1714-1727: George I, Jacobite Rebellion, Dissent, Finance and the Western Weald

George filled senior offices with Whigs who had consistently defended the Hanoverian succession and removed leading Tories from Anne’s final ministry. Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, was later impeached; Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, and James Butler, Duke of Ormond, fled abroad. Ministers treated Jacobite organisation as an immediate security problem while individual Tories took different positions on the Stuart claim.

George’s first Parliament met on 17 March 1715 after a general election. The Whigs secured a commanding position in the Commons. Parliament now had to vote revenue, deal with the former ministers, strengthen the new succession and respond to rumours that armed resistance was being prepared for James Stuart.

Thomas Pelham-Holles used great Sussex estates and borough interests to support the Hanoverian regime. His influence helped Whig candidates in the election of 1715, and George created him Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in August. Newcastle’s political strength rested partly on Sussex land, tenants, electoral connections and family alliances.

Chichester also returned members to the first Hanoverian Parliament. The city’s electorate chose within a borough where families, corporation officers and patrons had competed through the previous reigns. Parliamentary representation for Loxwood came through the Sussex county election, where qualifying freeholders could vote. Statutes and taxes passed by the Commons applied throughout Wisborough Green parish to electors and non-electors alike.

Petworth, a Fire and a Divided Political Family

Petworth entered the new reign as the principal seat of Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset, and Elizabeth Percy. Their rebuilding of the great house had begun in the late seventeenth century. A fire in 1714 damaged the house and brought further work. Louis Laguerre was later commissioned to paint the grand staircase, adding another major decorative campaign to a building already transformed by the Seymour and Percy wealth.

Somerset had supported the Hanoverian succession during Anne’s final months, but his family gave him a direct connection with Tory opposition. Sir William Wyndham, a leading Tory and Somerset’s son-in-law, became involved in the Jacobite plans of 1715. Government officers arrested Wyndham in September. He escaped briefly, surrendered on the advice of Somerset and was committed to the Tower of London.

Somerset had helped secure George’s succession. His son-in-law Wyndham was imprisoned during the attempt to overturn it. Estate officers continued to manage Petworth while ministers dealt with Wyndham in London.

The roads from Loxwood to Kirdford and Petworth carried ordinary estate and market traffic during the same months. Carriers moved produce, servants travelled between houses, and tenants dealt with stewards while national officials searched for conspirators elsewhere. Loxwood’s surviving records for 1715 concern chapel property and parish administration.

The Jacobite Rising of 1715

John Erskine, Earl of Mar, left London for Scotland and raised the Stuart standard at Braemar in September 1715. He called men to support James Francis Edward Stuart, the son of James II, and assembled the largest Jacobite force yet raised against the government created after the Revolution and Union.

The rising developed on two fronts. Mar gathered Highland and Lowland support in Scotland. Another Jacobite force crossed into northern England and hoped to attract additional supporters in Lancashire. Government troops and local forces blocked the movement before the rebellion could spread through the southern counties.

The English Jacobites reached Preston. Government troops surrounded them there in November, and the rising in England ended with surrender and imprisonment. In Scotland, Mar met the Duke of Argyll at Sheriffmuir on 13 November. Parts of both armies drove back their opponents, but Mar failed to exploit his numerical strength and withdrew without destroying the government force.

James landed in Scotland in December, after the main opportunities had passed. He joined the remaining Jacobites at Perth but found an army short of supplies and confidence. Government pressure increased, the Jacobites abandoned Perth, and James left Scotland in February 1716. The first major attempt to replace George I had failed within eighteen months of Anne’s death.

Ministers responded with arrests, forfeitures, military precautions and new law. Officials searched letters and houses, watched ports and pursued men accused of corresponding with the exiled court. Sussex lay far from the main fighting, yet its coast, roads and justices formed part of the same national system of watchfulness. The Loxwood deeds and parish records for these years record land, chapel trustees and parish administration.

