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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2024
Was there ever such a benighted stretch of railway as the Birmingham, Cannock and Rugeley Line, L.M.S. P The grime, the smoke and reek, the glimpses of ‘dumps and the offal of modern industrial conditions, the gloomy, forbidding-looking stations, and the dank fields in between are so depressing that we instinctively bury ourselves in a book so as not to see the spectres.
Yet if we knew it, if Vre could but lift the veil of two hundred years, we might be conscious of spectres of a very different type. For we are on hallowed ground, even though now so defiled and besihirched that nothing seems further from it than romance. But here is the romance. In the British Museum there is preserved a list of convicted Recusants in the reign of Charles II. This list has been compiled from the returns made by the clerks of the peace in twenty-three counties during the years 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28 and 29, of Charles II. In it we have enshrined the names of 10,236 people who, rather than conform to the Church by law established, preferred to pay a fine of £20 a month for each grown-up person thus absenting himself, though only £10 for a wife.
1 ‘Printed in Vol. VI of the Catholic Record Society, p. 77.
2 ‘The neighbourhood (of Boscobel) is now, as it was at the time of King Charles’ escape, a nest of Romanism. They have built themselves a little church at Brewood, under Pugin's auspices, so small, that it looks like a plaything, but very pretty. All the persecutions that these people of the old-fashioned creed endured in those times, even under the Stuarts, could not erase the loyalty from their bosoms; for it was by the members of this communion alone that the head of the Church of England, and reprsentatives of the triple royalty of these realms, was faithfully succoured, a t the risk of life, in the hour of his direst -datress.’—From Blackwood's Magazine, December, 1857, Payne, Non-jurors, p. 244.
3 At Birmingham we have but few notices, but the two following are not without interest:
John Reeve, of Edgbaston, yeoman. Freehold house at Studley, £52.
Philip Loxley, sen., of Edgbaston, yeoman. Two houses at Tanworth and Solihull. £37 2s. 6d.
Philip Loxely, jun. m of ditto, gent. ‘Two chambers in the butchers’ shambles, a butcher's shop under the shambles, and a stall and ground in Birmingham,’£6.
Given by Payne, Non-jurors, p. 273.
4 Among the Catholics who had to register their estates in 1715 we find William Davies, of Handsworth, yeoman, land in fee at Segley, £1O, also two freehold houses at Erdington, £28. —The English Catholic Non-jurors of 1715, pp. 247 and 276.
5 In 1715 Robert Freeman, of Whetstone, co. Derby, gent.— Freehold estates at Oscott, Great Barr, £25 13s.—Ib., p. 252.
6 In 1715 Thomas Johnson, of Moseley, has a house at Cannock; also Ursula Kempson, of Wolverhampton, has a jointure house at Cannock.—Ib., pp. 24, 241. Similarly, John Styche, of Birmingham, has an estate at Cannock.—Ib., 241.
7 At Boldesert Park, Richard Holmes, yeoman, has an estate themand at Tanworth.—Ib., p. 279.
8 Sir Edward Simeon, of Aston, near Stone, had a manor at Pipe charged with an annuity of £50 payable to Christopher Hevengham—Ib., p. 249. A little north of this lies Hoar Cross, now the site of a beautiful Protestant church built by Mrs. Meynell Ingram. Here Mary Anne Howard had a life estate worth £35a 10s. od—Ib., p. 249.
9 ‘June 10, 1681, a true bill was found against Mary Coates, of Morpeth, for high treason, for sending her son John, to school at St. Omers.’—Foley, Records v. 701, quoted by Payne, Non-jurors, p. 201.
10 Gillow's note on the Lancashire Recusants, Catholic Record Soc., vi, p. 143.
11 Ibid., p. 160.
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