A HISTORY OF SURREY 



Saunder or Saunders families of Charlwood and Ewell, the Talbots of 

 Mitcham, Gages of Hayling, Copleys of Leigh and Gatton, Fromondes 

 of Cheam, Brownes of Henley Park, Catesbys of Lambeth, and a son of 

 Sir William Monson. Some of these do not appear in the lists referred 

 to above, because at those dates their fortunes were worse still. Thomas 

 Copley, a distant kinsman to the queen through her mother, M.P. for 

 Gatton under Mary and Elizabeth, developed scruples about conformity, 

 not because he was dissatisfied with Jewell's Apologia as Parsons the 

 Jesuit said, for he was in opposition before Jewell's book came out, but 

 probably because he was an amateur theologian on his own account. 



Copley thought a good deal of his own learning, which was not 

 very extensive. 1 However he was imprisoned for a time, and then went 

 abroad and served the Spanish king before the war between England 

 and Spain. He never took arms against his country. Had he done so 

 his estates would certainly have been lost. He died abroad in 1584. 

 His wife returned to England and got into trouble. She is the Lady 

 Katherine Copley who was in prison in 1587. A curious fact in her 

 history is that her husband left her the borough of Gatton, with the 

 nomination of the two burgesses. She did not actually exercise a 

 female franchise, 1 for the Lords of the Council instructed More, 

 through Walsingham, to see that two well-disposed persons were 

 returned to the Parliament of 1586 ; Mistress Copley being a recu- 

 sant. Her son William also was arrested in England, but gave a show 

 of conformity, and then escaped abroad again. He was able to redeem 

 his estates for 2,000 at the beginning of James' reign, and thencefor- 

 ward paid a regular composition (240 a year). One of his brothers, 

 Antony, was a poet, but also a turbulent fellow and a conspirator in 

 Watson's plot, and a weak conspirator who did his best to get what was 

 certainly a hopeless plot found out. He made a full confession of it, 

 and was only banished. He died abroad. 2 A third brother lived to 

 conform and to be a Church of England parson, a high churchman, and 

 did not die till just after the Restoration. Among other Surrey Roman- 

 ists, John Gage of Haling lost his lands for harbouring a priest. His 

 brother, Robert Gage, lost his life for complicity in the Babington con- 

 spiracy. A member of the Saunders family was Nicholas Saunders or 

 Saunder, the famous controversialist, author of De Visibile Monarchia 

 Ecclesite and of De Origine et Progressu Scbismatis Anglicana, a work 

 which has discoloured the historical views of the common run of 

 Catholics abroad rather more seriously than Foxe and Burnet have dis- 

 torted the views of the common run of Protestants at home. He died 



1 As her husband's mother had done, in 1554, returning her own son, a minor, as member for 

 Gatton (see Parliamentary Writs and Returns printed by Order of the House of Commons, 1878). 



8 Antony Copley wrote A Figge for Fortune, which has been republished by the Spenser Society. 

 He, unlike his father, did serve Spain when Spain was at war with England. As for his turbulence, he 

 threw a dagger at the vicar of Horsham in church, and shot at a gentleman and killed an ox with a 

 musket. The fortunes of the Copleys, through exile, fines and difficulties with one of them conform- 

 ing and becoming a high churchman and quarrelling with his Puritan squire, Sir Edward Bering, is 

 fairly typical of many recusant families. 



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