Introduction
On 23 April 1702 Anne was crowned in Westminster Abbey. Within weeks her government declared war on France and Spain. Ministers raised armies, Parliament voted supply, merchants and contractors furnished war material, and bishops ordered prayers while the Queen’s government asked the country for money. The European alliance prepared under William III had become Anne’s war.
The war reached Sussex chiefly through taxation, customs, excise, government borrowing and the supply economy. Chichester, Arundel, Petworth, Horsham and the market towns stood inside the county network through which orders, assessments, elections and supplies moved. In the Western Weald, farms, mills, woodland holdings and rent-bearing property produced the goods and cash from which public charges had to be met.
A direct Loxwood event followed in 1703. John Mille, a London merchant, inherited Brewhurst with its house, stables, orchards, barns, gardens and two mills. The transaction came while builders were remaking the principal timber-framed ranges of Brewhurst House. The 1703 deed places the house, mills and agricultural buildings beside the River Lox in Anne’s second year, while the European war entered another campaigning season.
Anne Is Crowned and England Enters the War, April-May 1702
Anne’s coronation took place on St George’s Day, 23 April. Gout made walking difficult and Yeomen of the Guard carried her through the Abbey in an open chair. The anointing, oath and crowning nevertheless followed the public language of monarchy established after the Revolution. Anne swore as a Protestant sovereign under the succession created by statute, and bishops took their places in a ceremony that joined Crown and Church at the opening of the reign.
The European crisis was already waiting for the new government. Charles II of Spain had died without children in 1700. Louis XIV supported his grandson Philip of Anjou as Philip V of Spain, while the Habsburg claimant, Archduke Charles, was backed by powers determined to prevent the French and Spanish crowns from falling under one Bourbon interest. William III had organised the Grand Alliance before his death. Anne inherited its commitments and entrusted the principal English field command to John Churchill, whom she created Duke of Marlborough later in the year.
England, the Dutch Republic and the Emperor declared war on France and Spain in May 1702. The conflict spread across the Low Countries, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. English soldiers served abroad, the navy convoyed trade and attacked enemy shipping, and Parliament had to provide money every year. Bills, taxes, recruiting, shipping, prices and credit carried the war into English towns and villages long before a battle report arrived in a parish.
For western Sussex the Channel gave the war a close geographical edge. Chichester Harbour, the approaches to Portsmouth and the coast between Selsey and the Isle of Wight lay beside naval routes used by fleets and convoys. Inland roads carried grain, livestock, timber, horses and manufactured goods toward the coast. Loxwood stood beyond the Downs and away from the dockyards, but the farms and mills of the Weald belonged to the same southern economy that supplied the towns, ports and government contractors.
War Money and the Property of the Western Weald
Parliament financed Anne’s war through repeated annual grants of supply. Land tax, customs, excise and borrowing all contributed. The financial system developed in William III’s reign allowed ministers to borrow against parliamentary revenue and spend before every tax had been collected. The Bank of England, government securities and a growing market in public debt made sustained campaigning possible across more than a decade.
The land tax brought the war back to property. Assessors converted land, rents and local wealth into sums due. A farm might hold cattle, hay, wheat, oats, carts, tools and money owed by neighbours; a mill might combine machinery, water rights, grain stocks and rent; woodland could produce timber, poles, fuel and income. Kirdford probate inventories from the wider period record precisely this mixture of livestock, crops, implements, household goods, stock in trade and debts. The Kirdford inventories show the kinds of property from which households across the heavy Weald clay derived income and met charges.
Cash had to be found even where wealth stood in fields, barns and sheds. A farmer could sell an animal or grain, collect money due, or use rent and produce to meet an assessment. A miller received payment for grinding and converted local harvests into flour and meal. Traders and carriers linked the villages with Horsham, Petworth, Guildford, Arundel and Chichester. These transactions supplied the cash from which collectors received parliamentary taxes.
Parliament voted supply; county and local officers assessed property; farms and businesses turned produce and services into cash. Sussex records allow that system to be followed from parliamentary grant to county assessment and local payment. The same countryside that had funded royal government under William now faced a longer and more expensive war.
