As Barbara points out, modern (and foreign) pronounciations are irrelevant to the question. McGrath's and Steve's comments cover it. For general help with the older style of pronounciation in Hampshire, Tim might usefully refer to publications such as Long's A dictionary of the Isle of Wight dialect, and of provincialisms used in the Island; with illustrative anecdotes and tales; to which is appended the Christmas Boy's play, an Isle of Wight "Hooam Harvest", and songs sung by the peasantry; forming a treasury of insular manners and customs of fifty years ago (1886).

As Terry mentions, Catholics do seem to have been pretty thin on the ground in the New Forest labouring classes of those days, and there is no reason to think that George Blake of Lyndhurst (of whom I assume Tim was writing) was one of them. The great majority were at least nominally C of E, though doubtless there was also a Nonconformist tradition. There was an outbreak of Mormonism in the mid 19th century, but it doesn't seem to have lasted long. Many of the converts emigrated to America.