Episcopal business turned the manor into a centre of law and worship. Clergy appeared for institutions, licences, discipline and other formal acts. Chaplains celebrated the offices in the household chapel, clerks prepared instruments, servants managed food and lodging, and messengers carried sealed decisions to parishes and religious houses. Rede frequently dated acts at Drungewick during the years surrounding the foundation at Loxwood.
The bishop’s presence placed Loxwood close to diocesan authority. The hamlet stood at the meeting point of Wisborough Green parish, Drungewick manor and the Winchester boundary at Alfold. A pastoral difficulty in Loxwood could therefore reach the bishop through local clergy and landholders, receive judgment within a familiar landscape and return as a formal instrument carrying the episcopal seal.
Rebellion, Wales and the demands of royal war, 1400-1402
In September 1400 Owain Glyndwr raised his standard in Wales and claimed the title Prince of Wales. A local dispute developed into a national revolt supported by Welsh landholders, clergy and communities. Castles, towns and roads became contested, and Henry led repeated campaigns across difficult country. Rain, distance and the movement of supplies shaped the progress of armies as strongly as battle.
War in Wales joined continuing pressure on the Scottish border and the threat of French intervention. Royal government issued commissions, summoned military service and sought grants of taxation. Noble households supplied armed retinues, while counties provided archers, horses, carts, grain and money. Ports, markets and estate centres organised the movement of provisions towards the west and north.
The resources of the Western Weald entered this wider system through ordinary administration. Tax assessments named communities and property; local collectors gathered payments; landholders supplied horses and transport when required. Woodland produced timber, fuel and pasture, mills processed grain, and farms raised cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry. The same roads that carried produce towards market also carried news of campaigns, royal proclamations and requests for money.
Henry’s need for parliamentary supply strengthened the Commons. In 1401 the Commons pressed the principle that grievances should receive attention before taxation was granted. Petitions concerning royal expenditure, local burdens, appointments and the conduct of officials accompanied the king’s requests for funds. Knights and burgesses returned from Westminster with knowledge of national debate and with statutes that entered county and borough government.
Crown, Church and Lollardy in 1401
Henry IV’s accession brought Archbishop Thomas Arundel back to Canterbury. Arundel combined ecclesiastical authority with long political experience and a close connection to western Sussex through his family and the earldom of Arundel. King and archbishop shared an interest in ordered government, orthodox teaching and the authority of bishops over preaching and religious books.
Parliament enacted De heretico comburendo in 1401. The statute joined ecclesiastical judgment with the power of royal officers in cases of persistent heresy and gave the campaign against Lollardy a new legal form. Bishops examined doctrine through church courts, and the secular authorities enforced the sentences prescribed by law. The proceedings against the former priest William Sawtre in 1401 showed the seriousness of the new settlement.
The concern reached beyond the language of Scripture. Church leaders focused upon teaching about the Eucharist, clerical authority, confession, images, pilgrimage, oaths and ecclesiastical wealth. Licensed preaching, university learning and episcopal oversight supplied recognised channels for religious instruction. Manuscript books remained powerful objects whose copying, ownership and use could connect a household with wider devotional or controversial networks.
Parish worship continued through the Sarum liturgy, Latin service books and spoken teaching in English. Priests explained the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the commandments, the sacraments and the duties of Christian life. Wall paintings, statues, rood figures, stained glass and seasonal ceremonies presented biblical history through colour, gesture and movement. A small rural congregation encountered Scripture through this combined world of word, image, sound and ritual.
Bishop Rede belonged to the legal and pastoral structure that carried these policies into Sussex. His officers licensed clergy, supervised benefices and heard ecclesiastical business, while his manor chapels supported worship during episcopal residence. The later petition from Loxwood entered a diocese already attentive to the proper place, minister, furnishings and legal rights of every authorised centre of worship.
The Western Weald in the opening years of the reign
Loxwood occupied a ridge above the River Lox and the lower ground around Brewhurst. Farms, woodland parcels, commons, streams and tracks formed a dispersed settlement whose name had appeared in deeds since the thirteenth century. Houses stood beside yards, gardens, barns and animal enclosures, with fields and woods reached along lanes that became deeply rutted during wet weather.