Harvest, Milling and the Cash Demands of War
The annual rhythm of farming followed weather, soil and season, while Parliament fixed dates for public payments. Land had to be ploughed when weather and soil allowed, hay cut and dried, grain harvested, animals wintered and timber felled at workable seasons. Heavy Wealden clay made timing especially important because prolonged rain could turn roads and fields into ground difficult for carts and horses.
A tax demand required money on the date fixed by government. Grain could be sold after threshing, cattle or pigs could be taken to market, rent could be collected from a tenant and woodland produce could be sold to craftsmen or carriers. A household with substantial goods could lack ready coin until produce had been marketed. Government collectors ultimately received cash produced by these sales, rents and payments.
Milling stood in the middle of the process. Grain brought to a watermill had to be cleaned, ground and returned as flour or meal. The miller needed a functioning wheel, sound water control, millstones, timber gearing and access for customers. Brewhurst’s deed evidence places mills within an estate of barns, orchards and stables, with several forms of agricultural and milling income joined on one holding.
The roads then carried produce outward. Horsham offered a major market to the east; Petworth drew estate and market business to the west; Billingshurst and Pulborough connected the Weald with routes toward the Arun. Pallingham gave the southern part of Wisborough Green parish access to river movement. Farmers, millers and carriers used these documented markets and routes to turn rural produce into the money required for rent, wages and tax.
John Mille Inherits Brewhurst, 1703
In 1703 the Brewhurst deeds record John Mille, a London merchant, inheriting the messuage called Bruhurst. The property included stables, orchards, barns, gardens and two mills. The list describes a working estate in which the house stood among productive buildings and land. Buildings for people, animals and crops surrounded the dwelling, while milling added water, machinery and trade to the holding.
The deed belongs to the same period as a substantial rebuilding of Brewhurst House. A modern structural assessment dates the principal surviving two-storey timber-framed ranges to about 1700 and records extensive reuse of older oak. Carpenters assembled two joined ranges, and a large brick inglenook fireplace heated the south end. A bread oven formerly stood behind it. The surviving frame dates this building phase to the years around Anne’s accession.
John Mille lived in London, while the estate lay beside Brewhurst Lane and the River Lox. Ownership at a distance required local occupation and management. Roofs, barns and fences needed repair; orchards and gardens needed labour; the mills had to be operated or let; tenants and servants dealt with the estate on the ground. The 1703 deed records a developed Brewhurst holding containing two mills and a group of agricultural buildings.
The rebuilding can be read directly in the surviving frame. The principal ranges use heavy posts, beams and roof timbers assembled as a two-storey house, while older pieces were cut and reused where they could serve again. Reuse saved valuable oak and carried material from an earlier phase into the new structure. Brickwork at the great hearth concentrated cooking and heating around a permanent chimney. The rebuilt ranges formed part of the farm and mill complex recorded in the estate deeds.
The orchards and barns named in the inheritance added seasonal work to the property. Fruit had to be picked and stored or sold; grain and hay moved into barns; livestock required stable space and fodder. The two mills represented capital tied to machinery, buildings and power sources, and their value depended upon maintenance as well as ownership. The deed records the number and variety of productive parts inherited with Bruhurst.
Myll, Mille and Mills occur in earlier Brewhurst records, and the stone bridge on Brewhurst Lane carries the initials J.M. with the date 1672. Abraham Mills had dealt with property near Loxwood Bridge in 1700. John Mille’s 1703 deed records his inheritance of Bruhurst; the recurring surname alone cannot establish the exact kinship between all of these people.
The Great Storm Strikes Southern England, November 1703
During the night of 26-27 November 1703 a violent storm crossed southern England. Parish registers in different counties recorded churches and houses damaged, trees blown down and ships lost. The storm destroyed roofs, chimneys and timber in a few hours and turned the Channel into a graveyard for naval and merchant vessels.
The Sussex coast lay directly in its path. The Royal Navy advice boat Eagle had been at anchor in St Helen’s Bay when the storm broke. After her cables failed and her masts were cut away in an attempt to keep her upright, the vessel drove before the wind and broke up near Selsey. The surviving record states that the crew were saved. The wreck occurred on the coast of the same diocese whose northern parishes reached into the Weald around Loxwood.