Clergy prayed for the king and royal family, preached loyalty and used public worship to distinguish the Protestant succession from the Catholic Stuart claim. At Loxwood those services fell within William Booth’s cure of Wisborough Green and its dependent chapel, under Thomas Manningham, Bishop of Chichester.

The Riot Act and the Septennial Parliament, 1715-1716

Parliament gave magistrates a new procedure for serious public disorder. The Riot Act authorised specified local officials to read a proclamation ordering an unlawfully assembled crowd to disperse. A group that remained after the statutory period faced severe penalties. The law gave mayors, sheriffs, justices and other authorised officers a written form of command that could be used before troops or constables broke up a riot.

Elections, Sacheverell demonstrations, attacks on dissenting meeting houses and the uncertainty around George’s accession had shown ministers how quickly crowds could become part of a party struggle. Sussex justices received the same statutory powers as magistrates elsewhere, including authority to use the proclamation when the legal conditions were met.

Parliament also changed the interval between general elections. The Triennial Act had limited the maximum life of a Parliament to three years. The Septennial Act of 1716 extended the maximum to seven unless the Crown dissolved Parliament earlier. The Parliament elected in 1715 remained legally able to sit for as long as seven years from its first meeting.

In Sussex, the longer maximum reduced the frequency with which Newcastle’s interest, Petworth’s political connections, Chichester’s borough families and Horsham’s burgage holders had to contest a general election. County freeholders around Loxwood retained the same voting qualification while their MPs could remain in the Commons for longer before another election.

The Prince of Wales Passes through Chichester, 1716

George I left Britain for Hanover in July 1716. Before sailing, he appointed his son George Augustus, Prince of Wales, Guardian of the Realm and his lieutenant during the royal absence. The appointment placed the thirty-two-year-old prince at the head of the government within limits set by the king and his ministers.

The Prince of Wales made a short progress through southern England while serving as Guardian. His route included Chichester, Havant, Portsmouth and Guildford. On 25 September 1716 he passed through Chichester, bringing the Hanoverian royal family into the diocesan city two years after the accession.

Chichester’s City Act Book records the mayor and common council assembled for the visit. Thomas Hammond was mayor. The corporation prepared a banquet for the Prince. The royal party continued along the road without stopping for it, and the councillors consumed the unused meal themselves before ending the day in festivity.

The Prince continued from Chichester through Havant and Portsmouth before the southern progress carried him back by Guildford. Chichester stood on the road between western Sussex and the Hampshire naval coast, while routes north from the city connected with the Downs and the Western Weald.

The Prince’s temporary authority also connected the visit with the defeated rising. Warrants issued in his name as Guardian dealt with public business while his father remained abroad, including the continuing custody of prisoners from the rebellion. George I returned from Hanover in January 1717 and resumed government in person.

William Booth and Worship at Loxwood

William Booth had been instituted to Wisborough Green in 1693, during the reign of William III and Mary II. The 1724 diocesan record still lists him as vicar and explicitly joins the mother church with the ‘capella de Loxwood’. Booth’s incumbency began under William and Mary and continued through Anne’s reign and most of George I’s reign.

The authorised service book remained the Book of Common Prayer of 1662. Morning and Evening Prayer, Holy Communion, baptism, marriage, churching and burial used the same English liturgy that had returned at the Restoration. George’s government kept the 1662 book in public use, so William Booth used the same authorised forms that had governed worship during Anne’s final years.

English Scripture was read within those services. The Bible published in 1611 had become the principal translation associated with the established Church, while other editions continued in circulation. The surviving Loxwood records identify Booth, his benefice and the chapel but contain no inventory of the books then kept inside St John the Baptist’s.

The chapel’s dedication to St John the Baptist remained in use. The Prayer Book calendar kept the Nativity of St John on 24 June. Sunday worship, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and the appointed holy days changed the lessons and prayers through the year. Baptism and the Thanksgiving of Women after Childbirth could be administered locally under the long-established chapel arrangement, while Wisborough Green retained the legal rights of the mother parish.