The heavy Wealden clay rewarded careful timing. Ploughing, sowing and carting depended upon the condition of the ground. Cattle supplied traction, milk, meat and manure; pigs fed in woodland; sheep provided wool and smaller livestock supported household food. Oak and underwood supplied building timber, hurdles, tools, fuel and fencing. Seasonal work brought neighbouring households together for harvest, woodland management and repair.
Wisborough Green church provided Loxwood’s parish Mass, font, churchyard and pastoral centre. Its enlarged medieval building, tower, aisles and chancel served a broad rural population. The vicar received tithes and offerings and carried responsibility for worship, teaching, visitation of the sick and the rites surrounding death. Parishioners travelled there for Sundays, festivals and the principal ceremonies of family life.
Alfold stood about a mile north of Loxwood across the diocesan line. Its church belonged to the Diocese of Winchester and offered a shorter journey for some households. Kirdford church served another extensive parish to the south-west, while chapels, manor houses and religious estates linked the surrounding villages through patronage and landholding. The boundary between dioceses passed through a lived landscape of roads, kinship, markets and daily work.
Distance became most serious during winter, childbirth, illness and old age. Clay tracks held water, streams rose and daylight shortened. A priest travelling to a sick parishioner faced the same ground as the people travelling to church. These conditions formed the practical setting for a local initiative led by the vicar and the principal landholders of Loxwood.
John Okehurst and the Loxwood petitioners
John Okehurst connected Loxwood’s neighbourhood with property law, taxation, Parliament and the bishop’s lordship. He held land and rents around Wisborough Green, Billingshurst and Kirdford, worked as an attorney, collected taxation in Sussex and represented the city of Chichester in the Parliament of 1397. In March of that year he paid homage to Bishop Rede for land held from the see.
Okehurst’s experience gave him access to the language and procedures of formal petition. A successful request required named parties, a clear account of necessity, protection for existing rights and an authority capable of granting the remedy. The diocesan chancery could turn local testimony about roads, distance and pastoral care into a permanent legal instrument.
The vicar of Wisborough Green, Walter Whitchurch, who appears in Bishop Rede’s register under the name Walter Dysworth, stood at the head of the petitioning group. He was joined by John Okehurst, Richard Napper, Richard Threel, Thomas Pally, John Schudd, Nicholas Nicoll, William Atthall and Philip Neldred. These men represented clerical responsibility, substantial landholding and the households expected to finance and maintain the new foundation.
The petitioners became the first trustees of the oratory. Bishop Rede’s grant placed the cost of construction, ornaments, repair and the chaplain upon them and their successors, creating a continuing office of local guardianship before the later word trustee entered the records. The Napper, Threel, Neldred, Shudd and Atthall families carried that responsibility into later generations.
For these God-fearing landholders, devotion and estate management served the same developing community. A local place of worship made Loxwood more attractive to families taking tenancies, brought fields and woods into productive occupation and generated rents for the owners of the land. The oratory also gave the inhabitants a place in which Mass and the sacraments could be celebrated close to home. Settlement, rental income and pastoral provision advanced together.
The petitioners approached a bishop who knew the northern diocese and regularly used Drungewick. Okehurst already belonged to Rede’s tenurial and political world, while Whitchurch could state the pastoral needs of the parish. The resulting grant balanced local access to worship with the rights and income of Wisborough Green church.
The Battle of Shrewsbury and the crisis of 1403
The political crisis deepened in 1403 when the Percy family turned against the king. Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, had helped Henry IV secure the throne and had fought against Glyndwr and the Scots. Disputes over payment, prisoners, policy in Wales and the rewards of service widened into rebellion. Hotspur moved south with an army while the king and Prince Henry advanced to meet him.
The armies fought outside Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403. Archers opened the battle with intense volleys, and close combat followed around the royal standards. Prince Henry received an arrow wound in the face and remained in the field. Hotspur was killed, the rebel army broke and the king secured a victory that preserved the Lancastrian regime at a moment of acute danger.
The campaign demanded rapid movement of men, horses, weapons and food. Royal letters crossed the counties, retainers gathered around their lords and local officials kept roads and bridges under watch. News travelled through markets, religious houses and estate households. A victory in Shropshire entered Sussex through proclamations, returning soldiers, clerical correspondence and the conversations of travellers.
Bishop Rede continued diocesan government through this period and conducted a substantial sequence of business at Drungewick in 1404. His register records institutions, submissions, licences and disciplinary acts within the manor chapel. Warfare at the edge of the kingdom and ordered documentary work in a Sussex manor formed connected tasks of medieval government: military security, law, worship and local administration.