The storm acted upon the materials that filled the Western Weald. Oak-framed houses, barns, thatched and tiled roofs, orchards, hedges and woodland all stood exposed to the wind. Brewhurst had just passed to John Mille with orchards, barns, stables and mills. Loxwood Place, Fletchings, the chapel properties and the houses along the road were built principally from timber, brick, stone and tile.
Government ordered a national day of fasting and prayer after the disaster. Clergy preached about providence while naval administrators counted lost ships and repaired the fleet. Shipyards, insurers, merchants and householders dealt with the physical damage left by the storm.
Queen Anne Redirects Church Revenue to Poor Clergy, 1704
In 1704 Anne made one of the most durable church measures associated with her reign. She surrendered the Crown’s income from First Fruits and Tenths for the support of poorer Church of England livings. A corporate body, the Governors of the Bounty of Queen Anne for the Augmentation of the Maintenance of the Poor Clergy, administered the fund.
First Fruits and Tenths had originated as payments from benefices. After the break with Rome the Crown had received them. Anne redirected that revenue toward clergy whose livings produced too little income. The governors could use money to augment poor benefices, including through the purchase of land whose rent then supported the incumbent. The measure dealt with a practical problem: a parish priest could carry legal responsibility for worship and pastoral care while receiving an income too small to support a household adequately.
John Williams, Bishop of Chichester, took part in the new system. In November 1705 he attended a meeting of the Queen Anne’s Bounty commissioners. As Bishop of Chichester he governed the diocese containing Wisborough Green and Loxwood while serving on a body that directed money towards poorer benefices.
Queen Anne’s Bounty used surrendered Crown revenue to augment poor benefices. Loxwood’s dependent chapel drew support from property held by its local trustees, while the mother parish at Wisborough Green possessed the benefice to which the chapel was attached. The two funds came from separate property and were administered by different bodies.
Blenheim Changes the War, 1704
The military crisis of 1704 centred on the Danube. French and Bavarian forces threatened Vienna and the Habsburg position in the Empire. Marlborough marched his army from the Low Countries toward southern Germany, joined Prince Eugene of Savoy and fought the Franco-Bavarian army at Blenheim on 13 August.
The allied victory broke the immediate threat to Vienna and destroyed a large enemy army. Thousands were killed, wounded or captured. The battle made Marlborough the most celebrated English commander of the age and strengthened the Grand Alliance. Anne rewarded him and Parliament thanked the commanders, while printed accounts, sermons, medals and public celebrations carried the victory through England.
Victory also guaranteed more expenditure. A successful army had to be paid, clothed, armed and fed through the next campaign. Horses consumed fodder; soldiers consumed bread, beer and meat; uniforms required cloth and leather; muskets, swords, wagons and harness required metalwork and repair. Contractors bought from producers far beyond the battlefield, and parliamentary revenue underwrote the contracts.
Grain passed through mills such as Brewhurst; cattle and sheep moved between farms and markets; woodland produced building timber and fuel; horses and carts carried goods over difficult clay roads. Parliamentary taxes and government credit drew money from this ordinary economy while Marlborough’s army fought in Bavaria.
Victory Enters the Church Calendar
Military victories entered public worship as well as army dispatches. The Crown appointed days of public thanksgiving when news such as Blenheim reached England. Bishops and clergy received orders, churches held services and sermons interpreted victory within the language of providence, duty and national deliverance. Bells, prayers and preaching carried an event fought hundreds of miles away into the weekly and seasonal rhythm of parish worship.
The 1662 Prayer Book supplied the ordinary services, while special forms could be ordered for particular national occasions. Clergy added prayers for the Queen, the royal family, commanders and the success of the Queen’s armies and fleets to the public religious response to war. A congregation could hear biblical lessons and psalms on Sunday and later assemble under a special order marking a battle, fast or national danger.
National thanksgiving orders passed through bishops and clergy to the Church of England’s parishes and chapels. Diocesan channels carried the orders into local worship, where ministers read appointed prayers and preached on the named occasion.
After disaster the Crown ordered fasting and prayer; after victories it ordered thanksgiving. National events entered parish religion through named days, ordered services and sermons. The bell summoned people, the minister read the appointed material and the congregation heard events placed inside the language of public worship.