Burial drew families into the parish structure in another way. The historic rights protected when the Loxwood foundation was created left burial with the mother church. Loxwood families carried their dead to Wisborough Green for parish burial even when ordinary worship had been available at the chapel nearer home.

The trustees managed rent-bearing property and preserved legal title. William Booth served the cure as vicar. Bishop Manningham and his officials licensed clergy and exercised diocesan authority.

Queen Anne’s Bounty Continues under George I

The corporation founded by Anne in 1704 continued after her death. Its governors received First Fruits and Tenths, accepted benefactions and used the fund to augment poorer Church of England livings. Clergy poverty had outlived the queen whose name the corporation carried.

Queen Anne’s Bounty and the Loxwood chapel trust handled different property. The governors administered a national church fund. John Shudd, Richard Trower, John Butler and the other chapel trustees held local fields, houses and rents for St John the Baptist’s. William Booth held the benefice of Wisborough Green, to which the chapel belonged. Each body kept its own deeds and accounts.

The Bounty’s surviving ledgers also connect church finance with the South Sea Company during George I’s reign. On 6 April 1720 the Bounty appears to have purchased £13,907 of South Sea Company capital stock for £14,818. Later entries record South Sea bonds and annuities. The corporation that supplemented poor clergy placed part of its money in the same securities that became the centre of the 1720 speculation.

The South Sea Company’s trading rights had a further history beyond government debt. Under the settlement reached at Utrecht, the Spanish Crown granted the Asiento contract to Queen Anne, who passed it to the South Sea Company. From 1714 to 1739 the company’s principal commercial activity was the forced transport and sale of enslaved Africans into Spanish America. Modern research into the Bounty ledgers has traced a direct financial connection between the church fund and South Sea Company securities during these years.

The local documents used for Loxwood identify Booth’s cure, the chapel trustees and their endowed property. The Bounty ledgers belong to a separate national account, but both sets of records show church institutions managing money and property through written title, investment and recurring income.

Thomas Sherlock at Chichester, 1715-1717

Chichester Cathedral received a new dean in November 1715. Thomas Sherlock already held the mastership of the Temple in London and had built a reputation as a preacher and churchman. His appointment placed a cleric closely involved in national argument at the head of the cathedral chapter while Manningham remained bishop.

Sherlock presided over the cathedral chapter, its canons, vicars, choristers, officers and property. Bishop Manningham governed the diocese. William Booth served Wisborough Green and Loxwood within Manningham’s diocesan clergy.

Sherlock’s Chichester office soon connected the cathedral with a dispute that reached the king, bishops and Convocation. Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Bangor, preached before George I in 1717 on the nature of Christ’s kingdom. His argument sharply limited claims that church officers could bind conscience by spiritual authority. High Church clergy saw the sermon as an attack on the authority of the visible Church.

Sherlock chaired the committee of the Lower House of Convocation that examined Hoadly’s sermon. The dispute produced pamphlets, sermons and replies. Before the committee’s report could proceed through the normal ecclesiastical stages, the Crown prorogued Convocation. Substantive meetings then ceased for the rest of George I’s reign.

While Sherlock and Hoadly argued over church authority, William Booth and other parish clergy continued baptisms, communion, marriages and burials under the existing Prayer Book. A dean of Chichester led the clerical opposition to a bishop who had preached before the king; the same diocese continued its ordinary services from week to week.

Newcastle and the Prince of Wales Quarrel at Court, 1717

George I’s relationship with his son deteriorated after the Prince’s Chichester progress. The immediate break came at the baptism of the Prince and Princess of Wales’s second son, George William, at St James’s Palace in December 1717. George I chose Thomas Pelham-Holles, Duke of Newcastle, as one of the child’s sponsors.

