In what kind of environment did the self-consciously Catholic entourage of the Browne family originate and develop? What was the local context for the expression of the conservative and Catholic opinions and influence of the interrelated families grouped around the Brownes of Cowdray and Battle in Sussex? One of the consistent themes of the more recent tranche of local studies which deal with the English Reformation in the provinces is that the split between a supposedly more backward/conservative/Catholic North and a more progressive/Protestant South has been overdone. Put bluntly, what it means, according to Christopher Haigh, is that many English counties were more like Lancashire than everyone has thought. He suspects that ‘the contrast is between Lancashire and what the conventional wisdom tells us happened elsewhere, rather than between Lancashire and what actually took place in the rest of England’. And, indeed, we know from the famous 1564 survey of justices of the peace that there were significant numbers of mislikers, i.e. Catholics or conservatives, among many of the shires' natural governors. There were also widespread deprivations and resignations of conservative/Catholic clergy after the 1559 settlement. Even if the mislikers and malcontents were not going to turn the clock back to before 1559, things were unlikely to be reformed as fast as the reformers would have wished.

It may be worth reconstructing the local Reformation context of the aristocratic conservatism and Catholicism which form the focal point of this study.