Introduction
Mary I died at St James’s Palace on 17 November 1558, and Cardinal Reginald Pole, the archbishop who had directed England’s reconciliation with Rome, died on the same day. Elizabeth, the twenty-five-year-old daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, was proclaimed queen while the Marian Church was still operating. Mass remained the authorised public service, papal jurisdiction had legal force, Catholic bishops occupied the sees, and parish churches contained the altars, vestments, books and other furnishings restored during Mary’s five-year reign. Elizabeth inherited a Church that Mary had rebuilt after Edward VI and a country that had already experienced three major changes in religious policy since the 1530s.
Loxwood entered the reign with a renewed body of chapel trustees. In 1558 John King of Loxwood, the surviving holder of the earlier trust, conveyed the chapel interests to Richard King of Loxwood, John King, Walter King, Richard Mills, John Irelond of Rudgwick and John Laker. Their property included Stevynsfield in Kirdford, Cokkes in Loxwood, Baldwynnes in Wisborough Green parish and Calletehaw beside Oakhurst and the road towards Horsham. St John the Baptist’s chapel remained dependent upon Wisborough Green in the Diocese of Chichester. Beside it stood the former 1404-1407 oratory, by then the priest’s house, where the medieval oak frame survived and the altar stone remained hidden after its removal from the chapel during the earlier Reformation.
Several local records fix events in the forty-four years that followed. The east gable of Drungewick Manor carries the date 1559, the same year as the Elizabethan religious settlement. In 1560 Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, improved navigation on the River Arun as far as Pallingham Quay in Wisborough Green. The surviving Wisborough Green parish register series begins in the 1560s, and a February 1587 entry records a child ‘baptised at Loxwood’. At the end of the reign Anthony Watson governed Chichester, while John Irelond from the 1558 trustee body survived into the next recorded renewal of the chapel trust in 1615.
Elizabeth Takes the Crown, November 1558-January 1559
Elizabeth’s title rested on the statutory succession established under Henry VIII and confirmed by Mary’s childless death. The political transfer was orderly. Councillors, sheriffs, judges and local officeholders continued in their posts while writs and proclamations adopted the new royal name. The immediate religious future remained open because the institutions inherited from Mary could continue to function until the Crown and Parliament supplied new law. John Christopherson was still Bishop of Chichester at the accession, and the cathedral chapter, archdeacons, parish clergy and churchwardens continued ordinary administration while the court prepared for a new Parliament.
During the opening weeks the Crown changed hands before Parliament changed the law governing worship. Elizabeth allowed the existing services to continue for the moment while introducing limited changes around the royal chapel and public worship. A proclamation in December sought to restrain religious disputation pending parliamentary decision. The government needed time to assemble supporters, prepare legislation, print books and decide how far Edwardian forms should return. Until new orders arrived, parish clergy and churchwardens continued to use the service books, altars, vestments and images required by the existing law.
Elizabeth was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 15 January 1559. The coronation included the traditional anointing, oath, crown and public acclamation. Elizabeth’s legitimacy had been contested during her childhood, but she now received the regalia and authority of the monarch. The question for the first Parliament was the constitutional form of that authority and the liturgy that clergy were to use throughout the realm.
Orders affecting Loxwood reached the chapel through the mother church at Wisborough Green, diocesan officers at Chichester, local justices and the networks of landholding and travel that met around Horsham, Arundel, Petworth and the Surrey border. The chapel trustees had already secured their property title in 1558. They still had to maintain the chapel while the Crown changed the authorised form of worship once more.
The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 1559
Elizabeth’s first Parliament passed the laws that governed the Church through the rest of the reign. The Act of Supremacy reversed the restored papal jurisdiction and declared the queen Supreme Governor of the Church of England. The title differed from Henry VIII’s ‘Supreme Head’, while the practical effect placed ecclesiastical government under royal authority. Clergy and officeholders were required to recognise the new supremacy, and bishops who could not accept the settlement lost office or died during the transition. Bishops, cathedral chapters, archdeacons, parishes and ecclesiastical courts continued to administer the Church under the new supremacy.
The Act of Uniformity authorised a new Book of Common Prayer. Its text drew heavily upon the Edwardian book of 1552 while making alterations intended to establish one public order of worship across a religiously divided kingdom. Morning and Evening Prayer, Holy Communion, baptism, marriage, burial and the thanksgiving of women after childbirth were again conducted in English. The old Sarum Mass ceased to be the public parish liturgy, and the Prayer Book became a legal requirement enforced through clergy, bishops, churchwardens and magistrates.
