 
 
42 
 
 is offered in her behalf /13 4s. 8d. a year.' But this slight 
 hope of some better treatment, and of the possibility of the 
 Catholics being allowed to purchase toleration was quickly 
 disappointed, and the same, if not increased, rigour was 
 displayed towards them in the closing years of Elizabeth's 
 reign. 
 
 It is evident from the nature of things that only a portion, 
 and that probably by no means the greater portion, of the 
 fines paid by Catholics under the recusant laws really passed 
 into the State coffers. One of the worst results of penal laws 
 was the creation of a body of informers who traded upon the 
 necessities of their fellow-countrymen, and either by rewards 
 for discovering and detecting persons subject to the laws, but 
 hitherto unknown, or by hush-money extracted from the 
 unfortunate subjects, enriched themselves. Further than this, 
 all during the later part of Elizabeth's reign and in the early 
 years of her predecessor, it was the practice of the Crown to 
 reward favourites and officials by what was called " the value 
 of the recusancy " of this or that Catholic. In 1610, to 
 take one example. Sir John Saville offered to pay to the 
 King no less a sum than /8,ooo a year for permission to 
 farm the recusant fines in Yorkshire, and at the same time 
 Sir George Manners and Sir Thomas Grantham asked for a 
 grant of the fines for the county of Lincoln, promising to pay 
 /2,ooo a year more than the King had hitherto received from 
 his CathoUc subjects in that county who refused to go to 
 their parish churches to service.'' The extent to which this 
 
 ' State Paper Dom., Eliz., vol. 183, No. 16. 
 = State Papers Dom., James I., vol. 54, No. 78. 
 
43 
 
 was done was much greater than may be supposed. " A 
 memorial of things grievous and offensive to the Common- 
 wealth which may be reformed by the King or by Parliament," 
 drawn up in May, 1603, the first year of King James I., says : 
 "The penaltie of Recusants (is) £0.0 a month by Act of 
 Parliament for not comynge to church — a punishment no waie 
 fittinge nor proportionable to that offence." There is a great 
 " defrauding of the Prince of that penaltie due unto him . . . 
 for whereas the penalties amount yearlie to the somme of 
 /'13.595 as appeareth by the accompt of the officer that is 
 appointed for that purpose, there is paied into the Exchequer 
 for the Prince's use but ^"3,900 or thereabouts. The rest goes 
 to certain courtiers who have begged those penalties and com- 
 pounded with them and by that meanes become Patrons and 
 Protectors of Recusants wherebie Poperie is maintayned and 
 increased in the realm."' 
 
 With the coming of James I. the Catholics hoped for better 
 treatment and liberty. They were, however, soon undeceived, 
 and, quite a volume might be made of the various suggestions 
 proffered by hungry officials setting out how more might be 
 made for the Royal Exchequer out of the recusants' lands. 
 One paper sets forth particulars by which property leased at 
 £■2,1x0 4s. 3d. a year might be made to produce ;^5,779 8s. gd. 
 In Hampshire, for example, he desires to make Anthony 
 Uvedale, of Woodcote,' pay ;^40 instead of ;^i3 6s. 8d., and 
 our old friend Stephen Vachell, of Petersfield, /50 in place of 
 £xi? 
 
 ' State Papers Dom., i James I., vol. i., art, 68. 
 - Lansd. MS. 153, f. 178. 
 
44 
 
 The amounts, as stated to have been forfeited in this latter 
 reign, became so enormous that one almost hesitates to believe 
 them. I give one entry exactly as it stands. It is endorsed 
 ■■Recusants, lo July, 1612," and is to the following effect: 
 " The forfeitures of Recusants which have escheated into this 
 court from the beginning of Michaelmas term in the 9th year 
 of the King's Majesty's reign, to the end of Trinity term in 
 the loth year of his said Majesty's reign, do in the whole 
 amount to, as by the estreats thereof, remaining in the cus- 
 tody of the dark of the estreats of this court and by him 
 cast up, particularly appeareth, £'371,060." There would 
 appear to be no reasonable doubt about this record ; but the 
 effect of it is to show that, in this one year, property of 
 Cathohc recusants was confiscated to the crown to the 
 amount, in modern figures, of ;^4,452,720. 
 
