No luck so far with the reference - it's the sort of book which will have been sold as Christmas presents - I'll try again next week. There was a program on BBC radio which referred to it, and I then browsed the book to check up on its suggestions. I was satisfied that there was something in it, but not perhaps as much as the writer had indicated on the radio. There are only a few existing traces of the garden designs referred to, and there may have been an eagerness to extend them beyond what that evidence would sustain. There is something interesting about the idea of someone imprisoned for recusancy writing instructions, in clear, for plantings to aid recall of Catholic feast days, which might need further investigation. However, the cryptic ideas fitted the thinking of the period, and it was the right period for there to be a need for caution.

There is a tendency in the history of denominations to look only at the history relevant to one's own tradition. What is important to remember in the history of religion in England is that once the political move had been taken, the lid was off, and people began to be Dissenters of all sorts. It wasn't just Catholicism and Anglicanism, and it never will be again. It doesn't matter how alike the services are in RC and Cof E churches, that is not all that can be said about Christianity in England. In Lewes, for example, near to Tom Paine's house, is the Unitarian Chapel, with a notice proclaiming how its congregation was active in working for Catholic emancipation in the last century. The Unitarians are now barred, even from observer status, from Churches Together in England. It's not that simple over here.

Penny