The commencement date had a direct local consequence at Loxwood. The new Prayer Book came into force on 24 June 1559, the Feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist. Loxwood’s chapel had borne the dedication of St John the Baptist since at least the recorded bequest of 1488. The first day on which Elizabeth’s Prayer Book became compulsory was the chapel’s patronal feast. The calendar continued to commemorate St John, but the Church no longer authorised the older practices of invoking saints, maintaining their images for devotion or offering intercessory Masses to them.
A chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist observed its patronal feast on 24 June. In 1559 that day also marked the legal change of service book. The words heard in the building now came from the Elizabethan Prayer Book. The service continued to commemorate the birth of the Baptist, but the congregation heard the authorised prayers and Scripture in English.
The Chapel is Reordered Again
The legal settlement required another physical reordering of churches that had been refurnished during Mary’s reign. Royal visitors and bishops were instructed to remove objects and practices judged contrary to the new order, while churchwardens became responsible for the condition and lawful use of parish buildings. Eamon Duffy’s study of the opening Elizabethan years shows how quickly communities again dealt with altars, roods, images, books and ceremonial equipment. Within one generation parishes could pay to restore objects under one monarch and then sell, alter or remove them under the next.
At Loxwood the surviving evidence records the result more clearly than the exact process. During Edward VI’s reign the medieval altar stone had been removed from the chapel and hidden in the priest’s house, the former oratory. Mary’s restoration authorised stone altars and the Mass again, but no surviving record used here shows that the original Loxwood stone was returned to the chapel. When Elizabeth’s Prayer Book came into force in 1559, the medieval altar stone remained hidden inside the priest’s house.
Church Cottage preserved other elements of the first oratory in open structural form. The chancel arch, lower rood beam, mortices associated with the rood, reused medieval door and roof timbers survived because the building had become domestic accommodation beside the later chapel. The government no longer authorised the uses for which some of those timbers and fittings had originally been made. Timber that had once divided nave and chancel became part of a house; the hidden altar remained physically present while the public rite beside it used a communion table and English prayer.
The surviving sources used for this project contain no itemised Elizabethan churchwardens’ account for Loxwood and no record of a royal visitor entering the chapel or Church Cottage. They show that the chapel operated under the 1559 settlement, the medieval altar survived in concealment, and the priest’s house retained fabric from the original sacred building. Visitation records from other Sussex parishes show what officials required elsewhere, but they do not prove that a visitor personally inspected Loxwood.
William Barlow and Chichester, 1559-1568
John Christopherson’s short episcopate ended during the opening months of the reign, and William Barlow became Bishop of Chichester in 1559. Barlow had been a reforming bishop under Henry VIII and Edward VI and had been deprived after Mary’s accession. His return placed Chichester under a bishop committed to the Protestant settlement at the same time that parishes were changing their services and furnishings.
Barlow had to do more than distribute a new book. Nearly thirty years of royal religious policy had produced local differences in practice. A circular sent by Archbishop Matthew Parker to Barlow and the other bishops in 1564 complained of variation in the position of the communion table, the place from which services were read, the posture of communicants, the use of a font or basin in baptism and the retention or omission of the sign of the cross. Parker required bishops to identify such differences and pursue a more consistent order. The correspondence required Barlow to make Chichester clergy follow the 1559 settlement in parish practice.
Baptism was one of the rites Barlow had to supervise. Elizabeth’s Prayer Book retained infant baptism in English and retained the sign of the cross. The font remained a recognised piece of church furniture, yet Barlow’s diocesan world contained clergy who varied in the way the rite was administered. More than two decades later the Wisborough Green register would record a baptism performed at Loxwood itself. The later register records a baptism at Loxwood; Barlow’s correspondence shows why bishops were already supervising how clergy performed that rite.
Barlow also inherited a bishopric whose landed wealth was being reduced. Elizabethan legislation allowed the Crown to take episcopal lands during vacancies in exchange for impropriated rectories and other revenue. The older diocesan history records a severe reduction in Chichester’s landed resources during this period. For centuries the bishopric had combined spiritual jurisdiction with manors such as Amberley and Drungewick. During Elizabeth’s reign some estates passed from the see, while the bishop continued to supervise clergy, worship and church discipline.
