Buckland, a Catholic Stronghold

TONY HADLAND ___________________________________________ Buckland, a Catholic stronghold The story of the first post-Reformation Catholic church in the Vale of White Horse, a precursor of others at Abingdon, East Hendred and Wantage. THE FORMER BERKSHIRE village of Buckland, since 1974 in Ox- fordshire, lies near the ancient ridgeway that once formed the Gloucester to London road and is now the A420. On 26th October 1846, in the heart of the village, the foundation stone was laid for a Roman Catholic church.1 The architect was the Yorkshire Catholic Charles Francis Hansom. He was the brother and sometime collabora- tor of architect Joseph Aloysius Hansom, inventor of the eponymous cab and founder of the journal The Builder. The new church was funded by ‘the pious munificence’ of Sir Robert Throckmorton, Baronet.2 In accordance with the cisalpine sentiments of the Throckmorton family, who sought to distance themselves from excessive papal influence, the church was dedicated to St George. From parts of their Buckland estate, the Throckmortons could see the Uffington White Horse, seven miles to the south. Just below the horse, they could also see Dragon Hill, on which St George was said to have killed the Dragon. Sir Robert’s chaplain, Canon Daniel Rock, conducted the foundation- stone ceremony. Bishop Thomas Griffiths, the highest ranked Catholic clergyman in England, granted him a special faculty to do so.3 At the Reformation, all former Catholic dioceses in England and Wales became Anglican. Thereafter, for nearly 300 years, there was no formal Catholic hierarchy, because the state would not allow it and thus the Vatican regarded England as missionary territory. There were no dioceses and instead of parishes, the church operated a network of covert ‘missions’, often based in the country house of a Catholic family. From the late 17C onwards, the Catholic church in England was overseen by four missionary bishops, known as Vicars Apostolic, each responsible for a missionary region. Each Vicar Apostolic was a titular bishop, meaning he was given the honorary episcopal title of a ‘dead diocese’ from times past. Thus, Thomas Griffiths was titular bishop of Olena (a Greek see suppressed in 1432) but his real job was Vicar Ap- ostolic of the London district, which included Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire and the Channel Islands. The foundation stone at Buckland was laid 17 years after Catholic emancipation and four years before re-establishment, in 1850, of a formal Catholic hierarchy. The old London District was then subdivid- ed, Buckland falling within the newly created Diocese of Southwark. In a further subdivision in 1882, the Catholic diocese of Portsmouth was created as part of the Province of Southwark, and Buckland has been part of that diocese ever since.4 1 The foundation ceremony The foundation ceremony began about 11 o’clock on the last Monday morning in October 1846. The procession set out from the Throckmor- ton family’s imposing residence, Buckland House, and walked through the gardens towards the ‘picturesque and well-chosen spot’ set aside for the new church. At the head of the procession, carrying a 14C silver processional cross, was the heir to the ancient house of Throckmorton, Robert Charles Courtenay Throckmorton. He was followed by three of his brothers: John carried the salt (symbolic of cleansing) on a silver plate; Richard conveyed a silver holy-water bucket donated to the church by his mother, Lady Throckmorton; and William brought the trowel and mallet. Choristers followed them ‘in full flowing surplices in the true old English form’ singing psalms in Latin, followed closely by Canon Rock, the celebrant. Bringing up the rear was the architect, Charles Hansom, wearing a black velvet gown and bearing the plans of the church.5 A large crowd gathered to witness the scene. Canon Rock laid the first stone at the south-east corner of what would become the chancel arch. Then Sir Robert and Lady Throckmorton, their daughter and three sons each laid a stone. Canon Rock concluded the ceremony with an explanation of the sacred rite. Five days later, the Catholic weekly The Tablet reported that ‘the touching and majestic strains of the Psalms, the Litany, and “Veni Creator,” poured forth on such a gladsome oc- casion and in such a sweet spot, by a choir not to be surpassed in any country congregation for richness of voice, knowledge of music, and correct taste in chanting the services of the Church, produced a solemn effect.’6 The Yates A scene such as that described above was a comparative rarity in the English countryside at the time. Why was it happening at Buckland? The answer lies in the strong survival of Roman Catholicism in that parish from pre-Reformation times until the 20C. That survival would not have been possible without the active support of Buckland’s leading gentry families: the Yates and later, their successors through mar- riage, the Throckmortons. A survival strategy for Catholicism in Eng- land had been devised at a conference held in July 1586 at Harleyford Manor, home of Richard Bold, Catholic former Sheriff of Lancashire, on the Thames near Marlow. It centred on the country homes of Cath- olic gentry from which a clandestine priest could minister, disguised as a tutor or steward. The Yates and Throckmortons were among the families in the Vale of White Horse who provided this facility.