A haven in a time of storm

NORBURY IN Derbyshire is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Members of the Fitzherbert family were patrons of the Church of St Mary and St Barlock from 1125 to 1551 living in the Manor !louse.
This old and historic house has recently been restored by Mr Marcus Stapleton Martin. The Great Hall of the Manor built in 1305, is open to the public from May to September inclusive, by written appointment.
From the date of the accession of Queen Elizabeth I in 1558 throughout the succeeding two and a half centuries the owners of Norbury (with two exceptions) were closely associated with Recusancy and the pains and penalties which it involved.
The term "Recusancy", which became common in the early years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, denoted refusal to attend the church service as ordered by the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559.
An account of the penalties 15th century roundels put in by John Fitzherbert the agriculturalist (1450-1531).
suffered by the family under the Elizabethan persecution has been given by Dr Cox in Vol VII of the Derbyshire Archaeological Journal published in 1885 in his article entitled "Norbury House and the troubles of the Fitzherberts" and also by Dom Bede Camm in his work entitled "Forgotten Shrines" published in 1910.
The fourteenth clause of the Act laid down that any "person not resorting to his parish church on Sundays and Holidays should be fined twelve pence for each offence, the money to go to the poor of the parish". The crux of this regulation lay in the fact that the Mass had been eliminated from the service in the parish church, so that conformity with this clause implied the abandonment of the very core of the Catholic Faith. Any incumbent who was not prepared to accept the new order was immediately dispossessed, and his place taken by one who was prepared to conform, and by this stroke, and with the imposition of the as yet comparatively mild fines, the Government hoped that the old religion would gradually die of inanition.
For those of the laity who decided to stand firm and suffer the penalties, there immediately arose the necessity to procure in one way or another the services of 'a priest to say Mass and administer the Sacraments. This could only be done with the utmost secrecy, and by one of the displaced clergy, who are often referred to as the Marian priests, many having been ordained during the reign of Mary Tudor.
Sometimes a priest would go from house to house; sometimes he would be maintained in an establishment, appearing to be an ordinary member of the household, probably as a tutor to the children.
In 1559 the parish priest at Norbury, Henry Comberford, refused to conform, was deprived and ejected. lie was perhaps a relation, possibly even a first cousin of Sir Thomas.
It is clear that Sir Thomas also took an uncompromising line from the start, and in 1561 he was committed to the Fleet prison in London by the Queen's Commissioners.
At this date Sir Thomas was about forty three years old, and had been married for sixteen years but had no children. The family fortunes were at their peak, Sir Thomas having inherited Norbury from his father in 1538, Hamstall Ridware from his mother in 1551, and Padley in right of his wife.
Entries in the State Papers record that he was still in the Fleet in 1565. In 1568 he was appointed an executor by a fellow prisoner Dr. David Pole, the dispossessed Marian Bishop of Peterborough.
Meanwhile, during this time Lady Fitzherbert and other members of the family had
continued to harbour priests at Norbury.
Lady Fitzherbert died in 1576, but Sir Thomas' brother John managed the Estates and is always spoken of as "of Padley" which he evidently occupied with his family until the raid on Padley in July 1587, carried out by Lord Shrewsbury in person, and in which John Fitzherbert was discovered to be harbouring the Seminary priests, Nicholas Garlick and Robert Ludlam. Also found in the house was an old Marian priest of the name of Todd, who, however, as such, was not subject to the death penalty.
• Garlick and Ludlam were executed in Derby.
By this date, Thomas, the eldest son of John Fitzherbert and the heir to his uncle, had come under the influence of Richard Topcliffe and had turned informer, and Sir Thomas had sought to take legal steps to cut young Thomas out of the succession.
The next brother, Anthony, was in Derby gaol, having been taken into custody doting an abortive raid on Padley in the previous February. At this point, Richard, yet another brother, always spoken of as of "Hartsmere", who had spent much time abroad, now returned to do what he could to save the family estate. His return was reported and his arrest ordered, and there now followed active efforts to find grounds o,n which to incriminate Sir Thomas intreasonable practice with which he could be charged.
In 1590 an interrogatory was prepared to which Sir Thomas was to be subjected, and gives another glimpse of the continuing line of priests serving the Catholic Community at Norbury.
In his covering letter to Lord Shrewsbury, Richard Topcliffe writes of that "dangerous family the Fitzherberts in the county, in whose three houses bath been moulded and tempered the most dangerous and loathsome treasons".
By December 29th 1590 the Interrogatories had been administered, and the Council, after consideration of them, committed Sir Thomas to the Tower of London where he died on October 3rd 1591.