A HISTORY OF DORSET 



be removed to some other house and friends or placed with the sheriff of the county for the 

 time being, for that if she should continue in the place where she is now resident we doubt 

 would breed further mischief. For under cover of great hospitality and her bounty to the 

 poor many are drawn to her faction and repair thither as to their only supporter.'" 



Subsequently the lady was imprisoned together with nearly all her household 

 and heavily fined. "^ 



During the seventeenth century. Catholic sentiment was kept alive in 

 Dorset by the Webbs at Canford, and the Welds who came into possession 

 of Lulworth Castle in 1641. Their sons swelled the ranks of the seminary 

 priests, their daughters joined those communities established abroad for English 

 nuns on their dispersal in whose establishment and maintenance they were 

 largely instrumental."" Together with the owners of Chideock they remained 

 faithful to the Royalist cause on the outbreak of civil war. Sir John Webb 

 was ordered to be arrested by the Parliamentarians in 1641, but managed 

 to escape, and rendered such services to Charles I, that in reward of them he 

 was created a baronet."* Later on, about the time of Oates' plot, suspicion 

 fell upon Mr. Humphrey Weld, and in 1679, by the advice of the Lords' 

 Committee for investigating matters relating to the late ' horrid conspiracy,' 

 he was deprived of the governorship of Portland Castle and his commission of 

 the peace, the Privy Council directing that the castle of Lulworth, his 

 dwelling in Portland Castle and 'Weld House,' London, should be searched 

 for arms."' Since that time the Catholic owners of Lulworth have been 

 visited by various sovereigns and members of the royal family, including 

 George III and George IV when prince of Wales ;-^° The first Roman 

 Catholic church erected in England since the Reformation was built here in 

 1794 by express permission of George III.-" 



As regards the state generally of church activity in the archdeaconry 

 during the earlier half of the seventeenth century, we may note that an Act 

 was passed at the beginning of the reign of James I, for the transference of 

 the rectory from Radipole to Melcombe, and the erection of a new parish 

 church at the latter place, which was consecrated in 1606 by Dr. Zouch, 

 suffragan to the bishop of Bristol."" Reports of the primary visitations 

 carried out every three years by the dean of Salisbury in the prebends of the 

 cathedral give a few entries of interest. A note in the year 1628 states that 

 after the visitation of Sherborne, 14 July, it was ordained 



upon entreaty of the minister and parishioners of Sherborne that for the convenience of the 

 minister in going to the pulpitt and the people in hearing that the pulpitt shall be removed 

 unto the next pillar of the church westward on that side where now he standith and 

 so to be made that the minister may goe out of his seate where he readith prayers into 

 the pulpitt, and the seates in the gallery which are so arranged that the faces of the 

 people turn from the minister are to be altered so that they may face the minister for the 

 better hearing.^^' 



'" Cal. S.P. Dom. 1591-4, p. 521. '^ Foley, op. cit. iii, 472. 



"' Ibid. 540. A member of the Webb family, Agatha, was one of several ladies of birth and 'singular 

 virtue ' who accompanied Mary Caryll, of a well-known Catholic family of West Grinstead, as assistant in the 

 establishment of a Benedictine monastery at Dunkirk, in 1662. 



^» Ibid. 540, n. 9 ; v, 812. "' Lds. Jourv. 



'™ The celebrated Mrs. Fitzherbert was by her first marriage a Mrs. Weld of Lulworth. 



'*' It is said that George III gave permission for a mausoleum, which would include a church or chapel, but 

 the idea of which was less calculated to upset lingering prejudice. 



*«' Handbook for Church Congress at Weymouth, 1905 ; Rev. S. Lambert, T>!otes on Ch. 0/ Weymouth. 



*" Liber Fisit. Decani, 1628. 



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