ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



grove, 819 and Nicholas Beard in 1594 stated sso that Thomas Leedes kept one 

 Norton, a priest, in his house at Wappingthorne, 



near to which lies Washington house, where Nicholas Woolfe, 221 a gentleman and great com- 

 panion of Leedes, lives ; these houses are receptacles for priests, and have great convenience 

 for hiding them ; in Wolfe's house in a little gallery there is a place for an altar, and the 

 massing stuff, and a cover of boards over a great cupboard which can be taken off. John 

 Bamford has a son a priest ; the father is a recusant and lives with Mr. Bishop, a justice of 

 the peace, at Henfield. 



These hiding-places were not uncommon in the houses of the Roman Catholic 

 gentry ; there was one in Slindon House, 222 and the three houses owned by 

 the Caryll family in West Sussex were similarly provided, 223 and there were at 

 least two in Scotney Castle, the seat of the Darrells in Lamberhurst. 

 Scotney was twice searched by priest hunters ; on the first occasion, in 

 1597, Father Richard Blount and his man Bray lay for some days in a 

 secret place under the stairs, until they could remain no longer, when Bray 

 went out and gave himself up, showing his captors another hiding-place 

 where he said he had been lying ; the priest was thus enabled to escape. A 

 year later a sudden raid was made on the house and Blount and Bray had 

 barely time to escape half clad into a cell concealed by a stone, which 

 formed part of the walls of a courtyard. Part of Blount's girdle caught in 

 the stone as it shut, but Mrs. Darrell passing by observed it and cut it off, 

 calling to them to drag in the rest of the cord ; this they did, but her move- 

 ments had excited suspicion, and a careful search was made in the courtyard, 

 but just as the searchers had come to the movable stone, and were even 

 battering at it, the rain became so heavy that they abandoned their labour for 

 the night and went indoors. Issuing from their shelter Blount and Bray 

 went round the house to a ruined tower, when the father plunged into the 

 moat, on which ice was beginning to form, and swam across, but was too 

 numb with cold to assist his servant ; the latter, who could not swim, escaped 

 by raising an alarm of thieves in the stable and taking advantage of the com- 

 motion to ford the moat in a shallow part. The two fugitives thus got safely 

 away to the house of a friendly neighbour and saved their lives and liberty, 

 though at the expense of their health. 22 * 



While the Church of England was thus successfully waging war upon 

 that of Rome there was rising within her own borders an enemy, perhaps 

 less obvious, but not less dangerous to that autocratic control of the national 

 religion at which she aimed. Definite evidence of the early growth of 

 Puritan nonconformity in Sussex is hard to find, one of the earliest references 

 being in 1576 when the bishop suspended David Thickpeny, curate of 

 Brighton, on suspicion of being a member of the sect known as the Family 

 of Love. The curate, appealing to Archbishop Grindal and protesting his 

 innocence of the charge, was restored by him to his cure, but at once showed 

 his contempt for the Church's authority by ministering without the surplice, 

 neglecting the order of prayer set forth in the Prayer Book, and in other 



"* Cat. S.P. Dam. Eftz. ccxli, No. 35. " Ibid, ccxlviii, No. 1 16. 



BI Woolfe had been involved in Somerville's plot, and Leedes was expected to favour the Spaniards in 

 the event of their landing in 1588 : see V.C.H. Sussex, \, 519. 

 "* Described in Suss. Arch. Call, xlv, 213. 

 m Described in Rec. ofEngl. Prw. ofSoc. of Jesus, iii, 538. " Ibid. 482-8. 



29 