 Hallam has told us how priests came over from abroad 
 with their lives in their hands, and passed from one Catholic 
 house to another, administering the rites of religion and 
 exhorting those whom they met vnth to suffer the extreme 
 penalties of the law rather than abandon the Catholic religion. 
 The coasts of Hampshire and Sussex were naturally the parts 
 of England where these priests were landed, just as it was the 
 part from which, in those days, many a Catholic youth de- 
 parted, by stealth, to seek in the colleges established in 
 France and Belgium the education denied to him here. 
 Thus, in December, 1581, an informer, writing to Wal- 
 singham about one Mr. White, probably Mr. Thomas 
 White, of Titchfield, near Fareham, says : " He imparted 
 to me this day, although in Portsmouth he durst not enter 
 
45 
 
 into conference with me, that he was in France at Christ- 
 mas last, from whence he conveyed over to England one 
 Adams, a priest. . . He conveyed over into this realm of 
 late one Chapman, a priest, and landed him at Stokes Bay, 
 by Portsmouth, and gave directions what course he should 
 take."i The houses of the CathoHc families in Hampshire 
 were always open to shelter the priest on his landing. Mr. 
 George Cotton's house, at WarbHngton, was conveniently 
 situated near the coast, and in many state papers of the 
 period it is noted as one of their chief places of abode, and in 
 1609 the Lord Treasurer was informed that " In the house of 
 Mr. Cotton, of Hampshire, there is harboured a Jesuit who 
 names himself Thomas Singleton. He teaches the grand- 
 children of the said Cotton."^ 
 
 It is more than probable that priests landing at Portsmouth 
 would pass along the London road through Petersfield. Be 
 this as it may, it is certain that there was always a shelter for 
 them at Buriton, and Mr. Shelley's large manor house at 
 Mapledurham stood invitingly on the London road, a few 
 hours' journey from the coast. There and at the neighbour- 
 ing farm of Weston, priests were always sure to find a wel- 
 come, a place to say their Mass, and, if necessary, a secure 
 hiding place. A letter describing the state of the case in 
 1586 is of such local interest that I will give it entire : — " 15th 
 of June, 1586. The declaration of Edward Jones, the 
 Recusant. Inprimis Rt. Hon. ... it happened that serving 
 
 State Papers Dom. Eliz., 1581, No. 231. 
 '' Winwood's Memorials, iii., p. 43. 
 
46 
 
 my master Tichebourne,' being his footboy, the young man 
 being very desirous to travel, as fortune fell out, there came 
 on a time unto his master's house a merchant named Hopton, 
 being unto my knowledge but of small acquaintance, but they 
 knew one another, his father being then in prison" unac- 
 quainted with this matter. The place is named Porchester. 
 There they agreed between them that they would travel into 
 France, so staying there, departed, going towards London 
 wherein press of time met with was a week or thereabout, so 
 briefly concluded that the next week they would take their 
 journey towards Rye, where they were shipped privily and 
 passed by sea to Diepe where they arrived safely, myself being 
 then in London placed by my mother with one Mr. John 
 Shelley, waiting on the Lord Montague and being in the house 
 not passing a four days, but one of the Lord's sons named Mr. 
 George Brown was very desirous to have me and in the end 
 getting my mistress's good will and him I served a 3 weeks 
 in his father's house. At length old Mr. Titchborne being 
 then prisoner in the White Lion in Southwark, hearing of my 
 being with him sent for me and placed me with this Shelley's 
 brother" being prisoner too, where I waited on him and his 
 wife and was reconciled there in my mistress' chamber by 
 one Wrenche who died in London two years agone ; but being 
 alive went down with my mistress (Mrs. Henry Shelley) unto 
 her house named ^lapledurham, near unto Petersfield where 
 he did say mass every day once ; whither resorted certain 
 
 ' This was Mr. Chideock Tichborne, of Porchester. 
 
 ' Mr. Peter Tichborne, in the White Lion prison, 1583. 
 
 ' Henry Shelley, of Buriton. 
 
47 
 
 priests more, named as foUoweth : Jasper Haywood, Jesuit, 
 Shelborne, Chepnan, Adames, Warblington, Farmer, Eskene, 
 Stone. There I daily consociate withal and heard mass every 
 day, thus passing the time a three-quarters of the year in 
 London at my Mrs. lodginge and I came unto the prison and 
 heard mass every morning there. My old master Mr. Tich- 
 borne's father, he being always timorous of the law, would 
 never any these persons to have entertainment in the house 
 by reason of the law."' 
 
 On the back of this letter is noted : — " Mapledurham. Mr. 
 Stephen Vachill and his wife, Marten Croucher and his wife, 
 Mr. John Shelley and his wife. White Lion in Southwark, 
 Mr. John Shelley, Mr. Chideock Tichebourne." 
 
