During the reign of Elizabeth I Catholicism ceased to be the religion of the majority and became that of a small minority. In County Durham, the ecclesiastical settlement of 1559 met with little open opposition, except from a few of the leading clergy, but religious conservatism or ‘survivalism’ together with the ‘bastard-feudal Catholicism’ of the house of Neville remained strong until the Northern Rising of 1569. Thereafter Catholic recusancy emerged slowly amongst the former rebel gentry, under the influence of the Louvainists and seminary priests, but was contained by Government pressure. By the end of the reign the strains produced by persecution were shown in the conflicts amongst the Catholic clergy but ‘seigneurial Catholicism’ within the household régime remained the religion of a minority of the gentry and their dependants still associated with the house of Neville.

The Queen does not seem to have made any permanent grant of the Englefield property before the attainder of Sir Francis, but by letters patent dated 10 December 1585 she granted a lease of the land formerly held by Plowden at Shiplake, and of some land in Berkshire, to Andrew Blunden and Plowden's two sons, Edmund and Francis, for their lives and the life of the survivor. A year later, by letters patent dated 8 August 1586, she granted to Humphrey Foster and George Fitton, a lease for forty years of substantial parts of the property of Sir Francis. The lease comprised land at Up Rossall, Udlington, Yagdon and Yeaton in Shropshire, extensive property at Englefield, Tidmarsh, Burghfield, Sindlesham, Tilehurst, Hartridge and elsewhere in Berkshire, and land at Shiplake except that granted to Blunden and the two Plowden brothers. It is quite possible, and even likely, that Foster and Fitton held this lease for the benefit of young Francis Englefield, as on 14 August 1587 they held a court baron in Shropshire ‘at the special instance of Francis Englefield’. If that were the case, it would explain young Englefield's subsequent attempts to exercise the rights of a beneficial owner, not only in respect of the land he inherited from his father but in respect of that of Sir Francis as well.

Dr Keith Lindley, in his article in Politics, Religion and The English Civil War (‘The Part Played by the Catholics’), resurrected the thorny issue of Catholic neutralism during the Civil War. Using statistical analyses based upon the records of the Committees for Advance of Money and for Compounding, he argued that for the most part Catholics kept themselves to themselves, avoiding both sides, and enduring the War with resignation. What he most certainly demonstrated, in the areas of the country he selected, was that the records he consulted do indeed convey that impression.

Dr Galgano shows that the Papist Sir Thomas Preston continued his family's interest in operating their iron-mines, and points, interestingly, to the number of Papists amongst his ore customers. More importantly for historians of the iron-industry, he states (pp. 212–13) that, about 1664, Sir Thomas built a blast-furnace. Dr Galgano does not explain that this furnace would pre-date the first known ones in Cumbria (Cleator, c. 1695), and Furness (Backbarrow, 1711). Thus, Sir Thomas would be both an entrepreneur and an innovator. The question is, did Preston build a blastfurnace?

Many of the devotional works written for English Catholics, at home and in exile, assure the weary pilgrim that the battle will end and the soul will be at peace; or that in the midst of it there can be inner quietness; or that man must flee the conflict altogether and engage in a different kind of warfare, the Pauline struggle within oneself. The emphasis in all of them is that here is no abiding city, or state, or régime. This world was shown to be full of alarms and omens and disasters as well as vanities and temptations. Man's safety and peace lay in eschewing the world altogether, either literally or symbolically.

Conformity Certificates are to be found among the Recorda of the King's Bench in the Public Record Office, London (Class K.B. 145). I have been asked by the Public Record Office to make it clear that these documents are not generally accessible to the public; indeed, they are not easy to consult, being dirty, crumpled and many torn, though in only one case was the name of a recusant completely lost, being torn off, without occurring again in the certificate. The greater part of the Recorda are writs to sheriffs or justices, but among them there are also to be found inquisitions, memoranda, some accounts for repairs to the King's Bench, recognizances of debts, copies of pleas coram Rege, depositions of witnesses, orders to commit the children of felons to the parish, accounts of misdemeanours, and Gaol Deliveries. Conformity Certificates form only a small part of the whole.