Edward VI died at Greenwich on 6 July 1553 after six years in which royal government had ordered a Protestant prayer book into every parish, dismantled stone altars and stripped many churches of images, lights and ceremonial goods. Lady Jane Grey was proclaimed queen four days later under Edward’s attempted settlement of the succession. Mary Tudor rejected that settlement, gathered supporters in East Anglia and claimed the Crown under the succession arrangements made by Henry VIII and Parliament. The struggle lasted less than two weeks. On 19 July the council in London proclaimed Mary queen, ending Jane’s rule and placing England under its first crowned queen regnant.
The change reached Loxwood at a moment when Edwardian reform had altered the chapel physically. St John the Baptist’s chapel stood within Wisborough Green parish and the Diocese of Chichester. Its stone altar had been removed around 1550 and concealed in the adjoining former oratory, by then adapted as the priest’s house. The old rood arrangement had been cut and reused within the timber structure, while the chapel had used the English Prayer Book and a wooden communion table under Edward. Mary’s accession opened a new sequence of orders that restored the Mass, stone altars, Catholic sacraments and papal jurisdiction within five years.
Local property records also carried an older institutional history into the new reign. The men who held Loxwood chapel property had used deeds, rents and land transactions throughout the Reformation. A 1547 conveyance concerning Stevynsfield in Kirdford had shown John Mulle, Richard Yrlond, John King and William Hole acting while Edward’s Chantries Act transformed endowed religion elsewhere. Under Mary, the same foundation would pass through another documented trustee renewal in 1558, placing the chapel’s fields, houses and income in the hands of a new group immediately before another change of monarch.
Mary Takes the Crown, July–August 1553
Mary’s victory in July depended on law, family descent, political support and armed mobilisation. Henry VIII’s Third Succession Act of 1544 had placed Mary and Elizabeth after Edward in the order of succession, even though questions about their legitimacy had never been fully resolved. Edward’s Devise attempted to redirect the Crown to Jane Grey, a Protestant great-granddaughter of Henry VII. John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, promoted Jane’s claim and marched from London after Mary began gathering forces. The country’s response quickly exposed the weakness of the plan.
Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, became one of the councillors who turned against Northumberland. His role gave western Sussex a direct connection with the transfer of power. Arundel Castle controlled a major lordship on the lower Arun, and the Fitzalan estate network joined the county’s gentry, tenants and officers to a nobleman acting at the centre of government. When the council declared for Mary on 19 July, Arundel helped carry the political decision that destroyed Jane’s position. Northumberland surrendered at Cambridge and was executed in August.
Mary entered London on 3 August. Five days later Edward VI was buried at Westminster Abbey with the English service authorised in his reign, while Mary ordered a separate Catholic requiem for her brother. Mary possessed the Crown before Parliament repealed Edward’s religious statutes. Parish clergy had a new sovereign before Parliament had supplied the full legal machinery for a Catholic restoration. Royal proclamations, bishops’ instructions and local action filled the intervening weeks.
News of the accession travelled into Sussex through sheriffs, justices, noble households, cathedral officers and parish clergy. Arundel, Chichester and Horsham brought royal government into contact with western Sussex; Wisborough Green and Kirdford organised large rural parishes; Petworth supported a major landed estate. Loxwood lay among woods and farms near the Winchester diocesan boundary at Alfold. The royal name changed in public authority while farmers, millers, tenants and chapel trustees carried out the property and agricultural work already due that summer.
Catholic Worship Returns before Parliament Rewrites the Law, 1553
Mary moved carefully during the first weeks of her reign. A royal proclamation in August ordered subjects to avoid religious quarrels while the Crown and Parliament settled policy. The queen heard Mass openly, Catholic clergy returned to influence and parishes began restoring forms of worship that Edward’s government had removed. In many places the practical return of Catholic worship moved ahead of the final statutory reconciliation with Rome.
Restoring the Mass required physical work. A church needed an altar, chalice, vestments, service books, candles and the vessels used to reserve or carry the sacrament where local practice required them. Images, roods and processional objects reappeared in many parishes. Churchwardens elsewhere bought back goods sold during Edward’s reign or commissioned replacements. Eamon Duffy’s parish evidence records communities recovering images, books, vestments and vessels that had passed into private hands only a few years earlier. The restoration was carried out through carpenters, painters, smiths, tailors, merchants and parish collections as well as through royal orders.
Loxwood’s records do not give an account book for purchases in 1553. The chapel nevertheless had to meet the practical requirements of the restored rite if Mass was celebrated there. The 1404 foundation had placed the cost of worship, furnishing and a chaplain upon the inhabitants and local endowment while preserving tithes and parochial rights for Wisborough Green. Mary’s settlement revived the Catholic form of worship for which that medieval grant had originally been issued.
The hidden altar creates a precise local question. Edwardian officials had demanded the destruction of stone altars, and local tradition records Loxwood people concealing their large altar stone inside the former oratory. Mary again authorised Eucharistic sacrifice at an altar. No document yet found states whether the concealed medieval stone was brought back into the chapel during her reign. The stone’s later history proves that the concealment protected it; the identity of the altar actually used for Marian Mass at Loxwood cannot be fixed from the present evidence.
