Goosey, goosey gander Whither shall I wander Upstairs and downstairs And in my lady's chamber There I met an old man Who wouldn't say his prayers So I took him by the left leg And threw him down the stairs. A simple nursery rhyme Goosey, goosey gander actually refers to the persecution of Roman Catholics and government officials searching for priests hiding in priest holes who would not conform to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. From the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558, when her Catholic sister Mary died, you may think that this country became Protestant. Of course not, people did not change their faith so easily, but the 1558 Act of Uniformity brought into law that all worship had to be according to the Book of Common Prayer. There were severe penalties for those who did not conform. The Catholic mass was forbidden and every time you were absent from your Parish Church you were fined 12d. In 1581 the fine was increased to £20 per month or imprisonment. Wealthy Roman Catholics were a source of income for the government for many years. Over the next two hundred and fifty years the Roman Catholic faith went underground. Many priests were executed. Sons were sent to the continent to be educated as they could not go to Oxford or Cambridge. Roman Catholics paid double land tax. They were not allowed to take positions of office, possess arms or keep a horse worth more than £5 value, Roman Catholics were denied a vote. But there were pockets of resistance. Those who refused to conform and did not attend their Parish church were rounded up and sent to court where they were fined, and sometimes imprisoned. These were called Recusants. In some families the husband conformed and went to the Parish Church and the wife did not, but then the husband was made responsible for his wife's recusancy and had to pay £10 per month or his wife would go to prison. So you can see how gradually those of humble means who could not afford these fines eventually conformed. Those families who had money could pay and retain their belief. Landed families had to register their estates with the local Quarter Session court, and take oaths of allegiance to the King or Queen, lists of such in Quarter Session records are evidence of who they were. Gradually the picture changed with the failure of the Jacobite Risings in the 18th century. The French did not invade England from the south to help the Jacobites invading from the north. The Stuart succession was not re-established, so by the end of the 18th century the persecution of Roman Catholics declined and the 1778 Catholic Relief Act allowed them some freedom of worship and removed the threat of imprisonment from priests. The 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act allowed Roman Catholics to take part in public life, take office in government, become lawyers, and vote. However, for much of the time from the age of Queen Elizabeth I Catholic families who had land had to keep their faith secret and had to have trustworthy servants and tenants who would remain loyal at all costs. In return the masters and mistresses offered protection to their servants and tenants. So it became the normal practice to have this mutual relationship of shared faith, service and protection so that even in the 19th century when the threat of imprisonment had passed, the old ties between the Roman Catholic gentry and servants of the same faith remained strong. Back to Brandsby and the household of the Cholmeley family. And their servants. This time the gardener, Alfred Moverley, second from the bottom in this list. Here in 1881 Alfred said that he was born in 1854 at Stutton, which is near Tadcaster in Yorkshire. First of all I will go backwards and see where Alfred came from, then go forwards in his life and see how his life was shaped. His parents were Thomas Moverley, whose family had been in the Tadcaster district for several generations, and Jane Horsnail from Essex. How had his mother come from Essex to a tiny place near Tadcaster in Yorkshire ? The name Horsnail, with variations of Horsnell and Arsnell, was quite common in Essex and her family came from near Chelmsford. In 1851 two girls called Horsnail were servants at Hazlewood Castle, Esther born in 1821 and Jane born in 1831, both from Essex, Jane was Alfred's mother and married in 1853. Hazlewood Castle is now an exclusive hotel and wedding venue, but, yes, you've guessed, it had belonged to an ancient Catholic family called Vavasour. And yes, they had a Roman Catholic chapel in their castle. You will see there is a pattern here. Going back to Essex, Jane Horsnail came from Springfield, now part of Chelmsford, her father was an agricultural labourer, and near by was the Palace of Beaulieu, which in 1798 was occupied by Nuns of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre who ran a school there called New Hall. Looking for a link to Catholicism has not been immediately evident for Jane, but she had a sister Ann Horsnail who was a servant at this school in 1851 and then beame a nun at Lanherne convent in Cornwall. I cannot say how Jane got to Hazlewood Castle or what her faith was, but her husband Thomas Moverley was a Roman Catholic. This is the baptism of Thomas Moverley in 1830 in the Chapel in Hazlewood Castle. His parents were Joseph Thomas Moverley and Elizabeth Moody and they married at nearby Bramham on the 3rd February 1830. Joseph was born in Aberford, also near to Hazlewood