Petworth and the Duke of Somerset at Anne’s Court
Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset, brought the great Petworth estate into Anne’s reign as a courtier as well as a landowner. His marriage to Elizabeth Percy had placed the Percy inheritance in their household, and Petworth House had recently undergone its great rebuilding. Anne appointed Somerset Master of the Horse, giving a western Sussex magnate a senior office at court while the war expanded.
The office placed Somerset near the Queen and among ministers, commanders and courtiers competing for influence. His estates gave that position a regional base. Petworth employed stewards, servants and craftsmen, collected rents and dealt with tenants across western Sussex. Roads from Kirdford and Plaistow ran toward Petworth, and market and estate business connected the great house with the same countryside in which Loxwood families farmed and traded.
Somerset also exercised political influence. Elections at Chichester and other Sussex constituencies took place in a world where great landowners recommended candidates, maintained friendships and mobilised tenants or associates who possessed votes. The electorate was limited, but the decisions of the resulting Parliament affected everyone through taxes, war legislation and church law.
The duke’s politics shifted during Anne’s reign. He quarrelled with ministers and later opposed the Tory peace policy. From Petworth, Somerset possessed a large Sussex landed interest while he participated at court and in Parliament in disputes over the war, the ministry and the Protestant succession.
The 1705 Election Brings Party Politics into Sussex
The general election of 1705 turned arguments about war and the Church into contests for seats across the counties and boroughs. Whigs attacked Tory attempts to attach an Occasional Conformity measure to financial legislation, while Tories used the cry that the Church was in danger from dissent and Whig doctrine. Ministers needed a Commons prepared to vote war supply, and both sides treated elections as part of the struggle over religion as well as foreign policy.
Sussex peers entered the contests openly. Charles Lennox, Duke of Richmond, set up Sir Thomas Littleton at Chichester in the Whig interest. At Lewes, Richmond and Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset, appeared on the bench to support Whig candidates. The sheriff ordered the two peers away because peers had no right to participate directly in the poll.
Petworth gave Somerset a large estate interest within the county. He could recommend candidates, use friendships and patronage and appeal to tenants or freeholders who possessed the franchise. The legal poll belonged to qualified electors, and the sheriff at Lewes enforced that boundary when the two dukes appeared on the bench.
Around Loxwood, qualified electors could travel to vote according to the franchise; most inhabitants could not. Printed speeches, sermons and reports carried the language of Whig, Tory, war and Church beyond the electorate. The Commons returned in 1705 went on voting war supply and legislation that reached property, consumption and parish life across the district.
John Williams Ordains Clergy at Chichester, Advent 1706
Bishop John Williams supplied a more direct church event in December 1706. The episcopal register records an Advent ordination at Chichester in which he admitted four men as deacons and seventeen as priests. Only five of the ordinands belonged to his own diocese, showing Chichester serving a wider clerical network as candidates came for orders under a bishop authorised to ordain them.
Ordination changed a man’s legal and religious status. A deacon could assist in worship and ministry; a priest could celebrate Holy Communion, pronounce absolution and perform the sacramental and pastoral duties assigned by the Church. Bishops examined candidates, required testimonials and imposed hands in the cathedral service. The cathedral register then recorded the men admitted to orders.
The Chichester ordination occurred while Parliament and ministers were handling the Union and while Marlborough’s army was exploiting the victory at Ramillies. Williams attended ecclesiastical commissions in London, including Queen Anne’s Bounty business, and returned to Chichester to ordain clergy. His recorded work moved between the commissioners’ meetings in London and the cathedral service at Chichester.
The Advent register records the men whom Williams admitted to orders at Chichester. Loxwood depended upon ordained clergy appointed through the mother parish at Wisborough Green, so episcopal ordination supplied the clerical body from which parish and chapel ministry was drawn.
Ramillies, the Low Countries and a Second Sussex Wreck, 1706
Marlborough returned to the offensive in 1706. On 23 May he defeated Marshal Villeroi at Ramillies. The victory forced French armies out of much of the Spanish Netherlands and brought a succession of fortified towns under allied control. The allied army had converted the financial resources voted at Westminster and The Hague into another major continental success.