Mary Is Crowned as Queen Regnant, 1 October 1553
Mary was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 1 October 1553. She was the first woman crowned to govern England in her own right, and the ceremony had to express sovereign authority without converting her future husband into the source of that authority. Stephen Gardiner, restored as Bishop of Winchester after imprisonment under Edward VI, conducted the coronation. The ancient rite placed anointing, crown, sceptre, oath and Mass around a woman who now issued writs, summoned Parliament and appointed officers in her own name.
Gardiner’s return mattered geographically to Loxwood. Alfold, only a short distance north of the chapel, belonged to the Diocese of Winchester. Loxwood and Wisborough Green belonged to Chichester. Edward VI had placed reforming bishops on both sides of that boundary: John Ponet at Winchester and John Scory at Chichester. Mary restored Gardiner to Winchester and George Day to Chichester, bringing two bishops committed to Catholic sacramental worship into adjoining dioceses.
The old boundary had shaped Loxwood’s history since 1404. Bishop Robert Rede licensed local worship because inhabitants faced a difficult journey to Wisborough Green and could reach places outside Chichester’s jurisdiction more easily. The same geography now carried different bishops, services and doctrine. A Loxwood household walking north towards Alfold crossed from Day’s diocese into Gardiner’s; a household going south-west to Wisborough Green travelled towards its mother church inside Chichester jurisdiction.
The First Act of Repeal Reverses Edward’s Religious Settlement, 1553
Mary’s first Parliament met in October 1553 and dismantled the legal foundation of Edward VI’s Protestant worship. The First Statute of Repeal removed the Edwardian religious legislation, including the Acts of Uniformity that had imposed the Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552. Public worship was directed back towards the position at the end of Henry VIII’s reign. That step restored the Latin Mass and older sacramental forms while leaving the royal break with Rome to be addressed separately.
For parish clergy the change affected the next service they celebrated. Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer ceased to be the compulsory national offices created by Edward’s second Prayer Book. Priests again used the Latin books and rites appropriate to Mass and the other sacraments. Altars recovered their central place in chancels. The old calendar of feasts, fasting days, processions and ritual observances returned under ecclesiastical direction. The legal reversal reached parish churches through bishops, archdeacons, rural deans and clergy, each turning parliamentary law into instructions and services within particular churches.
At Loxwood, the original grant had authorised Mass, the purification or churching of women and other divine services while reserving burial and parish dues to Wisborough Green. Mary’s first Parliament brought the chapel’s authorised worship closer to the form contemplated by that medieval licence. A mother coming for churching, a sick person receiving priestly ministry or a congregation attending Mass now encountered rites that connected directly with the foundation’s fifteenth-century purpose.
The Edwardian years had left material gaps. Parliament could authorise the Mass immediately; roods, vestments and painted images required money, materials and skilled work. Communities faced different starting points because some had sold nearly every redundant object while others had hidden or kept items. Loxwood’s concealed altar belonged to the second category of local response: an object ordered out of public worship had been protected and hidden.
George Day Returns to the See of Chichester, 1553–1554
George Day had been Bishop of Chichester since 1543 when Edward VI’s council ordered stone altars taken down. Day rejected that policy, was imprisoned at the end of 1550 and formally deprived in 1551. John Scory took the see under the Protestant government. Mary’s accession reversed those careers. Scory, a married bishop, left England with his wife and went to Wesel in Friesland. Day was released, restored to Chichester and returned to royal favour.
Day preached at Mary’s coronation and resumed government of the diocese. In March 1554 he served on commissions examining doctrine and clerical discipline. The bishop who had resisted the destruction of altars now possessed authority to supervise their restoration. The Chichester diocesan history records altars being set up again and the old services returning under his episcopate. Cathedral officers, archdeacons and parish clergy carried this reversal through the same administrative channels that had transmitted Edwardian orders.
At Chichester Cathedral the deanery also changed. Thomas Sampson, associated with the reforming regime, had resigned in 1552. Mary’s congé d’élire instructed the chapter to elect under its ancient rights, and William Pye became dean in 1553. Pye opposed Reformed Eucharistic doctrine and took part in the religious argument surrounding the Convocation of that year. The cathedral chapter now operated under a restored Catholic bishop and a dean aligned with the new direction.
Day’s personal history gave the Loxwood altar episode a close diocesan counterpart. The local stone had been endangered by an order Day himself opposed. During Mary’s reign the man who had lost the bishopric over that issue again governed the chapel. The project sources do not record a visit by Day to Loxwood during these years, so the connection rests on his diocesan jurisdiction, the common altar policy and the chapel’s place under Wisborough Green.
Loxwood Re-equips a Catholic Chapel
The return of Catholic worship changed the work required inside St John the Baptist’s chapel. Mass needed an altar prepared for the rite, linen, vessels and books. The priest needed vestments appropriate to the service. Candles and other fittings had to be bought, recovered or repaired. The congregation again encountered ritual actions that Edward’s Prayer Books had removed from public worship. Every object required somebody to supply it, pay for it and keep it in usable condition.
