Reign of Mary I

The Reign of Mary I is the historical setting for the persecution described in Thomas Woolgar’s manuscript, the document that links Banfield’s sixteenth-century past to Gerry Fenn’s investigation of the modern-day Banfield Miracle. In Woolgar’s account, the period’s religious conflict shapes both the authorities’ response to Sister Einor and the villagers’ violence against her; the manuscript also reveals how family influence and institutional interests affected what was preserved and what was concealed.

Political and Religious Context

The novel places Mary’s reign after the Protestant rule of Henry VIII and Edward VI, and presents the new Catholic queen’s government as a forceful reversal. Its account describes the counter-Reformation as a short but fearful period in which religious allegiance carried grave consequences. It also recalls that nearly three hundred people were burned as heretics, while Richard Staffon, who had received Stapley Manor and its estate from Henry VIII in 1540, was driven into exile with his Protestant family. These details establish religious persecution as more than abstract background: changes in royal policy could reshape the lives and property of local families.

The manuscript’s account connects that national climate to events around Banfield. Thomas says that the Prioress regarded Einor as both a witch and a profaner, and that Mary had decreed witches and dissenters should be expelled from the realm and from mortal life. He recalls hearing of more than two hundred heretics burned and says he had witnessed two burnings near Lewes. These are claims made within Woolgar’s troubled retrospective narrative, not an independent historical account; the text presents them through a priest whose guilt and fear complicate his testimony.

The Woolgar Family and Banfield

The political transition also explains the Woolgar family’s position. According to the historical account Gerry Fenn assembles, the Catholic Church’s Stapley estate was taken during the Reformation, then passed by indirect means to Sir John Woolgar as a reward for his loyalty to the Church under Henry VIII. A wealthy Sussex businessman, Sir John became an influential patron; his son Thomas served as a priest at St. Joseph’s Church in Banfield. The family’s Catholic standing gave it connections to religious authorities, but it also gave Thomas’s father the influence to intervene in his son’s life.

Thomas’s manuscript shows the consequences of that influence after the events surrounding Einor. Following his breakdown, his father and the Bishop arranged for him to leave Banfield and serve at St. Peter’s Church at Stapley, on the family estate. Thomas suspects that the Prioress and his father had reasons to keep him away from his former parish. He also records that his father had the parish chest moved from St. Joseph’s Church in Banfield to St. Peter’s. The chest contained parish records, while Thomas’s own account of Einor was hidden separately for a future reader. The family’s intervention thus helped remove Thomas from the scene and relocate the materials through which Gerry Fenn would later reconstruct it.

Persecution and the Einor Narrative

Within Thomas’s account, the queen’s religious policy becomes part of the justification for action against Einor. After confessing some of his involvement to the Prioress but withholding the full extent of his knowledge, Thomas denounces Einor to a summoner as a heretic and witch. He then warns members of his congregation, and their anger gathers around the church. Thomas describes the villagers’ assault and execution of Einor, while acknowledging that he helped turn their fury against her and did not stop the violence. The episode exposes a central tension in his testimony: he casts himself as a sinner and victim of Einor’s influence, yet his own actions contribute to her condemnation.

The manuscript does not offer a neutral record of a trial. Instead, its account places accusation, religious authority, local grievance, and mob action together, while Thomas tries to explain his responsibility through the language of enchantment and political danger. His father’s influence, the Prioress’s authority, and the congregation’s response all shape what happens. The period’s atmosphere of persecution gives Thomas a framework for presenting Einor as a threat to the religious community, but his repeated admissions of guilt keep that explanation unsettled.

Function in the Later Story

The Reign of Mary I matters to the modern plot chiefly through this contested document. While investigating St. Joseph’s Church and the sudden pilgrimage interest in Banfield, Gerry Fenn follows the history of the parish chest to St. Peter’s Church at Stapley and discovers Thomas’s account. The chronicle inserts a sixteenth-century history of accusation, concealed wrongdoing, and violence into a present-day story about alleged miracles and renewed faith.

That connection is also a contrast. In the modern Banfield story, a crowd gathers around Alice Pagett, hoping to witness healing; in Thomas’s account, the earlier community’s religious fervor becomes a force of accusation and punishment. The novel does not make the two periods identical, but the manuscript makes the older history impossible to treat as distant background: its records and silences shape what Fenn can discover about Banfield, while its uncertain testimony leaves the truth of the past entangled with the present.