This book started out as a proposal for a doctoral thesis on the post-Reformation experiences of one aristocratic family – namely the Brownes who dwelt during this period principally at Cowdray in West Sussex, Battle Abbey in East Sussex and in their Southwark residence, Montague House, which was situated in St Saviour's parish on the south bank of the Thames. (The head of the Browne family during Mary Tudor's reign, Sir Anthony, was promoted to the peerage in 1554 as Viscount Montague.) These were the sort of people whose lives and careers could be used, I thought, to explore certain central themes within the social history of the aristocracy of the period, especially with reference to political ideology and religious belief. For the Browne family was predominantly and often openly Catholic in its religious inclinations.

At the time that I was commencing research, however, this topic looked potentially rather unfashionable. It was the ‘popular’ rather than the blue-blooded variety of English Catholicism which was then attracting Reformation historians' attention. Popular conservatism, we are still told, is the key to explaining why the English Reformation failed in its purpose of transforming the English Church into the godly and pious institution which some Protestants wanted. Indeed, popular residual Catholic sentiment would have had even more clout after 1559 had the natural leaders of Catholicism, the high-born, particularly the peerage, not been vertebraically challenged.