Loxwood’s endowed property existed for this practical purpose. The 1404 licence had placed responsibility for the building, furnishings and chaplain upon the local community while preserving the mother church’s tithes. Later gifts and land transactions created rent-bearing support. Stevynsfield in Kirdford had appeared in the trust’s property dealings before Mary’s reign. Other holdings later named in the 1558 renewal included Cokkes, Baldwynnes and Calletehaw. Rent from houses, gardens, meadow, crofts and fields gave the trustees a material base from which chapel obligations could be met.
The people undertaking the work lived within an economy of timber, grain, livestock and small property. Oak framed the older houses and church buildings. Watermills ground local corn. Smiths made iron fittings and repaired tools. Carpenters could construct screens, tables, chests and doors. Tailors and specialist suppliers provided cloth. Market journeys connected Loxwood with Wisborough Green, Kirdford, Horsham, Petworth, Guildford and Chichester. A religious restoration ordered by the Crown reached the village through this network of labour and exchange.
Church Cottage gave the site an additional resource. Its east bay, once the sanctuary of the first oratory, had been converted into domestic use and fitted with a large chimney. Medieval oak formed the floors, walls and openings after that conversion. The priest’s house could support the minister serving the adjoining chapel while concealing the large altar stone removed under Edward. Domestic use and sacred memory occupied the same compact group of buildings.
The Catholic Year Returns to the Western Weald, 1554
By 1554 parish worship again followed a Catholic calendar in which seasons were marked through particular rites as well as through readings and prayers. Candlemas brought candles and the Purification of the Virgin. Lent altered diet and devotion. Palm Sunday recalled Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. Holy Week led towards the Passion and Easter. Rogation processions carried clergy and parishioners around fields and boundaries while prayers were said for the crops. Corpus Christi centred devotion upon the Eucharist.
These observances had practical consequences in a rural district. Rogation involved actual roads, field edges, streams and parish boundaries. Fasting affected household food. Feast days altered the pattern of work and worship. Bells summoned people from scattered holdings. Candles, cloth, bread, wine and other materials had to be obtained. The Western Weald’s dispersed settlement meant that walking distance and weather shaped attendance as they had when Loxwood’s founders petitioned for local worship in 1404.
St John the Baptist’s feast on 24 June gave Loxwood a patronal day placed close to midsummer. Kirdford parish church carried the same dedication, and its congregation approached the feast through its own parochial organisation. Plaistow had a dependent chapel within Kirdford parish by the early sixteenth century. Wisborough Green served as Loxwood’s mother church. These places shared a restored Catholic calendar while clergy and local custom gave each church its own pattern of services and attendance.
The project records do not provide a Marian churchwardens’ account for Loxwood listing candles, palms or processional expenses. The national rite and diocesan restoration establish the form of authorised worship; the local documents establish the chapel, its endowment and its physical fabric. Keeping those categories separate avoids inventing a purchase or ceremony that no Loxwood document records.
Wyatt’s Rebellion Tests Mary’s Government, January–February 1554
The proposed marriage between Mary and Philip of Spain provoked rebellion early in 1554. Thomas Wyatt raised forces in Kent, while other planned risings failed to gather comparable strength. Mary addressed Londoners at Guildhall and presented herself as the lawful sovereign defending the realm. Wyatt’s force reached the outskirts of London before royal troops defeated the rising in February.
The rebellion sharpened the question of succession. Lady Jane Grey, whose claim had already collapsed in July, was executed on 12 February together with her husband Guildford Dudley. Suspicion also fell on Elizabeth. Mary’s government sent her half-sister to the Tower in March after examining possible links with Wyatt. The crisis showed how marriage, religion and dynastic succession had become inseparable political questions.
Wyatt’s main route ran from Kent towards London. Sussex landowners and county officers watched the crisis as the government prepared against any wider rising. Henry Fitzalan had helped put Mary on the throne only months earlier. Arundel Castle, Chichester and the county gentry formed part of the system through which musters, proclamations and orders could be enforced if rebellion spread. The roads through the Western Weald carried news between market towns and estates while local courts and rents operated under heightened political uncertainty.
Loxwood’s present records name no participant in Wyatt’s rising. The chapel’s immediate story in 1554 lies in restored worship and property. That distinction matters: royal rebellion could dominate news without producing a recorded local episode in every village. The same year gives a much firmer Loxwood-area document through a transfer of a messuage and watermill.
Bruers, Its Stables and Watermill, 1554
A deed of 1554 records John Myll senior of Loxwood granting to his son and heir, also John Myll, a messuage called Bruers with its buildings, land, stables and watermill. Current local research traces the place-name through forms including Brewers and Brewes to Brewhurst. The transaction gives Mary’s reign a physical Loxwood property that can be described through what the deed actually names: a house, associated buildings, stabling, land and a mill worked by water.
A watermill required a controlled stream. A dam or pond stored water, sluices regulated the flow and a wheel turned machinery that drove millstones. Customers brought grain by horse, cart or on foot and collected flour or meal after grinding. Stables allowed animals to be kept close to the working site. Timber buildings, mill gears, banks and channels required repeated repair. The deed transferred a productive unit of house, buildings, stables, land and watermill.
