ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



In I 59 1 is recorded the apprehension of George Gower, a priest taken 

 at Norwich, a most dangerous seditious person ;^ and that year the keeper of 

 Norwich gaol was dismissed from his post for giving liberty to recusants 

 committed to his charge.^ Later, the Council was encouraged by the increase 

 of conformity in Norwich, and the hst sent of men who had submitted ;' and 

 in 1592 the bishop was commended for the great number he had persuaded 

 to come to church, but whereas many had fled the country was directed to 

 find out where they were.* Directions were sent that the house of Thomas 

 Lovell, esq., should be searched, as there had been great recourse of papists 

 and recusants there,* and as a result he appeared and made very earnest pro- 

 fession of his conformity ' these many years past, and that he had taken the 

 oath of supremacy, and all his house are conformable save only his wife, to 

 his great grief ; and his daughter, whom he promises to reform.'' There 

 must have been more than one such divided household in Norfolk, where the 

 women seem to have remained firm when the heads of households, who had 

 to pay the fines, thought it prudent to conform. Francis Woodhouse of 

 Breccles was not a recusant, but his wife was, and his house was said to be 

 a great resort of recusants and seminary priests. In 1587—8, Anne Howlet, 

 a prisoner in the common gaol, was liberated, on bonds of 40 // taken for her 

 appearance, as her husband was conformable in religion, and was said to be 

 very careful to persuade her to the like obedience.^ 



Instructions to the bishop to grant liberty upon bond to Richard Lasher, 

 a scrivener, he being very poor, and having ' nothing to sustain his wife 

 and many children, but his onlie Industrie and traveyle in his profession,' 

 and there being likewise some hope of his conformity (23 May, 1591),^ 

 shows how hardly the laws must have pressed upon the poor. But most 

 of the recusants in Norfolk were men of property, a fact which in some cases 

 was their undoing, for there seem to have been always neighbours ready to 

 inform against them in the hope of profiting by a grant of their recusancy 

 fines ; Robert Clytherowe of Walsoken in Marshlande is even injuriously 

 indicted as a recusant without cause, and had his corn and cattle restored 

 to him on certificate of the bishop that he had been proceeded against in 

 malice.' 



Robert de Grey, a staunch Roman Catholic, seems to have been very 

 persistent in evading the laws against recusants. A truly pathetic case is 

 that of Mr. Humphrey Bedingfield, of Quidenham, who was already 

 an old man at the time of his first imprisonment in 1578. By order 

 of the Council, 20 March, 1588,'° he was committed to the charge of the 

 parson of Quidenham, Mr. Reeve, with orders not to depart two miles 

 distant from Mr. Reeve, and this is granted ' forasmuch as there is good hope 

 of his conformity in religion, if he might have conference with some that 

 are of right opinion therein, and for his ill-health'; but he was perhaps too 

 old to change, for letters of Archbishop Whitgift of 1599" speak of 

 Humphrey Bedingfield of Quidenham, recusant, as aged and infirm, and of 

 very quiet and honest conversation, and ask that his appearance in person 



' Jets P. C. ixiii, 208. ' Ibid. 176, 215. ' Ibid. 336, 365. 



' Ibid, xxii, 366. * Ibid, xxii, 203. ' Ibid. +54. ' Ibid, xv, 368. 



' Ibid, xxi, 144. ' Ibid, rxiii, 343. "Ibid. r\'ii, 1 12. 



" In a MS. collection at Merton Hall relating to Norfolk recusants, i 597-1600, described Nerf. Arck. 

 ix, 283. 



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