The Prince of Wales disliked Newcastle and confronted him after the baptism. He accused the duke of misconduct over the arrangements and told him that he would ‘find’ him out. Newcastle heard the Prince’s accented words as a threat to ‘fight’ him and believed that the heir to the throne had challenged the Lord Chamberlain to a duel.

George I treated the scene as a grave insult. He barred the Prince from St James’s Palace. George Augustus and Caroline moved to Leicester House, while their children remained in the king’s household. Leicester House then became a meeting place for politicians opposed to the king’s current ministers, including Robert Walpole and Charles Townshend during the Whig split.

Newcastle remained aligned with Stanhope and Sunderland. His Sussex estates and electoral influence continued to support the ministerial Whigs while his office as Lord Chamberlain had drawn him into George I’s quarrel with the Prince of Wales.

Parliament Removes Anne’s Additional Restrictions on Protestant Dissent, 1719

Anne’s final Parliaments had passed the Occasional Conformity Act and the Schism Act. The first targeted dissenting officeholders who received Anglican communion to qualify for office and then attended dissenting worship. The second sought to restrict dissenting schoolmasters and tutors. George’s Whig allies took a different course after the new dynasty had survived the 1715 rising.

Parliament repealed the Occasional Conformity and Schism measures in 1719. Licensed Protestant dissenting worship remained protected under the Toleration Act. The older Corporation and Test Acts still imposed Anglican sacramental qualifications for many public offices, so the repeal removed the newer Anne-period restrictions without creating full civil equality.

Western Sussex already contained Protestant dissenters who worshipped outside parish churches. Billingshurst had provided a licensed Presbyterian meeting place in the 1670s. Kirdford had lost a Presbyterian minister at the Restoration. Quakers had faced imprisonment in Horsham. By George I’s reign these histories had produced families and congregations with long experience of meeting outside the established parish system.

The new law affected teaching and officeholding more directly than the ownership of farms or houses. A Dissenter could inherit land, make a will, lease a field or buy livestock without becoming Anglican. Public office and religious education brought statutes into closer contact with belief and worship.

A General Baptist Meeting House at Horsham, 1719-1721

General Baptists secured a permanent site in Horsham during the same years. The site was registered for worship in 1719, and the surviving building was erected in 1720-21. Its original grant described a meeting place for Protestant dissenters called Anabaptists who lived in or near Horsham, Billingshurst, Slinfold, Shipley and Sullington.

The grant names Billingshurst, Slinfold, Shipley and Sullington alongside Horsham. Worshippers from those parishes travelled along the same roads used for markets, legal business and family visits.

The building was made of brick at a time when brick was becoming more visible in Sussex houses and public buildings. A dissenting congregation needed a roofed room, doors, windows, seating and legal security for the site. The 1719 registration and the 1720-21 building supplied those requirements in a town already used by Loxwood households for market and county business.

The surviving grant expressly includes Billingshurst among the parishes from which the congregation was drawn, placing the new dissenting building on the eastern side of Loxwood’s local network.

War with Spain and the Jacobite Attempt of 1719

George’s foreign policy returned Britain to war before the decade ended. Spain sought to recover Mediterranean possessions lost after the War of the Spanish Succession. Britain joined France, the Dutch Republic and Austria in the Quadruple Alliance, and British naval power was used against Spanish forces.

Spain also tried to use Jacobite opposition against George. A larger invasion plan was broken by weather and naval interception, but a smaller expedition reached the Scottish Highlands in 1719. Spanish troops joined Jacobite supporters who again hoped to raise the clans for James Stuart.

General Joseph Wightman defeated the Jacobite and Spanish force at Glenshiel on 10 June 1719. The rising never reached the scale of 1715. Spanish backing nevertheless joined a foreign war to the unresolved Stuart claim and reminded ministers that the succession could still be attacked through an overseas landing.

