A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



meetings at Watford and St. Albans, as well as of a small evening meeting 

 at New Barnet ; all these belong to the London and Middlesex Quarterly 

 Meeting." There is also a quarterly meeting for Hertford and Hitchm." 



Hertfordshire as a whole seems to have accepted the Reformation with 

 little hesitancy. In 1561 Robert Manners, late parson of Watton at Stone, 

 was the only ' recusant at large but confined within limits ' in the county, 

 while in i 576 Robert Chauncey, gent., was the only person certified as being 

 a fugitive over sea for the sake of religion." If a return of the following 

 year may be trusted, there were but five men and two women in the county 

 who followed the old faith, but these were all of gentle birth and within the 

 diocese of London.** A month before this report was made the Bishop of 

 London had notified as popish recusants Francis Sellis of Redbourn and the wife 

 of Robert Holmes of Watford, both apparently cottagers, also one Brewster of 

 Ardeley, then in prison in London and owner of land valued at ;(^io." The most 

 important recusants were undoubtedly Anthony Throckmorton and his wife, 

 whose lands in Cheshunt were expected to realize _^i,ooo if sold. At Ware 

 John Chapman and his wife wei^e also well-to-do, but John Maye seems to 

 have been a poorer co-religionist." Roman Catholicism was indeed, both then 

 and later, entirely confined to the east of the county, and the Bishop of Lincoln 

 was probably justified in his report that in his visitation this year he could hear 

 of none but such as he ' understoode of before,' although he had ' used all the 

 lawfull meanes ' he could ' to come to the knowledge of suche persons.' ^° 



Returns such as these have, however, an air of incompleteness, and in 

 1580 the Privy Council complained to the Bishop of London that the 

 certificates were ' very unperficte,' the names and residences of the recusants 

 not being distinctly set down, while various persons were accused of non-con- 

 formity 'because of their lawfull absence' from church." Further attempts 

 were made in 1581 to obtain a full list of popish recusants, but apparently 

 without much result." The Act of this year" made attendance at church 

 compulsory on every person over sixteen under a penalty of a fine of ^zo 

 monthly or forfeiture to the Crown of two-thirds of the offender's land. 

 The Privy Council ordered quarterly returns of recusants to be made by the 

 churchwardens and sworn-men of each parish to the justices of the peace 

 that indictments might be framed under the Act.** In the archdeaconry of 

 St. Albans the ecclesiastical officials went about the work with great 

 reluctance, and in November i 587 the bishop wrote to the archdeacon that the 

 matter was ' like to come in question before many days ' and that serious 

 trouble would follow further evasion." The admonition does not, however, 

 seem to have had much effect, for much the same complaints were made in 

 1604," and all the parishes within the archdeaconry declared themselves free 

 of recusants.^' The bishop does not seem to have been satisfied, and in June 

 1605 the archdeacon wrote to him that there were no recusants ' except only 



^ Religious Society of Friends : Progress in London and the Home Counties, 191 1. 



5° The Friend^ Te^ir Book, 191 3. " Cat. S. P. Dom. 1547-65, p. 522. 



'^ S. P. Dom. Eliz. ex, 9. Maurice eldest son of John Chauncey of Ardelcv was a monk of the London 

 Charterhouse in 1535. He became prior of the newly-established house of Sheen in 1 556 and retired to 

 Flanders on the accession of Elizabeth. He was Prior of the Carthusian convent at Louvain at his death in 

 15S1 {Diet. Sell. Biog.). '' Ibid, ciix, 20. Forty-six persons were returned for Essex, nine for Middlesex. 



^* Ibid, cxviii, 73. '^ ji^jj 38 j^id. cxvii, 13. 



" Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 12-13. ^ Ibid. 14, 15, 16. »» Stat. 23 Eliz. cap. i. 



*o Rec. of the Old Archd. of St. Albans, 56. « Ibid. « Ibid. 126. " Ibid. 128. 



360 