The Channel and Atlantic routes carrying troops, dispatches and trade were equally important. In November 1706 the warship Hazardous, a former French vessel captured in 1703 and taken into Royal Navy service, was returning from America with a convoy when bad weather drove her ashore between Selsey and East Wittering. Her captain ran the ship aground at high water to save the crew. The wreck later entered official records because government account papers from Virginia had been lost with her.
Hazardous had itself changed sides during the conflict. Built as a French warship, she was captured by the Royal Navy in 1703 and refitted for Royal Navy service. In 1706 she was returning from the Chesapeake in company with a large convoy. When the captain ran her ashore between Selsey and East Wittering to save the crew, papers connected with Virginia government accounts were lost with the wreck.
The captain chose to beach the vessel when the weather and shallow water made escape impossible. Running ashore sacrificed the hull in an attempt to save the crew. Salvage and official inquiry followed, and the wreck was later sold from Portsmouth. War at sea depended upon decisions made in minutes by captains and crews, while the aftermath generated inventories, accounts and legal records on land.
The wreck placed the global war on the Chichester coast. A ship captured from France, serving the English Crown and carrying papers from an American colony ended on the sands near Selsey. Chichester merchants, coastal inhabitants, naval officers and officials dealt with a conflict extending from Flanders to the Chesapeake while inland Sussex paid taxes and supplied markets.
Anne and Parliament Drive the Union Forward, 1702-1707
The question of England and Scotland had been left unsettled when the reign began. The two kingdoms shared a monarch but had separate parliaments, laws, taxation and established churches. Their succession policies had diverged after the English Act of Settlement fixed the Crown upon the Protestant Hanoverian line. Scottish politicians could use the succession question to bargain over trade, sovereignty and relations with England.
Anne opened negotiations for union in 1702. The first attempt failed amid disagreements over trade and constitutional terms. The dispute sharpened during the following years. English legislation placed pressure on Scotland over succession and commerce, while Scottish acts asserted the right to choose a successor under conditions different from those fixed at Westminster. War with France made the prospect of separate succession especially dangerous because a hostile power could support James Francis Edward Stuart and seek influence through Scotland.
In 1706 commissioners from both kingdoms met in London. They agreed the central terms quickly: England secured acceptance of the Hanoverian succession; Scotland secured access to English colonial markets and commercial privileges. The remaining articles dealt with representation, taxation, coinage, trade, courts and public administration. On 23 July the sealed Articles were presented to Anne at St James’s Palace.
England and Scotland ratified the agreed articles through their separate parliaments before union took effect. The Scottish Parliament debated the articles through the winter and gave royal assent in January 1707. The English Parliament followed in March. The legislation fixed 1 May as the day on which the two kingdoms would become one kingdom called Great Britain.
Great Britain Begins, 1 May 1707
On 1 May 1707 England and Scotland became the Kingdom of Great Britain. Anne’s royal style changed with the new state, and one Parliament of Great Britain was created at Westminster. Scotland sent forty-five members to the Commons and elected sixteen representative peers to sit in the Lords. The Hanoverian succession established by the English Act of Settlement was incorporated into the union settlement.
The union preserved important Scottish institutions alongside the new British Parliament. Scotland kept its own system of private law and its principal courts. Its universities and education system were preserved. Separate legislation protected the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, while the Church of England retained its establishment in England. From 1 May 1707 one Parliament legislated for a kingdom whose two parts retained different established churches and legal systems.
At Loxwood the immediate change appeared in law, royal style, taxation and parliamentary authority. Statutes, proclamations, taxation and military policy now came from the Parliament and Crown of Great Britain. Chichester’s bishop governed an English diocese within the new kingdom; Wisborough Green and Loxwood kept their existing English parish and diocesan jurisdictions.
Union also widened the political meaning of the Protestant succession. James Francis Edward Stuart could no longer hope that England and Scotland would choose different monarchs after Anne. Any attempt to restore him now challenged the succession of the united kingdom. That challenge reached the Scottish coast in 1708.
The Pretender Approaches Scotland, 1708
In 1708 Louis XIV supported an expedition intended to carry James Francis Edward Stuart to Scotland. A French fleet sailed with troops and the exiled prince, hoping that Scottish Jacobites would rise after a landing. The attempt gave physical form to the danger the union settlement had been designed to reduce.