Sussex and Hampshire faced the Channel routes that connected Britain with continental war. Portsmouth remained the principal naval base on the south coast, while Chichester Harbour and the coast around Selsey lay near naval and merchant traffic. Roads and markets in the Western Weald continued to move grain, livestock, timber and other goods through the southern economy during another period of naval expenditure.

Horsham Builds a New Market Hall, 1720-1721

Horsham rebuilt its market hall at the beginning of the 1720s. Local records place construction around 1720, and in 1721 the borough MPs Charles Eversfield and Arthur Ingram signed an agreement to complete the work. Men who represented Horsham at Westminster were also named in the practical business of finishing a public building in the town.

The new hall rose as a two-storeyed building of Portland stone. Its north front had three bays, and a clock turret stood above the hipped roof. Market business now took place beside a substantial early-Georgian building whose stone, carpentry, glazing and clockwork had to be supplied, transported and paid for.

Horsham served farmers, carriers, tradesmen and officials from the north-western Sussex Weald. Roads through Billingshurst and the surrounding parishes brought rural produce towards the borough. Grain, livestock, timber, cloth, household goods and services could be exchanged in the same town where justices, attorneys and county officers conducted public business.

Horsham’s parliamentary elections depended on local property rights and burgage interests. Eversfield and Ingram served as MPs and signed the 1721 building agreement while the Parliament elected in 1715 remained in office under the Septennial Act.

Richard Pay Buys Brewhurst, 1720

The strongest Loxwood-area property transaction in George I’s reign came in 1720. Brewhurst had remained with the Myll or Mille family through the seventeenth century. John Mille, a London merchant, inherited Bruhurst in 1703 with stables, orchards, barns, gardens and two mills. The main surviving timber frame belongs to about that period and incorporates reused older timber.

In 1720 the Brewhurst property was sold to Richard Pay of Kirdford. House, farm, orchards, mills and associated land passed together as one working estate. The deed history records the change of owner while grain, timber, animals and people continued to reach the holding along Brewhurst Lane and the surrounding tracks.

Brewhurst Lane crossed the River Lox by the stone bridge built in 1672. The bridge’s two arches, central pier and cutwater carried carts and riders towards the mill and farm. The dated structure had already served the Mille estate for almost half a century when Pay bought Brewhurst.

A watermill required more than the wheel and millstones. Water had to be held and directed, banks and channels maintained, timber gears repaired and customers given access with grain. Pay’s purchase transferred rights and maintenance obligations tied to the stream as well as fields and buildings visible above ground.

Richard Pay came from Kirdford, a neighbouring parish whose farms and roads were already connected with Loxwood. In 1730 Pay entered the renewed Loxwood chapel trust. His trustee appointment belongs to George II’s reign; his purchase of Brewhurst belongs to 1720.

The South Sea Bubble, 1720

The same year produced a very different kind of property transaction in London. The South Sea Company had been created in 1711 to combine government finance with a promised trading monopoly. After Utrecht it held the British Asiento for supplying enslaved Africans to Spanish America while also taking a growing role in managing public debt. In 1720 Parliament approved a scheme under which the company would take over a large part of the national debt in exchange for its own stock and financial arrangements with the government.

The company’s share price rose dramatically. Investors bought in expectation of further rises, and other speculative companies appeared around the same boom. Credit, rumour and the prospect of quick profit drove prices far beyond the level that the company’s real trading business could justify.

The price then collapsed. Investors who had bought near the top lost heavily, confidence in ministers and company directors broke down, and Parliament investigated the conduct of people involved in the scheme. Queen Anne’s Bounty held South Sea stock bought in April 1720 and remained part of the company’s financial network after the crash. The Bank of England later described the collapse as the first financial crisis in its history.

Brewhurst changed hands through a deed during that same year. Richard Pay bought a house, mills, orchards, barns and land beside the River Lox. The London scheme dealt in transferable company stock and government debt. One 1720 transaction fixed title to a working rural estate; the other converted public borrowing into a speculative market in shares.