 The endorsement is of some interest from the absence of 
 the name of Henry Shelley of Mapledurham. The fact is, 
 however, that before October 23rd, 1585, he had already died 
 in his prison at the White Lion, Southwark.* In the year 
 1587 in a small list of notable recusants, written in Lord 
 Burghley's own hand, appear two Hampshire names I have 
 already spoken a good deal about, George Cotton of War- 
 blington, and Gilbert Wells of Twyford, about both of whom 
 I shall have a word to say later. 
 
 A glimpse — and perhaps the most interesting glimpse — of 
 the life of the recusants in these parts at this period is afforded 
 by the information of an informer in 1594. He was a young 
 Hampshire gentleman signing himself " Ben. Beard," con- 
 
 ' Harl. MS. 360, f. 22. 
 •■ State Papers Dom. Eliz., vol. 183, No. 45 (6). 
 
48 
 
 nected with the Tichborne family, and who upon finding the 
 Fleet prison in London too much for him, endeavoured to 
 purchase his liberty by volunteering information about the 
 doings of his Catholic relations and Mends. He had seen 
 such and such priests at his grandmother's house, and if the 
 Privy Council would set him at liberty he would be able to 
 find them. He had heard mass said at such and such a house, 
 and the searchers could find the Chapel hidden away by 
 following his directions, and so on. Of course his chief infor- 
 mation is about Hampshire and a good deal is about this 
 neighbourhood. For instance, he says : " If these parties (i.e., 
 two priests) be missed at Mr. Wells' house (at Brambridge) it 
 is not unlikely, but they will be found at Mapledurham at Mr. 
 Thomas Shelley's house in that county, where I think one Mr. 
 Strange doth dwell.' Strange and Wells are great friends 
 and shift such persons between each other. At Mapledurham 
 there is a hollow place in the parlour by the livery cupboard 
 where two men may well lie together, which has many times 
 deceived the searchers." 
 
 " Jerom Heath, who is not a recusant, he dwelling at Win- 
 chester, who not being suspected for religion was wont in time 
 of any disturbance to harbour such persons, as when my 
 grandmother Mrs. Tichbourne lived, there were continually 
 in her house one Fennell and Richards priests, who upon any 
 search did lightly fly thither for a three or four dales 
 together." 
 
 ' Richard Strange alias Barnes of Burilon, gent., appears among the list of 
 Hampshire recusants (Recusant Roll, I., a.d. 1590). 
 
49 
 
 " If I were at liberty I could go but to the Castle at 
 Winchester where presently my uncle Gilbert Tichborne and 
 divers other my friends and kindred remain for their con- 
 sciences, of whom I could understand anything and no doubt ' 
 do very good service."' 
 
 In a paper containing further information Ben. Beard 
 says : Two Jesuits landed in Cornwall and were harboured 
 there for three weeks " by a minister and afterwards con- 
 ducted by the same partie to Hampshire to a place called Pitt 
 Farme, where one Mr. Yate and his wife did abide. . . . 
 have seen with my own eyes one John Shelley, who was with 
 the old Lord Montague carry Fennell and Richards (the two 
 priests about whom he had spoken as having been sheltered 
 by his grandmother, Mrs. Tichborne) about the country with 
 him in my Lord Montague's livery, with chains about their 
 necks. Whilst old Mr. Tichborne lived, this Simon Fennell 
 abode with the other priest Richards at Mapledurham in 
 Hampshire, where then one Strange did dwell."^ 
 
 Upon this information Beard was apparently examined 
 by the Lord Keeper Puckering, and we have the following 
 notes by his lordship : " Hampshire. John Shelley lieth at 
 Barnes Farme (or Bailes farme) as it were in an old park, 
 pailed and locked that none can come in without a key." 
 
 " His consort is Strange (that was with my Lord Montague) 
 and kept a college of priests (as it were) at Mapledurham. 
 
 " Robert Knight, of Lydshot, hard by Bramshot, where 
 
 State Papers Dom. Eliz., vol. 248 (March 15th, 1594), No. 30. 
 2 Ibid., No. 105. 
 
50 
 
 Mr. Marvyn dwelleth. This Mapledurham is Thomas 
 Shelley's house. He was going over the sea to be a priest, 
 and was taken, and now Strange farmeth it. . . ' . 
 
