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Updated: July 3, 2025
When he was away on the queen's business, the management of his estate devolved on Dame Katharine, and a letter from this lady addressed "To the right worshipful, my very good husband," and dated Oxburgh, October 1554, is a compte rendu of all she had done for his property during his absence.
"Whereas Sir Henry Bedingfeld of Oxburgh, Bart., being a recusant, and confined to the usual place of his abode, or within the compass of five miles from the same, and whereas it has been represented to us on the part of the said Sir Henry Bedingfeld that he has very necessary and urgent business, which does require his attention at this time, and whereas the said Sir Henry Bedingfeld has made an oath before us of the truth of the same, and that he will not make any causeless stay from his said place of habitation, we therefore, four of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the said county upon examination taken by us as of the premisses, do give this our licence to the said Sir Henry Bedingfeld to travel out of the precincts or compass of five miles from the place of his abode limited by the statute at all times, from the 13 of this instant August, until the thirteenth of September following, by which time he is to return again to his place of abode at the parish of Oxburgh, aforesaid.
'Have you anything in the way of terms to propose? asked the doctor, filling his pipe. 'Well, first, absolute secrecy. I alone know the state of the case. 'Has Mr. Logan no guess? 'Not the faintest suspicion. The detectives, when I left Kirkburn, had not even found the trap door, you understand. You hit on its discovery through knowing the priest's hole at Oxburgh Hall, I suppose?
There are, however, no details of any visit to Oxburgh, and Dr. Jessopp, considering that the place was quite out of the line of progress, is of the opinion that she never went there at all.
In the meanwhile, Bedingfeld was appointed Lieutenant of the Tower, and the following selection of letters from the family archives at Oxburgh not only affords us a further insight into his character, but shows at the same time in what manner the State prisoners were treated by the Queen, the Council, and the Lieutenant.
Sir Henry Bedingfeld, who was born in the year 1509, was the grandson of Sir Edmund Bedingfeld, the favourite of three successive kings, Edward IV., Richard III., and Henry VII. This same Sir Edmund had served in the Wars of the Roses, and Edward IV., by letters patent of the twenty-second year of his reign, granted to him, "for his faithful service, licence to build towers, walls, and such other fortifications as he pleased in his manors of Oxburgh, together with a market there weekly, and a court of pye-powder."
Henry's wife was Katharine, daughter of Sir Roger Townshend, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, and ancestor of the present Marquis Townshend. Sir Henry Bedingfeld kept up some state at Oxburgh, having twenty servants in livery, besides those employed in husbandry.
Their two families had always been on terms of affectionate intimacy, although it was not until two generations later that they became allied by marriage, when Thomas Bedingfeld of Oxburgh, Sir Henry's grandson, married Frances, daughter and co-heir of John Jerningham of Somerleyton.
"The 21 of May, 1554."* * This and the next following letters are taken from the fourth volume of the publications of the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society, "State Papers relating to the custody of the Princess Elizabeth at Woodstock in 1554," being letters between Queen Mary and her Privy Council and Sir Henry Bedingfeld, Knight, of Oxburgh, Norfolk, communicated by the Rev.
Since Christmas there is sent you of your own hawk's killing, eleven teals, two mallards, and eleven bitterns. And I humbly take my leave of your Mastership. From Oxburgh, 20 of December 1563, by your poor servant, "Wm. Deye."
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