Drungewick Changes at the Beginning of the Reign, 1559-1560
Drungewick had been closely connected with Loxwood since the thirteenth century. The Bishops of Chichester developed the moated manor as a northern residence with a private chapel and a staurum, a provisioning establishment that held livestock and supplies for the episcopal household. Bishop Robert Rede and Bishop Richard Praty had conducted diocesan business there in the fifteenth century. By the mid-sixteenth century the Crown was redistributing ecclesiastical property, and Drungewick was passing out of the bishopric.
The surviving house carries a precise Elizabethan date. Historic England records the year 1559 in the east gable of Drungewick Manor. The date belongs to the same year as Barlow’s appointment and the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. The date fixes building work at the manor in the opening year of the new settlement: while the chapel at Loxwood changed its service book, work at the former episcopal manor left 1559 embedded in the standing fabric less than two miles away.
The records show the manor passing out of episcopal ownership. Project research drawing upon Dallaway and the Elizabethan exchange legislation traces Drungewick out of the bishopric during the opening years of the reign; a later conveyance of 1605 described it as having recently formed part of the possessions of the Bishopric of Chichester. The bishops also stopped using Drungewick as a provisioning base around this period. The manor continued as an occupied landed estate, while the bishop’s household, clerks, chaplains, horses and stores no longer came there as part of the manor’s old episcopal role.
The Bishop of Chichester remained responsible for the clergy and worship of Loxwood after Drungewick passed from episcopal ownership, but he no longer maintained a household at the nearby manor. Diocesan orders reached the parish through Chichester, the archdeacons, visitations, parish clergy and written instructions. The manor still stood close to the chapel, but the bishops no longer used it as their northern residence and provisioning base.
Pallingham Quay and the River Arun, 1560
In 1560 Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, improved the River Arun for navigation between Stopham Bridge and Pallingham Quay in Wisborough Green. The work carried navigable water into the parish to which Loxwood belonged and linked the northern Weald more closely with the Arun valley and the coast.
River transport mattered because the heavy clay roads imposed limits on bulky goods. Timber, grain, iron, building material and other cargoes could move more economically by water once they reached a usable wharf. Pallingham stood south-east of Loxwood within the same broad parish landscape. Farm tracks and local roads connected holdings to the river, while the Arun connected Pallingham with Pulborough, Arundel and coastal trade.
Henry Fitzalan had been prominent in Mary’s accession and remained one of the greatest landholders in western Sussex. His estate resources helped improve a route used by merchants, boatmen and carriers. Estate officers and traders could now combine road and river transport through Pallingham on a route that passed close to Loxwood’s mother parish.
The surviving Loxwood records do not identify a cargo dispatched from the chapel lands through Pallingham in 1560. The trustees nevertheless held fields, houses and rent-bearing property in a district where the new river works made bulky goods easier to move. Their rents still depended upon productive land and tenants, while farmers, merchants and carriers had a stronger route towards markets and the coast.
The Prayer Book and the Religious Year at Loxwood
Elizabethan worship changed what clergy and congregations did in the chapel through the week and through the Church year. Morning Prayer, the Litany and Holy Communion were supplied in English through the Book of Common Prayer. Baptism, marriage, burial and the thanksgiving of women after childbirth also had prescribed English forms. Sermons and catechism placed explanation alongside the repeated words of common prayer. The bell continued to call a congregation, while the authorised content of the service now emphasised hearing, reading and congregational responses in the vernacular.
The calendar retained Sundays and a reduced body of holy days, including major feasts of Christ and biblical saints. St John the Baptist remained within that calendar. Loxwood’s ancient dedication continued to name the chapel and its patronal feast, although the authorised treatment of saints changed. The official service honoured the scriptural figure of John as preacher, baptiser and forerunner of Christ. The former practices of invoking saints, maintaining devotional images or funding intercessory Masses no longer belonged to the authorised parish order.
Loxwood remained a chapel within Wisborough Green parish, and the mother church retained the larger parochial identity established by the medieval grant. The exact pattern of Elizabethan attendance between chapel and mother church is not preserved in the sources used here. The two buildings belonged to one legal parish, and parish officers at Wisborough Green carried responsibilities for registers, poor relief, church discipline and other obligations that reached households living in Loxwood.
Bishop Rede’s grant had specifically authorised the purification or churching of women at Loxwood because the distant journey to Wisborough Green created practical hardship. The Elizabethan Prayer Book retained a service titled the Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth. Its words and theology were Protestant, but women still had an authorised service after childbirth. The surviving sources used here do not record a particular Elizabethan churching at Loxwood.
