(1606 - 1625)

In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot came new anti-Catholic legislation. Catholics were forbidden to appear at Court, despite the fact that the Queen, Anne of Denmark, had recently converted to Catholicism. They were also banned from coming within ten miles of the City of London, and had to remain within five miles of their homes, unless granted a special licence. They were excluded from many professions, including medicine and the law. All holders of public office were now required to take Communion annually according to the Anglican rite. And the penalties for secret Catholic baptisms were increased by an additional £100 fine (= £6,800 today).

It was also made illegal for Catholics to hold the patronage of Anglican benefices. Many Catholic landowners retained these ancient rights from pre-Reformation times. Henceforth these rights were to be divided between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge.

The 1606 version of the Oath of Allegiance contained a declaration that the Pope had no political authority in England. This seemed reasonable and some Catholic priests, including the Archpriest of England, took the oath. However, the new wording could also be construed as rejecting the Pope's spiritual authority. The Pope therefore condemned it and the Archpriest was replaced.

With the stiffening of anti-Catholic legislation John Perkins of Beenham, brother of the recently deceased recusant Richard Perkins and cousin of the recusant Francis Perkins of Ufton Court, claimed exemption from recusancy fines on the grounds that he had become an Anglican.

In 1606 Francis Englefield and William Wollascott together bought the manor of Earley Whiteknights near Reading for £7,500 (= £½m today). Six years later Francis Englefield achieved knighthood by becoming a baronet. After a further seven years he bought out Wollascott's interest in Whiteknights for £5,600, (= £336,000 today). This Wollascott seems to have been William Wollascott III. Whiteknights was to become an important Catholic centre for the Reading area. Today it is the main campus of Reading University.

Walter Hildesley's mother, Margaret née Stonor, died early in 1607. Her youngest daughter Catherine had a brass plate erected to her memory in the parish church at East Ilsley. Margaret Hildesley is not named but is referred to as the widow of William who had died some thirty years earlier. In the text on the plate Catherine refers to herself as 'shining with a virgin's diadem', thus seeming to imply that she was a nun. If so, she was not the only Hildesley nun about that time. In 1601 a Mary Hildesley had joined the Franciscan nuns of Brussels. Also in Brussels, but at a Benedictine convent, was one of Lady Ann Curson's daughters, who professed in spring 1605. Another of Lady Ann's daughters professed at the same convent seven years later.

Hildesley plaque
The plaque to Catherine Hildesley in East Ilsley parish church

In 1609 Mary Ward from Yorkshire founded a female equivalent of the Jesuits, which became known as the Companions of Mary Ward. They worked among the poor and established schools for girls at Hammersmith and York. An early Companion was Jane or Joanna Browne, daughter of Sir George Browne of Shefford and Caversham. One of her aunts was the wife of the younger Francis Englefield, another the wife of Sir Robert Dormer, the Catholic former Sheriff of Buckinghamshire.

Catherine Hildesley's brother Walter married twice. As previously noted, one of his wives was Honour Carey. The other was Dorothy, daughter of Humphrey Burdett of Sonning. The Burdetts were Catholics, friends of the Vachells and close relatives of the Englefields. In 1608 Dorothy Burdett's brother William gave thirty-one manuscripts to the recently refurbished Bodleian Library. Most came from Reading Abbey.

It may well be that Thomas Vachell rescued the manuscripts when his father oversaw the suppression of Reading Abbey. Perhaps half a century later, when threatened with seizure of his goods, he had secreted the documents with the Burdetts at Sonning, just as he had hidden his treasure with the Perkins at Ufton Court. The Burdetts passed other Reading Abbey manuscripts to another Catholic, John Stonor of North Stoke, who gave them to St John's College, Oxford.

About 1609 the Catholic Francis Hyde completed construction of Hyde Hall, Purley. The Hydes were a family with branches in many parts of Berkshire, some of which remained Catholic long after the Reformation. In Elizabethan times their principal seat was Denchworth (2 miles SSW of Lyford Grange) where they held three manors. The road from Denchworth towards Lyford is still called Hyde Road and almost half way between the two villages is Hyde Farm.

