ultimate fate is uncertain. [1] In 1589 Thomas Belson of Brill, with his servant, was executed at Oxford for the same offence. [2] In 1594 there is another official list of sixteen persons (mostly women) from whom large fines were due for recusancy. [3]
There are also some instances in the history of this county of the suspicion with which such persons were regarded by some of their neighbours, and of the eagerness with which information against them was accepted and followed up.
In 1584 a search was instituted by Paul Wentworth in the house of Isabel Hampden of Stoke Poges, the gates being guarded all the time that no one might come in or go out ; even a messenger who came from London during the day was arrested and searched. There still remains among the State Papers a pathetic list of innocent books, pictures and objets de piété carried off on this occasion,[4] the only serious item being ' a copy of the pope's letter 'presumably one of those on the question of allegiance.
Again in 1586 the house of Sir Christopher Browne at Boarstall was suddenly entered by John Croke, justice of the peace, and others (early in the morning, so that the inhabitants might have no chance of a warning), and searched from attic to cellar, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., the gates being guarded all the time.[5] This was on the information of one ' Hugh Davies, minister, of Boarstall,' who had been recently at Oxford with George Browne, and had sometimes served as domestic chaplain to another member of the same family. The information laid by Davies led to the expectation of some treasonable correspond- ence,[6] but nothing of this kind was found ; a fact which raised in the mind of Master Croke a strong suspicion not that it had never existed, but that it had all been destroyed ! One Agnus Dei, and a
- ↑ S.P. Dom. Eliz. cxcix. 4.
- ↑ Dr. F. G. Lee, The Church under Queen Elizabeth, 355.
- ↑ P.R.O. Recusant Roll No. I (Bucks). The names of Gifford, Throgmorton, Belson, Butler, still appear. The sums due vary from £240 to £300.
- ↑ S. P. Dom. Eliz. clxvii. 47 (26 Jan. 1584), e.g. a tablet of gold with a picture on it ; a pair of beads ; a picture of Christ ; an instruction to sing mass ; a book called Officium beatae Mariae, etc. These articles were of course contraband under the Act of 1571, which made them incur praemunire who possessed such things (Strype, Annals, ii. 69). A Confutation of Master Jewel's Book was doubtless dangerous : and even A Testament of the new translation at Rheims (the work of Gregory Martin, issued 1582, and the basis of the Douay version) might contain a perversion of the true gospel and so do a benighted papist more harm than good.
- ↑ S. P. Dom. Eliz. cxcii. 52-54. They searched ' coffers, cupboards, closets, trunks, caskets and secret places,' breaking open all locked doors ' for lack of keys.'
- ↑ Davies reported words of George Browne to the effect that if he were ever in such an affair as Babington's, he would manage it with better success. Further statements of Davies do not however add much to our respect for his evidence. He said that for two or three years past George Browne, his friend Robert Atkins, and a servant of theirs had been urging him to forsake the ministry of the Anglican Church and to go and be ordained at Rheims that he might come back to England and do much good, by reconciling people to the true faith. He had not consented to this, but yet had not liked altogether to refuse, because Browne had livings at his command, one of which he had hoped to obtain. This is the account which Davies gives of his own motives : and it seems not unnatural to wonder whether chagrin at the failure of his hopes from Browne had not led him to lay this information against one whose well-known views would make him specially liable to suspicion. It is also evident that Davies was familiar with the ordinary Roman arguments of that time how the queen had the tenths, and therefore his was but a ' political and temporary,' or rather ' Machiavelous religion.'
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