Bruers also places the Myll or Mills name within the Loxwood property network before the 1558 chapel trustee renewal. Richard Mylls appears among the men appointed to the trust in that year. The records used for this article do not establish his relationship to John Myll senior or junior, so the shared surname cannot be turned into a family connection without further evidence. The two documents nevertheless place the name beside both a watermill property and chapel trusteeship during Mary’s reign.
The mill drew surrounding farms into regular exchange. Grain had to be moved from field and barn to the mill; flour returned to households or travelled to market. The same lanes carried timber, animals and people attending worship. Mary’s restoration altered what happened inside churches, while the 1554 deed records the agricultural work from which rents, offerings and household income were generated.
Mary Marries Philip at Winchester, 25 July 1554
Mary married Philip of Spain at Winchester Cathedral on 25 July 1554. Stephen Gardiner presided in the cathedral where he had been restored as bishop. The marriage treaty gave Philip the title of king during the marriage while protecting English law, offices and the succession from automatic foreign control. Mary entered the marriage seeking a Catholic heir who could secure both dynasty and religious settlement.
Winchester stood close enough to the Western Weald to give the event a strong regional setting. Roads through Surrey and Hampshire connected the cathedral city with Alfold and the northern edge of Loxwood’s neighbourhood. Alfold itself belonged to Gardiner’s diocese, while Loxwood lay under Day at Chichester. The royal wedding took place in the cathedral governing the parish immediately beyond Loxwood’s diocesan boundary.
The marriage also changed the form of royal authority on documents and coinage. Philip and Mary appeared together in royal style, and the Crown issued coins and instruments under the joint names prescribed for government. The Royal Mint struck portraits of Mary alone before the marriage and issues naming Philip and Mary afterwards. Coins passing through Sussex markets carried the royal change into transactions for grain, cloth, animals, rent and imported goods.
Philip’s household and foreign connections provoked suspicion among opponents. The English marriage settlement defined his legal position. For Loxwood there is no record of a local celebration or protest. The strongest regional connection is concrete: the ceremony took place at Winchester Cathedral, within the neighbouring diocese whose border lay only a short walk north of the chapel.
Cardinal Pole Brings England Back into Communion with Rome, November 1554
Reginald Pole returned to England in November 1554 as papal legate. He was Henry VIII’s cousin and had spent years abroad opposing the royal break with Rome. Parliament addressed the ecclesiastical separation created in the 1530s, and at the end of November Pole pronounced absolution after the Lords and Commons petitioned for reconciliation. England again recognised papal jurisdiction.
The Second Statute of Repeal removed the Henrician legislation that had established the break with Rome. The settlement protected the property position of many lay owners who possessed former monastic and ecclesiastical lands. Mary wanted Catholic restoration without reopening every transfer made since the Dissolution. That political choice mattered to landowners throughout Sussex, where former religious estates had passed through Crown grants and private purchases.
The Diocese of Chichester now operated inside a Church reconciled to Rome. George Day governed under Catholic episcopal authority; William Pye served as dean; priests celebrated Mass; parishioners attended confession and received the Eucharist according to Catholic teaching. Across the boundary Gardiner governed Winchester until his death in 1555. Pole, as legate and later Archbishop of Canterbury, promoted preaching, clerical discipline and episcopal visitation as instruments of reform.
Loxwood’s chapel trust occupied a different legal category from a dissolved monastery. Its property supported a dependent chapel serving a local congregation, and the trust had passed through Tudor religious change without a Crown confiscation recorded in the project deeds. The 1558 renewal would again place its holdings in named local hands. The reconciliation with Rome changed church authority around those holdings without rewriting the local property chain.
English Books Serve a Restored Catholic Church
Mary restored Latin public worship, and English religious print supplied teaching alongside it. Catholic primers, catechetical works, homilies and devotional books instructed laypeople in the creed, commandments, sacraments, prayer and Christian conduct. Bishops and clergy could preach in English while celebrating Mass in Latin. The Marian Church used print to teach a population that had heard English Scripture and Prayer Book services throughout Edward’s reign.
This gave parish religion two languages serving different functions. Latin carried the central public liturgy; English explained doctrine and moral duty to congregations. Clergy preached, catechised and heard questions in the language people spoke. Printed material could be read privately by literate householders or heard aloud in families and churches. Catholic authorities redirected the English religious vocabulary learned since the 1530s towards restored doctrine.
At Loxwood, a priest serving a dispersed congregation needed to teach people who worked farms, woodland and mills and who might attend the mother church only on the principal occasions required by the foundation. The 1404 licence had been granted because distance impeded access to regular ministry. Marian preaching and catechesis gave local clergy the same pastoral problem in a changed religious setting: doctrine had to reach households scattered among lanes and woods.
The project sources do not identify a Marian book owned by Loxwood chapel. The national and diocesan programme supplies the evidence for this wider practice; no local inventory has yet been identified. The chapel’s medieval benches and compact nave would have placed listeners close to the priest as he preached or instructed them. The words used in teaching changed less dramatically than the language of the Mass itself, because English explanation had long accompanied Latin worship.