Purley Hall
Formerly known as Hyde Hall, Purley

In Denchworth parish church is a monument to William Hyde whose fourth son Hugh lived at Letcombe Regis (3 miles SW of Wantage). Through marriage Hugh Hyde acquired the manor of La Hyde at Purley (1 mile E. of Pangbourne) which had been held by his medieval ancestors (hence presumably the family name).

Hugh Hyde's son Francis became lord of La Hyde manor in 1605. About four years later he finished building Hyde Hall, now known as Purley Hall. Although the house was altered in later centuries, the symmetrical facade, with its bay windows, appears to be as Francis Hyde built it.

The parish boundaries in the area are somewhat convoluted and it is said that until about a century ago three converged in the dining room: Purley, an enclave of Whitchurch that no longer exists, and a neck of Sulham.

An old account in the Reading Mercury describes a smoke-blackened room adjacent to the kitchen chimneys, 'accessible only through a trap door in the ceiling of a cupboard'. The article suggests that this may once have been a priest-hole but it might merely have been for smoking bacon.

Francis Hyde's first wife was Anne Tempest, said to have been the daughter of Robert Tempest of Holmeside, Durham. This Anne was too young to have been the widow of Robert Belson and therefore can not have been the daughter of the Robert Tempest of Holmeside attainted for involvement in the Northern Rebellion of 1569. It is more likely that she was the daughter of his eldest son Michael, who was also attainted and who died in exile working for the Spanish in Flanders. She must have died relatively young, probably in childbirth, and certainly before Francis Hyde inherited La Hyde, Purley.

In 1610, about a year after the completion of Hyde Hall, Sir Robert Chamberlain of Shirburn obtained a licence to travel abroad for three years, with three servants, two nags and £50 (= £3,000 today). The permit was later extended by two years which enabled him to visit his exiled relative Jane Dormer on her deathbed in Spain. Jane Dormer, half-sister of the Catholic former Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, had been the loyal companion of Mary Tudor. She had become a Spanish duchess by her marriage to the Duke of Feria, Philip II's former representative in England. She urged Chamberlain to 'stand strong and firm in the Catholic faith'. However, he never saw England again because, a year or two later, he was drowned or murdered in the Mediterranean.

Another Oxfordshire Catholic who travelled abroad at this time was Robert Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt (6 miles W. of Oxford). In 1609 he sailed to Guyana in South America where, with his brother Michael, he established a settlement. After a few years it failed and, despite publishing a book on his voyage, he was unable to raise enough capital to revive the venture. However, in 1626 he and Captain Roger North founded the Guyana Company. Robert Harcourt left for Guyana two years later and is thought to have died there not long afterwards.

The remains of Stanton Harcourt Manor, the Harcourt family seat at this time, include a fifteenth century tower (of which more later) and the Great Kitchen, described as 'one of the most complete medieval domestic kitchens in England'.

Finchampstead (3 miles S. of Wokingham) lies on the Devil's Highway, the old Roman Road from Silchester to London. In the late thirteenth century the original manor was divided into two, known as East Court and West Court. The Perkins of Ufton acquired West Court in the late fifteenth century. By the time James I came to the throne West Court had passed to George Tattersall through his marriage to Francis Perkins's daughter Catherine. Two of George and Catherine Tattersall's great granddaughters married Howards and thereby became ancestors of the Dukes of Norfolk. West Court today presents a late seventeenth century appearance.

The Tattersalls were not the only Catholics in Finchampstead at this time. Thomas Eyston, youngest brother of William Eyston of Catmore (he of the ring), also lived there. He was a lawyer who had married Mary Yate of Lyford. Thomas Eyston was such a patient sufferer for his faith that he was given the nickname 'Old Job'. He was born in the year of the Armada and lived to the age of eighty-one.

Old Thomas Vachell lived to much the same age. He too had suffered greatly for his religious beliefs. His only child, a daughter, had died young. He passed away at Ipsden in the spring of 1610.

The appointment of his brother-in-law, Thomas Reade, as receiver for his sequestrated estates and seized goods, had resulted in a separation from his wife, Catherine. In 1595 she was boarding with her husband's tenant at Basset Manor near Stoke Row. But before her death in 1604 Catherine and Thomas were reconciled.

During his last few years Thomas was senile and was cared for by his widowed sister, Anne Montague. This led to charges of undue influence against her by Thomas's Protestant heir, Sir Thomas Vachell of Coley. He claimed she had retained a will and appropriated some of his valuables.