Scripture and the Language of Worship, 1560-1582
English Scripture expanded rapidly during Elizabeth’s reign. The Geneva Bible appeared in 1560, produced by Protestant exiles who had spent Mary’s reign on the Continent. Its compact formats, numbered verses and extensive notes made it influential in private reading and among reform-minded clergy. The book trade made copies available, although surviving evidence shows that ownership varied between households. No Geneva Bible is identified in the Loxwood records used for this article, and no local household or chapel copy should be assumed.
Matthew Parker and the bishops sought a Bible more closely associated with the established Church. The Bishops’ Bible was first printed in 1568. It was intended especially for ecclesiastical use and remained an important church Bible through the later Elizabethan period. Provincial instructions in 1571 encouraged the provision of a copy in churches where this could conveniently be done. Bishops and churchwardens had to carry out the instruction in the same churches where they enforced Prayer Book conformity.
The Great Bible inherited from Henry VIII’s reign also continued in use in many places, while several other English translations circulated at the same time. Clergy could preach from one version, a church could possess another, and a household might own a Geneva New Testament, psalter or devotional book. The surviving Loxwood evidence establishes the institutional route through Wisborough Green and Chichester while leaving individual ownership unrecorded.
Catholic biblical translation also entered the English-language world. The New Testament printed at Rheims in 1582 supplied an English Catholic text produced by scholars in exile. It belonged to a religious community excluded from public control of the parish Church yet still participating in the same expansion of vernacular print. By the later reign Protestants and Catholics disputed doctrine through competing English texts as well as through Latin theology, sermons, proclamations and law.
At Loxwood the surviving evidence establishes the language of public worship more securely than the ownership of a particular Bible. Public worship used the English Book of Common Prayer after 1559. Scripture was heard in English through lessons, psalms, the Litany, Communion and preaching. No surviving source used here identifies the Bible edition kept in Loxwood chapel or Wisborough Green church at a particular date.
Parish Registers and Written Family Memory, from 1565
The Tudor Reformation had already introduced a new form of local record keeping. Henry VIII’s 1538 injunctions required parish clergy to record baptisms, marriages and burials. Survival is uneven because early books could be lost, replaced or copied. For Wisborough Green, the surviving general register covering baptisms, marriages and burials extends from the 1560s, with the parish series beginning in 1565.
The register placed baptisms, marriages and burials into a continuing written sequence. A baptism recorded a child’s entry into the Church; a marriage recorded a public union with legal consequences; a burial recorded a death and burial in consecrated ground. The register did not replace memory, kinship or inheritance deeds. It added a recurring parish record that could later support questions of age, legitimacy, settlement and family descent.
Because Loxwood remained part of Wisborough Green parish, events at the chapel could appear in the parish-wide register. Much of Loxwood’s earlier history survives through deeds, episcopal grants and trustee records. From the 1560s the register also recorded recurring events in the lives of local families.
The parish register and the chapel trust recorded different parts of local life. The trustees preserved title to land and responsibility for the chapel; the vicar and parish officers preserved baptisms, marriages and burials. Successive trustees and parish officers had to continue both records across generations. A trustee deed renewed legal ownership before the last holder died; a parish register created a chronological series in which successive families could be followed. Elizabethan government increasingly relied upon such local writing for ecclesiastical discipline, taxation, poor relief and proof of status.
Petworth, the Percys and the Northern Rising, 1569-1572
Religious conflict became more politically dangerous during the 1560s. Mary, Queen of Scots, entered England in 1568 after losing power in Scotland and became a focus for Catholic hopes and diplomatic schemes. The following year Thomas Percy, seventh Earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville, Earl of Westmorland, led the Rising of the North. Their movement combined noble grievances with a public restoration of Catholic worship in parts of northern England.
Thomas Percy had a direct western Sussex connection through Petworth. Mary I had restored the Percy earldom and family honours in 1557, returning an old noble name to the lordship that had long shaped the region around Petworth. The same earl now became one of the leading rebels against Elizabeth. His principal political power lay in northern England, but the Petworth title connected one of Elizabeth’s leading Catholic rebels with western Sussex.
The rising failed. Northumberland escaped into Scotland, was later handed over to English authority and executed at York in 1572. In the same year Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, was executed after involvement in plans surrounding Mary, Queen of Scots. The political world around the great Catholic families had become increasingly dangerous as marriage schemes, foreign diplomacy and religious allegiance converged.