British naval forces intercepted the expedition before it could establish a secure landing. Weather, pursuit and uncertainty prevented the French from putting James ashore, and the fleet returned. Anne escaped a second war at home while the main British army was fighting on the Continent.
The attempted landing forced naval commanders to guard against another French approach. Portsmouth and Chichester Harbour lay beside the routes protecting the Channel, and Sussex had recent experience of naval danger at Beachy Head and of wrecks during the Great Storm.
The same year brought another change at court when Prince George of Denmark, Anne’s husband and Lord High Admiral, died on 28 October. Naval administration passed into other hands at a moment when the sea had just prevented a Jacobite landing. Anne lost the person who had shared her household for twenty-five years while the government faced both continental war and a succession still contested from France.
Oudenarde and the Cost of a Long War, 1708-1709
On 11 July 1708 Marlborough defeated a French army at Oudenarde. The allies then captured Lille after a hard siege. These successes pushed French forces back and encouraged allied leaders to demand greater concessions from Louis XIV.
The next campaign showed the cost. At Malplaquet on 11 September 1709 Marlborough and Prince Eugene drove the French from a strong defensive position, but allied casualties were enormous. Families, taxpayers and politicians faced another campaign, another grant of supply and another list of dead and wounded after a battle counted as an allied victory.
War weariness affected debates about ministers and peace. Land tax and excise supplied revenue after both glorious and costly campaigns. Government borrowing accumulated obligations that would outlive the campaign. The fiscal state built under William and expanded under Anne could sustain war, but sustaining it changed politics at home.
In the Western Weald farms had to make rent and tax payments from crops and animals. Millers depended on harvests and water. Estate owners managed debts and leases. Parliamentary supply drew money from property and trade while the army fought far beyond Sussex.
John Williams Dies and Anne Chooses Thomas Manningham, 1709
John Williams died on 24 April 1709. His death created a vacancy at Chichester in the middle of the war and at a moment when appointments to bishoprics carried party significance. Anne selected Thomas Manningham, Dean of Windsor and one of her chaplains, for the see. He was consecrated Bishop of Chichester on 13 November and entered the House of Lords in December.
Manningham’s appointment brought a court preacher into the diocese. He had served at St Andrew’s, Holborn, held a canonry at Windsor and preached before the Crown. His career had been made through court preaching and offices in the established Church before he came to Sussex. Once consecrated, however, his legal jurisdiction extended over Chichester clergy and parishes, including Wisborough Green and its dependent Loxwood chapel.
The appointment disappointed Whig churchmen who had hoped for a different choice, and Manningham’s later votes did not follow a simple party line. Anne’s nomination placed him over the Diocese of Chichester as disputes about the Church and the Revolution settlement intensified.
Manningham’s recorded actions in Anne’s final years included service in the Lords, preaching, Queen Anne’s Bounty business, confirmations and the government of clergy. His surviving record places him in Parliament, at court and in diocesan administration.
Sacheverell’s Trial Draws the Bishop of Chichester into the Crisis, 1710
Henry Sacheverell, a Church of England clergyman, turned arguments over revolution and conformity into a national confrontation. In a sermon preached on 5 November 1709 he attacked principles associated with Whig government and portrayed the Church as endangered by dissent and political doctrine derived from resistance to kings. The Whig ministry chose impeachment, giving Sacheverell a public trial before the House of Lords in 1710.
Thomas Manningham sat among the bishops when the impeachment opened on 27 February. On 15 March, during the trial, he preached the general fast sermon before the Lords. His sermon spoke about the diminished worldly position of the clergy and used provocative language about restoring former church property. The speech drew criticism in the chamber and put the new Bishop of Chichester directly into the controversy.
When the Lords moved toward judgment, Manningham avoided a straightforward party vote. He was present during the proceedings but did not cast a final vote on Sacheverell’s guilt. Whig observers were angered by his absence and Marlborough was surprised that the bishop appeared to have moved toward Sacheverell’s side. Within months of his consecration, the Bishop of Chichester had preached before the Lords and then withheld a final vote in the trial dividing Parliament and the Church.
