few images of alabaster and wood provided material for a bonfire ; of ' divers papistical books ' the ' worst and most portable ' were sent up to the Privy Council ; and there the matter apparently ended.
The increase of recusants from 1577 to 1586 was no doubt due to the activity of the Jesuits and seminary priests ; the names of half a dozen or so are mentioned as connected in different ways with this county.[1] It is worth noticing that some of those who bore the worst characters in the official reports were harboured and countenanced by gentlemen of undoubted loyalty, and sometimes retained by them for years as domestic chaplains. The Dormers of Wing were never sus- pected of any treason, and indeed contrived to keep themselves out of the recusant lists of this county all through the reign probably by occasional conformity [2] ; but they had in their house as a resident chap- lain a priest who had been associated with the Babington family, [3] just as Lord Montague, [4] another gentleman who never fell under suspicion, connected with the Dormers by a double marriage, harboured some traitors of the deepest dye, who were sought in vain for the prison and the gallows. Further than this, members of these very families, the Dormers and the Brownes, a Lee of Pitstone, and probably one of the Penns of Penn, were allowed to enter the Society of Jesus,[5] their parents presumably knowing to what atrocities (if so it were) their vows would bind them, and the shameful death which they must face if they returned to England. These facts are capable indeed of a double inter-
- ↑ Seven are named in S. P. Dom. Eliz. clxviii. 33 as ' harboured ' by gentlemen of this county in 1584. In a list of 1586 amongst those imprisoned in the Counter prison is one Davies, a ' notable corrupter,' who conducted Campion, Parsons and Edwards throughout England : he it was who ' corrupted ' William Fytton, his mother-in-law (Isabel Hampden of Stoke), and all their family with divers others. He afterwards escaped (S. P. Dom. Eliz. cxcv. 72-74).
- ↑ This may have been easier for them to manage than for some people, as they had the advowson of the parish church of Wing. The names of all their children are entered in the parish register, every one marked with the sign of the cross, which does not occur in any other entries.
- ↑ His name was Harris : according to the confession of another priest, Robert Gray, he had had much to do with Lady Babington. He had a chamber at Wing, from which he never came out, but the family visited him there. S. P. Dom. Eliz. ccxlv. 98, 138.
- ↑ Lord Montague was one of the lords temporal who opposed the Act of Uniformity in 1559. Robert Gray, a priest imprisoned for the second time in 1593, was for some years his chaplain at Cowdray (perhaps he may have been in the house even during the queen's visit), and went with him to visit his son-in-law, Sir Robert Dormer, at Wing. A Jesuit, Fr. Curry, was often at Cowdray, and Alban Dolman (in Newgate in 1586, and called a ' notorious villayne ' in S. P. Dom. Eliz. cxcv. 72-74), as well as others. Gray knew all the Jesuits and priests about London, Surrey and Bucks, and their haunts. This much is his own confession. His papers were said to contain recommendations to Catholics to dissemble and go to church and to Parliament, so as to destroy the laws. This however is only at second hand, on the evidence of Richard Topcliffe, the priest-finder.
- ↑ Brother William Browne, who died a novice, was the son of a sister of Sir Robert Dormer, and a brother of Lord Montague. H. Foley, S.J., Records of the English Province, ii. 429, 433. Brother John Dormer (ibid. i. 132) was probably a grandson of Sir Robert, son of his daughter Mrs. Huddleston. Brother Thomas Penn occurs in another list (ibid. i. 436). Father Roger Lee had the chief responsibility of converting Mary Moulsoe, the heiress of Gayhurst, in this county, and her husband Sir Everard Digby (ibid. i. 462). Father Anthony Greenaway of Leckhampstead was of humbler parentage (ibid. i. 466). The object of the Jesuits was, quite frankly, the conversion of England ; we may not think England wanted converting, but they were of a different opinion, and it must be owned that their convictions brought them little reward or consolation in this world. The other priests, so far as the evidence of this county goes, seem to have lived in considerable danger and discomfort mainly for the sake of ministering to their brethren and sisters in the faith. Foley's Records of the English Province has furnished a good many of the references given above ; but in the case of the State Papers they have all been personally verified.