No surviving record used here shows a rising at Loxwood or names a Loxwood resident among Northumberland’s supporters. Justices, sheriffs, commissioners and bishops were expected to identify disobedience and protect the queen’s authority. The chapel trustees continued to manage local property under men whose surnames – King, Irelond, Mills and Laker – belonged to the immediate district rather than to the great noble conflicts. The Percy lordship at Petworth nevertheless linked western Sussex property with one of the principal rebels.
Richard Curteys and Diocesan Teaching, 1570-1582
After William Barlow’s death in 1568 the see remained vacant until Richard Curteys became Bishop of Chichester in 1570. Curteys inherited a diocese in which conformity had been legally required for more than a decade while practice remained uneven. The older diocesan history presents him as an energetic preacher who travelled through Sussex with other learned clergy and worked to improve the quality of teaching.
Preaching carried the settlement beyond the words printed in the Prayer Book. A sermon explained Scripture, doctrine and moral obligation in spoken English and allowed bishops to respond to local ignorance or disagreement. Curteys also participated in the wider programme of supervision associated with Archbishop Parker. Instructions of 1571 required churchwardens to prevent public prayer or sacramental ministry outside the authorised Book of Common Prayer and to ensure that teaching and preaching were carried out by licensed ministers.
These rules gave churchwardens direct responsibilities for worship as well as for parish property. They maintained the fabric, accounted for parish money, presented offenders and helped enforce attendance and lawful worship. A bishop in Chichester could issue or transmit an instruction, an archdeacon could inspect compliance, and churchwardens in a rural parish could be required to answer for the condition and practice of their church.
Loxwood’s trustees held a different office. They held property for the chapel rather than serving as the parish’s statutory churchwardens. Their rents and deeds sustained the local building, while the vicar, churchwardens and Bishop of Chichester regulated its services, clergy and doctrine. This division had existed in different forms since the foundation of 1404.
Recusancy, Puritanism and the Enforcement of Conformity
Religious conformity became more politically charged after 1570. Pope Pius V’s bull Regnans in Excelsis excommunicated Elizabeth and declared her subjects released from obedience to her. English Catholics did not respond in one uniform way: many continued to attend parish worship, some withdrew from communion, some paid recusancy penalties, and a smaller number became involved with missionary priests or political schemes. The Crown increasingly treated overseas Catholic organisation and domestic recusancy as questions of security as well as belief.
Parliament tightened the law in stages. The 1581 statute increased penalties for absence from Church of England worship and made efforts to withdraw subjects from allegiance to the queen a serious offence. The arrival of seminary priests trained at Douai, Rome and elsewhere led to further legislation in 1585. Churchwardens, constables, justices and bishops supplied the local machinery of enforcement. Their records could identify non-attendance, refusal of communion, harbouring of priests or possession of prohibited Catholic material.
Chichester diocesan records show officials pursuing these policies across Sussex. Visitation returns name recusants in a number of parishes and record households suspected of harbouring priests. The Catholic Gage family at Firle and the Pole family at Lordington belonged to the county’s better-known recusant networks. A 1587 report on Sussex justices also distinguished officials by the strength of their conformity and by connections with recusant relatives or tenants. Religious allegiance could affect officeholding, household reputation and official surveillance.
Some Protestant clergy also resisted the authorised settlement because they wanted further reform. Several Sussex ministers refused subscription or questioned Prayer Book ceremonies. Archbishop Whitgift suspended a group of clergy and required explanations concerning baptism, the sign of the cross, confirmation and the authority expressed in ordination. Amberley, one of the old episcopal centres south of the Weald, appears among the benefices affected by this dispute. Bishops and archdeacons enforced the Prayer Book against Protestant nonconformity as well as investigating Catholic recusancy.
No surviving source used for this article places a named Loxwood inhabitant in either camp. The wider diocesan evidence cannot be converted into a claim about individual Loxwood inhabitants. Wisborough Green churchwardens and parish officers belonged to the enforcement structure, the Bishop of Chichester supervised the clergy, and Loxwood’s trustees maintained the chapel and its property. In February 1587 a baptism was recorded at Loxwood while Sussex officials elsewhere in the diocese were naming recusants and questioning ministers about conformity.
Arundel and the Politics of Catholic Conformity
Arundel entered the religious politics of the reign through the Fitzalan and Howard families. Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, had helped Mary secure the throne in 1553 and remained a major figure during Elizabeth’s early years. His daughter Mary Fitzalan had married Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk. Their son Philip Howard inherited the earldom of Arundel through his mother’s family in 1580, bringing the great castle and its estates into the Howard line.