The Queen’s Expected Child Shapes the Succession, 1554–1555
Soon after the royal marriage, Mary believed she was pregnant. By spring 1555 the court prepared for a birth, and government clerks drafted official announcements with spaces left for the date and details of the expected prince. Mary withdrew to Hampton Court for confinement in April. The anticipated birth carried political weight because a child of Mary and Philip would displace Elizabeth from the immediate succession and give the Catholic restoration a Tudor-Habsburg heir.
The expected date passed without a birth. Mary left the confinement arrangements in August after hope of a child had faded. The episode exposed the fragility of a settlement built around a queen in her late thirties whose religious programme had no secure heir. Philip departed England later in 1555, and Elizabeth again stood closer to the succession despite the suspicion surrounding her after Wyatt’s rebellion.
Churches had prayed for the queen and royal family as part of the public religious order. News of a hoped-for child travelled through proclamations, court reports and clergy. The sources used here contain no Loxwood entry recording a special service for the pregnancy. The dynastic issue nevertheless mattered to every royal policy extending beyond Mary’s own life, because the person who inherited the Crown would determine the future of the restored Church.
For the chapel trustees the succession question sat beside a much slower legal rhythm. Trust property passed through families and replacement deeds over generations. Mary’s anticipated child might have secured Catholic monarchy for decades; the local trust’s security depended on making sure enough named men could hold and transfer title. The 1558 deed would become especially important once Mary died childless.
The Heresy Laws Return, 1555
Parliament revived the medieval heresy laws, and prosecutions leading to execution began in 1555. Heresy was treated as a religious offence with public consequences. Ecclesiastical courts examined accused men and women, bishops pronounced judgments and secular authorities carried out death sentences by burning. The policy aimed to secure doctrinal conformity after six years of official Protestant teaching.
The first executions included prominent clergy and ordinary laypeople. John Rogers was burned in February 1555, followed by further cases across London and south-eastern England. Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley were burned at Oxford in October. Thomas Cranmer, architect of Edward’s Prayer Books and former Archbishop of Canterbury, was executed in March 1556 after a series of recantations and a final public rejection of papal authority. Around three hundred people were burned during Mary’s reign.
The burnings changed the consequences of religious speech. A parishioner who rejected the Mass, denied transubstantiation or publicly attacked Catholic teaching could move from local dispute into formal prosecution. Bishops and clergy were expected to identify and correct heterodox belief. Printed Protestant books circulated secretly or from exile communities abroad, giving opponents of Mary’s Church material around which networks of belief could form.
No Loxwood prosecution appears in the project material for these years. The absence of a named case does not permit a claim about what every household believed. Some people may have welcomed restored worship, some may have complied because law required it, and others may have held Protestant convictions privately. The documentary record for the village is stronger for chapel property, buildings and trustees than for individual religious opinion.
Protestants Are Burned in the Diocese of Chichester, 1555–1556
The persecution reached the Diocese of Chichester during George Day’s restored episcopate. The diocesan history records one Protestant burned at Brighton in 1555, four at Brighton in 1556 and three at East Grinstead. These executions placed the Marian heresy policy inside the same diocese as Loxwood, even though the recorded cases lay many miles from the chapel.
Day’s role needs to be understood through the office he held. He had suffered imprisonment under Edward for refusing the destruction of altars, then returned under Mary to restore Catholic worship and enforce doctrinal discipline. His episcopal court formed part of the process through which accused heretics were examined. The bishop who had once resisted government pressure now served a government demanding conformity to the theology he defended.
East Grinstead linked the persecution to the Wealden interior. Roads and markets joined Sussex communities across a county where ironworking, woodland trades, farming and small towns created frequent movement. News from East Grinstead travelled through clergy, markets and households across Sussex. Heresy cases were public acts intended to warn as well as punish.
The records used here do not identify a Loxwood witness at Brighton or East Grinstead and give no local reaction. The article can place Loxwood under Day’s jurisdiction and can name the diocesan executions; it cannot assign sympathy, approval or fear to particular Loxwood people without evidence. That distinction is especially important in a reign whose later reputation was shaped by partisan accounts of martyrdom.
Stephen Gardiner Dies and John White Takes Winchester, 1555–1556
Stephen Gardiner died on 12 November 1555 after serving Mary as Bishop of Winchester and Lord Chancellor. His death removed one of the most experienced figures in the government and the bishop whose cathedral had hosted the royal marriage. Gardiner was buried at Winchester, where his chantry chapel preserves his association with the cathedral.
John White was chosen for Winchester in 1556 after serving as Bishop of Lincoln. He had been headmaster and warden of Winchester College and was closely associated with Catholic restoration. His appointment placed another committed Marian bishop immediately across the diocesan frontier from Loxwood. Alfold now came under White while George Day governed Chichester for the final months of his life.
The sequence shows how quickly episcopal leadership could change. Loxwood’s founding had been shaped by a stable geographical boundary between Chichester and Winchester; Tudor policy repeatedly replaced the bishops governing each side. Under Edward, Scory and Ponet enforced reform. Under Mary, Day and Gardiner restored Catholic worship; after Gardiner’s death White took Winchester. The roads between Loxwood and Alfold crossed a fixed county and diocesan edge beneath changing episcopal commands.