The Loxwood petition followed within this atmosphere of active royal and episcopal government. Its purpose concerned access to Mass and pastoral care, and its success depended upon the same culture of written authority that sustained the Crown. A sealed grant gave the community a durable right whose terms could survive the lives of the original petitioners.
The episcopal grant for worship at Loxwood, 1404
The petition described Loxwood as a distant part of Wisborough Green parish. The journey to the parish church extended for about three miles through deep, miry tracks and wooded ground. The inhabitants reported that they travelled beyond the Diocese of Chichester to hear Mass, receive the sacraments and attend divine service, while the distance also hindered the vicar’s regular visitation of the sick.
Bishop Rede granted permission to build and make one oratory or chapel at a fit and convenient place within Loxwood. The instrument authorised Mass, the purification or churching of women after childbirth and other divine services. It established a permanent local centre where a chaplain could serve the inhabitants under the bishop’s jurisdiction.
The grant preserved Loxwood within Wisborough Green parish. Burials remained at the mother church, and the tithes, offerings, fruits, revenues and issues arising from Loxwood continued to belong to the vicar. The inhabitants remained responsible for parish charges and attended Wisborough Green on five principal festivals each year. These provisions maintained the financial and ceremonial bond between chapel and parish church.
The petitioners and their successors accepted the cost of the building, its ornaments and repairs, together with the support of a suitable chaplain. An altar, service books, vessels, vestments, lights and other furnishings were required for Mass and the authorised rites. Their obligation joined money, produce, land, skilled craft and supervision to the permanent care of the oratory.
The instrument was issued in perpetuity through the diocesan chancery. Canon law supplied the bishop with authority to judge necessity, approve the site and regulate the relationship with the mother church. The grant created a chapel foundation within the existing parochial system and gave Loxwood an enduring place in the written government of the diocese.
A convenient place beside Loxwood Place
The chosen site occupied raised ground near the centre of Loxwood, beside the moated farmstead known as Loxwood Place. The plateau stood above the lower clay and streams, with approaches from the surrounding holdings and from the road towards Wisborough Green. The site brought worship into the settled core of the hamlet while remaining close to the households responsible for the foundation.
Loxwood Place formed a substantial local centre. Its moat, house, yards and associated land expressed the status of the holding and offered a practical setting for construction. Timber could be stored and worked nearby, carts could deliver materials, and the petitioners could supervise a building intended for common use. The later ecclesiastical site developed immediately beside the house.
Drungewick offered a nearby episcopal parallel: a moated residence with a household chapel placed to the east of the main house. The bishop’s manor and the Loxwood site belonged to the same northern landscape and shared an eastward orientation for worship. Clergy and officials travelling between them could inspect progress, conduct business and maintain the new foundation within close reach of episcopal authority.
The title of St John the Baptist is first recorded for the Loxwood chapel in a will of 1488 and continued through the later church on the site. The dedication suited a place associated with baptism, preparation and the churching of women at the threshold. The nearby Common of St John also carried the saint’s name within the local landscape.
The 1404 licence allowed an oratory or chapel, giving the community a form suited to immediate worship and later development. The first building became the oak-framed oratory now preserved within Church Cottage. A larger chapel followed in the fifteenth century under the continuing authority of the same grant.
Building the Loxwood oratory, 1404-1407
Scientific dating places the construction directly after Rede’s grant. Dendrochronological analysis found principal timbers felled between the winter of 1404 and the winter of 1407. A later oxygen-isotope analysis placed the transverse beam between the centre and eastern bays within the range 1403-1408. The dated members belong to one coherent building campaign.
The structure measured about thirty-two feet from west to east and sixteen feet from north to south. Its oak frame formed three bays arranged as a western narthex or preparation space, a central nave for the congregation and an eastern chancel and sanctuary focused upon the altar. The sequence gave a complete liturgical plan within the scale of a rural oratory.
Oak trees were selected during the winter felling season, converted into posts, beams, braces and roof timbers, and assembled through mortice-and-tenon joints secured by wooden pegs. Carpenters set out the frame on the ground before raising the principal sections. Labourers prepared foundations and infill, carters moved timber and earth, and local households supplied food, drink and assistance during the work.