* * During the reign of Elizabeth I, a significant minority of gentry in the Thames Valley had Catholic sympathies. Those families who were most ar- dently Catholic often had links to the regime of Queen Mary or numbered Catholic martyrs among their associates and relatives. Catholic sympathies persisted in some Oxford colleges, especially St John’s, founded in Mary’s reign to provide well-educated Catholic priests. William Allen, former principal of St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, became the head of the English Roman Catho- lic church in exile. 2 The Yate family came to the Vale as wool merchants. Their heraldic arms featured three gates with the bracing in the form of a letter Y: party fesse-wise and battled argent and sable three gates countercol- oured. Yate, variously spelled, was a widely occurring dialect form of ‘gate’, as in the place name Symonds Yat.7 In the mid-1400s, Richard Yate settled in Charney Bassett, a village a few miles south of Buckland. His son John traded from there as a highly reputed merchant of the Staple at Calais. John Yate owned sheep farms in Wantage and Lambourn; in 1538, he bought the former Abingdon Abbey grange at nearby Lyford and moved there. His son James was also a merchant of the Staple and moved to Buckland some time after 1523. James married into the well- and widely-connected Fettiplace family and died in 1544. That year, James’s son, John Yate II (also married to a Fettiplace), bought the principal manor of Buck- land from the king.8 A decade later, in July 1554, John Yate II was granted the manor of Faringdon, jointly with Sir Francis Englefield.9 This was nine months after the coronation of Mary Tudor and just four months before the English church was formally reconciled with Rome. Sir Francis of Englefield near Reading was one of Mary’s most ardent supporters and a leading member of her Privy Council. He, too, was married to a Fettiplace. Sir Francis went into exile on the Continent after Mary’s death in 1558. With the accession of Elizabeth, the English church again split from Rome. In common with members of several other Vale of White Horse and downland gentry families involved in the wool trade, in- cluding Winchcombes, Hydes, Fettiplaces and Eystons, John Yate II became a recusant, i.e. someone who refused to attend Anglican services. In 1564, John Yate II was declared by the Bishop of Salisbury to be excommunicate, having never received Holy Communion according to the Anglican rite since Elizabeth acceded. In 1577, he was listed officially as a recusant. At Candlemas (2 February) that year, a priest- hunter called Hodgkins raided the Yate residence, Buckland Manor. John Yate’s secret chaplain, Fr William Hopton, had a narrow escape: his gown was found, still warm under the armpits. John Yate died the following year, aged 68, leaving 12 children.10 John Yate II was succeeded by his son Edward Yate, who married Jane Giffard. He thus became brother-in-law to the Archbishop of Reims. This was a powerful link with Catholic Europe, not least because French kings were crowned at Reims cathedral. In common with the male heads of many Catholic gentry families at this time, Edward Yate avoided being listed or convicted for recusancy. It seems he was a ‘church papist’, i.e he outwardly conformed to the requirements of the state church so as to avoid fines, prison or worse, while secretly supporting a Catholic household. It is known that he absented himself from Anglican services at the Middle Temple where, like his father, he had studied law. His wife was listed as a recusant in 1592–93. It was probably his brother John who was listed as a Catholic fugitive at Leuven (Louvain) in what was then the Spanish Netherlands.11 3 In 1581, during Edward Yate’s lordship of Buckland manor, one of the defining events in English recusant history took place nearby at Lyford Grange. This moated manor house, now a shadow of its former self but then similar in scale and general arrangement to Baddesley Clinton near Warwick, had passed from John Yate I via his son Thomas to Thomas’s son Francis Yate.

Load more