 "These houses are common receptacles for priests, and 
 have great shift for the hiding of them : as in Mapledurham 
 house, under a little table is a vault, with a grate of iron 
 for a light into the garden, as if it were the window of a cellar, 
 and against the grate groweth rosemarye." > 
 
 In another examination, held in 1596, of one John Harrison, 
 then prisoner in Bridewell, some slight information is afforded 
 about Mapledurham, Petersfield. Harrison confessed that 
 " he was married to his wife in Newgate by an old priest 
 then in prison, himself nor his wife being no prisoner." He 
 " served Robert Barnes by the space of eighteen years, and 
 was with him at his house at Mapledurham, Hants, and 
 was there when Mrs. Barnes died, which was about eight 
 years past, and she was buried at the parish church at 
 Buriton. He attended on his master Barnes at Bellamy's 
 house, but his master was at Mapledurham when Babington 
 resorted to Bellamy's house. He confesseth himself to be 
 a Catholic of the Pope's religion, and so hath been before 
 and since he came to Barnes' service," but he denied that 
 he had ever seen any he knew to be priests in his master's 
 house at Mapledurham.' 
 
 It was, of course, as Hallam has told us, highly dangerous 
 to property, and even to life, to be known to shelter a priest ; 
 
 'Ibid., No. 116. 
 State Papers, Dom. Eliz. 1596 (March 3), No. 47. 
 
51 
 
 and curious devices were practised to be able to escape the 
 penalty. Thus, in one case, a priest declares that to his 
 knowledge the Catholic gentleman stood "behind the door 
 to hear the masses, and not to be seen of his servants," as 
 though he had not known the gentleman staying in his house 
 to have been a priest at all. It is curious to find that, 
 through the sympathy and contrivance of the gaolers Catho- 
 lics in prison for their recusancy were able to obtain many 
 of the consolations of religion. We have already heard that 
 people outside the walls of such a prison as the White 
 Lion at Southwark, could often come and hear mass said 
 by some priest confined there ; and that marriage and other 
 sacraments were administered within prison walls. This 
 was the case even within the Tower, where in 1588, it was 
 discovered not only that at times, by means of keys, the 
 prisoners had access to each other's rooms ; but even, for 
 a certain period, had been able to have daily mass said 
 " by all the priests that have been there these many years." ' 
 At Winchester gaol the compassion of the gaolers mitigated 
 the strictness of the confinement of some of the recusant 
 prisoners ; but this was soon discovered, and a long enquiry 
 led to the dismissal of the official, and the appointment of 
 another who could be relied on "to correct " those under 
 
 his care. 
 
 In 1583 " certain poor Catholics, who were unable to pay 
 the heavy fine imposed upon them for neglecting to attend 
 public service were publicly whipped through the streets of 
 
 ' Ibid., 1588 (Oct. 26), No. 760. 
 
52 
 
 Winchester,'" and on Bishop Cooper succeeding to the see in 
 1584, he wrote to the Privy Council suggesting the following 
 admirable mode of getting rid of the recusants from the 
 county of Hampshire, which he describes as over-run with 
 them. His plan is " that a hundred or two of the obstinate 
 recusants, lusty men, well able to labour, might by some 
 convenient commission be taken up and sent to Flanders as 
 pioneers and labourers, whereby the country would be dis- 
 burdened of a company of dangerous people and the rest 
 that remained be put in some fear."" 
 
 It would appear that at this time, 1584, the number of 
 recusants in Hampshire was very considerable ; the Clerk 
 of the Peace for the county states that, "at every sessions 
 the indictments against them are in number seven score at 
 the least." He adds, after suggesting some change in his 
 duties : " The number of recusants which at every sessions 
 are to be indicted is so great, that the Clerk of the Peace is 
 driven to spend not only by himself, or his deputy and a 
 servant or two, a great deal of time before and after the 
 sessions itself, in drawing and engrossing the indictments, 
 judgments and processes, and the Justices most occupied 
 about them, whereby the sessions are continued more days 
 than heretofore, and almost all other causes and grievances of 
 the shire omitted altogether." ' 
 
 One other point only will I refer to here : the difficulty ex- 
 perienced by recusants in burying their dead, for, as a rule, 
 
 ' Milner, Winchester, p. 380. 
 
 ^ Cassan, Lives of the Bishops of Winchester, II., p. 47. 
 
 ' State Papers, Dom. Eliz., vol. 183, No. 83. 
 