Philip Howard became openly Catholic in the 1580s and attempted to leave England in 1585. He was arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London and attainted in 1589. He died there in 1595 after a decade of confinement. By then the Crown increasingly treated Catholic association, overseas contact and refusal of conformity as matters of state security shaped by plots and war with Spain.
Arundel Castle stood south of Loxwood on one of the principal routes connecting the Western Weald with the coastal plain. Its household and estates employed officers, tenants, craftsmen and carriers. Philip Howard’s imprisonment and attainder affected management, patronage and local authority across a wide property network even while ordinary tenancies continued.
The chapel trustees at Loxwood held a small local endowment through collective title, while the Earl of Arundel held a great estate that the Crown could affect through imprisonment and attainder. The Loxwood trust continued through deeds concerning fields and rents. The ownership and control of Arundel, by contrast, became entangled with treason law and Philip Howard’s Catholic allegiance.
Thomas Bickley and the Condition of Sussex Churches, 1585-1596
Richard Curteys died in 1582, and after another vacancy Thomas Bickley became Bishop of Chichester in 1585. Returns from his primary visitation in 1586 record church fabric, clergy, sermons, catechising, attendance, communion and religious dissent across Elizabethan Sussex. The returns concern parishes elsewhere in the diocese rather than Loxwood itself, so they show the questions Bickley’s officials were asking clergy and churchwardens across Sussex.
A properly ordered church was expected to be clean and maintained, with walls whitened and biblical sentences displayed. Earlier stone altars had generally been removed from their Catholic positions, and visitation complaints could note the unpaved place where an altar had stood. Communion tables, fonts, pulpits, Prayer Books and written Scripture were now required for the authorised services. Parishioners still had to pay for repairs and furnishings, and some churches remained neglected.
The visitation also records weaknesses among the clergy. Quarterly preaching could be treated as an acceptable minimum in some contexts, while several parishes lacked regular sermons. Catechising children and servants on holy days was repeatedly expected. Wednesday and Friday prayers were another point of supervision. Bickley’s officials continued to enforce these requirements more than twenty-five years after the settlement of 1559.
Bickley’s diocese contained both Protestant ministers who resisted prescribed ceremonies and Catholics who avoided church or communion. Archbishop Whitgift suspended several Sussex ministers who refused subscription to the Prayer Book. Other records presented householders who retained Catholic books, harboured priests or rejected communion. Bishops, archdeacons and magistrates used visitations, presentments and courts to enforce one authorised order.
The surviving Loxwood evidence is more limited. The 1587 register entry proves that the chapel was administering baptism within this same diocesan system. No surviving record used here names a Loxwood recusant, a suspended minister or an Elizabethan churchwarden dispute. The regional returns show the questions officials asked elsewhere in Sussex; the Wisborough Green register records one sacrament actually performed at Loxwood.
A Baptism at Loxwood, February 1587
The most direct surviving record of worship at Loxwood during Elizabeth’s reign appears in the general register of Wisborough Green. On a page within the baptismal sequence for February 1587, the clerk recorded that a child was ‘bapt[ised] at Loxwood’. The surviving project source identifies the register as West Sussex Record Office Par/210, covering baptisms, marriages and burials from 1560 to 1670. The brief phrase fixes an Elizabethan baptism to Loxwood itself.
Baptism in 1587 used the Book of Common Prayer. The minister received the child within a service containing Gospel reading, prayers, promises made by godparents, water and the sign of the cross. The rite was conducted in English. Parker’s earlier correspondence with Bishop Barlow had shown that baptismal practice could vary in details such as use of a font or basin and the sign of the cross, making episcopal supervision necessary. The Loxwood register gives the place and the baptism but does not name the vessel, minister or exact ceremonial details.
The entry also connects directly with the purpose of the medieval foundation. The 1404 grant had been obtained because distance from Wisborough Green hindered access to worship and pastoral care. The larger chapel of the fifteenth century extended that provision. By 1587 the chapel was serving a rite of Christian initiation that created a parish register entry while remaining administratively part of Wisborough Green. The sacrament took place locally while the mother church maintained the parish register.
The chapel’s dedication to St John the Baptist also had a direct connection with baptism. John baptised in the Jordan and remained an authorised biblical saint in the Elizabethan calendar. A child baptised in the chapel bearing his name entered the Church through a rite whose words had changed from the medieval Latin manual to the English Prayer Book. The chapel retained its medieval dedication, but the minister now used the English rite authorised by Elizabeth’s Church.