The roof structure changed across the three bays, with crown-post framing at the west, king-post work over the central division and queen-post framing towards the chancel. The standing frame preserves the chancel arch, the position of the rood beam and carpentry associated with former openings and liturgical fittings. A bell, altar and sanctuary furnishings completed the building for worship.
The three-year sequence records a planned programme carried through by the petitioners and the wider community. Main timbers were raised first, followed by secondary bracing, fittings and finishes. They were building a house of God, and the quality of the work formed part of their offering: mature oak, exact geometry, specialised carpentry, gates, rood, altar and sacred furnishings were brought together to the highest standard their resources could achieve.
The new oratory stood within sight of familiar farms and paths, yet its internal order connected Loxwood with the wider Catholic Church. The west-east axis, chancel division, rood and altar belonged to the same liturgical culture found at Wisborough Green, Kirdford, Alfold, Chichester Cathedral and churches across western Europe.
Worship in the new oratory
Durandus described a church as a material image of the heavenly Church and of the Christian body. Doorways marked entry through Christ, windows conveyed the light of Scripture, the nave gathered the people and the chancel formed the head directed towards the eastern altar. The Loxwood frame gave this theology a precise local form through its west-east axis, successive thresholds, rood, chancel and sanctuary.
People entered through the south doorway, encountered the holy-water stoup and passed beneath the first timber liturgical gate. The western narthex formed the place of preparation, and the open upper screen allowed those waiting there to hear the service. Benches stood along the north and south walls of the nave, leaving a central passage towards the rood, chancel and altar. Benches associated with the Hurst, Nicholls and Malham or Napper families preserved the names of households connected with the foundation.
The interior formed a carefully ordered sequence of sacred spaces. Narthex, nave, chancel and sanctuary diminished towards the east and were divided by gates shaped within the oak frame. Limewashed walls and painted biblical imagery, the rood with the Virgin and St John, coloured altar hangings, vestments, wax lights and the hanging pyx brought colour and movement into the building. Every threshold guided attention towards the sanctuary.
At the centre stood the stone altar. Its upper surface measured seventy-six by thirty-one and a half inches and tapered to a base of sixty-three by twenty-five and a half inches. Its proportions governed the setting-out of the oratory: the building length of 380 inches, width of 190 inches and eaves height of 152 inches repeated the altar’s measurements, which also recur in the doors, bays, thresholds and timber forms. The altar represented Christ as the cornerstone, and the building was ordered around it.
Medieval worship followed a recognisable daily rhythm whose times varied with season and local custom. Matins commonly began near dawn, the principal Mass around eight or nine in the morning, and evensong around three or four in the afternoon before daylight faded. The Loxwood bell announced the services across the hamlet. Great festivals added processions, music, incense, announcements and seasonal ceremonies as the year moved from Advent and Christmas through Lent, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost to the summer and autumn feasts.
Churching took place at the threshold. A mother approached the church door after childbirth, where the priest received her with prayers before leading her into the sacred space. The narthex at the west end supplied a sheltered setting for rites of entry and preparation, and the dedication to St John the Baptist linked the site with baptism and the opening of Christian life.
Pastoral access improved for the sick and elderly because a chaplain served within Loxwood. Confession, counsel, prayers and the sacraments could reach households through shorter journeys. Death still drew the community towards Wisborough Green, where burial in consecrated ground maintained family connections with the parish church and earlier generations.
The five principal festivals required attendance at Wisborough Green and brought the Loxwood congregation back into the larger parish assembly. Tithes and offerings continued to support the vicar and mother church. Local worship and parish unity therefore operated together through the detailed terms of the grant.
Households, work and the church at Loxwood
Buildings in the early fifteenth-century Weald ranged from modest dwellings to substantial timber-framed hall houses. Oak posts and beams carried roofs of thatch or tile, and walls used timber studs with wattle-and-daub infill. An open hearth warmed the principal room and supported cooking, while smoke rose through the roof space. Barns, byres, sheds and yards held tools, fodder and animals.
Household work followed daylight and season. Men and women shared the labour of dairying, brewing, baking, gardening, poultry keeping, spinning, mending, fuel gathering and harvest. Children carried water, watched animals, scared birds from crops and learned the skills of farm and household. Servants lived within many farming households and moved between employers through annual hiring and local agreement.
