A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



were undoubtedly towards Puritanism, with a leaning in some cases to the 

 Presbyterian model, there was in this county and elsewhere a minority to 

 whom the Reformation settlement was less congenial. It has been asserted 

 by some of the best modern historians that the county gentry, more than any 

 other class in England, were inclined to hanker after the mediaeval forms of 

 religion ; and so long as they were not asked to take part in any political 

 intrigues, many of them all through the sixteenth century would ' prefer the 

 Latin mass, with all its perils, to the security of a dull morning prayer or a 

 dreary homily at their parish church.' 16 This assertion is well illustrated in 

 the history of Leicestershire. The official returns of recusants for this county 

 were very small ; not a single inhabitant was ever convicted of taking part in 

 any really doubtful or treasonous proceedings ; yet there were not a few who 

 put in occasional attendances at their parish church to escape fine, and had 

 mass said secretly in their own houses for the benefit of their families and 

 neighbours, throughout Elizabeth's reign. Some who had been not dis- 

 pleased with the beginnings of reform in King Edward's day drew back and 

 changed their minds when they saw what the Reformation really meant under 

 Elizabeth. So in 1577 it was reported that Robert Brooksby had once been 

 ' a zealous professor of the truth ' and ' had continued so not without some 

 danger ' in Queen Mary's time ; but soon after Elizabeth's accession he had 

 withdrawn himself by degrees from his parish church. 161 He continued to be 

 returned as a recusant throughout his life, 162 and though under pressure he 

 consented to have morning prayers read in his house, it was always uncertain 

 whether he was present at the reading himself. His son was married to a 

 daughter of Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who with her sister, the more famous 

 Anne Vaux, came to be a part of the innocent framework of the Gunpowder 

 Plot. 163 It is more than probable that Mr. Sergeant Beaumont, of Gracedieu, 

 son of the Recorder and Master of the Rolls, was through the greater part of 

 his life a ' church papist.' He was brother-in-law to Lord Vaux, and in 

 1591 it was alleged that he had been 'heretofore a large contributor' to the 

 seminary priests ministering in this county. 164 His mother was imprisoned 

 in her own house in 1581 because she would not confess that Edmund 

 Campion the Jesuit had been her guest ; and one of the searches so common 

 at this time revealed there a quantity of ' massing stuffe mete to be defaced/ 

 with books and money collected for the support of the proscribed services. 1 " 

 Sir George Shirley, of Staunton Harold, with his brother Thomas, was occa- 

 sionally returned as recusant ; 156 and one of his nephews entered the Society 

 of Jesus. 157 Lady Nevill of Holt lent her house to the Jesuits later as a 

 centre for missionary work ; 158 and some few other recusant wives of con- 



w Frere, Hist, of the Engl. Ch. 240. See also the works of the late Professor Gardiner, &c. 



151 S.P. Dom. Eliz. cxvii, 13 ; cxviii, 34. 



Acts ofP.C. xiii, 239. 



153 Gerard's ' Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot ' in Morris, Troubles of our Cathohc Forefathers, cxxxv ; 

 Camden, Visitations of Leicestershire, 49. 



:M S.P. Dom. Eliz. ccxxxviii, 1 26. 



" Act! ofP.C. xiii, 164, 187. 



M S.P. Dom. Eliz. clxxxiii, 29, 30 ; ibid. Jas. I, xlvii, 46. 



" A sister of Sir George Shirley was a nun at Louvain. Foley, Records of the English Province, \, 476. 

 One of the Faunts of Foston also became a Jesuit. Ibid, ii, 286. 



48 Ibid, ii, 300-7. This was at the beginning of the next century ; there was no college of Jesuits in 

 this county till 1607. Ibid, ii, 273-285. Lady Nevill herself is said to have died from the shock of having 

 her house at Holborn searched at midnight by the pursuivants. Morris, Condition of Catholics, 39. 



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