Public finance had already reached Sussex through land tax, customs on traded goods and the wider credit system inherited from William and Anne. The South Sea collapse affected government borrowing and confidence at the centre. Rural households continued to meet rent, wages, rates and taxes through the cash produced from land, milling, animals, timber and trade.

Walpole Returns to the Treasury, 1721

Robert Walpole returned to high office in April 1721 as First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He helped reconstruct confidence after the South Sea crisis and remained First Lord for more than twenty years. Later convention commonly treats him as the first British prime minister, although ‘prime minister’ was not then a formal office carrying the modern constitutional definition.

Walpole worked through the Treasury, the House of Commons, royal favour and political patronage. He needed majorities to pass supply and protect financial settlements. George still appointed ministers and took a direct interest in foreign policy, while the day-to-day management of the Commons gave Walpole increasing importance.

Sussex politicians operated inside that parliamentary system. Newcastle strengthened his place among the Whig managers, and county and borough seats gave the ministry or opposition votes at Westminster. Taxes, poor-law statutes and the legal rules governing dissent carried parliamentary decisions into Wisborough Green parish.

General Baptists Meet at Chichester, 1721

Chichester Baptist records place a General Baptist Assembly in the city on 31 May and 1 June 1721. The surviving denominational history treats it as the first recorded meeting of the Assembly outside London. Ministers and representatives travelled to the diocesan city while Sherlock was Dean of the cathedral and Manningham was Bishop of Chichester.

Chichester Cathedral’s dean and chapter worshipped under the Church of England settlement. The General Baptists met in the same city as legal Protestant dissenters under the Toleration Act. Each body kept its own ministers, meetings and forms of discipline.

Horsham’s new meeting house and the assembly at Chichester belonged to the same expanding dissenting network. Roads across Sussex connected the market town with Billingshurst, the Arun valley and the cathedral city. People travelling from the Loxwood district already used those routes for secular business; the religious records show Dissenters using the county’s towns for their own assemblies as well.

Settlement and Removal in Wisborough Green Parish, 1714-1727

Wisborough Green’s poor-law records run through George I’s reign. A person’s legal settlement determined which parish could become responsible when relief was required. Churchwardens and overseers examined claims, issued certificates and sought removal orders when they believed responsibility lay elsewhere.

The catalogue records removal orders for Archibald Blaire on 13 September 1714 and Anne Blaire on 5 October, only weeks after George’s accession. John Venn appears in a removal order dated 23 March 1716. An order concerning Elizabeth Woods on 13 January 1717 was discharged after the legal process reversed the proposed removal.

Further orders followed: Elizabeth Hedges in July 1718, Elizabeth Wilshire in March 1720, Thomas Coote in January 1721 and James Steere in July 1722. John Venn appears again in April 1724. The records continue with William Johnson and Hannah Steyning in 1725, Isaac Bennett and Thomas Pollington in 1726, and William Batchelor in May 1727.

Settlement certificates record another part of the system. A certificate could identify the parish that accepted responsibility for a person or family who lived elsewhere. Wisborough Green’s surviving series includes certificates for Hugh Goather in October 1723, James Michell in April 1724 and Richard Edwards in March 1726.

The catalogue indexes these names under Wisborough Green parish, which included Loxwood. Because the catalogue is parish-level, the named people may have lived in any part of the parish. Churchwardens, overseers, justices and neighbouring parishes decided which parish should pay when poverty crossed a parish boundary.

A Loxwood household could owe rent to the chapel estate and poor rate to the parish under separate legal obligations. The trustees held property for St John the Baptist’s chapel; Wisborough Green’s officers administered statutory poor relief and settlement.

Parliament Changes the Administration of Poor Relief, 1722-1723

Parliament altered the law of poor relief near the end of George’s first Parliament. The Poor Relief Act of 1722-23 allowed churchwardens and overseers, with the consent of parishioners assembled in vestry or another public meeting, to purchase or hire a house for lodging, maintaining and employing poor people. Small parishes could combine or contract with another parish.