The entry sets a clear limit on what can be claimed. It proves that baptism could take place at Loxwood in February 1587. It does not identify the frequency of baptisms there, the size of the congregation, the private beliefs of the family or the precise furnishings then present. Those questions require further register, visitation or churchwardens’ evidence.
The Spanish Armada and Sussex Defence, 1588
The following year brought the greatest foreign military crisis of Elizabeth’s reign. Philip II of Spain assembled the Armada to enter the Channel and support an invasion force from the Low Countries. English government had prepared for war through ships, coastal fortifications, beacons, musters and county levies. In July 1588 the Spanish fleet moved through the Channel while English squadrons followed and attacked it before the Armada passed into the North Sea.
Sussex faced the Channel and formed part of the defensive preparations. Surviving references collected for the county record arrangements for arms, lances and light horses, coastal notification and the organisation of local resources. Justices of the peace and deputy lieutenants turned royal orders into county preparation. Ports and coastal towns watched the sea, while inland roads carried men, horses, food, powder, timber and messages towards the coast.
Loxwood lay inland, yet its economy supplied exactly the kinds of resources on which mobilisation depended. Farms produced grain and livestock; woods supplied timber and fuel; smiths maintained iron fittings and tools; carts and horses moved goods along the routes to Horsham, Petworth, Arundel and Chichester. The surviving sources used here identify no named Loxwood man in the 1588 muster and no specific consignment from the chapel lands. The surviving evidence supports a connection through county administration and the working economy, not a specific Loxwood military episode.
The Armada crisis also intensified the political meaning of religion. England fought the Catholic monarchy of Spain while the government feared cooperation between foreign enemies and domestic Catholic networks. Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, was already imprisoned. Recusancy, seminary priests and correspondence abroad received closer scrutiny. In 1588 Sussex parish officers continued ordinary worship and record keeping while county authorities prepared for war and investigated possible disloyalty.
After the Armada failed, churches held sermons, prayers and public thanksgiving. The victory did not end war with Spain, and the 1590s continued to require taxation, naval expenditure and coastal vigilance. County officers still depended upon local roads, estates, horses, carts, food and labour when they carried out royal orders in the Western Weald.
The Chapel Lands and Everyday Work through the Long Reign
John King’s 1558 property settlement remained in force through Elizabeth’s long reign. The trustees held Stevynsfield, Cokkes, Baldwynnes and Calletehaw. A field generated crops, grazing or rent. A tenement with garden and meadow required tenants, fences and drainage. A messuage and croft required roofs, timber, hedges and access. The trustees depended upon rents and productive land to pay for the chapel’s continuing needs.
Woodland remained one of the principal resources of the Western Weald. Oak supplied building and repair timber, while underwood supplied fuel, poles, hurdles and charcoal. The regional iron industry increased demand for charcoal and transport during the sixteenth century, and concerns about the pressure of ironworks upon timber became a recognised subject of government. Loxwood’s surviving chapel deeds do not identify a furnace belonging to the trust, yet trustees and tenants lived in an economy where woods could be valuable for agriculture, building, fuel and industry at the same time.
Mills, livestock and household production added other work. The 1554 deed for Bruers had already recorded a messuage, stables and a watermill in the local landscape. Grain had to be grown, carried and milled; horses needed fodder and shoeing; cattle and pigs used pasture and woodland; cloth and leather connected household labour with markets. The river improvement at Pallingham widened the transport network available to the parish, while roads towards Horsham, Petworth and Guildford remained essential for smaller loads and daily movement.
The chapel itself required regular expenditure. A roof, bell, windows, seating and interior surfaces needed maintenance regardless of changes in theology. The Prayer Book, Bible, communion vessels and other authorised furnishings had to be obtained and maintained. The trustees used income from endowed property to pay for the building and the practical requirements of worship.
The names of the trustees also identify local families with property and standing. The 1558 group included King, Mills, Irelond and Laker, surnames that recur in later local records. Their authority came through landholding, reputation and the legal capacity to receive and convey title. The trust did not depend upon one family holding the estate indefinitely. It required surviving holders to transfer the estate before the legal chain failed. John Irelond, appointed in 1558, survived long enough to take part in the next recorded renewal in 1615.
Poverty, Harvest and Parish Responsibility, 1597-1601
The later 1590s brought serious economic pressure across England. Population growth, price inflation and a sequence of poor harvests increased the number of households vulnerable to high food prices and irregular employment. Parliament responded with legislation that made organised poor relief a regular parish duty rather than leaving support only to voluntary almsgiving or occasional local action.
