A HISTORY OF HAMPSHIRE 



The council were better pleased with the bishop in the following 

 September, when they wrote expressing their pleasure that he had 

 reduced some recusants to conformity by conferences of learned and godly 

 men, and instructing him to commit others to take their trial at Quarter 

 Sessions. 1 



In a list drawn up in June, 1582, of ' the notablest recusants yet 

 remayninge prisoners in Winchester and elsewhere ' occur the names of 

 ' William Burley, gent, in Queene Maries tyme a justice of peace ' ; 

 ' Nicholas Scroope, gent, Thomas Owen, gent, a bachelor of the Civile 

 lawe ; Symon Cuffolde, gent ; Gilbert Welles, gent,' who were all at that 

 time in Winchester gaol. In a later hand to this list is added, ' Tiche- 

 burne gent prisoner in Bekonsfelde gent.' * 



On 8 August, 1582, Bishop Watson wrote to Walsingham requesting 

 instructions how to proceed with one, John Chapman, ' a Seminarie and 

 Massing Priest.' He forwarded the little he had got him to confess, 

 and wished to be directed whether he should still detain him or send 

 him to the assizes at Andover. ' He is in the meane tyme comytted to 

 a safe place in the Correction Howse. The Gaole hath many backward 

 People, that we thought not goode to Comytt nether the Priest nor the 

 Widdowe Mrs. Bullacre 3 thither.' 



The examination of John Chapman, taken before the Bishop of 

 Winchester, and Francis Cotton and William Wright, esquires, testifies 

 that he was ordained by the Bishop of Wells and held the living of 

 Langton Herring, Dorset, which he served six years ; that he left the 

 ministry through doubts engendered by reading, without formal resigna- 

 tion ; that he went to London and saw one, Blewet, a prisoner at the 

 Marshalsea, and was directed to cross the seas to Rheims ; that after a 

 year's sojourn with the seminaries at Rheims he was ordained priest ; 

 that he landed in England about midsummer twelvemonth ; and that 

 after visiting various parts of the west of England he came to Mrs. 

 Bullacre's of Warblington. He acknowledged taking an oath to the 

 pope at his ordination, but only such as all catholic priests take, and that 

 he is the queen's subject in all causes temporal. 4 Hampshire knew more 

 of these seminary priests than almost any shire, because of its extensive 

 seaboard whereon they might stealthily land from small vessels, and 

 because of the residence in the county of not a few of substance who 

 were thankful for their ministrations. 



In January, 1583, a sudden search was made by order of the 

 council in the chambers of Winchester gaol occupied by Warnford, 

 Howard, Slade, Body, Travers and Mercy Deane. The inventory 



1 Dam. State Papers, Eliz. 1581-2, p. 203. 



* Ibid. cliv. 38. The Tichbornes, as one of the leading Hampshire families, were perpetually 

 harassed, fined and imprisoned throughout Elizabeth's reign for their recusancy. The Diocesan History, 

 strangely enough, instances them as a loyal Roman Catholic family, who were allowed ' to exercise 

 their religion at home unmolested.' Ibid. civ. 8. 



1 The college of Douay, afterwards transferred to Rheims, was founded in 1568 to supply secular 

 English priests to secretly serve the English Catholics of the Roman obedience, as the old 'Queen Mary 

 priests ' were beginning to die out or had become infirm. 



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