53 
 
 the bodies were refused a resting place in the parish church- 
 yards. I have mentioned already the name of the family of 
 Wells, of Brambridge, near Twyford. One member of that 
 family was Swithun Wells, whose house in Hampshire was 
 the refuge of numerous priests, and in it were frequently 
 celebrated ^two, and even three masses a day. In the last 
 stage of his life he had taken a house at London, in Holborn, 
 near Gray's Inn Fields. Here Topcliffe, the celebrated priest- 
 catcher, broke in whilst Father Edmund Genings was saying 
 mass, and carried off the priest and the whole congregation 
 to Newgate. Mr. Wells was not present at the time, but 
 was afterwards apprehended and condemned to death for 
 harbouring a priest and having mass in his house. He, to- 
 gether with Mr. Genings, was actually hanged before his 
 own door on December lo, 1591. The Twyford register of 
 burials discloses the fact that in the century from 1663 (before 
 which date such entries do not appear to have been set down) 
 to 1767, some seventeen members of the Wells family were 
 buried " as recusants, clandestinely, by night." During the 
 same period some fifteen or sixteen other recusants were 
 similarly buried. 
 
 The Cotton family were lords of the manors of Warblington 
 and Bedhampton, and we have already seen what large sums 
 Mr. George Cotton had paid to the crown in fines for not 
 attending his parish church. He had likewise lost great 
 estates in Cheshire, which having been granted to his father. 
 Sir Richard Cotton, and having come to him as part of his 
 inheritance, passed again to their original owners.' A letter. 
 
 Harl. MS. 2083, fol. 127. 
 
54 
 
 written in 1614, records his end. " George Cotton," the 
 writer says, " was despoiled of all his goods and consigned 
 to a dungeon to the end of his days which was hastened by 
 hardships, filth, misery and a chronic malady. The mini- 
 sters, as if he were unworthy of Christian burial, would not 
 allow his corpse to be buried in their churchyards, hence his 
 remains are deposited in an open field."' 
 
 Mr. Thomas Pound, of Beamond or Belmont, near Far- 
 lington, spent nearly thirty years of his life in various prisons 
 in England. His life presents a series of almost incredible 
 sufferings for the rights of conscience, and most of his property 
 passed to the crown in fines for obstinately refusing to attend 
 the parish church. The register of Farlington records his 
 burial thus: " 1613 (i March) Thomas Pounde, Esq., was 
 buried by night the first of March." 
 
 In the year 1589, Nicholas Tichborne of Hartley Maudit, 
 three miles from Alton, died. He had been in the gaol of 
 Winchester for nine years a prisoner, as he says himself in 
 his petition for relief " for not repairing unto my parish 
 church," or as the SheriflF puts it, " in execution for a great 
 sum of money due unto Her Majesty by reason of his re- 
 cusancy." We have a glimpse of his sad condition in a letter 
 written by him in 1585. In October of that year, orders were 
 sent down to the ofi&cials in the various counties to demand 
 from each recusant gentleman or woman one " light horse " 
 for the queen's service, or £25 in money. George Cotton, 
 apparently, was the only one in this part of the country who 
 
 ' Foley, ColUctama, part 2. 
 
55 
 
 was " contented " to furnish the horse. Poor Nicholas Tich- 
 borne pleaded "non-ability" to do what was required. " I 
 and such other recusants," he writes, " have reported our- 
 selves, notwithstanding our recusancy, to be as good subjects 
 as any other Her Majesty's subjects, which before God I 
 do acknowledge and profess. And hereupon. Her Majesty 
 having present service for certain light horsemen to be sent 
 into Flanders, Her Majesty's will and pleasure is to require 
 of me to have a light horse in readiness, with all the furniture 
 thereunto belonging, by the 26th day of the month of October, 
 or else £2$" 
 
 " I," he continues, " am a younger brother and son of a 
 younger brother," and had only one little farm, " for the main- 
 tenance of myself, my poor wife and eight young children." 
 The " lease whereof with all such goods as I had upon the 
 same was sold by Robert White, Esq., late Sheriff of the said 
 county, and the money for the same was paid into the receipt 
 of Her Majesty's Exchequer, to Her Majesty's use in the 
 Michaelmas term in the 25th year of Her Majesty's reign." 
 I may mention that in the Pells Receipt Book is entered on 
 November 13th, 1584, the sum of £ip paid by Nicholas Tich- 
 borne in part payment. Whilst on the Exannual Roll of the 
 following year this £^0 is deducted from the ;^36o he is said 
 to owe the queen, but one sum of £^260, and two of £^120, are 
 added to the debt at the same time. 
 