Sacheverell was found guilty but received a relatively mild punishment. Crowds treated him as a defender of the Church, riots attacked dissenting meeting houses in London and the political reaction helped destroy the Whig ministry. Anne dismissed leading Whigs and a general election in 1710 produced a large Tory majority. A sermon and an impeachment had changed the government directing the war.
Western Sussex already contained Anglican parishes and Protestant dissenting traditions. Kirdford had lost a Presbyterian minister at the Restoration; Billingshurst had hosted licensed Presbyterian worship in the 1670s; Quakers had suffered prosecution in Sussex. Those histories gave practical meaning to the new arguments over conformity as Sacheverell’s case divided opinion across the country.
The Tory Ministry Changes the Direction of the War, 1710-1712
Robert Harley and Henry St John became the leading ministers of the new Tory government. They wanted peace and distrusted the political power accumulated by Marlborough and his Whig allies. Negotiations with France began while British forces remained in the field.
Marlborough’s relationship with the court also collapsed. Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, had lost Anne’s confidence, and political disagreements deepened the personal breach. In December 1711 the Queen dismissed the duke from his offices. The general who had won Blenheim, Ramillies and Oudenarde left command while ministers prepared terms to end the war.
The government needed support in the House of Lords, where Whigs and allied peers could obstruct the peace programme. Anne created twelve peers at the end of 1711 and gave the Tory ministry additional votes in the chamber.
Charles Seymour of Petworth broke with the Tory ministry and opposed its peace policy. Petworth’s owner had served Anne at court but now stood among peers challenging the terms on which Britain might leave the alliance. His principal Sussex estate lay only a few miles from Kirdford, Plaistow and the villages surrounding Loxwood.
Occasional Conformity and Protestant Dissent, 1711-1712
The Tory majority also changed the law governing Protestant dissent. The Occasional Conformity Act received royal assent in December 1711 and took effect in 1712. It targeted officeholders who qualified for public office by receiving Anglican communion as required by the Test and Corporation Acts and then attended dissenting worship.
The Toleration Act protected licensed Protestant dissenting worship. The new statute targeted officeholders who took Anglican communion to satisfy the sacramental test for office and then returned to a dissenting meeting house. Parliament again joined public office to communion and religious allegiance without repealing the basic toleration granted in 1689.
In western Sussex dissent already possessed meeting places, ministers and family networks. A Dissenter could trade, farm or inherit property while worshipping outside the parish church, but public office brought additional tests. Constables, overseers, churchwardens, justices and other local officials could have their legal qualifications scrutinised.
The statute altered the conditions under which a Dissenter could hold public office throughout England. In Sussex, Anglican parishes and licensed meeting houses stood within travelling distance of one another, so communion, officeholding and dissent could concern the same local families and magistrates.
Manningham Governs the Diocese after the Sacheverell Crisis, 1710-1713
Manningham returned from the parliamentary crisis to diocesan work. In December 1710 he attended business connected with Queen Anne’s Bounty. During 1711 correspondence and records show him dealing with clergy, financial difficulty and confirmations.
For confirmation, clergy presented instructed candidates to a bishop. Families could travel to an appointed church when the bishop did not come to their own parish. Manningham’s surviving disputes over confirmation arrangements record him deciding when and where that service would be administered.
Wisborough Green and Loxwood lay within Manningham’s jurisdiction, and their clergy were subject to the licensing, discipline and orders issued through the Diocese of Chichester. His Anne-period record includes confirmation and clergy business across the diocese.
The Peace of Utrecht Ends Britain’s War, 1713
Britain signed the principal peace treaties at Utrecht in April 1713. The settlement ended British participation in the War of the Spanish Succession and accepted Philip V as king of Spain under conditions designed to prevent union of the French and Spanish crowns. France recognised Anne and the Protestant succession established in Britain.
Britain obtained important strategic and commercial gains. Gibraltar, captured in 1704, passed into British possession under the treaty, and Britain also secured Minorca and trading advantages. France recognised the Protestant succession and withdrew formal support from James Francis Edward Stuart’s claim to the British Crown.