Old Thomas of Ipsden was buried on 10 May 1610, in accordance with family tradition, at St Mary's in the Butts, Reading. This was the church where, sixty-four years earlier, he had married, and to which he had recently made a donation for a new bell. But until the end of his life he was fined for being a Catholic.

Ipsden House
Another view of the house and dovecote

Perhaps the most traumatic event of 1610 for Catholics in the Thames Valley was the execution of Fr George Napper at Oxford.

The Nappers were said to be descended from the Earls of Lennox. They lived at Holywell Manor, which they leased from Merton College. The house stands on what was then the eastern outskirts of Oxford, near the River Cherwell. Originally an early sixteenth century building, it is now much altered and part of Balliol College. The Nappers also leased Rectory Farm at Temple Cowley from Christ Church.

George Napper's father was a fellow and benefactor of All Souls; his mother the niece of a Franciscan Cardinal. Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, George's elder brother William had sublet a plot of land at Temple Cowley to a Catholic mason called Badger, who built a safe house for Catholics on it.

George Napper was born during the reign of Edward VI. At the age of thirty he was arrested on his return from a year at Rheims. He was in prison about the time of the Armada in 1588. The following year he took his own version of the Oath of Allegiance which seems to have satisfied the authorities without compromising his own conscience. He later studied at Douai and was ordained in his mid forties. He spent the rest of Elizabeth's reign at Douai and Antwerp.

On the accession of James I in 1603, Fr George Napper joined the English mission. He worked in England for seven years, travelling on foot, poorly dressed. One summer's day in 1610 he was in the village of Kirtlington (8 miles N. of Oxford). The holders of the manor house, the Arden family, were Catholic about this time, but that night Fr Napper stayed at the house of Henry Tredwell. Two young men saw him enter and told the vicar.

The following morning Fr Napper was arrested, taken to the local constable and then to the nearest justice of the peace, Sir Francis Evers. Sir Francis treated him well and contrived not to find the small bag of relics and the pyx containing two consecrated hosts which were concealed in the old priest's clothing.

Fr Napper was tried at Oxford Assizes. The judge, Sir John Croke, was a son-in-law of Sir Michael Blount of Mapledurham. He told the jury that, if Fr Napper were to say he was not a priest, he would believe him. But the priest was not prepared to deny his calling and so was sentenced to death.

He might have been granted a reprieve but for the fact that, soon after his conviction, a criminal revealed on the scaffold that Fr Napper had reconciled him to Catholicism. This enraged the militant Puritans who pressed for an early execution.

However, this was prevented by the Sheriff, Sir Michael Dormer, whose elaborate tomb can be seen in Great Milton parish church (8 miles ESE of Oxford). Fr Napper was interrogated by Sheriff Dormer (a Protestant relative of the Catholic Dormers of Buckinghamshire) and by the Vice Chancellor of the University. He was urged to take the Oath of Allegiance and thereby save his life. The priest was prepared to take his own version of the oath, but this time the ploy was rejected. His family petitioned the King for a reprieve but to no avail.

Early one November morning in 1610 Fr Napper was told he would be hanged between one and two o'clock that afternoon. He responded by celebrating Mass in his cell. Later the Proproctor of the University made a final unsuccessful attempt to persuade him to take the Oath of Allegiance.

Fr Napper was then dragged through the streets on a hurdle and taken to the scaffold. A Protestant clergyman told him to confess his treason. He replied 'I thank God I never knew what treason meant.' An argument followed in which Fr Napper maintained that only Catholics could achieve salvation. Then the old priest prayed that the King might be made a saint.

The crowd were sympathetic to Fr Napper. When he was thrown off the scaffold they pulled on his legs so that he would not have to live through his own disembowelling.

Each of the four quarters of his body was fixed to a gate of the city. According to tradition at least one of his quarters ended up in the Thames. A miller at Sandford (3 miles S. of Oxford) saw it and told Edmund Powell, whose sister was Fr George Napper's sister-in-law.

The Powells were a Catholic family of Welsh origin who had bought Sandford Manor during the reign of Henry VIII. The house had been a regional base, first for the Knights Templars and later for the Knights Hospitallers. It is said that Edmund Powell had Fr Napper's remains retrieved from the river and buried in the Knights' old chapel on the south side of the manor house. At some stage the chapel was converted into a barn but it still exists.