 To return to the letter of excuse.- Tichborne declares 
 that since he has been in prison and all his little property 
 taken away, his family has lived upon the alms of the chari- 
 table. He is sorry he is unable to do anything in the way of 
 
56 
 
 finding the horse to show " his loyalty and true obedience to 
 Her Majesty, who," he adds, " with all my heart I do ac- 
 knowledge for my most dread sovereign lady and queen." 
 He begs they will give him his liberty so that he may work 
 for the support of his family, and promises if possible, when 
 free, to collect the money necessary to buy a horse from his 
 friends.' 
 
 The sheriff himself testifies as to the miserable condition of 
 poor Nicholas Tichborne, for on November nth (1585) he 
 writes that he "is utterly unable of himself to maintain his 
 wife and children since the confiscation of his goods to Her 
 Majesty for his contemptuous recusancy." ' 
 
 He was left consequently in the Winchester Gaol till he 
 died, as I have said, in 1589. The Bishop of the diocese, 
 Dr. Cooper, refused to allow his body to be buried in any 
 church or cemetery, declaring that his conscience would not 
 permit him to suffer a papist to be buried in any of his churches 
 or cemeteries. By the advice of an old Catholic the body was 
 carried to the summit of a hill about a mile from the city and 
 interred in the old disused cemetery of St. James, now known 
 in Winchester as the Catholic Cemetery. 
 
 To these instances I must add that of the burial of Fr. 
 Sigebert Buckley, the last of the old Westminster monks. 
 For some time before his death he was living in the house 
 belonging to Mr. Anthony Norton, called Punsholt, in the 
 parish of Eastmeon, to which we have referred before. 
 As they refused him burial in any churchyard, his friends 
 
 ' State Papers, Dom. Elizabeth, vol. 183, No. 45. 
 ^ Ibid., vol. 184, No. 17. 
 
57 
 
 carried his body and deposited it in the ruins of an old chapel, 
 in the hopes, as the record says, that in happier times it might 
 be removed to a more honourable sepulchre. 
 
 With this I must close my paper to-night. I will ask you 
 to believe that I have touched only the fringe of a large 
 subject, and that the mass of material at hand to illustrate 
 this page of English history is little short of appalling. One 
 thing I hope I have made clear, and that is, that if we want 
 to know the history of these times we cannot afford to ignore 
 the penal laws or to underrate the amount of domestic misery 
 of which they were the cause. 
 
 In these days people talk easily of liberty of conscience, but 
 they are commonly ignorant of the means by which, and of 
 the man by whom, the liberty now so highly prized was really 
 won. In a vague way it is imagined that the world was con- 
 vinced of this by the philosophers ; that "Locke, for example, 
 was the apostle of this liberty. The work, however, was not 
 done by men who wrote at ease in their armchairs ; but by the 
 men, whatever their belief, who bore and suffered all things 
 rather than be false to what appeared to them to be the 
 leading light of conscience. In Elizabethan days, to do so 
 was in some respects most difficult ; for the immense majority 
 of Catholics had no quarrel with the queen's succession, and 
 were quite ready to accept her as their legitimate sovereign. 
 The politicians in this party, if potent, were few. On the 
 other hand, Elizabeth was open in her declaration that all she 
 required was external compliance with State regulations in 
 matters of religion for the purposes of policy ; yet, fortunately 
 for true " liberty of conscience," she demanded conformity 
 
58 
 
 with externals which, as anyone acquainted with the actual 
 state of the Church of England in her reign knows, were quite 
 incompatible with any continued belief in the Catholic 
 reUgion. 
 
 There can be no question as to the fact that most of those 
 who suffered under the penal laws, outside the ranks of those 
 who actually sacrificed their lives for religion, were simple- 
 minded Englishmen and Englishwomen, skilled neither in 
 argument nor controversy ; but from truthfulness and sincerity 
 of conscience easily open to conviction from the logic of 
 visible facts. They saw through the plea for mere external 
 compliance as the early Christian martyrs of old recognised 
 the renunciation impUed by the mere dropping of a few grains 
 of incense before the statue of their Emperor. 
 
 The lives of the Recusants fell in days of that confusion 
 and entanglement of ideas which must exist in an age of 
 transition. Whilst, at whatever sacrifice, they refused to 
 abandon what they felt to be good and holy coming to them 
 from the past, they were unwitting instruments in preparing 
 the only conditions possible for the public weal in days to 
 conje, when it should be seen that unity of religious faith in 
 England had been broken, perhaps for ever. 
 
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