Tenure joined families to manors through rents, services and customary obligations. Manorial courts recorded transfers, inheritance, debts, boundaries and breaches of local order. Written deeds protected some holdings, while memory and neighbour testimony supported others. The petitioners for the oratory belonged to this world of land, obligation and local authority.
The church added another structure of responsibility. Tithes drew a portion of agricultural production towards the clergy. Offerings supported lights, books and worship. Feast days interrupted work and gathered neighbours, while fasting shaped diet and preparation. Baptism, marriage, churching, sickness and burial placed the household within a sacred sequence extending across generations.
The oratory also created practical work. Its frame and roof required repair, the bell and doors needed maintenance, wax supplied lights and linen served the altar. A chaplain required food, lodging and income. Trustees accounted for land and gifts, and parishioners combined small contributions into the continuing support of worship.
Loxwood’s new centre stood among an established network of churches. Wisborough Green remained the mother church; Alfold served its Winchester parish across the boundary; Kirdford gathered communities across a large western Sussex parish; and Chichester Cathedral governed the diocesan order through its bishop, canons, courts and records.
The northern rebellion and the king’s illness, 1405-1406
Rebellion returned in 1405 through an alliance involving Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshal, Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, and supporters of the Percys. Their manifestos criticised taxation and government and called for reform. Royal forces dispersed the rising through negotiation and rapid action, and the leaders were executed at York in June.
The execution of Archbishop Scrope carried exceptional weight because a consecrated archbishop held a sacred office recognised across Christendom. Henry obtained legal judgments through royal commissioners, while many churchmen regarded the sentence with deep concern. The episode revealed the intensity of the struggle for the throne and the close, sometimes difficult, relationship between royal justice and ecclesiastical status.
Henry’s health declined from about 1405. Periods of illness reduced his mobility and increased the role of the royal council, Prince Henry and the king’s half-brothers from the Beaufort family. Government continued through clerks, seals, Parliament and regional officers, while political influence shifted among groups close to the king and prince.
Prince Henry directed much of the war in Wales and gained experience in command, finance and administration. Castles were repaired and supplied, garrisons maintained and Welsh resistance pressed through coordinated campaigns. The burden of these operations kept royal requests for taxation before Parliament.
Bishop Rede remained active in diocesan and royal business. In 1406 he witnessed the entail of the Crown that settled succession upon Henry IV’s sons and their heirs. His position linked the royal settlement with the Church and brought a bishop familiar with Loxwood’s foundation into the formal ordering of the Lancastrian dynasty.
At Loxwood, the oratory building campaign continued through these same years. Timbers felled, shaped and raised in the northern diocese accompanied national events recorded in Parliament and royal chronicles. The bishop’s grant, the petitioners’ obligations and the carpenters’ work gave the hamlet a lasting institution during a period of political uncertainty.
In July 1406 the parish ministry changed while work on the oratory continued. Bishop Rede’s register records Walter Whitchurch under the name Walter Dysworth at the Old Temple in London on 17 July, when he was admitted to the vicarage of Lokenore in the Diocese of Lincoln. On 21 July Adam Wrocwardyn appeared before Rede at the same place and was admitted to the vicarage of Wisborough Green. Whitchurch had helped to secure the Loxwood grant; Wrocwardyn inherited the mother church’s tithes, pastoral duties and developing relationship with the new oratory.
Parliament, taxation and the Commons, 1406-1407
The Parliament of 1406 sat for an extended period and pressed for reform of the royal household, stronger financial supervision and a council acceptable to the political community. The king confirmed arrangements for the succession and accepted detailed advice concerning officers and expenditure. Parliamentary petitions entered the machinery of government through written answers and statutes.
Taxation gave the Commons its strongest leverage. War in Wales, defence of the Scottish border and diplomacy with France required revenue beyond the ordinary income of the Crown. County knights and borough representatives could connect the grant of money with grievances about collectors, purveyance, local justice and the cost of the royal household.
In 1407 the Commons established the principle that grants of taxation should originate in its own chamber, with the Lords giving their assent. The decision became a foundation of the Commons’ financial privilege. Henry’s contested accession and repeated need for supply accelerated a constitutional development already growing through the fourteenth century.
Local administration gave these parliamentary principles material form. Assessors valued taxable property, collectors received payments, sheriffs returned accounts and landholders carried petitions or complaints to county representatives. John Okehurst’s earlier work as a tax collector and Member of Parliament shows how a man from the Loxwood neighbourhood could move between local property and national finance.