The statutes of 1597 and 1601 established the mature Elizabethan poor-law system. Each parish was expected to raise money for people unable to support themselves and to appoint officers to administer relief and work. Churchwardens and overseers assessed households, collected the rate and identified people who needed help. Justices of the peace supervised the statutory system at county level.
Loxwood still belonged to Wisborough Green parish. It had its own chapel and trustees, but the poor rate and statutory officers belonged to Wisborough Green’s parish government and covered households in Loxwood as well. The chapel trust could support its own religious purposes; the parish carried a separate statutory obligation towards poverty.
The chapel trust and the poor law placed different duties on local officeholders. Medieval chapel trustees held land and used its income to support worship. Elizabethan parish officers were required by Parliament to collect and distribute money for poor relief. Both systems depended upon named officeholders, written accounts and enforceable local duties. The surviving sources used here do not identify an individual Loxwood recipient in 1601, so the direct evidence is that Loxwood households came within the poor-law responsibilities of Wisborough Green parish.
Anthony Watson and the Last Elizabethan Years, 1596-1603
Thomas Bickley died in 1596 and Anthony Watson became Bishop of Chichester. Watson carried the diocese through Elizabeth’s final years and into the accession of James I. By this stage the Book of Common Prayer had governed public worship for more than forty years, yet bishops still supervised conformity, clerical qualification, communion and recusancy through visitations and written returns.
At the turn of the reign the Chichester records contain detailed returns about parish worship and clergy. In 1603 Archbishop John Whitgift sent bishops a series of questions seeking information about communicants, recusants, clergy and benefices. The surviving answers were returned after James I had succeeded Elizabeth, particularly from the Archdeaconry of Lewes, and they count adults receiving communion and identify people who refused it. They belong formally to the opening of the Stuart reign, but the questions and reporting methods had developed under Elizabeth.
The successive Bishops of Chichester had spent the reign enforcing these requirements. Parker’s concern about fonts, tables, vesture and posture required Barlow to pursue greater uniformity. Curteys emphasised preaching and licensed ministry. Bickley’s visitations examined catechising, church repair and communion. Watson inherited parishes accustomed to answering detailed questions about clergy and worship.
Loxwood supplies different evidence for the same period. The 1587 baptism records sacramental ministry in the chapel. The trustees continued to hold land for its support. Church Cottage retained the medieval frame and hidden altar beside a chapel whose public worship used the Elizabethan Prayer Book. The foundation of 1404, the later medieval chapel, the sixteenth-century alterations and the trustee property all remained connected with the site.
Elizabeth Dies and James I Succeeds, 1603
Elizabeth died at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603 after a reign of more than forty-four years. James VI of Scotland succeeded peacefully as James I of England, bringing the English and Scottish crowns under one monarch. James was the great-grandson of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII, through her marriage to James IV of Scotland. Proclamations, prayers and official records changed to the new royal name while county, parish and diocesan officers continued their work.
Anthony Watson remained Bishop of Chichester and carried the diocese into the Stuart reign. The Book of Common Prayer remained the public liturgy pending the Hampton Court Conference and later Jacobean adjustments. English Bibles remained in churches and households, with the Bishops’ Bible and Geneva Bible still in circulation. James soon called the Hampton Court Conference and authorised the translation project that produced the Bible published in 1611.
At Loxwood the chapel entered the new reign as a functioning place of worship within Wisborough Green parish. The 1587 register had recorded baptism there, the chapel lands remained held for the foundation, and Church Cottage still contained the surviving fabric of the first oratory and the concealed altar stone. Drungewick no longer served as the Bishop of Chichester’s nearby household, while Pallingham’s improved river route and the parish register had changed transport and record keeping in the local area during Elizabeth’s reign.
John Irelond of Rudgwick provides a direct link beyond 1603. He was one of the six men who received the chapel property in 1558 and survived into the next recorded renewal in 1615. He then conveyed responsibility into another group containing members of the King, Napper, Mill or Phillippe, Ireland and Laker families. He had served as a trustee from Elizabeth’s opening year into the government of James I. The chapel estate continued through another conveyance of trustees.
James I’s reign would bring the Hampton Court Conference, the 1611 Bible and the next recorded renewal of the Loxwood chapel trustees in 1615. Elizabeth died with Loxwood chapel still operating within Wisborough Green parish and the Diocese of Chichester.