Page:VCH Buckinghamshire 1.djvu/377

Rh ultimate fate is uncertain. In 1589 Thomas Belson of Brill, with his servant, was executed at Oxford for the same offence. In 1594 there is another official list of sixteen persons (mostly women) from whom large fines were due for recusancy.

There are also some instances in the history of this county of the suspicion with which such persons were regarded by some of their neighbours, and of the eagerness with which information against them was accepted and followed up.

In 1584 a search was instituted by Paul Wentworth in the house of Isabel Hampden of Stoke Poges, the gates being guarded all the time that no one might come in or go out ; even a messenger who came from London during the day was arrested and searched. There still remains among the State Papers a pathetic list of innocent books, pictures and objets de piété carried off on this occasion, the only serious item being ' a copy of the pope's letter 'presumably one of those on the question of allegiance.

Again in 1586 the house of Sir Christopher Browne at Boarstall was suddenly entered by John Croke, justice of the peace, and others (early in the morning, so that the inhabitants might have no chance of a warning), and searched from attic to cellar, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., the gates being guarded all the time. This was on the information of one ' Hugh Davies, minister, of Boarstall,' who had been recently at Oxford with George Browne, and had sometimes served as domestic chaplain to another member of the same family. The information laid by Davies led to the expectation of some treasonable correspond- ence, but nothing of this kind was found ; a fact which raised in the mind of Master Croke a strong suspicion not that it had never existed, but that it had all been destroyed ! One Agnus Dei, and a