The financing of the oratory followed a smaller communal scale. The inhabitants raised resources for timber, labour, fittings, repair and the chaplain while continuing their obligations to Wisborough Green. Both Parliament and the chapel foundation depended upon negotiated contribution, written responsibility and confidence that money would serve an accepted purpose.
Archbishop Arundel, English Scripture and the Constitutions of 1407-1409
Archbishop Arundel continued the campaign against Lollardy through provincial councils, visitation and control of teaching. Oxford held a central place because Wycliffe had taught there and scholars had participated in the production and circulation of English biblical texts. The archbishop sought a structure that joined university learning with episcopal approval.
Constitutions drafted at Oxford in 1407 and issued for the Province of Canterbury in 1409 regulated preaching, theological instruction and new translations of Scripture. They required ecclesiastical approval for fresh vernacular translations and for the use of disputed writings. The measures strengthened the authority of bishops and universities to judge religious teaching.
The Constitutions operated within a culture already rich in English devotion. Priests preached and taught in English, households used prayers and devotional books, and biblical stories circulated through sermons, drama, images and paraphrase. The central issue concerned authorised interpretation and the relationship between a written text, the sacraments and the teaching office of the Church.
Loxwood’s oratory was completed during the years between the 1404 grant and the provincial settlement of 1409. Its design placed the altar, chancel, rood and threshold rites at the centre of religious life. The building communicated doctrine through architecture and liturgy while its chaplain served under the Bishop of Chichester’s authority.
Rede’s Dominican formation, legal responsibilities and regular use of Drungewick made the northern diocese part of this wider ecclesiastical response. Clergy serving Loxwood required episcopal approval, and the books and rites used there belonged to the authorised worship of the Church. The new foundation brought pastoral access and diocesan discipline into the same small building.
The King’s Last Years, 1408-1413
The last great Percy challenge ended in February 1408 when the Earl of Northumberland was defeated and killed at Bramham Moor. Royal authority strengthened in the north, while Prince Henry’s campaigns recovered important Welsh strongholds. Harlech fell in 1409, and Glyndwr’s movement withdrew into the mountains as organised resistance diminished.
The easing of rebellion allowed greater attention to diplomacy, finance and the succession. Prince Henry and his Beaufort uncles gained influence in council, promoting an active policy towards France. The king and Archbishop Arundel reasserted their direction of government in 1411, and the prince temporarily withdrew from the council. The episode prepared both sides for an orderly transfer of power.
Henry’s illness continued, and royal government relied increasingly upon institutions capable of working during his absences. Chancery issued writs, Exchequer officials received accounts, judges travelled on commission and Parliament supplied taxation and counsel. The machinery inherited from the Plantagenets sustained the Lancastrian Crown through the king’s declining health.
Church life in Sussex continued under Bishop Rede. Ordinations, institutions, visitations, licences and estate business connected the cathedral with parish clergy. Drungewick remained an active episcopal residence, and the Loxwood oratory served the community under the terms of the 1404 grant. The building’s bell, altar and chaplain gave the hamlet a regular place within the Christian week and year.
Henry IV died on 20 March 1413 in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster Abbey. His body was carried to Canterbury Cathedral and buried near the shrine of St Thomas Becket. Prince Henry succeeded as Henry V with a secure coronation, extensive military experience and a royal government shaped by the political struggles of the previous fourteen years.
Crown, Diocese and Community at the Accession of Henry V
Henry V inherited a monarchy whose title had been established through Parliament, defended in battle and supported by an alliance with the senior clergy. The Commons held a stronger place in taxation, the royal council had gained experience during illness and rebellion, and the campaign against Lollardy operated through statute, episcopal courts and Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions.
Loxwood entered the new reign with an oak-framed oratory completed on the village plateau. Worship took place locally while burials, tithes and principal festivals preserved the relationship with Wisborough Green. The bishop’s residence at Drungewick remained close, Alfold marked the neighbouring Diocese of Winchester, and the petitioners’ families carried responsibility for the foundation.
Bishop Rede continued at Chichester until 1415, allowing the royal and local stories to pass directly into Henry V’s reign. The oratory authorised in the unsettled opening years of Lancastrian rule became the first enduring ecclesiastical centre in Loxwood and the starting point for the later chapel of St John the Baptist.