Peace left the debts accumulated during the war to be serviced from future revenue. Taxes and public credit had financed campaigns before current revenue was available; investors expected repayment from future income. After Utrecht, ministers and Parliament had to service those debts and decide which wartime taxes and financial arrangements would survive.
For the Western Weald the immediate result was the end of annual British campaigning and the taxes and prices shaped by a wartime economy. Farmers, millers and landholders had paid into a state that could wage war abroad. Utrecht stopped the British campaigns, but the fiscal and parliamentary system built to sustain them would shape the eighteenth century.
Two Tories Are Returned at Chichester, 1713
A general election followed in 1713. Chichester returned two Tories while the Tory ministry defended the Utrecht peace and the established Church against Whig criticism.
Great landowners competed for influence across Sussex, and the Chichester election was conducted through the borough’s freemen, patrons and local interests. Manningham’s recorded activity in 1713 concerned the diocese and the House of Lords, while Chichester’s freemen returned the borough’s members.
Loxwood had no parliamentary borough and no separate representative. Some landholders in the district could possess county voting qualifications, while many labourers, servants, women and poorer householders had no parliamentary vote. The Commons elected in 1713 would decide taxation, trade and legislation for those households as well as for electors.
Manningham’s surviving records also indicate diocesan visitation activity in 1713. From Chichester he dealt with clergy and church discipline while the borough’s freemen sent two Tory members to Westminster.
The Schism Act Reopens the Question of Education and Conformity, 1714
The final parliamentary session of Anne’s reign brought another measure directed against Protestant dissent. The Schism Act required schoolmasters and tutors covered by its provisions to obtain episcopal licence and conform to the Church of England. Dissenting academies and private teachers were the principal target because they educated children outside Anglican control.
Education brought religious regulation into weekday teaching. A school taught reading, writing, accounts and religious doctrine; a dissenting academy could prepare ministers and professional men. The Act required the schoolmasters and tutors covered by it to seek episcopal licence and conform to the Church of England.
Thomas Manningham was Bishop of Chichester when Parliament placed these new licensing powers in episcopal hands. Any schoolmaster or tutor covered by the Act within the Diocese of Chichester would have required the episcopal licence specified by Parliament.
The Act was due to take effect on 1 August 1714.
The Protestant Succession Becomes an Immediate Crisis, Spring-Summer 1714
Anne’s health deteriorated while ministers divided over the succession and the peace. The legal heir under the Act of Settlement and Union was Sophia, Electress of Hanover, followed by her Protestant descendants. James Francis Edward Stuart had supporters in Britain and the backing of Jacobite networks abroad. Anne’s failing health turned the succession into immediate government business.
Thomas Manningham joined the Lords in April when the succession was debated. He voted with the majority of bishops that the Protestant succession was secure under Anne’s government and then supported a stronger address concerning the removal of the Pretender from Lorraine. His votes placed the Bishop of Chichester directly inside the dispute that would determine Anne’s successor.
Sophia died in May, before Anne. Her son George, Elector of Hanover, now stood first in the statutory Protestant line. Ministers prepared for the Crown to pass to a prince living in Germany while watching Jacobite supporters who hoped to create a rival government.
Charles Seymour also re-entered the succession struggle. The Duke of Somerset had broken with the Tory ministry and aligned with peers determined to secure the Hanoverian settlement. His court rank and the landed interest represented by estates such as Petworth gave a western Sussex magnate a place among the peers manoeuvring during the final days of Stuart government.
Anne Dies and George I Succeeds, August 1714
At the end of July Anne dismissed Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, from the Treasury. Her health then collapsed. Senior ministers and peers gathered as the government tried to prevent a vacancy in executive authority. Anne placed the treasurer’s staff in the hands of the Duke of Shrewsbury, and arrangements for the statutory succession moved forward while she lay dying at Kensington Palace.
Anne died on 1 August 1714. On the same day the Schism Act was due to take effect. George, Elector of Hanover, inherited the Crown under the statutory Protestant succession while the new restrictions on dissenting education reached their appointed commencement date.
George, Elector of Hanover, became George I under the Act of Settlement and the Union. The succession ended the Stuart monarchy on the British throne. James Francis Edward Stuart and his supporters kept the Stuart claim alive, and rebellion would break out in 1715.