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Rh hood, were repeated and made the foundation of a story which spread all over the country-sidehow Sir Kenelm Digby had sent his mother a great store of arms, which was now laid up in her house, and how there was to be a great rising of Papists in Gayhurst grounds as soon as the King and his army were well out of the way in Scotland. It was Lady Digby herself who had the matter sifted to the bottom ; but the story gives some idea of the impression made by the plot on the popular mind.

It was not, however, from the Papists that the Church in Buckinghamshire had most to fear at this time. A visitation of the arch- deaconry in 1612 shows a very different source of danger. Nine churches were seriously out of repair, and in all but two of these cases it was by the default not of the priest but of the people. At Datchet many of the roof tiles were missing, and the rain came in ; at Waven- don the seats were in decay, and the windows wanted glass in many places, so that ' starlings and other fowl ' came in and defiled the church, while even the Bible was torn and defective ; at Iver it rained even upon the communion table, and the pulpit was so ruinous that the steps to it were unsafe ; at Chalfont St. Peter one side of the church was ' so broken that a hog may creep through.' In a few cases it was com- plained that the people were not provided with sermons : more often that the preachers were not licensed. At Chenies the rector refused to wear the surplice and administered the sacrament to seated communi- cants ; at Great Marlow the vicar was said to be a man of evil life and a harbourer of recusants ; he certainly had a difficult parish to deal with. A certain number of people were reported as refusing to come to church, or for working on Sabbaths and holy days. The four churches which were in the archdeaconry of St. Albans were in better condition, being under the supervision of the vicar of Winslow, a