Sandford Manor
From Templar base to campsite and country club

Two of Edmund Powell's daughters later became Franciscan nuns. Through the Powells' influence Sandford-on-Thames was to remain an important Catholic mission throughout the seventeenth century. The manor house became known as Temple Farm. It is now part of Templars' Court Country Club, a Thameside caravan park and leisure complex. Fr Napper was beatified by the Pope in 1929.

By the time Fr Napper was executed Sir Michael Dormer's term of office as Sheriff of Oxfordshire had expired. His successor was Benedict Winchcombe, a Catholic. Sheriff Winchcombe was related to the Berkshire Winchcombes and lived at Noke, on the edge of Ot Moor (4 miles NE of Oxford). He also held land at Chalgrove (3 miles WNW of Watlington). Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign his family had built their own chapel on to the north side of Noke parish church. This chapel no longer exists, having been demolished in the mid eighteenth century.

Two years after Fr Napper's execution the Privy Council made an order that all holders of public office with recusant wives, children or servants should be dismissed. Benedict Winchcombe's wife was a known but unconvicted recusant and he promised to receive Communion according to the Anglican rite in the near future.

Benedict Winchcombe was probably a church papist but it seems unlikely that he ever fully conformed. He died in 1623, leaving his estates to Benedict Hall, his Catholic nephew. The overseers of the will included the notable Catholics Francis Plowden and Sir Richard Fermor.

Catholicism meanwhile persisted in the Henwick branch of the Winchcombes. This is evidenced by William Winchcombe of Henwick, who became a Benedictine two years after Benedict Winchcombe promised to conform.

The heads of the Bucklebury branch of the family conformed to Anglicanism, at least outwardly. Yet throughout the seventeenth century the Bucklebury Winchcombes frequently intermarried with neighbouring Catholics. Jane married Edward Perkins, son of Francis Perkins I of Ufton Court. Her brother Henry married Mary Wollascott of Woolhampton. Henry's daughter Frances married another Francis Perkins, grandson of Francis Perkins I. Frances's sister Mary married Francis Hildesley of East Ilsley and Littlestoke. Her son Francis became a Jesuit. And Sir Henry Winchcombe of Bucklebury married Frances Howard, the Catholic daughter of the third Earl of Berkshire, who lived at Ewelme Manor. The Winchcombes' Bucklebury home was built on the site of a retreat of the martyred abbot Hugh Faringdon. It burned down in 1830 but the monastic fishponds still exist.

In 1611, the year after Fr Napper's execution, the authorities sequestrated an estate known as Bullocks at Cookham. This was the property of Sir Edward Manfield who had been convicted of recusancy. It is now called White Place and is on the Thames two miles upstream of Maidenhead, and almost opposite Cliveden. In 1991 what seems to have been a priest-hole was discovered in Churchgate House at the entrance to Cookham churchyard.

In the summer of 1611 Sir Francis Stonor's wife, daughter, sister and daughter-in-law were imprisoned in Banbury Castle for refusing to take the Oath of Allegiance. The daughter-in-law was his youngest son William's wife, Elizabeth. Her father was the Secretary of State, Sir Thomas Lake. Her brother Arthur married Anne Plowden, granddaughter of Edmund Plowden.

In 1615 the trial took place of another kinsman of the Stonors, John Owen of Godstow. The Owens of Godstow were gentry and do not appear to have been closely related to the family of the martyred Oxford craftsman Nicholas Owen.

Although not a priest, John Owen was said to have spent time at seminaries in Seville, Rome and in Flanders. He was alleged to have stated that the King, being excommunicated, could lawfully be deposed and killed. John Owen was sentenced to death, but after three years in jail, he was exiled following the intervention of the Spanish ambassador.

In 1616 Marcus Antonio De Dominis, Archbishop of Spalato (now Split, Yugoslavia) fled to England, renouncing the Catholic Church. James I made him Dean of Windsor and Rector of West Ilsley.

Initially De Dominis wrote against Catholicism, but after six years without promotion, he turned against Anglicanism. One wonders what contact he had with his Catholic neighbours such as the Moores and Hildesleys.