Castle but Elizabeth came from Hexham. Did she also come as a servant to the Castle and the Vavasour family ? She was baptised in the Roman Catholic registers that covered private chapels in various houses near Hexham in 1803 and had two brothers. Joseph was baptised in the Roman Catholic chapel in Hazlewood Castle 1806 Sept 21 was baptized JOSEPH THOMAS s.o. JAMES & ELIZABETH MOVERLEY (born on the preceeding day ) by Pere Fidella who supplied at Hazlewood at that time. I have gone backwards and forwards, looked at many of Joseph's siblings, one brother John Moverley, a woodcutter, went to Brough Hall near Catterick and then Upleatham near Guisborough. Joseph was one of twelve, his father married twice, the Hazlewood Catholic registers are full of Moverleys. They were there for many generations before Joseph Thomas, and many of them were blacksmiths on the Great North Road. So who was the family at Hazlewood Castle ? The Vavasour family claimed to be one of the oldest families in the country and could trace a straight line back to the time of the Norman Conquest. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavasour_family But the line eventually ran out and went sideways to the Stourton family who then took the name Vavasour. A Walter Vavasour had married a Dorothy Langdale of Holme on Spalding Moor. Both their sons died without surviving children. Dorothy's niece Mary Langdale had married Charles Philip Stourton, and it was through this family that Hazlewood Castle descended. They were well connected to the Howards, Dukes of Norfolk, the Cliffords, and were even related to Mrs Fitzherbert who had secretly married King George IV. But now I will go forward to see how did Alfred Moverley born at Stutton near Hazlewood get to Brandsby Hall ? Estate Agents' brochures are very useful, and Knight Frank have these pictures of the garden. I hope that Alfred had more flowers. Alfred was already a gardener before he arrived at Brandsby, so while his father and brother were blacksmithing at Stutton, Alfred had embarked on a different career. After he had arrived at Brandsby he married Jane Eliza Firth who had come from Bilton near Harrogate, they married in 1882. Jane's family are particularly elusive. But once in Brandsby Alfred and Jane brought up five children. Alice the first was born in 1884, followed by Hilda in 1887, Thomas in 1891, Katherine in 1896 and Charles in 1899. Here the story takes an unusual turn. By now the owner of Brandsby Hall was Hugh Fairfax Cholmeley, son of Thomas Cholmeley who had been there in 1881. He evidently took great notice of Alfred's daughters, decided that he would marry the eldest one, Alice, and paid for the three girls to be educated sending them away to convents. He married the eldest, Alice, in 1903 when she was still a teenager and he was old enough to be her father. They married at St Dominic's Priory, Hampstead. In 1901 Alfred and Jane were still at Brandsby but by 1904 they had moved all the way to Boston in Lincolnshire. Here Alfred was a "Jobbing Gardener" which did not have the same prestige as being gardener for Brandsby Hall, and it seems that Jane took on the roll of bread winner whilst their two boys were educated at Boston. Jane was acting as an agent for matching servants to places. She said that the agency had been there 29 years, and it had, with two different proprietoresses, so Jane must have bought this business in Boston in Lincolnshire at about the time her eldest daughter married Alfred's employer in 1903, perhaps Alfred did not want to work for his son in law. Although by now Hugh Fairfax Cholmeley had given up living at Brandsby Hall and shared his time between London and a new house he built in Brandsby. Jane Moverley ran the agency until about October 1911, and then there were no more advertisements. At some point after this Alfred and Jane moved to London and lived at Erskine Hill, Hampstead, both were buried at Kensal Green in 1920. Their son Thomas remained in Boston in Lincolnshire, but their son Charles lived in London. Already I have explored how servants were passed between members of extended families, and this allowed them to travel from one part of the country to another. Another way that servants were recruited was through agencies and advertisements. The Tablet is the weekly newspaper for Roman Catholics, dating back as far as 1840 , the small ads were also used for recruiting servants. As not many of the servants would be able to either read or write or even afford the newspaper, it must have been the literate and servant employing readership who passed on the information. The Tablet 4 October 1879 where Mrs Cholmeley is acting as an agent trying to find a place for a nurse. This from the death notices in The Tablet 2 December 1871 where a nurse had been with the family for many years and moved from the Stricklands to the Cholmeleys. They were related. The Tablet 16 February 1878 The Tablet 28 September 1878 The Tablet 18 October 1879. Adam Robinson had moved from Berkshire to Rudding Park by this time. The Tablet 26 September 1891. Was this when Adam Robinson left butlering at Clayton Hall ? In conclusion I have found that the ties were strong between masters and servants and the extended families of both masters and servants. Word of mouth, personal recommendation, and then the small ads in their own newspapers maintained a network of faith which served them all very well indeed.
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