THE COKE PAPERS AT MELBOURNE HALL. 57 



both the one and the other being notorious recusants. Upon 

 search of the said house we found so many rooms and chambers 

 as I have never seen in so small a content of ground, and amongst 

 other there was two chapels, one opening into the other, and in 

 either of them a table set to the upper end for an altar, and stools 

 and cushions laid as though they had been lately at mass. Over 

 the altars there was crucifixes set, and other pictures about it. 

 There was beds and furniture for them in that little house to 

 lodge 40 or 50 persons at the least. At Castle Gresley, within 

 the hundred of Repton and Gresley, there was in one litde house 

 (not above two bays and low built) six gentlewomen of very good 

 fashion outwardly and well apparelled, one of them being an 

 ancient gentlewoman called Mrs. Tamworthy, with whom the rest 

 sojourned ; another of them was Captain Allen's wife, which 

 Captain Allen had served the last year under the Archduchess, 

 and was at London as she said ; none of the said gentlewomen's 

 husbands was there, save only one whose name I remember not. 

 They were all recusants, and they had so many men and women 

 servants and children that I marvel how they could lodge in so 

 little a house. Every one of these gentlewomen had a riband of 

 green and another of white silk tied in a kind of knot upon their 

 left arm, and (as is reported) did use to give such ribands to 

 divers of their friends and well wishers. I think these women 

 were able to make more proselytes tiian twenty priests, for it is a 

 pestilent kind of cunning at Brisselcote (not far from Castle 

 Gresley and in that Hundred) being in the house of John Merry, 

 gentleman, and half a mile remote from any town we found a 

 Dutchman, by trade a painter, who was then drawing of the 

 picture of one of these gentlewomen (which we had seen at 

 Castle Gresley), beholding a crucifix painted before her a little 

 higher that she might look up to it. At West Broughton (in the 

 Hundred of Appletree), in two farmers' houses being convict 

 recusants we saw such store of beds and other provision of butter, 

 cheese, pork as is not usual in such men's houses. These were' 

 tenants to Sir Henry Merry. At Alkmanton in this Hundred 