The practical life of the chapel depended on clergy below the bishops. A bishop could institute incumbents, issue injunctions, visit churches and judge doctrine. The priest at a small chapel said Mass, instructed the congregation and administered authorised rites under the mother parish. Parishioners experienced episcopal policy through these local actions carried out by priests and parish officers.
George Day Dies and John Christopherson Comes to Chichester, 1556–1557
George Day died on 2 August 1556 and was buried at Chichester Cathedral. His death ended a career that had spanned Henry VIII’s supremacy, Edward VI’s Protestant reforms and Mary’s Catholic restoration. During the vacancy cathedral and diocesan officers handled necessary business until a successor was appointed.
John Christopherson became Bishop of Chichester in 1557. He was a scholar and clergyman committed to the Marian settlement, and his episcopate occupied the final phase of the persecution in Sussex. The Clergy of the Church of England Database dates his appointment to 1557 and his tenure to Mary’s final year. He inherited a diocese in which altars and Catholic services had been restored for several years.
For Loxwood, the change of bishop came after the chapel had already been operating under the restored rite. The local foundation’s property owners had to maintain buildings and income while another ordinary took charge of clerical government. The 1558 trustee transaction would occur under Christopherson, placing a dated Loxwood deed inside his short episcopate.
Chichester Cathedral also carried a Marian chapter under Dean William Pye. Bishop, dean, canons, archdeacons and parish clergy formed the institutional route from the cathedral to rural chapels. Royal religious policy reached the Western Weald through these named offices, then entered local life when a priest celebrated Mass, a churchwarden obtained a fitting or a trustee paid for work on chapel property.
Ten Protestants Are Burned at Lewes, 1557
In 1557 ten Protestants were burned together at Lewes. Among them was Richard Woodman, an ironworker from Warbleton. The mass execution became one of the best-known episodes of the Marian persecution in Sussex. Lewes stood east of the Western Weald, and its county importance and road connections carried news of the event far beyond the town.
Woodman’s occupation is relevant to the wider Wealden economy. Ironworking depended on ore, water power, charcoal and timber and employed workers across the eastern parts of Sussex. The Western Weald around Loxwood also used woodland intensively for timber, fuel and craft production. The execution of an ironworker shows that religious prosecution reached people whose daily lives were rooted in farms, workshops and the working landscape as well as clergy and scholars.
Later Protestant martyrology gave the Lewes burnings a powerful place in memory. Those accounts require careful use because polemic shaped descriptions of interrogations, character and motive. The executions themselves are securely part of the county record. Chichester’s diocesan history identifies Woodman and locates the Lewes burnings before the Star Inn.
No deed or chapel record from Loxwood links a named inhabitant with the Lewes prisoners. The local history intersects the persecution through diocesan government and county communication. In the same year that people were burned for Protestant belief, Loxwood households attended Catholic services and local property owners prepared for the legal succession of the chapel trust.
Philip Returns and England Enters War with France, 1557
Philip returned to England in 1557 while Spain and France were at war. Mary’s government brought England into the conflict. Parliament voted subsidies, the Crown organised military forces and ports prepared ships and supplies. The decision joined the kingdom to a European war at a time when the treasury already faced the ordinary costs of government and religious reconstruction.
Sussex and Hampshire stood close to the Channel and to the naval infrastructure around Portsmouth. Chichester and Arundel lay on routes by which men, horses, grain and equipment could move towards the coast. Inland landowners could be required to respond to musters and fiscal demands through county officers. The Western Weald produced grain, livestock, timber, charcoal and transport animals that formed part of the regional economy supporting towns and ports.
The Loxwood records used here do not name a soldier, cart or tax payment from the village for the 1557 campaign. That gap prevents a claim that a particular household supplied the war. The national mobilisation nevertheless altered the environment in which local landowners and tenants worked: Parliament demanded money, county officers received orders and coastal defence acquired greater urgency.
War also raised the importance of roads. A message from Chichester, a muster instruction, estate correspondence or a load of provisions depended on passable routes through clay and woodland. Loxwood’s medieval complaint about difficult tracks had never ceased to be relevant to movement. The village stood between the Surrey approaches, Wisborough Green, Kirdford and the routes towards Petworth and the south coast.
Calais Falls, January 1558
French forces captured Calais in January 1558. England had held the town since the fourteenth century, and its loss ended the Crown’s last territorial possession on the French mainland. The military defeat damaged the prestige of Mary’s government and exposed the cost of entering Philip’s war.
Calais had supplied a gateway for soldiers, merchants and diplomacy across the Channel. Its fall shifted English defence back towards the coast itself. Sussex ports and the naval routes through the Channel now faced a different strategic position. The loss also fed political criticism at a moment when Mary’s health was weakening and Mary had produced no heir.
For the Western Weald, taxation, military administration and trade carried the effects of the war inland. Chichester and Arundel faced the sea-lanes beyond the Downs; Petworth and inland estates supplied agricultural goods to markets connected with the coast. Loxwood’s farms and mill belonged to that economy while the chapel trust prepared one of its clearest Tudor deeds.
