A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE were undoubtedly towards Puritanism, with a leaning in some cases to the Presbyterian model, there was in this county and elsewhere a minority to whom the Reformation settlement was less congenial. It has been asserted by some of the best modern historians that the county gentry, more than any other class in England, were inclined to hanker after the mediaeval forms of religion ; and so long as they were not asked to take part in any political intrigues, many of them all through the sixteenth century would ' prefer the Latin mass, with all its perils, to the security of a dull morning prayer or a dreary homily at their parish church.' 16 This assertion is well illustrated in the history of Leicestershire. The official returns of recusants for this county were very small ; not a single inhabitant was ever convicted of taking part in any really doubtful or treasonous proceedings ; yet there were not a few who put in occasional attendances at their parish church to escape fine, and had mass said secretly in their own houses for the benefit of their families and neighbours, throughout Elizabeth's reign. Some who had been not dis- pleased with the beginnings of reform in King Edward's day drew back and changed their minds when they saw what the Reformation really meant under Elizabeth. So in 1577 it was reported that Robert Brooksby had once been ' a zealous professor of the truth ' and ' had continued so not without some danger ' in Queen Mary's time ; but soon after Elizabeth's accession he had withdrawn himself by degrees from his parish church. 161 He continued to be returned as a recusant throughout his life, 162 and though under pressure he consented to have morning prayers read in his house, it was always uncertain whether he was present at the reading himself. His son was married to a daughter of Lord Vaux of Harrowden, who with her sister, the more famous Anne Vaux, came to be a part of the innocent framework of the Gunpowder Plot. 163 It is more than probable that Mr. Sergeant Beaumont, of Gracedieu, son of the Recorder and Master of the Rolls, was through the greater part of his life a ' church papist.' He was brother-in-law to Lord Vaux, and in 1591 it was alleged that he had been 'heretofore a large contributor' to the seminary priests ministering in this county. 164 His mother was imprisoned in her own house in 1581 because she would not confess that Edmund Campion the Jesuit had been her guest ; and one of the searches so common at this time revealed there a quantity of ' massing stuffe mete to be defaced/ with books and money collected for the support of the proscribed services. 1 " Sir George Shirley, of Staunton Harold, with his brother Thomas, was occa- sionally returned as recusant ; 156 and one of his nephews entered the Society of Jesus. 157 Lady Nevill of Holt lent her house to the Jesuits later as a centre for missionary work ; 158 and some few other recusant wives of con- w Frere, Hist, of the Engl. Ch. 240. See also the works of the late Professor Gardiner, &c. 151 S.P. Dom. Eliz. cxvii, 13 ; cxviii, 34. Acts ofP.C. xiii, 239. 153 Gerard's ' Narrative of the Gunpowder Plot ' in Morris, Troubles of our Cathohc Forefathers, cxxxv ; Camden, Visitations of Leicestershire, 49.
- M S.P. Dom. Eliz. ccxxxviii, 1 26.
" Act! ofP.C. xiii, 164, 187. M S.P. Dom. Eliz. clxxxiii, 29, 30 ; ibid. Jas. I, xlvii, 46. " A sister of Sir George Shirley was a nun at Louvain. Foley, Records of the English Province, , 476. One of the Faunts of Foston also became a Jesuit. Ibid, ii, 286. 48 Ibid, ii, 300-7. This was at the beginning of the next century ; there was no college of Jesuits in this county till 1607. Ibid, ii, 273-285. Lady Nevill herself is said to have died from the shock of having her house at Holborn searched at midnight by the pursuivants. Morris, Condition of Catholics, 39. 374