De Dominis was expelled from England in 1622 and made his way to Rome. Despite writing against Anglicanism he was imprisoned by the Church authorities. He died in the Castle of St Angelo two or three years later. De Dominis was noted for his advanced explanation of rainbows. But soon after his death his body was disinterred and burned with all his writings.

His successor at West Ilsley was Dr Godfrey Goodman, who later became Bishop of Gloucester. Although Goodman never formally left the Church of England, he is said to have become a secret Catholic, the only Anglican bishop to do so.

In 1617 Thomas Plowden of Shiplake became a Jesuit. He was the third son of Francis Plowden and hence a grandson of the Elizabethan lawyer Edmund Plowden.

Another Edmund Plowden now comes into the story, Thomas's elder brother. In 1620, about the time that the Puritan 'Pilgrim Fathers' set up their American colony, Edmund Plowden II established the Plantation of New Albion. This consisted of a huge area around Chesapeake Bay, including what is now Delaware, part of Pennsylvania, New York, and Cape Cod. Long Island was first known to English-speaking people as Isle Plowden, after Edmund Plowden II of Shiplake.

Edmund and his wife Mary stayed in America for ten years. During this time his sister Margaret became a nun at the Augustinian convent, Louvain. She had been taken there at the age of twelve by her mother. Edmund Plowden II later became Earl Plowden, Governor of New Albion, and took the radical step of offering religious freedom to his settlers.

Francis Perkins II, son of the first of that name, succeeded his father at Ufton Court. In 1620 he did a deal with his Catholic neighbour, Thomas Purcell of Wokefield, whereby Purcell applied to the Crown for the lease of Perkins's sequestrated lands.

Since 1606 it had been standard practice for the authorities to offer the sequestrated lands of Catholics, to their Protestant neighbours for a nominal rent. This was to encourage Protestants to inform on Catholics.

The authorities thought Purcell was a Protestant and so granted him Perkins's estates for a token rent. The plan was that Purcell would then pay Perkins the difference between the true rental value and the nominal rent. Unfortunately an informer told the authorities and the plan was foiled.

William Eyston of Catmore, owner of the ring found in Catmore churchyard, was Francis Perkins II's brother-in-law. William Eyston's fourteen children added to the financial burden of being a recusant. He was forced to sell the manors of Burford in Gloucestershire and Seymours, West Hanney (3 miles N. of Wantage). However, in 1623 he was able to buy the Abbey Manor, East Hendred from the Dutch merchant Sir Peter Vanlore, whose alabaster monument is in Tilehurst parish church.

To what extent he used these lands is hard to ascertain. Many years later it was reported that former monastic lands at East Hendred were uncultivated because it was felt wrong to do so.

Five years after his purchase of the Abbey Manor, it seems that William Eyston was able to achieve for his brother-in-law what the informer had prevented Thomas Purcell from doing. The Crown issued letters patent to William granting him use of Perkins's estate. Richard Hyde of Purley also managed to negotiate an advantageous arrangement. The Hydes' sequestrated land was leased to Richard's father-in-law, William Smith of Whitchurch.

In 1623 the role of Archpriest was superseded by that of Vicar Apostolic. The first to hold the new post was the aptly named William Bishop, who was given the title Bishop of Chalcedon, all the traditional English Catholic sees being occupied by Anglican bishops. In the same year the English Province of the Jesuits was established and Fr Thomas Plowden of Shiplake was sent on the mission to England. Oxfordshire formed part of the Jesuits' 'Residence of St Mary', often referred to as 'Mrs Oxon', whereas Berkshire formed part of their 'College of St Ignatius'.

Towards the end of his reign James I tried to arrange a Spanish Catholic marriage for his son Charles. In 1623, during these negotiations, Catholics in England first became known officially as Roman Catholics. This was at the insistence of the Spaniards who appreciated that the Church of England claimed to be the Catholic Church in England.

James I died in 1625. At the end of his reign there were still some eighty Catholic justices of the peace, and two high sheriffs. Within the last four years, old Sir Francis Stonor had served another term as Sheriff of Oxfordshire, and Edward Yate II of Buckland had become a baronet.

Although the hopes of the Oxfordshire woman expressed at James's accession had not been met, during his reign the number of Catholics in England had increased by about a quarter. Even more remarkably, the number of Catholic priests had doubled.