The year 1558 is exceptionally valuable locally because the trustee renewal names people and property. National history supplies war and dynastic uncertainty; the Loxwood deed supplies fields, houses, roads and named men. The two levels meet in the same final year of Mary’s reign without requiring an invented causal link between Calais and the chapel.
John King Renews the Loxwood Chapel Trust, 1558
By 1558 John King of Loxwood held the legal position needed to renew the chapel trust. The project trustee chronology identifies him as the sole remaining holder from the earlier body. He conveyed the chapel interests to six men: Richard King of Loxwood, John King, Walter King, Richard Mylls or Mills, John Irelond of Rudgwick and John Laker. The transaction placed the trust in a broader group able to hold title, receive rent and deal with future property business.
Several names connected the deed with older Loxwood history. The King family had entered chapel trusteeship before the Reformation and would appear repeatedly in later centuries. The Irelond or Ireland line reached back through the family descended from Margery, daughter of the founder Philip Neldred. John Irelond’s association with Rudgwick extended the trust across a parish boundary. Richard Mylls brought into the group a surname also found in the district’s milling and property records.
The new trustees received responsibility for property dedicated to the support of St John the Baptist’s chapel. A trustee had to preserve deeds, know tenants and boundaries, collect income and execute legal documents when deaths reduced the number of title-holders. That work gave the chapel a durable administrative structure independent of any one priest’s lifespan.
The timing gives the deed additional value. Mary’s government was defending Catholic worship and fighting France; Christopherson governed Chichester; John White governed Winchester; the queen’s health was failing. John King and his neighbours dealt with a local conveyance amid those national pressures. Their deed carried the chapel’s material base toward the next reign only months before Elizabeth inherited the Crown.
Stevynsfield, Cokkes, Baldwynnes and Calletehaw
The 1558 trustee record names four properties associated with the chapel: Stevynsfield, Cokkes, Baldwynnes and Calletehaw. These names place the endowment in the landscape more precisely than a general statement about chapel income. The holdings included agricultural and domestic property spread through Loxwood, Wisborough Green and Kirdford.
Stevynsfield lay in Kirdford and had appeared in the earlier trustee history. A 1547 sale described its boundaries against Broke Reden, Motons and Barnefield. Fields such as these generated value through cultivation, pasture or rent and placed the Loxwood foundation in direct relationship with Kirdford landowners and tenants. The chapel’s property reached westwards beyond the hamlet itself.
Cokkes is described in local research as a tenement with a garden and small meadow in Loxwood. Baldwynnes comprised a messuage, garden and adjoining croft within Wisborough Green. These were places where people lived and worked. A house needed roofing, timber and hearths; a garden produced food or herbs; meadow supplied hay; a croft provided a small enclosed piece of agricultural ground. Rent from such holdings turned ordinary domestic production into support for the chapel.
Calletehaw was described by boundaries: Oakhurst lay to the east and south and the road from Loxwood towards Horsham lay to the north. The deed fixes one chapel holding against a named farm and a route used by travellers and carts. Roads mattered legally because they formed clear boundaries; they mattered economically because tenants used them to reach markets, mills and neighbouring settlements. The trust’s written geography can be walked through actual fields, houses and lanes as a group of actual holdings and boundaries.
The Chapel Trust Connects Loxwood with Kirdford, Rudgwick and Wisborough Green
The six trustees appointed in 1558 show how local institutions depended on networks wider than a single hamlet. Richard King was described as of Loxwood. John Irelond came from Rudgwick. Stevynsfield lay in Kirdford. Baldwynnes lay within Wisborough Green. The chapel’s title was held collectively by men whose property knowledge extended across these places.
Such a group could witness deeds, identify boundaries and replace members as deaths occurred. Kinship helped preserve memory of earlier grants, while residence in neighbouring parishes gave the trust access to local knowledge beyond Loxwood. The method resembled earlier feoffments used by families and charitable foundations to hold land for a defined purpose.
The trust also sat beside separate church authority. The Bishop of Chichester governed clergy and doctrine. The vicar of Wisborough Green held the mother benefice and received the tithes and dues protected by the 1404 grant. The trustees held property whose income supported the chapel. A tenant paying rent to the trust and a household paying tithes to the vicar dealt with different legal obligations attached to the same religious site.
Mary’s reign changed the doctrine and jurisdiction of the national Church twice within living memory of older villagers: Edwardian Protestantism gave way to Catholic restoration. The 1558 deed records a different kind of durability. Deaths and changes of residence reduced the earlier trustee body, and the need to maintain legal title produced a fresh conveyance naming actual fields and houses. The next regime would have to deal with a chapel whose property base had just been renewed.
The Medieval Altar through Mary’s Reign
The altar stone hidden under Edward VI links Mary’s reign to the physical origins of the Loxwood worship site. The stone’s upper surface measures about seventy-six inches by thirty-one and a half inches, with a narrower base. Structural research on Church Cottage has identified repeated dimensions in the medieval frame related to the altar’s measurements. The original oratory appears to have been set out around a sanctuary whose scale was governed by the stone.