The Act also allowed a parish using such a house to refuse ordinary relief to a poor person who would not enter the accommodation offered under the statutory scheme. From 25 March 1723 a justice was also required to hear evidence that a claimant had first sought relief from the parish before ordering payment over the objections of local officers.

Wisborough Green’s churchwardens and overseers acquired these statutory powers because the parish included Loxwood. The surviving Wisborough Green series for George’s reign consists of removal orders and settlement certificates, recording officers who continued to manage responsibility through the parish system while Parliament made the workhouse option available.

At Horsham, local records place poor-relief expenditure at about £705 in 1725. The parish decided to create a workhouse, borrowed £300 from the vicar and had justices including Henry Ingram, John Wicker and Charles Eversfield enter a building contract. The bond was guaranteed by churchwardens and overseers.

Horsham’s workhouse was recorded as established in 1727 near the parish church. A national statute had authorised a parish to gather poor people into a house, set them to work and contract for their maintenance; the Horsham vestry and officers then found money, premises and a contractor. Households in the Loxwood district used Horsham as a market and administrative town while that new institution was being created.

Three Bishops in Three Years, 1722-1724

Thomas Manningham died in 1722 after governing Chichester through the final years of Anne and the first eight years of George I. Thomas Bowers succeeded him. A surviving liber cleri compiled under Bowers in 1724 records Loxwood chapel directly.

Bowers’s survey entered ‘Wisborough Green cum capella de Loxwood’. The entry names William Booth as vicar, records his BA and associates him with Peterhouse, Cambridge. It places Loxwood in a formal diocesan list alongside the separate local record preserved by the chapel trustees.

The Latin entry states the relationship in compact form: Wisborough Green with the chapel of Loxwood. William Booth held the vicarage of the mother parish, and the Loxwood building remained part of the cure identified under his benefice.

Edward Waddington succeeded Bowers in 1724. He inherited a diocese whose country churches varied greatly in condition and activity. Surviving 1724 returns from other Sussex parishes record decayed fabric, irregular fittings and low numbers of communicants in some places. Houghton was reported without a Communion within living memory, and its table stood against the north wall without a rail.

Other returns allow comparison across time. Eastbourne, recorded with about 500 communicants in 1603, reported about 100 in 1724. Bexhill fell from 225 to 30 in the same comparison; Brightling from 195 to 40. Eastbourne, Bexhill and Brightling produced those figures; Bowers’s entry for Wisborough Green records Booth and the chapel at Loxwood.

The bishop’s authority reached the chapel through clergy licensing, visitation and discipline. Bowers and Waddington governed the clergy; Shudd, Trower, Butler and their fellow trustees preserved the property from which the local foundation drew support.

Richard Budgen Maps Sussex, 1724

A large survey published by Richard Budgen in 1724 gave Sussex a new county map during the same year as Bowers’s clerical survey. Budgen plotted towns, roads, the coast and navigable rivers across the county on one sheet.

For the Western Weald the map is valuable because roads mattered more than straight-line distance. Loxwood stood between routes towards Wisborough Green, Kirdford, Billingshurst, Horsham, Petworth and the Surrey border. Heavy clay, streams and seasonal mud could slow carts even where two places lay only a few miles apart.

The River Arun and its improved navigation remained part of the southern route through Pallingham and Pulborough. Brewhurst Lane crossed the River Lox at the 1672 bridge. Budgen’s county survey belongs to the period when these separate roads, bridges, rivers and settlements began to appear together with greater precision on printed maps.

Budgen recorded routes that carriers, clergy, land agents, magistrates and travellers already used. His map can be read beside deeds, poor-law papers and diocesan records that name journeys and places in the same county.

General Baptist Records at Horsham, 1724

General Baptist records place a denominational meeting at Horsham in July 1724. It took place only a few years after the new brick meeting house had been established there and while the Church of England was carrying out diocesan surveys under Bowers and Waddington.