When local people concealed the altar around 1550, they protected more than reusable masonry. The stone had occupied the place where Mass was celebrated, where bread and wine were consecrated and where the congregation’s attention was directed towards the Eucharist. Mary’s restoration returned that theology to public authority. The object hidden because a Protestant government rejected stone altars now belonged to the kind of worship the Crown again required.
The project sources leave its exact Marian use unresolved. No deed, visitation return or account states that the stone was lifted from the concealment and reset inside the chapel between 1553 and 1558. A replacement altar could have served the restored Mass, or the original could have been used before being hidden again later; present evidence cannot choose between those possibilities. The article must leave the question open.
Church Cottage itself records the repeated use of old fabric. The medieval nave door became an internal domestic door. Rood-related beams and mortices became parts of floors and partitions. The chancel arch formed part of the standing frame. During Mary’s reign a priest living beside the chapel occupied a house whose timbers carried the geometry and fittings of the earlier sacred building. The restored Mass took place beside a domestic structure that physically contained Loxwood’s pre-Reformation past.
Farming, Milling and Woodland Work during the Marian Years
Religious policy occupied Parliament and bishops, while most Loxwood households depended on land. The heavy Wealden soils required careful timing for ploughing, sowing and carting. Cattle and pigs fitted a mixed agricultural economy; meadow produced hay; woodland supplied timber, fuel and materials for fences, buildings and craft work. Small fields and scattered holdings linked household labour to rent and market exchange.
The 1554 Bruers deed gives the watermill a central place in this working landscape. Farmers brought corn to be ground and needed passable tracks for carts or pack animals. The miller depended on the River Lox and maintained the structures controlling water. Mill timber, wheel components and sluice work drew on local carpentry and woodland resources. The transfer from John Myll senior to his son placed this productive machinery inside a family property transaction.
Markets converted produce into cash. Horsham drew trade from the northern Weald. Petworth concentrated demand around a great estate. Guildford opened routes towards London, while Pulborough and Arundel connected western Sussex to the Arun valley. Chichester supplied ecclesiastical courts, merchants and government officers. A Loxwood tenant paying rent to the chapel trust depended on the same agricultural and market economy that financed household food, tools and church obligations.
The restored Church also created demand for skilled work. Altars needed masonry or timber support; candles and metal fittings required specialist supply; vestments and linen came from textile trades; church buildings required carpenters and roofers. National religious policy entered rural economic life as orders for objects, repairs and materials. The people paying for these things earned their money from farms, mills, woodland and local exchange.
Mary’s Last Pregnancy Hope and the Final Religious Programme, 1557–1558
Mary believed herself pregnant again during the closing part of the reign. By 1558 few at court shared her expectation, and her health was deteriorating. The absence of a child left Elizabeth as the likely successor under the Tudor settlement. Every bishop, councillor and landowner understood that another royal death could reopen the religious direction of the kingdom.
Cardinal Pole pressed ahead with Catholic reform through preaching, clerical discipline and education. Bishops visited clergy, examined doctrine and worked to improve pastoral standards. The restored Church had moved beyond merely reversing Edward’s statutes; its leaders sought to train priests and teach parishioners within the Catholic settlement they expected to endure.
At Loxwood, worship took place in a chapel whose endowment had just been transferred to the 1558 trustee body. The Mass and Catholic sacraments had been legal public worship for five years. The chapel properties tied Kirdford fields, Loxwood houses and Wisborough Green land into one support network. The trustees held a stronger documentary position just as the political future became uncertain.
The project material gives no Loxwood memorandum discussing Elizabeth’s prospects or the queen’s health. The local story is recorded through dated property deeds and trustee names. That silence is useful: it prevents the beliefs of later generations being placed into the mouths of Tudor villagers. What can be stated is that the men named in 1558 were holding chapel property when the sovereign who restored Catholic worship entered her final months.
Mary and Cardinal Pole Die, 17 November 1558
Mary died at St James’s Palace on 17 November 1558. Cardinal Reginald Pole died the same day. Mary left no child, and Elizabeth became queen at the age of twenty-five. Royal officers proclaimed the new sovereign while the public Church was operating under the Marian settlement: Mass was authorised, papal jurisdiction had legal force and Catholic bishops occupied the sees.
John Christopherson held Chichester when Elizabeth succeeded. John White held Winchester across the boundary at Alfold. William Pye was Dean of Chichester. These churchmen had served the restoration and now faced a queen whose religious intentions would soon move government in another direction. Elizabeth’s first Parliament in 1559 would redefine supremacy and public worship again.
Loxwood entered the accession with Richard King, John King, Walter King, Richard Mylls, John Irelond and John Laker holding the chapel property under the new 1558 conveyance. Stevynsfield, Cokkes, Baldwynnes and Calletehaw named parts of the endowment. Bruers and its watermill had passed from John Myll senior to his son four years earlier. Church Cottage stood beside the chapel with the medieval altar protected within the site.
The next chapter begins with these people, properties and objects already in place. Elizabeth inherited a Catholic chapel whose legal support had just been renewed, a diocese under Christopherson and a neighbouring Winchester diocese under White. The Crown would now require another change in public prayer, episcopal authority and the use of altars, forcing Loxwood’s trustees and congregation to carry the same buildings into a fourth Tudor religious settlement.