Horsham’s dissenters also kept their own records. A register beginning in 1724 preserved births and other information for families who worshipped outside the established church. Anglican parish registers and dissenting registers now preserved different documentary trails within the same market town.

The grant for the Horsham meeting house had expressly named Billingshurst among the surrounding parishes from which its worshippers might come. Billingshurst lay on the eastern side of the Loxwood network. The assembly and register show a dissenting organisation capable of holding property, receiving people from several parishes and preserving its own written record during George I’s reign.

A New Organ in Chichester Cathedral, about 1725

Chichester Cathedral added a new chamber organ to the choir about 1725. Its case stood on the top of the Arundel screen, the stone structure that separated the choir from the nave. The instrument added a new piece of eighteenth-century furniture to a church whose medieval fabric had survived fire, Reformation, Civil War damage and Restoration repair.

The organ required money, a maker, transport, timber, metal pipes and continuing maintenance. Chichester Cathedral used the instrument in choir worship. At Loxwood, the trustees spent a much smaller income on the books, fabric, fittings and other needs of a dependent chapel.

Thomas Sherlock remained Dean when the organ was installed, and Edward Waddington was bishop. While sermons and pamphlets continued to argue over church authority, cathedral officers paid craftsmen, maintained the choir and kept the new instrument in use.

The Chapel Trustees through George I’s Reign

The Loxwood trustee list created in 1693 contained John Shudd the elder, John Shudd the younger, Richard Shudd, John Laker, Richard Laker, Edward Laker, John Butler the elder, John Butler the younger, Robert Handsher and Richard Trower. That body had been formed during William III’s reign and entered George I’s reign without a new conveyance.

Deaths gradually reduced the number of surviving legal holders. The next recorded renewal in 1730 identifies John Shudd of Loxwood, gentleman, Richard Trower of Loxwood, yeoman, and John Butler of Warnham, yeoman, as survivors. Those three names show which members of the earlier body carried title across George I’s thirteen-year reign.

Their work concerned land, rent and deeds. A trustee had to know which property belonged to the foundation, who occupied it, what rent was due and when too few surviving holders made another conveyance necessary. Long intervals between renewals increased the importance of preserving the documents and acting before the legal chain became too weak.

Richard Pay’s purchase of Brewhurst in 1720 added a future trustee to the immediate Loxwood property network. When the renewal came in 1730, Pay joined new trustees drawn from the King, Shudd, Laker, Trower and Napper families. Pay bought Brewhurst under George I and entered the recorded chapel trust under George II.

The chapel itself still stood beside the former medieval oratory incorporated into Church Cottage. The timber of the first sacred building and the concealed medieval altar stone remained on the site while William Booth served the established Church in the eighteenth-century chapel. The surviving structural sequence assigns no rebuilding phase at the site to the years 1714-1727.

George I Dies on the Road to Hanover, 1727

George continued to travel to Hanover during his British reign. His dual position required him to deal with government in both kingdoms, and royal yachts carried him across the North Sea on repeated journeys. In 1727 he set out again for Hanover and became ill during the journey.

George died at Osnabruck on 11 June 1727. His son, George Augustus, Prince of Wales, succeeded immediately as George II under the established Protestant succession. Jacobite supporters still recognised James Stuart’s rival claim.

Walpole remained at the centre of government. Edward Waddington remained Bishop of Chichester. Richard Pay held Brewhurst after the 1720 purchase. John Shudd, Richard Trower and John Butler remained among the surviving holders of the Loxwood chapel property.

Three years after George II’s accession, John Shudd, Richard Trower and John Butler conveyed the chapel property to a renewed body that included Richard Pay, members of the King family, Lakers, Trowers and Nappers. The poor-law statutes of the 1720s remained in force, while Loxwood chapel continued within Wisborough Green parish and the Diocese of Chichester.